How many of you out there in internetland saw this? And how many of you then saw this? Ah, claims and backlash, the bread and butter (coconut oil?!?!) of the internet. The health claims about coconut oil are nothing particularly new. For several years now, your search engine of choice will be happy to point you in the direction of the coconut oil bandwagon. Everything from weight loss to dry skin is said to benefit from this magic elixir. But just as labeling ourselves (or part of ourselves) as good or bad can have some pretty serious consequences, I think labelling food and exercise as one or the other can be equally harmful.
Coconut oil isn’t the only food out there with a bevy of proported health claims. Seems like every year one study is published about a particular nutrient and bam! Kale is the best thing you can eat. Or blueberries. Or oats. Or salmon… You get the idea. And the physical activity end of the spectrum isn’t immune either. One study comes out touting the cardiovascular benefits of HIIT and ka-pow! You have people all over the place completing workouts without weighing individual pros and cons.
Exercise may be the easier nut to crack. I am of the opinion that as long as you don’t have any major medical issues, and as long as you are moving your body (including listening to it tell you when to take a break) any kind of exercise that keeps you interested and consistent is “good”. There are so many different types of workouts out there because there are so many different types of people out there. I love me an intense workout, and while I have done CrossFit before, it isn’t my particular jam. That doesn’t make CrossFit (or me) bad. It just means I won’t be consistent so it isn’t right for me.
Food and our diets, though… I look at my mom and her generation and I see a group that is still absolutely terrified of fat. Fat was demonized during this period of time as part of an attempt by the medical community to reduce the number of heart attacks. Current-for-the-time science suggested that saturated fat clogged the arteries and caused heart disease. Nutrition science has since discovered that the trans fat we added to foods was worse and that not all types of fat are “bad.”
The generation between my mom and I… terrified of cholesterol. A whole crowd of people who refused to eat eggs, or at least the yolks, because of the cholesterol content. Again, thought at the time to be one of the main causes of heart disease. Fast forward to today and the scientists have discovered that eggs are in fact chock full of amazing things including protein, healthy fats, B-complex vitamins, and many of the trace minerals. All contained in the yolk.
Today, we are vilifying carbs. Low carb, Zone, Paleo, Keto, and gluten free diets are just a few of the many ways we avoid this crucial macronutrient. To be completely fair, there are certainly individuals among us that may benefit from a reduction of carbohydrates in their diets (i.e. someone with Celiac’s will need to be gluten free or an individual with Type II diabetes will need to pay attention to the sugar content of their diet). But as with the generations before us, I can say with some reasonable certainty that given enough time, the nutrition science will come full circle and we’ll learn that carbs are not main enemy number one.
Which brings me to my broader point; the human animal is meant to live and thrive on a varied diet. If you haven’t checked out Michael Pollan’s excellent books (The Omnivore’s Dilemma or In Defense of Food) run to the nearest bookstore. Basically, the idea is that we should be eating real foods. Foods with minimal, or no, ingredient lists and foods that our grandparents and great-grandparents would actually recognize. If we are eating these foods, they aren’t good or bad, they are just part of our lifestyle and should be there to support our health and wellness.
Generations ago our ancestors didn’t stop to think about the specific nutrient in an apple that made it awesome. They just thought, hey, this tastes pretty good. We have lost the ability to see the big picture in our diets and to look at diet from the broader perspective of lifestyle. And we are sicker than ever for it. In an effort to cut down on heart attacks, incidence of heart disease actually went up. And it took Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and most cancers, along with it. We need to take a step back and examine not the nutrients we eat, but the actual foods themselves.
I’ll give you two examples from my own diet: I eat kale. Every nutrition article around right now tells me that I should be eating it. Yay for me. But I ate kale before the scientists told me I should. I was introduced to it via a CSA box. Unlike some, I also don’t exclusively eat kale to satisfy my leafy green veggie quota. I also eat mustard greens, collards, spinach, and broccoli like it’s going out of style. My leafy green quota is met by something different every single day. Although, they are all whole foods that my grandparents would recognize.
I also eat acai. Again, every nutrition article out there says that I should because this little berry is apparently the cure for all that ails us. Acai is (reportedly) so amazing for us because of its dark purple color. If you pay attention, there aren’t many plants this color in nature. The dark color comes from the plant having to defend itself against its natural predators. Which translates into antioxidants. Little miracles that help our bodies stay healthy and do their thang much more efficiently. Here’s the catch: I don’t love most other fruits and veggies that are in this color family. I am Italian American and I have tried eggplant numerous different ways, but it really just makes me gag. I am not a fan of blueberries or blackberries. And while I like plums, they are only available for a little while. But frozen acai? Tastes a bit like chocolate. So I use it to disguise blueberries and blackberries because the acai taste is stronger. And this allows me to make sure that I am getting an entire class of vitamins and minerals associated with the purple color that would otherwise be missing from my diet.
So, is coconut oil good or bad? I ask why we are labeling it at all. Coconut oil is, hopefully, one small part of an overall lifestyle that includes many other nutritious whole food choices. Consumed in moderation like any other whole food, my guess is that coconut oil is just fine. Moderation doesn’t assume good or bad in totality, it assumes frequency. And moderation also assumes that other things are filling in when we aren’t consuming the coconut oil, thus making for a much more complete and sustainable lifestyle.
In the end, demonizing a food and calling it bad, really just allows us to call ourselves bad for eating it. Think about it. I am so bad, I had a slice of cake at a birthday party. Or, I had wine and bread at dinner last night, I was naughty. The reverse is also true. We all know somebody who touts their breakfast smoothie that contains 6 different fruits and veggies and all the “good” things. We as people are neither good nor bad. Life is not that black and white. And our diets aren’t either. The consumption of one particular food item should not make or break your entire day. It should be viewed as part of a whole. And if you eat something that you later wish you hadn’t? Good news, there will be another meal that comes around again. Another chance to make a healthful selection.
