Just got back from a great weekend in Florida. Met up with some great people, ate big and saw a great football game…ok it was a bit of a blowout but the good guys won (go gators!)
At the tailgate we crushed some serious food…biscuits with sausage gravy, beef short ribs, sausages, burgers, bacon, eggs, 3 kinds of potatoes, parfait, apple pie, key lime pie, and some other stuff that I can’t remember the name of.
The point is at a tailgate it was perfectly fine to eat all of these foods and everyone was enjoying themselves.
But some of those same foods could be items that other people would literally be afraid to eat. I think some people are actually afraid of certain foods imagining that they can really do some sort of ‘damage’ to your body.
This is a misplaced fear directed a a specific food instead of a specific amount of food.
I’ve already mentioned the concept of toxic calories, and I think that the bigger danger to your longevity and health isn’t a particular food but too much total food.
The negative effects of eating excessive carbs, or excessive fat, or excessive sugar are very real, but they require you to be in a total calorie excess as well.
In other words, sugar and fat are perfectly fine to eat if you’re not over doing it with your total calories.
Most of the commentators on the evils of sugar or ‘simple carbs’ or saturated fat typically leave out the specific question ‘how much’.
More often than not you get a complex sounding (but highly over simplified) explanation of what they think the body is doing when you eat sugar or fat, and then tell you never to eat them again.
The concept of total calories or dose is rarely discussed and the cult of eating ‘healthy food’ instead of a ‘healthy AMOUNT of food’ continues.
In my opinion the best thing you can do for the look and health of your body is get a handle on your total number of calories. Once you’ve got that under control you can mix and match combination’s of food as you wish until you’ve got a routine that satisfies your appetite and your body image ideals.
JB
