For anyone trying to improve their physical or mental health, the modern landscape of food choices is dizzying, confusing, and manipulative.
As I have written about in my Eye of the Beholder series:
A growing body of evidence suggests that ultra processed foods are: “so highly reinforcing that they may trigger addictive biological and behavioral responses, thus directly driving forward excessive patterns of food intake and contributing to obesity”.
-The Eye of the Beholder - Part 2 (the manipulation of how food looks)
To make matters worse, diet recommendations change on the daily. Coffee is good for you. Coffee is bad. No it’s good again. Meat sustains you. Meat destroys you. Got milk? No don’t drink that. Eat butter. No try this ultra-processed vegetable oil instead (aka margarine) because that crap won’t kill . . .or will it?
And somewhere in all of this lies the concept of “Whole Foods”. In theory, whole foods are the answer, but what are whole foods and how do you know if you are getting enough?
What are whole foods?
Roll back the added salt, sugar, fat and food additives and you are probably looking at a whole food.
But can you be sure?
No.
Because there is no agreed upon definition of what “whole foods” actually are.
I’ve written before about the difference between processed and ultra-processed foods. In fact, you can find the classification in this post which talks about how there are levels of processing and only the last stage (group 4 - ultra-processing) is really the place to start eliminating things from your diet.
Typically whole foods are listed as fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, standard cuts of meat like you get at a butcher shop, eggs, milk and fresh fish.
And yet, foods like cheese, yogurt, humus, and nut butters can qualify as whole foods if they are created the “old fashioned” way without the trickery of excess salt, sugar, fat and additives.
A basic tomato sauce made from chopped up whole tomatoes? Is that a whole food?
What about extra virgin olive oil? EVOO has been made the traditional way for hundreds of years. It is definitely NOT the same as corn oil which requires use of solvents like hexane to create. (Not something you’d be doing in your kitchen! Hey Grandma -where do you keep the hexane?)
So how do you know if you are eating whole foods? Or where to draw the line?
Try WWGD!
Okay - you might be a lot younger than me - for you try WWGGD!
WWGD is a handy phrase that helps me decide if something is falling on the good side of the processing spectrum or the bad side.
It’s simple.
WWGD = What Would Grandma Do? (or Great-Grandma if you are younger)
Generational food wisdom seems to be about the only reliable thing to consider these days. It is not perfect. For sure there were some bad food choices and processes going on back in the day . . . . .like let’s not be going back to aluminum cookware and making tomato sauces in it!
But as a rule of thumb, Grandma probably knew best how to feed you.
If you are thinking about a food, ask yourself whether this food existed like this prior to 1950.
The list I gave you above (fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, standard cuts of meat like you get at a butcher shop, eggs, milk and fresh fish) all fit the bill. So do cheese, yogurt, humus, nut butter, tomato sauce and olive oil. Even bread has been made for thousands of years.
If you could have made it in a 1950’s kitchen, it is probably in the category of a whole food. I guess there are some exceptions (maybe) because certainly people made sausages and cured hams.
But let’s consider that for a moment, would a 1950’s sausage or ham be as bad for your health as one off the store shelf? I wonder. . . .
The main finger pointing over processed meats links back to the addition of sodium nitrate which is one of those manipulative additives for color and flavor, and to stop bacterial growth. But does anyone remember Grandma reaching for a box of sodium nitrate?
Is it tomato sauce or Tomato Sauce?
I think one of the most frustrating things about trying to eat healthy foods today is that most health studies are looking at current diet patterns and foods and declaring them unhealthy.
Let me tell you - from personal experience of raising my own grass-fed beef, processing it with my neighbor and cooking it at home - there is NOTHING in the store tastes like THAT. And that is a 1950’s style beef.
So when a study says red meat is bad - eat less beef - that study is NOT talking about grass-fed Dexter processed the old fashioned way. That study is talking about feed-lot Angus or Hereford finished on corn and soy. Not at all the same thing.
TOmato or ToMAto? It is just different.
Do you eat tomato sauce made from diced up fruits? Or ultra-processed sauce with excess salt, sugar and fat, with enough herbs thrown in to make you think it is “authentic”. And then ask the question is tomato sauce healthy.
What would Grandma do?
If you are struggling to make food choices that support your wellbeing, ask yourself what your distant family ate one or two generations back.
My Grandmother raised 13 kids on a prairie grain farm, with livestock. My mother would go out to feed the chickens or work in the garden. My uncles helped bring in the grain on hay wagons pulled by horses (crazy to think just two generations ago horse power was Horse Power).
And what I can tell you is that my Grandmother never spent a nickel more than she had to when feeding chickens. They got kitchen scraps, a handful of scratch grains, and what they could free range for themselves. Chicken then, is not chicken now.
Cheese made from whole milk on the farm, is not spreadable bright-orange goo that pours from a jar.
For me, the definition of what WHOLE FOODS actually are falls into the category of
“If I could find it in my Grandmother’s kitchen, it’s probably a whole food”.
With some flexibility to include foods that would be found in Grandmothers’ kitchens around the world, you can pretty much make the list.
WWGD is probably the wisest food guide you are going find.
Just remember that the time lag changes the meaning of what constitutes fruit, vegetables and meat. Check out - Micronutrient Deficiencies: What happens when healthy food becomes less healthy? - for an explanation of how our food is changing due to changing soils. And remember that when you change how you feed livestock, you change the meat, dairy and eggs too.
As you think about the foods you eat, and especially if you are trying out the recommendations from last week’s post (What foods are you eating? Let’s take an economic approach to your food habits), it’s a good idea to figure out how much of your diet consists of whole foods.
What would your Grandma do? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
This post, and everything written for The Naturalized Human is created by a human (me- yours truly). No AI here. Subscribe to get every post in your inbox and to support further human-created stories.