We are pleased to announce that as of March 4, 2025, an updated Rich Text Editor has been introduced in the MyFitnessPal Community. To learn more about the changes, please click here. We look forward to sharing this new feature with you!

Define "healthy" food...

1171820222338

Replies

  • Posts: 2,067 Member
    Hornsby wrote: »
    550 comments or so. I will never catch up.

    So my opinion...

    No one food is healthy or unhealthy. A complete diet can be healthy or unhealthy, but not one food. If you think otherwise, you are just plain wrong.
    i just want to point out the irony here...
  • Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited January 2015
    Uhhh...wow. Setting aside the obvious 'healthy' and 'not healthy' aspect of asparagus versus pizza, 'healthy' foods are foods that do not harm your body.

    Seems a reasonable definition, except I'm not quite sure how a slice of pizza harms your body. Let's take my homemade pizza with wholewheat crust cooked in some olive oil, tomato sauce with tomatoes from my garden, lots of veggies, some olives (I love olives), cheese (but in moderation), and some lean ground beef with spices. (Hmm, I need to really make this.) How does eating this--especially just one slice as part of an overall balanced diet*--do you harm?

    Indeed, if we are going to play the "what if you only ate X" game, I'll eat the pizza and you eat the asparagus (my pizza has some asparagus, so I get both), and see who feels better in a month.

    *To be fair, make the pizza a commercial slice, say mushroom, black olive, and spinach. It's not great to eat tons of--high calories, low protein--but will eating a slice as part of an overall balanced diet harm your body? I really don't see how.
  • Posts: 3,165 Member
    PRMinx wrote: »

    Yes but, more importantly, would you rather eat only broccoli for one month or only Doritos?

    The main question is what is "healthy" to you/me? the doritos thing is a side discussion
  • Posts: 4,585 Member

    The main question is what is "healthy" to you/me? the doritos thing is a side discussion

    I was making a joke. Lighten up, yo. It's only Tuesday.
  • Posts: 9,532 Member
    My definition of "healthy" food is simple - does eating it in a normal serving amount cause me difficulty in meeting my macro and calorie goals? If the answer is yes, then I consider it "unhealthy".

    Of course, that can change over time and circumstance - the more active I am, the smaller the universe of unhealthy foods gets because there's just a lot more room for fun & games.

  • Posts: 10,322 Member
    PRMinx wrote: »

    Yes but, more importantly, would you rather eat only broccoli for one month or only Doritos?

    Why the hell would I do either? I take it someone went to extremes somewhere in this thread. Imagine that. People who make those types of comparisons have 0 logic. They are ignored.


  • This content has been removed.
  • This content has been removed.
  • Posts: 13,575 Member
    JoRocka wrote: »

    I've had it like 2-3 times and I cannot.even.

    between the fact it tastes so awful and the huge "OMGHERD kale" reaction people get all ga-ga for in health food circles- it makes me stabby.

    I was raised eating kale and love it. But I also kind of hate that it's become a "superfood" too. The prices for it at the grocery are outrageous now.
  • Posts: 257 Member
    Spinach is the now food again "over Kale" where have you people been? Thanks everyone for a great read... It made my day :D
  • Posts: 3,165 Member
    MrM27 wrote: »

    You see it as back peddling because you fail to grasp the concept of logic. It's ok. We don't think any less of you.

    Look. I'm just asking where you got the idea that eating broccoli for 1-2 months would land one in the hospital. That's it. Can you answer the question? Seriously, that's what I asking.
  • Posts: 4,585 Member
    Serious thread is so serious.

    200x200px-ZC-d0ddbfc2_baby-serious-face-gif-o.gif
  • Posts: 71 Member

    More than one person has told me that seasoned kale chips were a tasty alternative to potato chips. I guess I am naive, because I went out, bought some kale, rubbed it with oil, added my seasonings, etc., baked it for however long the recipe said (I don't remember), and you know what? It didn't taste like potato chips. It tasted like %$#^ kale!

