Slightly better or less worse??

Messaging around food, exercise, (or anything that we "should" be doing) is generally very black and white with different foods classed as "good or bad", "healthy or unhealthy". Yes there are clearly some foods that are much better for you such as fresh fruit and veg, nuts, seeds etc. Then there are foods that clearly aren't so good for you such as the ultraprocessed foods which have undergone hugely industrialised processing and have no resemblance to the natural food they originally came from; except for the photo of the nice piece of fruit or wheat on the label.

But beyond this, the good and bad messaging is really unhelpful. In his latest book, "Food for Life", Tim Spector discusses the importance of personalised nutrition, how sugars can affect us all at different rates and how eating bananas everyday might not be so good for keeping everyone healthy. However, even within this messaging, there are certainly "better" or "less worse" choices you can make. For example, if, for you, a banana creates a large spike in your blood sugar, then having this everyday may not be good for your overall health and risk of developing disease in the long term. However if the alternative is having something more processed or sugary (such as processed cereal bars, sweets, cake or pastries) then the humble banana will still be a better choice with it's real-food nutrient and fibre content.

This idea can be applied to all foods. If you want a sweet snack then fruit that is suited to your own level of insulin sensitivity is a great option. But following that if you consider a scale of sweet snack foods, it would go roughly as follows: all whole fruit at one end, then unsweetened dried fruits then raw fruit and nut bars (eg Nakd, Primal) then Sweetened dried fruit and whole nut bars (eg Kind) then Oaty cereal bars (eg Nature valley) then processed cereal bars or oaty biscuits (eg Nairns Chocolate Oatcakes) then wholegrain biscuits (eg Belvita) then highly processed biscuits, cakes, pastries and finally confectionary. When considering which of these to choose, the options at the higher end contain more real food; which is still in it's original form as when it was harvested from the plant. This retains more fibre and nutrients and contains a great deal more information that our guts and bodies just love. Then as you go down the scale, the food increasingly looses it's original form, there is an increase in added ingredients and by the time you reach the end of the scale has virtually no fibre or nutritional value and is just an empty source of energy, which if consumed regularly can have huge health consequences.

The same goes for juice and sweetened drinks. Orange juice is often labelled as a "health food". This suggests it should be consumed everyday to keep you healthy. This is certainly not the case. It contains huge amounts of sugar, very little fibre to regulate that sugar absorption (as it would have in a whole orange), and unless freshly squeezed in front of you, may have lost a lot of it's nutritional value too. However, good quality orange juice can certainly be enjoyed as a better option to, for example fizzy drinks, as it will contain some soluble fibre (some insoluble fibre if it contains the "bits") and vitamins.

It's not about all or nothing. It's about trying to eat real food most of the time, and making better, more informed choices the rest of the time. Then if you go through a phase of cravings or eating food that is less good for you, notice how it makes you feel and try to use the scale to nudge yourself back in the right direction.

If you've eaten all the Easter eggs, and find yourself craving sugar the next day then choose a Nakd bar the next day- have two if you need to. Then the next day try and satisfy that craving with dried mango or dates and the next hopefully you will find the fibre has mediated those sugary effects, the cravings have eased and you can go back to choosing that apple or pear, or maybe nothing sweet at all. Listen to your body- only you know the right way that works for you.