Magic foods? Like “Jacques and the Beanstalk” you mean? I prefer to say healthy foods are like Santa Claus without the elves. Healthy foods are like Santa Claus without the elves.
In the past, exorcists, sorcerers and bonesetters provided advice mixed with esoteric incantations and composed miracle powders and mysterious to cure illnesses that we did not understand or chase away the evil spirits so feared.
Times have changed but you still see it: wizards are still there. Let’s see why the healthy foodsit’s just a Christmas account!
Today, nutrition has solid scientific bases and we know more and more about the reactions of the human body to foods, and to combinations of foods (this notion of combination is important, you will see).
Articles, books, YouTube videos on healthy foods are regularly popping up, depending on the fashion: chia seeds, goji berries, etc.
Healthy Foods… A Myth?
To get better, the entire population should consume foods that are good for health. From then on, everyone has the “choice” between treating themselves using traditional treatments or believing in the “miraculous” qualities of pomegranate, turmeric, broccoli and other fashionable fruits or exotic ingredients.
Americans swear by blueberries, which they now use in all sauces and especially in all their dishes; the whole world has sung about the antioxidant benefits of cranberries aka cranberries…
In short, as soon as it is natural and new, the panacea is not far away.
But while healthy foods can sometimes be praised, others are demonized. Which, as luck would have it (it’s Freudian!), are often stimulants such as sugar, etc.
In truth, everything that provokes a stimulation of the senses, everything that has a strong flavor, one day or another sees itself assailed, even reviled, while we crown the sweet, the cutesy, the sweet.[1].
At the top of the charts
Fortunately, one observation is reassuring: the “magic” foods often find themselves at the top of the healthy eating charts for a short time, as one fashion quickly follows another.
Who does not remember chocolate, celebrated for centuries, which one day saw “experts” decry it, blaming it for tons of faults (by mixing dark and milk) before, today , to hear once again celebrate one’s qualities, whether on the heart, or on morale, etc. ?
In nutrition as elsewhere, the wheel turns… and so do the laurels of the “magic food” label.
The fact remains that this phenomenon reflects a permanent nutritional truth well anchored in the minds of consumers: the magical power of food.
Magical because, at all times, we favor products to which we confer properties that most of the time have little to do with their composition. But no matter: we have faith, we believe in them. A religious adherence, again…
Fruits and vegetables, the current panacea
Fashion has thrown its finger of success at fruits and vegetables. You have to eat five of them a day, as we have seen, because they take care of everything:
- avoid gaining weight,
- diffuse minerals,
- offer trace elements,
- do not release any grease,
- are low in calories,
- provide fiber and are satiating, etc.
Better: they contain antioxidants. Ah, what a magic word, what a wonderful term!
What an effective and clear association is this prefix “anti” attached to “oxidant”, a formula worthy of alchemy and therefore a miracle since it is associated with the oxidation of a metal, a phenomenon whose meaning everyone understands. Fruits and vegetables? In a word, the perfect food.
However, even if we know them better and better, we are still far from knowing everything about them.
First example
Look, if cabbage, thanks to indols, helps prevent cancers as varied as those of the lung, bladder or esophagus, what about the interactions between them?
You eat on average one fifteen foods daily, each containing at least a hundred constituents, which will sometimes combine, sometimes fight each other, also having to deal with each person’s level of stress, taste or not for alcohol, tobacco, the influence of ‘environment…
Well, how will this cocktail perform? We don’t know it. Which clearly proves that the very notion of “magic food” is erroneous!
So why do we so easily adopt this new food religion? Because the products mentioned are basically healthy, obviously, but also because they ideally correspond to the spirit of the times.
Second example
Another example of somewhat irrational, magical fads in nutrition: food supplements.
In the 1990s, a large study called SUVIMAX, carried out over eight years, was undertaken. Its goal: to examine our food.
First highly publicized conclusion: the French were victims of deficiencies that needed to be remedied without delay.