    I don't know if I can ever learn to trust again.
    :#:#:#:#
  • Posts: 1,948 Member
    ndj1979 wrote: »

    Ummm actually you did not..and that thread is now locked by the mods...but feel free to post it again ...

    Actually, I did. But you amuse me and this might help somebody who is actually serious.
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=sugar+linked+to+death+from+CVD+study+CDC
  • Posts: 6,035 Member
    Waiting for thread to be locked in 5...4...3...
  • Posts: 15,151 Member
    but......I was only gone for 4 hours.
  • This content has been removed.
  • Posts: 71 Member
    Soooo what is healthy and unhealthy???
  • Posts: 207 Member
    20 pages lol
  • Posts: 1,324 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »

    But the problem is that "healthiness"--at least in the way that I am using it, as in "is beneficial to eat" is not an inherent property of food but depends on the circumstances. If you need to gain weight, almost anything edible might be healthy. If you've eaten nothing but broccoli for a week, broccoli is not healthy. In particular, there is no food that is so beneficial that you would want to say that it could make up an entire diet. Whether a food benefits your health or not depends on the overall diet. Oatmeal is quite healthy, IMO, but getting 90% of your diet from oatmeal is not ideal, IMO. Bananas are fabulous, but the banana only diet seems idiotic to me.

    But thanks to another poster I now get how you are using the term and it makes more sense to me, although I don't really think of food so much that way, but in connection with an overall diet. (This is because I think the desire to rank foods and all that is really bizarre and impossible. How on earth do you even start to compare chicken and zucchini or some such. And why?)

    I think that my definition (and Kalikel's) are more of a general guideline from which to build a menu plan. I don't try to rank bananas vs spinach, I just know that fruits and veggies have been associated with good health in several studies, so I eat both. I don't go out of my way to eat candy, though, as there is no evidence that it improves human health in general. Sure, in certain situations it can be helpful (I used to eat jelly beans in the middle of my workouts to keep my blood sugar up), but on a broader scale, it isn't associated with any benefits that most people can't get elsewhere with many additional benefits. I do eat low nutrient density stuff for the taste as well, I just limit it to a small amount of my calories to make sure I am getting all my nutrients in. Which is probably the same thing that most people on this thread do, they just approach it from a different angle.
  • Posts: 1,069 Member
    Eating broccoli, nuts/seeds, beans can put me in the hospital.
  • Posts: 1,951 Member
    fit4eva86 wrote: »
    Soooo what is healthy and unhealthy???

    Meeting your macro and micro nutrients/day = healthy
    Not meeting your macro and micro nutrients/day = less healthy
  • Posts: 207 Member
    Not locked
  • Posts: 12,950 Member
    JoRocka wrote: »

    get out.

    we can't be friends any more

    <cries>

    I had a raw kale salad at the brasilian place last night.
  • Posts: 6,035 Member
    keola64 wrote: »
    Not locked

    Shocked ;)

  • Posts: 7,739 Member
    BigT555 wrote: »
    i just want to point out the irony here...


    doyouevensarcasmbro?
  • Posts: 12,950 Member
    I'll just throw this out there, so much blather about what is healthy food and what isn't. Ya'll know what's unhealthy? The massive cortisol releases from all this arguing. Ya'll should just break up.
  • Posts: 6,035 Member
    adowe wrote: »

    Meeting your macro and micro nutrients/day = healthy
    Not meeting your macro and micro nutrients/day = less healthy

    +1
  • Posts: 4,585 Member
    edited January 2015
    dbmata wrote: »

    I had a raw kale salad at the brasilian place last night.

    I guess db and I will have to go sit in a corner.

    But, hey, I hear there's beer over here. And peanut butter. You won't be able to resist us for long.
  • Posts: 29,136 Member
    MoiAussi93 wrote: »

    Actually, I did. But you amuse me and this might help somebody who is actually serious.
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=sugar+linked+to+death+from+CVD+study+CDC


    awww look it took me to a google search ..how cool ..

    still is not a link to specific study you referenced...
This discussion has been closed.