The Basics: What even is a whole food?

Even at Whole Foods, most of the food is processed food.  Back to the basics means eating food that hasn’t come from a factory - even an organic factory.  

When you sit down to a meal - if there are carrots in a dish, you need to be able to see the carrot.  If you have a strawberry something and all you see is strawberry goo or you taste them but can’t see them - that is not a whole food.  

We learned in The Jungle that when food becomes unidentifiable there are things in there that you don’t realize are in there.  That rings true today also.  And what is added is not added for your health, rather it is for shelf life, texture, color, or smell.  

More importantly, what’s taken out is even worse for your health.  Fiber, vitamins, minerals, polyphenols, antioxidants are lost.  “It’s not the food, it is what is done to the food that makes you sick, “ my favorite quotation and a guiding light in the grocery store.  It comes from the book Metabolical by Robert Lustig, an awesome book.

For example, whole grain factory made foods are not truly whole grains. In most cases, it began as a non-whole grain food.  Why? Because whole grains are not as shelf stable as refined grains.  So, refined grains are used and then the bran and fiber are added back in after being stabilized by heat or chemicals before the product is completed.  

So you are actually getting the stripped grain and denatured bran and fiber - a key reason foods are fortified to partially make up for the nutrition loss. But, when you strip the grain you change how your body processes the sugar in the grain - the sugar is absorbed quickly giving you insulin spikes; and the fiber becomes less healthful.

So what to do?  
Get back to truly whole foods.  That does require time - one of the reasons I created jolie: whole foods based prepared meals focused on health and priced accessibility.   

Opt for snacks that are not from a box or with a wrapper: fruit, half of lunch, jolie or homemade soups, olives, smoothies jolie or yours, nuts, cut up veggies,.  

Buy your grains minimally processed.  My favorite grain or grain substitutes are wild rice, black rice, oat groats, and, if you are not gluten free, wheat berries.  These are basically all intact - so there is no nutritional loss and your body knows what to do with them.

If you haven’t tried jolie, this is a great time to begin.

with love,

Jolie
xo