Good Food, Bad Food
What if there’s no forbidden fruit? What if you think about eating to take care of yourself? In episode two, Juna describes the judgments she and others impose on themselves and their food choices.
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Sal DiStefano is a personal trainer and fitness podcaster for the show Mind Pump. Instead of seeing physical appearance as a main goal of fitness, Mind Pump cultivates self love and promotes holistic health through quality information and education.
Bio | Mind Pump Podcast | Mind Pump Instagram
Rachele Pojednic is a professor at Simmons College, nutrition and wellness expert, fitness instructor, and founder of Strong Process which provides fitness and wellness consulting, education, forums and retreats.
Website |Twitter | Instagram | Strong Process
Michelle Gallant is a nutritionist at Harvard who is known as a “No Diets Dietician”.
The No Diet Dietician | LinkedIn -
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Juna If you're new here, this is actually episode two of Food, We Need To Talk. There's also an episode one, which explains a lot. It's called "Doomed If You Diet, Doomed If You Don't." You should probably check it out. OK? OK.
WBUR [00:00:33]Produced by the iLab at WBUR, Boston. [2.1s]
Juna: Dude, I'm taking jiu jitsu. Did you know that?
Eddie: I didn't know that.
Juna: Yeah, don't come at me, Eddie? Just kidding.
Eddie: Good thing there's a table between us.
Producer: OK, let's go. We're starting with a cut, right?
Juna: Yeah, start with the cut.
Juna: OK, everybody come here. You have to say your names. What's your name?
Nicholas: Nicholas.
Matilda: Matilda, like the movie, Matilda.
Juna: Ok, And then how old are each of you?
Nicholas: I'm 9.
Matilda: 18.
Juna: Matilda! How old are you?
Matilda: I'm 7, there.
Juna: Is certain food good and certain food bad?
Nicholas: Yes.
Matilda: Yes, some of them.
Juna: Which ones?
Nicholas: For good food, vegetables, fruit and all that kind of stuff.
Juna: Matilda?
Matilda: Candy, more candy and more candy for me?
Juna: What do you guys think of sugar?
Matilda: I love it.
Nicholas: For kids, sugar can be good for them because it can make them hyper. But at the same time, bad for your health and like all that kind of stuff.
Juna :Why is it bad for your health?
Nicholas: You can get cavities.
Matilda: I already got a cavity once. My goal is to not eat sugar for one day, and I finished that goal. Because I eat too much sugar every day.
Juna: Well, how do you know you eat too much?
Matilda: Because every single day I eat more than one piece of candy.
Juna: Even at a super, super young age we’re already brainwashed with all these labels about food. Even my super young, young relatives. And I started to think back when I was little, like certain foods are good, certain foods are bad. And bad foods are usually really fatty or really sweet. Not only did it make me look at myself differently when I eat certain foods, but it also makes me look at other people differently, especially when I could see what they're eating. One day last year, when my sister Wendy came home from school, she told me the story about when she went into her high school economics class on Halloween.
Wendy: I just walked in. Ms. Home, just kept on repeating that there was a bowl at the front of the classroom with candy in it, and then if anybody wanted a piece, they could go up and grab a piece. So eventually everyone sat down, the bell rang for the class to start. Nobody was getting up. And, yeah, I got up, girl. I had the balls to get the candy. I know when I was getting up there, that everyone was watching me. And if I had been overweight or anything, I would have felt extremely uncomfortable getting candy. It's only that I was like confident in the way I looked and what I was wearing, even like my outfit. But it did help that, like, I looked good.
Juna: And then what did your friends say to you later at lunch?
Wendy: I think what she said was just like, "Oh yeah, you have to make up for the candy with that salad, huh?" I don't know. But every single day, people always look at my salad and silently judge me about my salad for sure, because it's like only skinny bitches eat salads. Or other people will look at my salad and be like, "Yeah, I need to lose weight too. I should probably start eating salads." People will say that they're inspired by me to start eating healthy so that they too can be fit.
