What’s a Healthy Food, Anyways?

If someone were to ask you right now to name three healthy foods, you would probably say something akin to broccoli, carrots, and chicken breast. It doesn’t take too much effort to think of examples— why is that?

*Photo by* *Suzifoo* *via Getty Images.*

Food labeling is common in the United States. We are always told that there are certain healthy and unhealthy foods, but the reality is that there is no such thing as healthy food. Registered dietitian Kia Octaviano says that the term “healthy eating” is a very broad phrase and the way that we view healthy eating in American culture is very skewed that is why she defines healthy eating in one solid word which is balance. When Octaviano says the word balance, she is not only referring to food itself but rather the balance of our value in food and the type of food that we eat.

Balance in all foods fit.

“Hot Cheetos can be part of a healthy diet just as much as apples and celery,” said Octaviano.

Being able to understand that you don’t need to restrict yourself from your favorite foods to eat healthy is something very big in understanding balance. Octaviano describes the all foods fit philosophy in the belief that not to label the food as healthy and unhealthy because it assigns more morality to food meaning that when we put morals to foods it assigns shame to certain foods.

*Photo by* *Carmen k sisson cloudybright* *via Alamy Stock Photo.*

When we label certain foods as unhealthy that means that they are bad so when people eat that bad food it makes them feel shameful and guilty. This leads them to want to restrict the foods that they once enjoyed that they can no longer see as good for them.

Every meal doesn’t have to be perfect.

Having a traditional meal balance includes the science behind having a protein, a carb, a fat source, and then a fruit or vegetable in your meal but Octaviano explains that not every single meal is going to include all those components every single time and that doesn’t mean it makes it an unhealthy meal.

“If someone were to daily eat and make their chicken breast and rice and their broccoli that’s getting a balanced meal,” said Octaviano. “But if they were to order chow mien at Panda Express, with orange chicken and they got broccoli and another side of veggie as well, that would be a balanced meal because there’s a carb, there’s a protein and even if it didn’t have a vegetable in it, they still found balance.”

Not every meal must be perfect or healthy if you can find a balance of what your body needs and having a good amount of food to nourish it is also important.

Consistent eating is key.

Octaviano says that along with finding balance in every meal that we eat being able to also eat consistently is something important because she has found that a lot of college students have very poor eating schedules which is why she also defines healthy eating as consistent eating.

“I know a lot of college students eat maybe twice a day, once a day, sometimes because of the busyness or because of their belief that eating less is eating healthy,” said Octaviano. Along with college students’ lack of eating, there’s also a trend on how many college students want to eat healthier but don’t know how to so they end up following certain healthy eating patterns that they might believe in or have been exposed to before.

Octaviano explains that when students try to eat healthier, they are already exposed to beliefs about healthy eating and non-healthy eating from how they grow up so for them, they are already labeling food because of the condition and the belief that our American culture has on food.

Why labeling can be the enemy.

Labeling food as healthy and unhealthy can have negative effects on mental health. When we label our food, it leaks into the identity of ourselves. The perception of when we eat bad foods, we are a bad person, and when we eat good foods then we are a good person.

Octaviano says that what we eat doesn’t necessarily determine our health 100%. “You can have the healthiest person in the world and they’re smoking daily cigarettes and we’re still saying they’re healthy because they eat vegetables and that’s because of how we assign what healthy means by the foods that we eat but that doesn’t mean you’re a healthy person,” said Octaviano.

Labeling foods causes us to not have variety in the foods that we can eat and when you have a very small variety of foods, that can lead to eating more or can interfere with your overall nutrition and what your body needs. We want to be able to have a large variety of foods so that way we can eat whatever we want without labeling food as good or bad.

We all need food to survive, and food is good for us so therefore there shouldn’t be any morality to food.

The pressure on college students to eat “healthy” vs “unhealthy” by society.

As Octaviano explained earlier college students have been exposed to following certain healthy eating patterns, and they also fall under the pressure of society wanting them to always eat healthy. Octaviano’s specialty in nutrition and dietetics in eating disorders has allowed her to see how the pressure and accountability on college students to eat healthier can affect how students think and act about their eating patterns.

“They’re more exposed to that accountability and the pressure to eat healthy versus unhealthy,” said Octaviano. “And because of that the typical college student of the students who come after high school of that age range of 18 to 21 are more susceptible to eating disorders because of that pressure to eat healthy and whatever definition they have of what healthy eating is.”

*Photo by Sam Moghadam Khamseh via Squarespace.*

That pressure to eat healthy in college is something that can lead to a serious eating disorder that society might not see because of the way that people in the U.S. have viewed food and what healthy eating is. It is better to eat what you want and find balance in it and not fall into what society wants you to eat because there isn’t only one definition for healthy eating.

You can have your own definition of what healthy eating is without having to label food as healthy or unhealthy because remember there is no such thing as good or bad food and food doesn’t define who you are.