You want to eat healthy, but that's a little hard when the science changes daily and half the stuff the experts recommend sounds like a gift from the Wise Men (WTFarro?). That's why we've assembled the new rules of eating. Now go forth and stuff your face...wisely
A 2014
1. DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ
We're constantly bombarded by claims of newly discovered wonder berries, or convention-busting studies that say Doritos cure cancer. So you dutifully make Dorito-berry smoothies, because you don't want cancer. Only when you dig into the reports do you learn that the Doritos research was conducted on eleven lab rats in Norway and that the results were "inconclusive but encouraging." Point being, if the health breakthrough sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Be open-minded, sure, but stay skeptical.
— Jon Wilde
— Jon Wilde
2. THE BEST DIET IS NO DIET...
Paleo. Raw. Atkins. High-fat. Low-fat. Mediterranean. Whatever Dr. Oz is hyping this week. There's an endless string of fads promising to shrink your love handles and give you Caligula's sex drive. Which is the best? Not a one. Dr. David Katz, director of Yale's Prevention Research Center, reviewed studies and medical literature and found that the most successful diets overlap. "The best push real foods that are minimally processed or direct from nature," he says. "Mostly plants, nuts, seeds, whole grains—with or without fish, seafood, eggs, lean meats, and poultry. Those are the elements of an optimal diet, from Okinawa to Crete to California."
— Noah Davis
— Noah Davis
3. ...SO BECOME A HYPOCRIT-ARIAN
I started out trying to be a vegetarian. It seemed like the right thing to do: The meat industry is a major stress on the environment; eating dead animals isn't great for you and contributes to such ills as dying young and cancer; even chickens have feelings and experience pain. Still, every time I sat down in a restaurant, what I mostly wanted to order was the fried chicken. And then I discovered other, competing ideas about meat: It's possible to support meat purveyors who raise animals humanely, and it's also (arguably) good for your body to have meat once in a while.
So I arrived at a complicated arrangement. In order for me to be at all moderate in my relationship with the bacon arts, I have to think of myself as a vegetarian. I have to tell people I'm a vegetarian. And then I have to lapse. And when I lapse, so as not to feel too guilty, I have to tell myself I will eat only animals that aren't raised by scientists at Butterball or living with their feet stapled to the floor but instead come from actual farms where they're fed delicious things like grubs and seeds. That kind of meat turns out to be better for you—lower fat, nutrient-dense, with fewer of whatever diseases animals get from eating their own poop. I figure I'm a vegetarian 85 percent of the time. I'm not totally proud of that, but did I mention how good this fried chicken is?
— Devin Freidman
— Devin Freidman
4. EAT YOUR GRAINS LIKE IT'S A.D. 1
Moses parted the Red Sea. Then we're pretty sure he chowed down—mind-halving a body of water is no joke—on plates of biblical-era whole grains like farro, freekeh, spelt, amaranth, teff, and barley. They're all making a comeback on menus, because they're all earthy little flavor bombs packed with far more nutrients than you'll find in rice, pasta, or any other processed, un-whole-grain-containing foods. Plus, as pioneering health-minded chef Yotam Ottolenghi says, you can't really screw up an old grain. "They're not easily overcooked, and they're really versatile," he says. "Try using one instead of rice in a risotto, for example, with feta, tomato, and chile flakes." Then try parting your bathwater.
— N.D.
— N.D.
5. THE LAST WORD ON EVERYTHING
Will Tuesday's miracle-cure superfood give you rickets on Friday? It's enough to make a man throw up his hands and crush a bacon cheeseburger. So we're here with the most up-to-date verdict on controversial foods.
— Chhristopher Cohen
— Chhristopher Cohen
- Red MeatAfter years of being considered the gout-giving antithesis of healthy eating, red meat has been propelled by consecutive trend diets (Atkins, paleo) to health-food respectability. The reality is somewhere in the middle: It's high in protein, iron, and B vitamins (good!) but packed with cholesterol (not so good!). There's room on your plate for small portions of red meat. Just not antibiotic-packed feedlot junk, and not four times a week.
- KaleThe O.G. superfood has lost some of its luster through sheer ubiquity—we're about two weeks away from a $3.99 kale salad at Long John Silver's—but it's still packed with all the fiber and vitamins that made it a hit in the first place. Chow down.