Juna: So why do you eat salad?
Wendy: Because I like salad.
Juna: Just like Wendy said her friends do, I was just constantly making judgments. And of course, this all came back to myself because you only judge other people the way you judge yourself. And it's because I was always so self-conscious when I was in public and eating in front of people about what they were thinking about me. So, for example, somebody offering me dessert was like the greatest internal battle because on the one hand, I didn't want them to think that I was some person with no self-control and stuff. And like they were internally thinking, "Oh, she's already 10 pounds overweight. Like, why is she eating dessert? That's gross." But then on the other hand, I didn't want to say no and have them like, "What the hell? Is she on a diet?" I don't know. I just like, never knew what to do, because either way, it seemed like I was being judged by other people. Like, we're so hyper-aware of what everybody around us is eating.
Kay: Now, you definitely watch what people eat. And like right now, they're those brownies in there that somebody made, and I keep eating them. And I definitely know who eats those and who doesn't. So yeah, it definitely influences people around. You know, you're like, "Oh, wow, I'm a slug, I should be on a diet."
Juna: That was Kay who works at Harvard. And let me tell you, the music department is a place full of tasty treats. Um yeah, I tend to stay away from there now, most of the time. You know, there's something else I gotta say. Food, we need to talk. That's also the name of this podcast. If you're new here, we're talking about our incredibly complex relationships with food. My name is Juna Gjata, and I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Eddie Phillips from Harvard Medical School and the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine.
Eddie: Juna, I want to hear more about this morass of judgments about food you're making day by day. What's good? What's bad?
Juna: Yeah, Eddie. So I have a question for you, actually, because I know for me, like I always have labels on food being good and bad. But do you ever think of food as good and bad yourself?
Eddie: I try to think of some foods as better and other ones as probably worse choices. For myself, I try to get away from the dichotomy of just like, Oh, this one I can't have in this one I must have.
Juna: For me, all desserts just go in the bad category, and then foods that were good were basically foods that were low calorie that like, wouldn’t make you gain weight.
Eddie: How has that worked out for you?
Juna: It didn't really matter what they would do to my health. It only mattered what they did to my weight, and thinking of it that way didn't lead to the best relationship with food, as my favorite fitness podcaster Sal DiStefano explains.
Sal DiStefano: You know, if we only eat right to lose weight and get skinny, we're going to have a terrible relationship to food because it's either going to make us fat or it's going to make us skinny. And then we're going to resent it because we're going to want to eat something that tastes better and we will rebel.
Juna: And that's exactly what happened to me. I mean, my relationship to food was basically all around calories. And then it got even more specific than that, and it started to be about carbs, fats and proteins, and I became obsessed with those numbers. So, for example, I saw these protein pancakes. So I would buy those because they had way more protein and like less carbs or whatever. And then I thought this high-protein ice cream because I could eat the whole pint because it was high protein. So the health of food became just hitting the right numbers, if that makes sense.
Eddie: So, Juna, I think to maybe clarify how our body reacts to the different foods I'm going to bring in Rachele Pojednic. She's an assistant professor of nutrition at Simmons College.
Rachele Pojednic: So we don't eat protein. We eat food. If you're eating a high-protein pancake, you still are eating a little bit of protein, a little bit of carbohydrate, likely a little bit of fat. You know you got your all-natural maple syrup. You know, that's still the way that your body sees that is glucose. And so we are completely obsessed over these labels that we're putting on food, but our body is just not confused at all. It will use whatever you put into it, which is, I think, a big disconnect.
Juna: Eddie, like, I get that your body can't tell the difference, but there's no universe in which broccoli is worse for you than cake. You know what I mean?
Eddie: If you had too much broccoli, that's pretty bad. And if you had too much cake or never had cake, I might say that that's bad.
Juna: But like if you could never have cake, why would that be bad?
Eddie: Because you might want it. [pause] What do you make of that?
