Batman & the misguided food battle

I don't watch much TV, but I did take in all of True Detective's (excellent) first season, and I'll admit to letting Scandal play in the background sometimes while I do some work. In both shows, the lead characters espouse a theory of light versus dark. Surely there is a drinking game designed to take advantage of Olivia's oft-uttered "step into the light" mantra, whereas in the True Detective finale Rust has a great line alluding to the classic philosophy. Good versus evil: The eternal struggle. It's why Batman can exist. (And Superman and every other superhero, but I'm keeping it simple. Also, I'm slightly biased; I like Michael Keaton's 1989 Batman.)

The eternal struggle isn't just for television plot lines or superheroes, though. In today's food environment, we're all faced with the light-versus-dark dilemma. And I'm not – for once – talking about chocolate. Our food world has increasingly become a minefield of potential bad things we're supposed to avoid. Reach for the light – literally, the "light" foods, processed creations that are aggressively marketed, brightly packaged and designed to sell. We're told to avoid whichever nutrient or food is currently touted as bad. Once upon a time that was fat, then sugar, and lately grains.

When it comes to food, though, labeling specific foods as definitively good or bad is misguided. Yet our food system is centered on this idea. Not just from a marketing perspective (adding health claims to packaging creates added value, which means you can charge more), but even at the core of our nation's food belief system is the idea that there are good and bad foods. Nutrition science is designed to suss out which is which, and public health policies are based on those findings.

But what if this focus is wrong? Similar to our dogged campaign against fat in the '90s (which was based on nutrition science later found to be incorrect), what if focusing primarily on food as the main determinant of health is misguided? Don't get me wrong: Nutrition matters. It more than matters; good nutrition is essential for health. But what if it's not the be-all end-all we think it is?

It's not the "what" of our diet that matters most, it's the "how." It's not about what we're eating, it's about how we're eating – our habits and attitudes surrounding food.

For example, divert your attention from food for a second and think about these as "good" and "bad" behaviors that could have a huge impact on health:

When we focus primarily on what we're eating so much, the how almost always suffers. It takes so much mental energy to remember the "can"s and "can't"s of a diet, or we become overwhelmed by the abundance of often-conflicting advice, and our food mindset becomes narrow and hyper-focused.

When we focus on how we eat, though, being thoughtful about what we're eating is a natural extension of that. Focusing on how we eat gives us the best of both worlds. While focusing on the how, we end up also addressing the what in an intuitive way more likely to lead to real, lasting change.

This has implications on a public-health level, too. We of course need to study food and its relationship with disease. Nutrition science is critical to public health. But thinking about the how – our behaviors and attitudes about eating – is important on a public-health level as well. Using the how-we-eat versus what-we-eat lens could help us focus on areas like sustainable agriculture, how we grow and distribute our food, and even the design of school lunch programs. Other countries, namely in Europe, put a high priority on the how of eating and the what follows naturally. For example, in Italy the food labeling system is highly regulated because quality is of the utmost importance – naturally resulting in healthier foods. In France, school children sit down for lunch and eat proper meals with real plates and flatware. Fresh foods are often prepared in an on-site kitchen, not because it was determined to be lower in "bad" stuff and higher in "good stuff," but because they value sitting down and enjoying a good meal and it seems only natural that they'd want high-quality ingredients because they taste better. The nutritional value isn't the leading factor; it's a byproduct of other healthy behaviors.

Many people, usually in effort to lose weight, keep food journals. I'd propose keeping a "how" journal instead. How were you eating today – meals or snacks, hurriedly or in a relaxed manner, alone or with others, focused or distracted, until just satisfied or overstuffed – with zero mention of actual foods. I'd be willing to bet the association between changing eating habits & lowering weight would be stronger than the correlation between changing foods and lowering weight. And you'd likely end up making food changes anyway by focusing on habits, but without all the feelings of rules and restrictions. It would simply be a natural progression.

We believe food has the most power over our weight and health, and there's no doubt that food does strongly correlate to health – absolutely, without a doubt, it is a primary determinant of health. But the overlooked piece, which is equally or perhaps even more important, is how we're eating. The battle between light and dark is erroneously attributed to the foods themselves, but the real battle, the deserving recipients of the "good" and "bad" labels are our food behaviors & attitudes. If we shift our primary focus to improving how we're eating, improvements to what we're eating will naturally follow.