- ButterAs the issues with processed foods and trans fats come into clearer focus, good old butter is enjoying renewed cred, because it's less evil than the alternatives. Does that mean butter is good for you? Hell no! Eat as little as you can.
- SoyIts recent rep as a thyroid-ravaging menace is mostly overblown. But less-processed forms (tofu, tempeh) are a great source of lean protein and a way to stave off your red-meat jonesing.
- ChocolateStudies show that chocolate could serve as a source of antioxidants and promote cardiovascular health, which will keep you from dying young and sad—except even darker varieties can come with a high dose of sugar and fat, which will cause you to die young and sad. Eat in moderation.
- YogurtIt's a great source of protein and calcium, a virtue drowned out by all the noise about probiotic yogurt, which supposedly creates a happy home for friendly bacteria in your gut. Except there isn't much of a clinical link as yet between bacteria-jacked yogurt and better belly microbes.
6. DON'T BELIEVE THAT LATE NIGHT SNACKING MAKES YOU FAT
It's not when you eat, it's what you eat, that makes you a candidate for elastic-waist pants. What do you eat late at night? Pizza, ice cream, cereal—maybe all three in a bowl, if you're super high.
—Tyler Graham
—Tyler Graham
7. SUGAR: YOUR GUT'S PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE
If there's one lesson you take from these pages, it should be this: Stop eating sugar. It makes you fat. And not only fat but unhealthy in ways that go beyond being fat. That said: Sugar, definitely making you fat.
It always has. Back in the olden days, when we grew corn as a food and not as the base for a lab-concocted sweetener, sugar wasn't as prevalent; it showed up mainly in natural foods like fruit and honey, so it wasn't a big concern. But modern man has found ways to shoehorn sugar into his diet, from the obvious (soda, fruit juice, bread) to the not so obvious (sports drinks, ketchup, salad dressing). Like Kim Kardashian, sugar is everywhere, and though you know it's a shallow thrill, you always want more.
The solution, which requires Jedi-level willpower, is to eat less sugar. Much less. Because here's what happens if you don't: Your body's insulin production—the mechanism by which sugar is turned into either usable energy or blubber—short-circuits from overuse. At which point your doctor says, "You have diabetes." And though that does afford you the chance to workshop your Wilford Brimley impression, it's mostly all downside. Diabetes means iPhone alarms labeled "injection :(," puts your aging on fast-forward, and may result in said doctor sawing off your leg because your molasses blood stopped circulating so well. But hey, go ahead and order that second dessert. It's only a foot.
— T.G.
— T.G.
8. DON'T WORRY ABOUT SUPPLEMENTS
Never mind that a major exposé in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported that multivitamins have no health benefits. ("The case is closed," they wrote.) It gets better: A Canadian research team tested fourty-four herbal supplements and found that a third didn't contain the key advertised ingredient. You can find those in the Sucker's Placebo aisle at CVS.
— T.G.
— T.G.
9. THIS IS A MYTH: EATING FIVE MEALS A DAY BOOSTS YOUR METABOLISM
It's the kind of crap advice your 23-year-old trainer offers up while pawing his twelve-pack: You keep putting wood in the fire, it'll burn hotter. But your body doesn't seem to care if you eat three normal meals or five small meals or one bite every seven minutes—it burns calories at the same rate, all things being equal.
— T.G.
— T.G.
10. REINVENT VEGGIES
Chef Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy, N.Y.C.'s vegetarian gastrodome, on why you should cook squash like a T-bone
"People get bored with vegetables because they learn one way to cook them and do it over and over again. I say, treat veggies the way you do meat. Pan-fry them, grill them, smoke them. A lot of guys overlook squash; but peel and halve a butternut squash, scoop out the seeds, rub it with a little olive oil and salt, then grill it over medium heat for about twenty minutes. It'll be sweet, with that intense charred flavor we normally associate with meat."
11. THINK BEFORE YOU DRINK
A visualization of the up-and-down reputations of our favorite things to guzzle and gulp—and where they stand now.
— C.C.
— C.C.
12. FOOD ISN'T A NUMBERS GAME
Healthy eating isn't mathematics. Don't count grams of protein or log your niacin intake. Simply eat more foods grown honestly from the earth. Keep tilting the balance to quality and don't flay yourself for enjoying the odd burger. Just don't call it a "cheat meal."
—J.W.
—J.W.