Words Matter: Is What You Eat As Healthy As You Think?

Words matter. We know that fully well.

You can hurt a person's feelings with words.

You can create havoc with words.

When it comes to food, words sometimes give us a reason to order things that we may not think are healthy for us, but because they're called something different, we're happy to eat them.

Is What You Eat Really What You Eat?

I'll give you an example.

Ta-da! A muffin. This is nothing but a piece of cake, people. It's cake in disguise in a muffin format. Delicious smelling, delicious-tasting muffin.

And I had half of one for breakfast. I had so much freaking sugar, my sugar level went up and it crashed back down and I had to have a nap.

Yep, true. Because it's called a muffin, we feel okay ordering it for breakfast.

Yet….

A muffin as the same ingredients as a piece of cake.

• Sugar

• flour

• eggs

• butter

The same basic ingredients, but we call one cake, and we call one a muffin. When it comes to what we call food, has a really big impact on whether or not we're going to eat it or not.

That's just one example of something posing as something else. So a lot of the breakfast bars and granola bars, call themselves that. We think, healthy, but a lot of them have as much sugar as candy bars. They're candy bars in disguise.

The Food and Drug Administration to the Rescue

The Food and Drug Administration is trying to make that easier for all of us.

When you call something healthy right now, it doesn't mean much of anything.

But they proposed a rule that for a food manufacturer to put the word “healthy” on a product, it had to have not a lot of sugar and sodium. It needs to have whole grains. They're still figuring out what goes in that formula to call something healthy.

But it's coming.

They've been working on this since 2016, slow and steady wins the race here.

How To Check What You Eat

In the meantime, check the ingredient label.

That's where you're going to find the truth. If the first three ingredients are any type of sugar, then know that's what you're eating.

You're eating a treat.

Enjoy it. Know it's a treat. Have it less often.

And make healthier choices the rest of the day!

I did enjoy this delicious chocolate muffin. The last time I had it was probably three months ago, and the next time I have it's probably going to be up three or four months again.

We all do it. We love food. We love the taste of food.

And healthy eating isn't about depriving ourselves, but it's going in with eyes wide open and words matter.

Dr. Deb