Juna: I don't know. OK. I mean, yes, too much broccoli would just make you have to go to the bathroom. So I guess it would be bad. But it's just hard for me to see why it would ever be bad to have too little dessert.
Eddie: Probably having too much of it. But if you really had a nice piece of cake and you savored it and it was for a special occasion, would you, would you turn that down?
Juna: I guess if I didn't think it would make me obese.
Eddie: And it probably alone is not going to make you obese.
Juna: But the problem is there's “one piece of cake” every day, whether it's bagels being offered at work or somebody made like homemade whatever. And if I say yes all the time, that's going to add up.
Eddie: So I think maybe the thing to focus on here, Juna, is the special part. And it was that one time when you're really looking and saying, "Wow, everyone's singing Happy Birthday, I'm going to take a bite of that cake," but not every time everyone offers you a bagel and a cookie and another bagel.
Juna: OK, so have some judgment.
Eddie: Yes, always.
Juna: Don't say yes to everything.
Juna: You know, Eddie, this seems like one of those special moments. The perfect time for a brief message to our listeners.
Eddie: I'm not going anywhere.
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Eddie: So Juna, as we're talking about how certain foods make us feel, I want to ask you, have you ever gone down the path where you sort of say, "Well, I ate that and it made me feel bad?"
Juna: How about this, when I eat worse.
Eddie: Uh huh…
Juna: My skin will, like, break out a few days later.
Eddie: Are there any foods that make you feel good when you eat them?
Juna: I guess any time eating more whole foods. I look better just like my skin, my hair, my nails. Everything feels better when I'm eating more vegetables and fruits.
Eddie: Better foods.
Juna: Better foods. And then I just notice it, especially with like very sugary things and like greasy things. My skin breaks out and my energy is bad and I'm sleepy. I guess those are like the big things that I notice.
Eddie: OK, so you've intuited this or how did you get there to realize the relationship? Because a lot of people, I think, are kind of clueless about how food makes them feel.
Juna: You have to eat that way for a little bit and notice the way you feel instead of just noticing how it adds up.
Eddie: So what I'm hearing is you became more mindful at some point.
Juna: Yes, that would be a good word. OK.
Eddie: And you started to connect the dots?
Juna: Yes. Which took a long time.
Eddie: Right. And there's actually some science to this as well.
Rachele Pojednic: There are a million other reasons why you would eat certain foods that have nothing to do with weight whatsoever. And the data is showing more and more is that regardless of weight, if you're eating certain foods, then you're significantly more healthy, both physically and mentally.
Juna: This is Rachele Pojednic again at Simmons College. She says the way food affects your weight is maybe not the most important thing to focus on.
Rachele Pojednic: One of the things that we know is that eating a high fiber diet is going to have beneficial effects that may have ramifications on weight. But really, there's a lot going on there that we're just investigating things like inflammation, things like mental health that are really starting to come out in the literature, just from eating a little bit of fiber and feeding those gut bacteria, right? And so the idea that it all has to be traced back to weight is, I think, just the worst lens with which to look at food because there's so much more with your body and the interaction with the food that you're putting in it besides whether or not the calories are balanced.
Juna: You heard my cousins in the beginning, right? That stuff has been so ingrained in me that certain foods are good and certain foods are bad. I can make new associations, but it's so hard for me to just forget the numbers that I know, but I think a really good simplified way to think about it is the way Sal talks about choosing your food.
Sal DiStefano: The key to the whole diet thing, A, is to not diet and B, is to feed yourself as if you were trying to take care of yourself. So if you start to look at food in that way, like, OK, what is going to take care of me right now? And then you eat that food. More often than not, you'll make decisions that are better for your health. And sometimes that means you are going to eat ice cream because sometimes eating ice cream is taking care of yourself.
Juna: So that's what you meant by it's OK to have cake sometimes.
