Look Again. There Is (Even) More Going On With Your Food

Two Foods Have Fat. Does That Tell You Enough?

Put a handful of nuts beside a pastry. Both contain fat. Does that make them nutritionally the same? Not even close. Our bodies need fat. But the kind of fat we eat most often matters too. Nuts and seeds provide mostly unsaturated fats. Butter and foods made with a lot of butter or other saturated fats provide more saturated fat. Regularly eating too much saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol in the blood. Over time, high LDL helps fatty deposits build up inside artery walls. That is one reason the Food Guide points us toward foods containing unsaturated fats more often. The message is not “fat is bad.” Look at the kind of fat and where it is coming from. Once again, the name of one nutrient does not tell you the whole story about the food.

Try it: Your friend says, “ Both foods, butter tarts and nuts have fat, so what's the difference?” What would you tell them?

Where Did All That Sodium Come From?

Here is one you can check yourself. Pick up a package of instant noodles and find sodium on the Nutrition Facts table. Then check a soup, deli meat, frozen meal, sauce or salty snack. A lot of our sodium is already in the food before we ever touch the salt shaker. Why does that matter? Regularly eating too much sodium raises blood pressure. That means blood pushes against the walls of our blood vessels with more force. Over time, high blood pressure increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. With sodium, the message is pretty simple: we usually need less of it, not more. The Food Guide helps us look beyond whether something tastes salty and pay attention to and notice foods that bring a lot of sodium into our usual eating pattern.

Try it: Check the sodium on three Nutrition Facts tables. Which food brings the most sodium in the amount you would normally eat?

So What Is the Food Guide Really Doing?

Look at where we ended up. With fruits and vegetables, variety and the whole-food matrix matter. With fat, the type of fat matters. With sodium, how much we regularly eat matters. That is why one simple rule does not work for everything we eat. And that is exactly why a Food Guide is useful. It takes a huge amount of nutrition and health science and turns it into something we can actually use when we look at our own eating pattern. It helps us see what we are getting regularly, where variety matters and what might deserve another look. But there is something else interesting about that plate. It shows us what our bodies need without telling everybody exactly which foods they have to eat. Beans or fish? Rice or bannock? Bok choy or broccoli? Lentils or eggs? Different foods and different meals can still help build a healthy pattern.

And that gives us our next question: If human bodies need many of the same things, why does food look so different around the world?

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