Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Why it’s so hard to eat healthily, even when you cook at home

Think you're eating healthy? Think again.

Lindsay Parrill
By

Unless you’re one of those truly exceptional people who live entirely off the land, growing and harvesting your own fruit and vegetables, tending to your organic farms and animals, chances are you spend a good portion of your time at the grocery store. And while grocery stores carry a plethora of food items that claim to be healthy, unfortunately, in many instances, this just isn’t the case.

Try as we might to feed our bodies the best quality ingredients, packed with nutrition and vitamins, it turns out that about 73 percent of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed, according to recent research from Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute. This means that about three-quarters of the food available to us through grocery stores is made mainly with added fats, starches, sugars, and hydrogenated fats. Oftentimes, also containing additives like artificial colors and flavors or stabilizers.

Recommended Videos

Of course, not all food processing is created equal. Certain processes are beneficial for increasing access to a wider public. Canning, freezing, fermentation, and vacuum-sealing are all tremendously helpful in aiding to preserve and spread healthier foods to a larger audience. Unfortunately, though, most of the foods researched scored high marks in ultra-processing, which strips foods – even healthy ones – of many of their natural vitamins and minerals.

Related
Tara Clark/Unsplash

For their research, the team created the publicly accessible TrueFood database, which compared the degree of food processing of thousands of popular items. Each item receives a score that is based on additives and secret ingredients. To find that 73 percent of foods is overly processed was disheartening, to say the least.

Giulia Menichetti, Senior Research Scientist at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University, and senior author of the papers was stunned by the results, telling Food Tank, “It surprised me how a considerable amount of highly processed food is mistakenly considered healthy because the public narrative still focuses on one nutrient at a time, instead of evaluating food as a whole.”

This is incredibly frustrating for those who are truly trying to do their best for their bodies and eat a healthful diet. It seems between confusing nutrition labels and the enormity of overly processed foods, would-be healthy eaters just can’t win.

The glimmer of hope, though, is that through research like this, the ball can start to roll as far as future change for the better. “According to my preliminary studies, while these concepts still lack precise quantification, they appear to be the leading factor in explaining how current ultra-processed food negatively affects our health. We need to come up with a mathematical definition of ‘whole food’ versus ‘disrupted food.’” Menichetti said.

With more research like this opening the eyes of the public, there is real hope on the horizon for more easily accessible, fully nutritious food options.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Lindsay Parrill
Lindsay Parrill
Contributor
Lindsay is a graduate of California Culinary Academy, Le Cordon Bleu, San Francisco, from where she holds a degree in…
The best pre-workout meals — everything you need to know
Maximizing athletic performance in the gym requires the right nutrition. These best pre-workout meals will help you succeed
Man eating before a workout

As in most things in fitness, there is never going to be a one-size-fits-all situation. Whether that's diet, exercise, routines, supplements, habits, the list goes on, just because something works for someone else does not mean it will work for you. A pretty commonly asked question on that fact is whether you should eat before a workout.

First thing, you need to establish which group you fall into. Do you feel fully optimized during your session, either with or without food? Some people feel less sluggish on an empty stomach and love to recover with a feast. Others feel lethargic and struggle throughout without proper fuel. If you're the latter, this article is for you. If you are not sure, try both for a couple of weeks and compare your training performance.
Peak performance
With that being said, eating right before a workout may help you perform at your best. The right foods can give you the strength you need to crush a cardio workout or maximize a strength-training session.

Read more
The FDA is changing its stance on salt substitutes — here’s what a dietitian says you should know
How to reduce your salt intake
Salt with a wooden spoon

If there's one "secret" ingredient that makes anything taste more delicious, it's salt, of course. Well, salt or butter. Usually both. No dish is complete without this miraculous little mineral. After all, where would our French fries, our crispy bacon, our nuts, or deli meats be without salt? And those are just the obvious foods we know and love for their salty goodness.

When you take into account the flavor miracle that salt works on all food, bringing out all of an ingredient's other features like sweetness and tartness, there really isn't anything this little chemical can't do. At least when it comes to flavor. Unfortunately, when it comes to health, salt's positive attributes fall a bit short.

Read more
Why nutrition experts say you (probably) don’t need that gluten-free diet
Do you believe these gluten-free diet myths?
baked bread sliced on a white table

Just when you thought the experts had spoken and the people agreed that the Mediterranean diet was best, social media whet people’s appetites for more. This year alone, there’s been the “all-carnivore diet” and “All-McDonald’s diet,” which are precisely what they sound like and have received two thumbs down from the nutrition community.  

However, another diet trend won’t go away: Gluten free.

Read more