Sunday's Plate

When I hear the expression: "Eating healthy,"the first thing that enters my mind is eating healthy what? Healthy is an adjective. It's not an adverb, and it should modify eating and doesn't when one says, "eating healthy." It should be healthily.

As we get the grammar wrongly, we also get the eating wrongly. People unflinchingly say, "I had a great healthy meal at" - and then name a restaurant. This is an oxymoron. Some people think an oxymoron is a self contradictory effect; I think it's a pair of Dummy Tumpkins. One might say, "I had a delicious meal, a splendid meal, a really sumptuous meal..." not the same as a healthy or a "good" meal.

Let's think! Restaurant eating is not a healthy experience. The salt and fat and methods of cooking restaurant food puts it out of the healthy range. Most people eat out at least once a week. That's fine. But when eating out is a daily gig, and worse, a daily gig for children, the problem of high fat and high salt is tantamount to using a tanning bed on your insides every single day.

Yes, Miss Judy loves eating lunch out. Yes, I grew up in restaurants. Yes, I buy liquor store pizza for my grandboys. Yes, I love MacDonald's when I'm traveling. But I also know that this is a treat for the special occasion, and although I celebrate life every day, I'm not going to celebrate at the cost of my skin, my kidneys, my heart or my liver.

So what is the healthiest kind of eating? The healthiest foods are foods which have the least "treatment." The more you process a food, the more it loses its meaning; its reason to be; its ability to nourish and do its job.

The best food is fresh. Fruits and vegetables that are still in their skins are your healthiest food deal. Fresh meat and fish is also healthier than processed. You can't eat raw meat, but cooking foods gently helps. Grains that are whole are better than grains with the good part missing. Whole oats are better than cereal that has been pulverized with sugar and other additives with names so long, the food becomes a non food.

So how do you know what to buy?

Let's look at one of each food.

Let's start with pineapple. Canned pineapple is a convenience. It has a shelf life of about four thousand years. On the other hand, fresh pineapple has a shelf life of about three weeks. When you consider the taste, the fresh pineapple is incredibly delicious, and the canned tastes like can, is ultra sugary, and has the consistency of scrap plastic. Nutrition wise? The fresh pineapple is superior because the processing of the canned variety is loaded with extra sugar. The only processing that will cause the fresh pineapple to be nutritionally challenged is the cutting.

Let's look at corn. Fresh corn is wonderful and actually available all year long. Fresh corn needs one thing - shucking. You steam corn for less than five minutes in a frying pan. Or you can bake it in the oven for about thirty minutes. Canned corn, however, is soaked in sugared, salted water for years. Its poor quality reminds me of floating nodules of soap. When you buy corn in a can, you are paying for canned water with nodules. The nutrition is in the water, so drink the salted, sugared water if you want to retain your nutrients. Frozen is somewhere in between.

Let's look at grain products like cereal, bread, rice, and pasta. When your grain products are made with white flour exclusively, you are using the most processed food available. By moving your shopping list from white to whole grain, you are re-claiming the ingredients best for you. By buying whole grain cereals, you are opting for the least processed. When you buy whole grain pastry flour, you are achieving healthy baking (healthy modifies baking which is a noun.) When you buy whole grain pasta and rice, you are buying a product which has less "treatment" than white pastas and white rice. White pasta and rice need another food to push it through your intestines. If you don't eat the other food like fresh vegetables and fruits, that white rice or pasta just sits there and festers.

With meat, the idea is to keep away from frozen or canned entrees that have been prepared by someone else. Canned meat is a peril to the body and contains little or no nutritional value. Canned spaghetti, ravioli, potted meat might as well be a ticket to an internal tanning bed.

When any package has a long list of ingredients too 'lettery" to read, run for your life. Your food should come without a list of chemicals, additives and preservatives. If your food needs preservatives, you need to ask, "What is it waiting for?"

Buy fresh, buy often, and buy with care.