All the commotion, broadcasts, articles, debates, positions… a simple “solution” is emerging in the minds of many: throwing themselves into food supplements. It was a rush.
Until researchers, frightened by such reactions, intervened, declaring, for some, that these supplements were not always useful.
Then by specifying, among others, that it was appropriate, to compensate for the shortages, to increase the consumption of certain foods.
Result of this mess: we are now both distressed by the fear of not eating enough targeted products, but protected by the fact that, if we did eat them, we could avoid a large number of diseases.
What is the real solution?
The simplest appears, in the minds of many, to combine foods and supplements. A magical thought was born.
The beneficiary? The industry, and it is every time, since it only needs to follow dietary recommendations to advertise a product or counteract its alleged negative effects.
Let’s return to chocolate: this square of happiness, which suffered for a long time from a bad reputation, was suddenly adorned with all the qualities thanks to studies detailing how good it was for high blood pressure, against diseases cardiac…
By failing to insist too much on the recommended quantity: 2.5 g per day. Or how a product described as bad is given a therapeutic dimension in order to limit the damage that the religion of sugar-free and fat-free could cause!
The case of polyphenols, these substances that are found everywhere and which allow us to fight against everything, is also telling.
To obtain a truly useful dose for the body, you would have to consume hectoliters of wine. And we saw, further, that it is its alcohol content, at an infinitesimal dose, which would seem to allow the vaunted protective effects.
The same goes for almost all substances that contain it. But it doesn’t matter to us in the end: ingesting these products gives everyone the feeling of doing themselves good; it’s worthy of the placebo effect.
Okinawa magic and healthy foods
The literature relating to the astonishing longevity of the inhabitants of Okinawa, Japan, paves the way – I am willing to bet – for the emergence of the same phenomenon of “thought” or soon-to-be “magical” food.
“A few decades ago, Okinawa enjoyed the longest life expectancy in the world,” explained scientist Shinkichi Tawada, in comments taken up by AFP and quoted on Yahoo, December 24, 2013. You see, a real Christmas story 🙂
And to highlight a dream-like fact: the archipelago has the largest number of centenarians on the planet, with, according to estimates, around 33 per 100,000 inhabitants. This kind of record, inevitably, piques the interest of scientists.
Where do the people of Okinawa get their exceptional longevity? Their diet according to specialists would consist of foods good for health
Thus, the professor of agronomy at the Ryukyu University of Nishihara, who has “always been interested in the substances which, in traditional food, are at the origin”, could, after twenty years of research, have finally solved the mystery.
According to his work, the secret lies in an amber liquid from which sweet tropical scents emerge: the essential oil of getto flower (guetto) or alpinia zerumbet.
It is a plant belonging to the ginger family that has large green leaves, small red berries and white flowers.
However, the plant is full of resveratrol, an antioxidant found in grapes (and therefore in wine) and with well-known effects on longevity.
Better still, the clumps of wild getto growing on the side of local roads have even more of an impact on lifespan. Shinkichi Tawada and his colleagues fed it to demododes (alpinia zerumbet), worms that live only one month.
Well, these got 22.6% more life time.
“Traditionally, Okinawans have considered that when eating muchi [un plat d’hiver composé de pâte de riz entourée d’une feuille de getto]we become immune to colds, and we gain strength and vigor[2]”, explains scientist Tawada.
This is encouraging and suggests that a serious avenue for increasing life expectancy lies on this Japanese island. But the process of putting the rumor about healthy foods into orbit seems to me to be well underway.
The recipe is the same as usual: a secret, a promise of longevity, a scientist, an “antioxidant” substance, a very simple plant, and, oh miracle, we are saved.
If the mayonnaise takes hold in the media, the elixir is close…
I will spare you the story of goji berries and other chia seeds. Once again, if foods good for health contain micro-nutrients with proven nutritional virtues, they must be considered within the broader framework of a varied and balanced diet.
