Why food quality is everything
Fad diets got the public to obsess over food calories and categories. Here's why the Spartan Diet obsesses over the quality of food.
We make food choices every day — where to shop, what to buy, how much to buy, what to order in a restaurant and what to make for dinner. Why do we make the choices we make?
I've identified 13 common criteria that people base their food choices on: pleasure, habit, boredom, addiction, status, vanity, convenience, group affiliation, availability, nostalgia, low price, morality and health.
Most people aren't fully aware of their own criteria for food choices, which tend to be short-term and impulsive, rather than long-term and deliberate.
The Spartan Diet approach to food choices is: quality above all. The best choice is not just any healthy choice, but the healthiest possible choice available in every situation.
Conventional nutrition advice focuses on categorical differences between foods: Eat apples, not French fries. Vegetables are good for you. These are categorical distinctions that ignore the quality of food. Fad diets tend to go back and forth on the question of carbs vs. fats. Some diets are low-fat. Other diets are low-carb. Where is the concern over the quality of carbs and the quality of fats? Are the carbs in question sweet potatoes or Wonder Bread? Are the fats in the form of avocados or Crisco shortening? Quality is everything.
For example, the claim "cherries are good for you," isn’t a useful claim. Cherries, like most foods, exist on a qualitative spectrum. Freshly picked local, organic cherries exist on the healthiest end of the spectrum, while maraschino cherries — those artificially almond-flavored cherries preserved in a jar of sulfur dioxide, food coloring and corn syrup you find on top of ice cream sundaes — sit at the unhealthiest end. The first one helps protect against cancer, the other contains ingredients linked to a higher risk of cancer. Between these two extremes you'll find a full range of quality in the cherry category. Fresh cherries are better than frozen, and organic cherries are better than conventionally grown. Whole cherries are generally better for you than cherries chopped up and left in the refrigerator for a few days. Local cherries in season are better than organic frozen ones. And organic cherries grown locally sold at the local Farmer’s Market are better than organic cherries imported from other countries for the simple fact that fresher cherries picked later tend to be higher in nutrients. (The moment cherries are picked, they start losing nutrients and when they have to travel thousands of miles to a store near you, a lot of time transpires and time translates into decay or at least decrease in nutrients.)
For cherries, as with most foods, the categorical distinction is almost meaningless as a predictor of healthfulness, while the qualitative distinction is everything. To be on the Spartan Diet is to pay attention to differences in food quality, and to always choose the highest available to you.
When you're at a restaurant, open the menu and ask yourself: "Which options are healthiest?" Not, "what do I feel like having?" Use the same criteria in the store, at the market, and in the mess hall, school cafeteria and at home when preparing meals.
Here in the Spartan Diet Journal and in the upcoming book, The Spartan Diet, I’ll be going into great detail on food quality and how you can maximize the quality of food, enabling you to cherry-pick, so to speak, only the highest-quality of food for health, taste and for a better life.
Recipe: Spartan Diet Banana Bread
Get ready to enjoy the most sumptuous banana bread ever! If cake is your thing (it’s definitely my thing), you'll love this banana bread. It has the wonderful lusciousness and pillowy softness of cake. And the frosting on the cake, pun intended, is the fact that the batter is fermented and will be the healthiest cake you've ever had.