To eat out or not to eat out
seed oils, cookie dough, and You
Health/Wellness
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being a health coach, it’s that people often think they’re healthier than they actually are. The most common manifestation of this I see is people eating at restaurants and thinking they’re eating healthy food.
Have you wondered why you feel so weighed down after eating out, even though you went to an upscale farm-to-table restaurant or just got a salad? Don’t have time to cook at home, and wonder why you’re not meeting your health goals or have digestive issues? No matter what the marketing says or how expensive your meal is, most restaurant food is unhealthy.
Typically, restaurants have one goal: serve the most delicious food at the lowest cost to them. What makes food taste good? I used to be amazed at how restaurants could make their food taste so delicious, until I took a culinary class during the pandemic. It’s actually really simple: yummy food = fat + salt + sweet + acid. Humans evolved to crave these elements for survival (fattier foods = more calories = more energy) and to discern safe plant foods from poisonous ones (sweet, salty, and sour plants are usually safe to eat, unlike bitter ones). Using our evolutionary instincts against us, chefs (and the larger food industry) put together meals that our ancestors would only dream of foraging.
Here are 3 things that make restaurant food unhealthy:
Seed and vegetable oils - Restaurants use seed and vegetable oils like sunflower, canola (aka rapeseed, from the turnip family), soybean, corn, and safflower because they’re cheap and have neutral flavor while enhancing the other flavors in the dish. I’ll probably dedicate a future newsletter section to seed and vegetable oils, but for now, let’s just say that the harms of seed and vegetable oils can’t be overstated. For starters, to make industrial seed oils, seeds are processed at extremely high heats, forming free radicals which can cause cancer. Then, they’re processed with toxic chemicals, such as hexane, which can stay stored in the fatty tissue of our bodies for years. The end product is a highly processed oil that’s rich in omega-6 fatty acids, causing inflammation and possible weight gain, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mental health disorders.
Vegetable and seed oils are also found in packaged food and, shockingly, health supplements. My jaw was nearly on the ground when I saw sunflower oil as an ingredient in a recognizable, new DTC supplements brand that focuses on digestive health. Always check the ingredients list!
Fat, salt, sugar - As I said before, restaurants optimize for taste. This means excessive use of fat, salt, and sugar (even in savory dishes). I’m sure you already know the harmful effects of too much fat, salt, and sugar, so I don’t want to belabor this point. I’ll just leave you with this quote from Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, “If you eat at any good restaurant, assume you've eaten a stick of butter.”
Ingredients - Like any other business, restaurants aim to keep their cost of ingredients low for higher margins. This means using lower quality ingredients like inorganic produce, table salt and sugar, cheap oils (see #1), and harmful chemicals and preservatives. Remember, restaurants don’t list every ingredient on the menu. At this point in human evolution, our bodies are still only accustomed to fresh and unprocessed food, sans chemicals. Putting these low quality foods and chemicals into our bodies has negative consequences for our health, whether we notice it immediately or not.
So should we never go out to eat again? Of course not. Restaurant food may not be what it seems, but eating out still has its place in a healthy diet and lifestyle. Just be wary of where you go, how often, and what you order. Cooking at home might take a bit of time and effort, but it’s better to invest that time now than have to worry about health problems and chronic inflammation later.
Business
Last week I picked up Deux cookie dough from CTown. It’s an “enhanced” cookie dough, which means it has functional ingredients like elderberry, zinc, or maca. This is a great example of the larger functional foods trend we’re seeing emerge in the last year, mostly from the focus on immunity and mental health during the pandemic.
A study says that 70% of consumers use products that have functional benefits, with most of those consumers being millennials or Gen Zers. But is adding ingredients to make foods more functional actually something new? Not really. It’s basically an iteration of fortified foods we all grew up— iodized salt, calcium-fortified orange juice, and vitamin D-fortified milk, to name a few. This time around, though, the intention behind adding these elements is different.
In the 1920s, rickets, the softening of the bones from a vitamin D or calcium deficiency, was widespread in the US, with around 80% of children in Boston suffering from it. Children were working during the Industrial Revolution and didn’t spend much time outside in the sun, which caused the vitamin D deficiency. So, the government began fortifying milk with vitamin D by the 1930s, and rickets was virtually eliminated. Around the same time, iodine was added to salt to prevent goiter, an enlarged thyroid. In the past, fortified foods were introduced to prevent or treat illnesses. Now, we’re seeing functional foods aimed at optimizing health.
This creates a lot of room in the market for new products and access to less mainstream botanicals (most of which have been used for centuries).
Personal
I’m always so intrigued by “wellness” being depicted on TV/movies. I liked 9 Perfect Strangers overall when I watched it a couple months ago, but some things were questionable and flat out wrong (drinking alcohol at a wellness retreat?). More recently, I watched You on Netflix which made fun of people who are into health and wellness (though, Joe, the main character/serial killer could probably benefit from some breathwork and meditation). Wellness tropes are usually funny and over-the-top, but I was floored with this scene, which has actually played out multiple times in my life:
Should’ve avoided those seed oils and fortified milk.
That’s all for this week!
Be well ♥️