Eddie: Right. You know, another thing that I think about when I reach for a nice spoonful of some crunchy chocolate ice cream is that it's that first bite that really gives you the pleasure. And after that, you sort of accommodate to it or your nervous system actually accommodates to it. That second, third tenth bite of the chocolate ice cream is not as pleasure-full. But really savoring the first one, I would say, is a good choice.
Juna: I think the danger with counting calories, if I was just like trying to eat super clean, I literally became driven insane by something that I never even cared about before.
Eddie: So this is something you didn't want, and now you're craving it.
Juna: Yeah, I never liked bagels before. Gosh, yeah. And then like, I would just go to the dining hall and I ate three bagels in a row.
Eddie: Because you didn't want to have them. You wanted to have them.
Juna: Yeah, exactly. And it was this time when I was like, going crazy about food and -- a side note, I was also taking six classes -- so I don't know if it was just like the stress was driving me crazy. Anyway --
Eddie: So Juna you know what I'm hearing is the actual act of dieting, actually, maybe it was just adding more stress. Your cortisol levels are going high. You're kind of going nuts like just trying to get control and you're losing more control.
Juna: When I was eating was the only way I could calm myself down, basically, and that's why I was so attracted to like super fatty, super sugary foods. Because that's like the only thing that was like, this is the only good part of the day.
Eddie: You were feeding your brain and just kind of getting a little relaxation there.
Juna: Yeah, exactly. And I was like, All right, I need some help. So I saw this nutritionist at Harvard who has been called the No Diets dietitian. Michelle Gallant. And I thought I would ask her, Why is it a problem if we label foods as good and bad?
Michelle Gallant: When we call them good or bad foods, the bad foods can wind up being more appealing because they're forbidden. I hear it from my patients all the time that their family didn't allow sugar or sweets in the house. But boy, when they went to a friend's house, it was a free for all. Or if they had a little money, they would go and buy candy. And so allowing it in moderation, they can learn to have it in a balanced way. When you make it into forbidden, it makes it that much more appealing.
Eddie: The forbidden fruit, huh?
Juna: Yeah.
Eddie: And makes you think back to Genesis and to the beginning. And this great debate. Maybe you read East of Eden at some point in your life?
Juna: Sure.
Eddie: And they debated, you know, is everything preordained? Boom is everything free, will? And what they decide at the end of this wonderful book is "thou mayest".
Juna: Right, "I may."
Eddie: You can make a choice.
Juna: Um, the only problem is that I'm afraid sometimes if I "may," then I won't be able to stop "maying," if you know what I mean.
Eddie: You may have this cupcake and then the next, and keep on going.
Juna: I mean, I may have the entire tray of cupcakes because I may.
Eddie: So Juna, now, before we go any further, I really want to talk about binge eating and purging. That's a serious medical issue. It's a sign of a real eating disorder. If you're experiencing that, you should call your doctor and reach out to the National Eating Disorders Association. But if we're talking about the typical everyday dilemma, like do I say yes to this treat and when do I say no to it, then I think we could go back to the free will part. You have the active choice to say no when you need to say no and to say yes to those really special times, to something you really want.
Juna: Well, that's exactly what Michelle Gallant told me to do back in sophomore year.
Michelle Gallant: When you give yourself permission. It becomes neutral. Like, OK, I can have cookies or pizza or chips any time. So do I really want it right now? "Well, yeah, I do." OK or, "Nah, I'm really not interested in it right now." That relieves that anxiety and that fear, and it helps you gain control over your eating.
Eddie: In other words, let's get away from "I can't have that" to "I choose not to have that."
Juna: When I was in college, I was trying to say that “I choose not to have that”. And I would be like anxious days in advance of events where I knew there was a lot of foods. Especially formals, because I knew if I had one drink, it was just like all out the window. You know what I mean?
Eddie: Well, alcohol's a whole nother subject here.
Juna: But it's like as soon as my inhibitions were down, I knew that I would have no self-control. So I was anxious days in advance.
Eddie: I'm getting a little bit anxious, just listening to your anxiety. Is it the anxiety that you're not going to be able to control what's going on?
