7 Traps That Will Undermine Your Health

There are many obvious ways to destroy your health. Smoking, drinking excessively, taking drugs, and eating junk foods comes to mind. But there are also subtler ways that we can halt our progress and overtime, fail to experience the benefits that a healthy lifestyle can provide.

These health traps are about fooling ourselves into thinking were doing something positive when in fact, were not being honest with whats really going on and how were not as healthy as we think we are.

#1- Gourmet cooking

Celebrity chefs have tried to sell us is that home cooking is better than eating out, and that the most important thing we can do for our health is to use fresh, organic ingredients and learn to cook them ourselves. Jamie Olivier is infamous for having toured the US and made hard-working people feel bad about not feeding children organic chicken with roasted, locally grown vegetables for lunch at school every day.

The trap of gourmet cooking is that we think its always healthier, when in fact, its often just as bad as restaurant cooking. Celebrity chefs all use liberal amounts of butter, olive oil and salt in their food. Of course, a home-cooked meal generally beats fast food, but its important to keep in mind that celebrity chefs are not nutritional experts. They are often overweight and hold the same bias as most people when it comes to meat, olive oil and the use of specialty salts.

The trap is also about thinking that we need to know lots of recipes and cooking skills to eat well. In fact, its more about finding what you like and making the same tasty, healthy meals, over and over again.

#2 Organic meat

The next trap is giving yourself a free license to eat meat as long as its organic or grass-fed. Grass-fed beef is often touted as being healthier and more nutritious than conventionally raised beef. Grass-fed beef might have a somewhat higher concentration of certain nutrients, such as omega-3 fatty acids and B12. It might also be cleaner with fewer antibiotics and growth hormones. But both conventionally raised beef and grass-fed beef generally contain similar amounts of saturated fats, cholesterol, and animal protein. And at the end of the day, its the total amount of animal protein in your diet, along with saturated fats, that will have a negative impact on your health.

We fool ourselves into thinking that healthier meat is healthy, hurting our health in the process.

#3 Calorie counting on a SAD diet

If everyone didnt change the composition of their diet but simply ate significantly fewer calories, we would eliminate the obesity problem and get rid of a large percentage of chronic illness, even if everything on the menu was allowed: McDonalds, fruit, vegetables, twinkies and candy bars.

A nutrition professor at Kansas State University, Mark Haub, tried a Junk food diet experiment in 2010, to make a point for hisstudents. He decided to eat almost nothing but the worst junk food for 10 weeks. He ate snacks you can find at convenience stores, like Twinkies, donuts, Doritos, Oreo cookies, etc. But, and heres a big but he limited himself to 1800 calories a day.

After 10 weeks, he had lost 27 pounds and dropped his LDL cholesterol by 20%, increased his good cholesterol (HDL) by 20%, and most surprisingly, lowered his triglycerides by 39%.Losing weight leads to many health improvements, no matter which diet youre on. The problem with this approach is that its impossible to maintain in the long-term.

Rich, calorie-dense foods have been designed in labs by the best food scientists in the world to be highly palatable. This means that they are stimulating our reward centers in the brain and are highly addicting.

Losing weight by only counting calories requires extraordinary discipline, and most people eventually regain the weight with that approach.

Its not practical to eat a little bit of junk. Believe me, I have tried

You must go all-in, and then the magic happens. Calorie counting can be still useful on a healthy plant-based diet. But only the combination of portion control, low caloric density and high nutrient density allows for this weight loss to be sustained and lead to great health in the long-term.

#4 Green juices

Fresh juices, especially those containing mostly vegetables, attract many people who want to make positive changes to their diet. They might want to try a juice fast, or drinking only green juices for breakfast, or simply incorporate a fresh juice daily into their diet.

Its not those green juices are bad for you, but they wont cancel out the other unhealthy foods youre eating. Doing something good for our health often gives us the subconscious license to justify bad habits or overeating. At least Im consistent with my green juice routine, a person might think, trying to erase the guilty feeling after an unhealthy treat.

I prefer to make green smoothies instead of green juices, and drink them as a meal, rather than to supplement my diet.

#5 Vegan alternatives

This might be more of a newbie trap when you first go vegan and start experimenting with all the fake meats, plant-based butters, Impossible burgers and realistic, melting vegan cheese.

On average, these products are still lower in saturated fats than the animal foods they replace, but they often contain more sodium, more fat and more calories. So, its a wash.

Unhealthy habits should be replaced by healthy habits. Meat should be replaced by vegetables, legumes, grains and (yes) even fruit. Dont kid yourself into thinking that processed foods, though vegan, are healthy!

#6 Avocados, nuts, and seeds

At the height of popularity of the raw food diet in the early 2000s, many people were eating three to four avocados a day. Many gurus even claimed that it was perfectly okay to do so. No, its not okay! Three or four avocados is almost 1000 calories, 84 grams of fat and 12 grams of saturated fat! This is too much, even by mainstream, medical standards.

A raw-foodist once I met confessed to me that he ate one jar of almond butter every day. Thats 2300 calories, 208 grams of fat and 16 grams of saturated fat! Its enough calories to feed a person.

Nuts, seeds and avocados are ok in moderation, if youre at a healthy weight, but they should be the mainstay of a diet. Half an avocado, or one or two ounces of nuts and seeds is a reasonable amount to eat in one day.

#7 Nutrient-rich foods

This is the approach of adding more foods with certain nutrients, or containing significant quantities of antioxidants, such as berries, kale, flax seeds, micro-greens, etc.

Adding these foods is beneficial, but they wont cancel out the harms of an unhealthy diet. I think too many people find comfort in eating kale and ground flax seeds, forgetting the organic turkey sandwich they had for lunch, or the vegan pizza they had for dinner.

Aim at making big changes in your diet, such as eliminating all animal protein, eating a fruit-based or starch-based diet, and cutting out the oil and salt. Then, and only then, can you think about optimizing your diet with more nutrient-dense foods.

The Bigger Picture

The traps of health are the details that obscure the bigger picture its when you cant see the forest for the trees.

Kale is more popular than ever, but at the same time, the population is getting fatter and sicker than ever. Perhaps we should focus on eliminating unhealthy foods before we focus on micro-managing what healthy replacements we should be eating.

Your thoughts? Comment on the blog.

Frederic