Disclaimer: Professional eating disorder treatment is critical for people who are suffering from an eating disorder. If you have an eating disorder, please follow your treatment plan and listen to the professionals involved in your care. This blog is not geared towards people who have an eating disorder but rather a food addiction or general curiosity.
Is there such a thing as a “good” or “bad” food?
I am sometimes met with pushback when I share my choice about abstinence from refined sugars. I am promptly told “there are no good or bad foods” and that I am wrong for thinking refined sugar is something that should be avoided. One of the most notable times I have received this criticism was from a dietitian, but is she correct?
Common rhetoric
The “no good or bad foods – just foods” is typical rhetoric in some diet and weight loss communities that reject diets that they feel are “restrictive.” In the context of the conversation I had with that dietician, I was trying to seek help for my binge eating of sugar. Part of the issue came down to that I was in eating disorder treatment when I should have been in addiction treatment. Dr. Vera Tarman explained this very well in her book Food Junkies. Unfortunately, I found this advice after I paid all that money.
Live and learn, I guess.
People are saying this, particularly in a clinical setting for an eating disorder, because those seeking treatment often feel a lot of shame surrounding food and what they eat. The dietician’s concern is I was restricting a food group and would find myself inevitably binging on it later. The idea was if I could accept sugar as just “food,” I could eat it regularly in “normal amounts” and not binge anymore.
That works except when it doesn’t.
Being an addict and not someone with an eating disorder rendered that advice not only unhelpful but harmful. I tried adopting this philosophy, but I found myself eating sugar almost constantly. (I gained so much weight in that program, it’s not even funny.) Then I was told, “well, sugar is a sometimes food” – and there I go being told to moderate my sugar intake again.
Our conversation would then circle back around to “no good or bad foods – just food,” and I still just couldn’t accept that as true.
Let me explain.
Issue of Semantics
Maybe it’s an issue of using the same words but in different ways. Just in case, I’m going to take a moment to lay out those definitions. (Thank you, Google, for these definitions.)
Definition of Food:
Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth.
Definition of Good
As an adjective:
- To be desired or approved of
- Having the qualities required for a particular role
As a noun:
- That which is morally right; righteous
- Benefit or advantage to someone or something
Definition of Bad
As an adjective:
- Of poor quality or of a low standard
- not such as to be hoped for or desired; unpleasant or unwelcome.
- failing to conform to standards of moral virtue or acceptable conduct.
- (of food) decayed; putrid.
- regretful, guilty, or ashamed about something.
- worthless; not valid.
Pro Tip: Not all definitions are relevant to every situation
When there are words with several meanings, it needs to be understood that not all definitions will apply to the situation. Some of the above definitions are much more helpful than others, so it is essential to decide what the applicable definitions are and determine which ones to use when discussing them.
To be clear, when I say there are, in fact, “good and bad foods,” I am primarily talking about the utility of food – how well it does its job at being food.
How I define “good food”
When defining what “good” food is, I am using the definition of “having the qualities required for a particular role.” If the definition of food is that it must be a nutritive substance to “maintain life and growth,” “good food” will be nutritious and help maintain life and growth.
Bottom line: If a substance has no or very little nutrition and/or is known to harm health to the point of shortening someone’s life, to me, that is not something that is going a good job at being food. It fits much better under the definition of “of poor quality or of a low standard.”
We judge objects all the time
No one would say there is no such thing as a good mattress or a bad mattress. Some people may like different types of mattresses/levels of firmness, so there may be a mattress that is good for some people but not others.
There may be food that some people have sensitivities to, so it may be a bad food for some. However, there is still nutritional benefit to it, so it might be a good food for others.
Some mattresses are objectively bad and beneficial to no one. (Infested, excessively worn out, of extremely poor quality, etc.)
And yes – there are foods like this, too. In the most extreme case, it is when food is spoiled and gives you food poisoning. Still, I also think that any food that causes more harm than good is doing a horrible job at being food. The only difference from the bad mattress is that the food that does an awful job at being nutritious and beneficial is often pretty tasty.
What that dietician meant
When I pressed the dietician touting the “there is no good food or bad food, just food” philosophy, she clarified she meant “morally” good or bad.
At first, I was confused why food would be equated with morality. The food itself is incapable of having a moral compass. Although, many people do often associate food with a moral code. Many vegans, for example, equate food that contains animals or animal products as immoral/unethical. Some religions ban pork, etc.
What about manmade processed food?
I think it is reasonable to adopt the belief that creators of food can have intentions that are moral or immoral.
For example, is it moral to engineer a food to have the “sweet spot” amount of fat, sugar, and salt to make food very difficult to resist? These “foods” are designed to override the body’s natural hunger/fullness cues. They intentionally design these “foods” so that people will eat way too much, despite being detrimental to the consumer’s health. Those “foods” make a lot of money. When a company is more concerned about making food irresistible at the expense of the consumer’s health, I do have a problem with that.
Those foods may make a lot of money, but they do so at the expense of public health.
At the end of the day, listen to Elsa and “Let it Go”
The bottom line is we should not view ourselves as abject moral failures if we eat and enjoy French Fries or pizza or judge others as such. Eating these foods on occasion accompanied by an otherwise healthy diet can be a way of enjoying life and experiencing pleasure with minimal damage to overall health.
That being said, something containing gluten is not a good food for some people. For some people, it causes nasty side effects. Likewise, for some people, eating refined sugar is not a good choice. For me, it causes inflammation, an overall feeling of not being well, and an insatiable desire to eat more.
Food can and should be judged as “good” and “bad.” However, these judgments are best used to help make decisions about what you want to feed your body, not if you are a bad person or not for eating a particular food.
It’s important to remember that dietary habits are just that – habits. These habits are often very engrained. Remember to show compassion to yourself as you work to replace your old less-healthy habits, with newer healthier habits that make you feel good.
