Why So SAD?

Let’s talk SAD.

Standard American Diet.

Recently I was giving a talk to a ladies’ lunch group and when I asked if they were familiar with the Standard American Diet, only three raised their hands. Here’s how I explained it.

What’s your definition of a typical American’s day of food? How might it look? Probably most of those foods included would fall under this diet’s definition. My own childhood was often similar to this:

Breakfast - cereal or poptart

Lunch - cafeteria food or sandwich with chips, fruit snack, etc.

After school snack - Teddy Grahams, Goldfish, etc.

Dinner - pasta, frozen dinner, or drive thru?

That’s an example, but I would guess that most of either have eaten like this regularly or still do. The true definition of the Standard American Diet or SAD is a diet high in grains, processed meats, sugar, corn, and processed foods and low in vegetables, fruits, and fish.

The danger isn’t in eating a pop tart or going to McDonald’s every now and then as you rush from soccer practice to piano lessons, because of course, most of us can’t avoid these foods all day every day. The danger with the SAD is how prevalent it has become and how often these foods are consumed. Your body has the ability to deal with a certain amount of inflammation, in this case caused by food that is cooked in highly processed oils, has added sugar, and has added ingredients that most have sensitivities too (gluten, soy, etc.), but when the human body is under a constant siege of these types of foods along with our more stressful lifestyles these days, it’s harder to keep up. The ingredients in many processed foods I don’t even consider to be food, but more of a food-like product. Preservatives and chemically altered ingredients to increase the taste. High fructose corn syrup added to everything from bread to tomato soup. Artificial sweeteners in virtually every bottled drink and pre-packaged sweet snack and yogurts. It gets harder for our bodies to filter out the bad and keep the good, the nutrients, the minerals, when we’re being overrun by ingredients we didn’t even ask for in so many of our grocery store favorites.

Most of us try to eat healthy on the go, if we can, but even the “healthy” fast food restaurants like Jamba Juice, Chick-Fil-A, Starbucks, are serving dishes with more sugar per item than the daily recommended serving. A small Banana Berry smoothie from Jamba Juice has 59 grams of sugar. That’s like eating 15 teaspoons of sugar or 15 sugar cubes, or 15 packets of sugar. The problem with these health foods on the go, is that they’re still a processed food in most cases, or contain much more sugar or additives than the same item made at home. In short, our challenge is that it’s not easy to eat “healthy” on the go, and so many of us are on the go often.

What’s the alternative?

Whole foods. Real foods. Clean foods. However you want to put it. I typically say that we should be focusing on eating a whole food diet. That seems to be easier to picture for most people. In essence, let’s try to eat the foods as close to their “whole” state as possible, or in the case of a packaged food, be able to recognize the whole state of the ingredients. The easy advice is to shop the perimeter of your grocery store, but the truth is that sometimes you need things on those inner aisles. When you’re doing your grocery shopping, my challenge to you is to do this. Pick up an item and say out loud what you would expect to be in that item. “Ok, Liz, if you were going to make this balsamic dressing at home, what would you put in it?” “Hey self, I would expect balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, salt, maybe lemon juice?” Then flip it over. Check the ingredients. Is that really what you would put in that salad dressing, or apple pie flavored protein bar, or cereal, or pasta sauce? If it’s not, and especially if it’s off by a LOT, or contains things you would never add to that food, then maybe keep looking. Find a brand that keeps the pasta sauce to what you would use if you had the time to make your own. Just because you’re not making it yourself doesn’t mean that you have to settle for ingredients like soybean oil, corn syrup, or Red #40 (what does a number taste like anyway??).

Which food products have you found that you’ve been surprised about the ingredients?