Juna: Yeah, the screw it all mentality of like, it's not perfect anymore. So I might as well --
Eddie: And perfect is the enemy of good. And if it wasn't perfect, then to hell with it.
Juna: If I'm going to go out, I got to go out with a bang. Like, I can't just have one oreo, I have to have five hundred.
[music interlude]
Juna: So, Eddie, this year, for the first time in my life, I bought dark chocolate peppermint stars and I had them in my pantry. And would you believe me if I said I had them a serving at a time?
Eddie: So you're no longer forbidding them for yourself?
Juna: Yes.
Eddie: You know that eating too many of them —that sounds like it makes you feel badly.
Juna: Yeah. Like physically badly.
Eddie: Physically badly. But having one? How does that make you feel?
Juna: Fine.
Eddie: OK, so you've sort of intuited, "Wow, I could have one. I'm giving myself real control, not just assigning a black and white to this is good, this is bad."
Juna: And honestly, everything that I would fantasize about turned out really not to be as good as I thought it was once it was allowed. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't know, things were only so attractive to me because I knew that I wouldn't let myself have them. But what I've really realized is like at the end of the day, the only way you're going to change the way you eat for the rest of your life is to address the root of the issue – how you think about food and the purpose it serves in your life.
Michelle Gallant: The first thing that's very important is to be reliable about feeding yourself good food that you enjoy over the course of the day.
Juna: I asked Michelle Gallant to give a couple of final things for people to really think about in terms of trying to change their relationship with food.
Michelle Gallant: Asking yourself, "What do I really want?" Instead of just what I should have? Because if you're always depriving your appetite, those snack foods are highly palatable foods will be way more appealing. That's the first step. The other step is to practice. Take deep breaths before you eat, just to calm yourself,center yourself. Give yourself that permission. And learn to provide for yourself with food rather than depriving yourself all the time.
Eddie: What a beautiful way of thinking about the food is nourishing you.
Juna: Yeah, and that's the thing. It's like sometimes food doesn't just nourish you biologically, but it also nourishes you, like, for example, when I'm with my family over the holidays and my mom has like, worked hard all day and made baklava.
Eddie: You could taste the love, huh?
Juna: Yeah, you can taste the love and the syrup. There's a lot of syrup.
Juna: In the next episode, I'm so excited because I got to talk to a drug addiction specialist. Can you guess why?
Eddie: Because food is a drug, for some of us.
Juna: I mean, well he won't go so far to say that it's legitimately addictive the way we call drugs addictive.
Episode 3 Promo [00:20:44]Well, I do believe is that there's reward mechanisms that motivate food consumption the same way that reward mechanisms that motivate drug use. [6.8s]
Eddie: Let's talk about that next time.
Juna: Yeah, for real, because this is your brain on cheesecake.
Eddie: [laughs] I just lost a sponsor.
Juna: Well, we don't want to lose you. So if you haven't subscribed to food, we need to talk. Then head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and click that subscribe button. And if you decide we're good. And leave us a review.
Eddie: And if what you've heard leaves you with a burning question, send a voice memo to foodweneedtotalk@gmail.com. We'll try to answer you in future episodes.
Juna: And if you want to see me peer pressure Eddie into trying a gingerbread latte and deciding if it's good or bad. Head on over to Instagram and follow us @FoodWeNeedToTalk. We post all the time and it's always informative but hilarious content.
Eddie: Juna, let's thank our guests.
Juna: OK, they're definitely good.
Eddie: Thank you, Rachele Pojednic, Sal DeStefano and Michelle Gallant. Food, We Need To Talk is a production of WBUR.
Juna: The Wizard that makes it all happen is George Hicks.
Eddie: Our final arbiter and editor is Elisabeth Harrison. Our Founding Godmother is the fantastic Carrie Goldberg.
Juna: My name is Juna Gjata
Eddie: I'm Dr. Eddie Phillips. See you next time.
Juna: Eddie, you cannot see podcasts.
