What is “Real Food”?

You’ll see the phrase “real food” a lot around here. So let me explain what I mean by that.

It sounds funny, right? Would I really eat anything other than food that is real? Most people would promptly answer a resounding “no!”.

Is an apple real, naturally occurring as a food? Yes! 🙂 How about eggs? Yeah, those too. Is my collagen powder real? It doesn’t look like something straight out of the ground or from the farm. But yes, collagen is a real food and a pretty cool one too. Collagen extraction requires beneficial processing that helps turn big protein into little collagen peptides in powder form. What about my protein bar? Hmm…maybe.

Definition of Real Food

“Real food” is whole foods (like an avocado) or foods & recipes made up of these types of foods as ingredients (like homemade guacamole made simply with avocado, chopped tomatoes, onions and cilantro, lime juice and salt) . It is unprocessed (like raw almonds) or minimally processed (like almonds ground into almond butter with a touch of salt). Because of little processing, this food is free of bizarre chemical additives and is rather naturally filled with nutrients.

Real food is wholesome & nutrient rich. It’s the food that humans have been eating for a long time, not just the past half-century or so. When we eat wholesome food made with real ingredients, we don’t have to worry about if a food is “bad” or “good” for us. It is always “good”. How refreshing & freeing is that? We don’t have to worry if a food is going to harm ourselves, our children, our family, our friends. Therefore, all foods that are real have a reason to be eaten.

The same goes for supplements, by the way. Good supplements should be made from wholesome ingredients, made in the proper forms most readily used by the body. Likewise, wholesome food also has nutrients in the proper form for the body and essential nutrients that can’t fully be replicated in engineered foods.

So what else is included in the real, wholesome foods? One of the biggest eye-openers is that it includes many types of fat. Yep, some fats from food can be highly nourishing. And fats are essential every day in our diet. You’ll probably know the typical healthy ones like nuts, seeds, olive oil, and avocados. And guess what? It can also include some foods containing saturated fat like coconut products including coconut oil, fatty fish, eggs (including those nourishing yolks!), and full fat dairy & beef especially from grass fed cows!

Some wholesome foods might not be right for some people.

Of course, food sensitivities & specific dietary needs (which is my forte!) require restricting even some wholesome foods due to those needs, but these are specific circumstances. A lot of what I do in my nutrition counseling is helping navigate these very issues! If one cannot tolerate garlic, this doesn’t mean garlic is “bad”. Rather, it means it does not currently support that person’s health journey at the moment.

On the other hand, a typical packaged & highly processed apple turnover from your local gas station mini mart is likely NOT full of wholesome or real ingredients and therefore doesn’t pass the real food test. But you might wonder, “does it really make a difference in my health if I go ahead and eat that apple turnover or not?” Yes. It absolutely does. Stick around here to learn more about WHY.

Why go real?

Finally, real food works with the body rather than against it. It does what it is meant to do- nourish & heal us. When we eat foods that are wholesome and real, we get the nutrients that our body is meant to get to thrive.