Is it actually Real Food?

Do you ever wonder when the concept of “food” expanded from fish, vegetables, meat, raw dairy products, fruit and other such natural items to include the highly processed, preserved, artificially flavored and often brightly colored concoctions that now exist in supermarkets?

Perhaps it began in the ‘50s with the advent of the TV dinner, or around the time McDonald’s began expanding their hamburger business. It’s anyone’s guess, really, but this quasi “food” really caught on.

Nowadays, 90 percent of foods Americans purchase every year are processed foods, and in 2006, 2,800 new candies, desserts, ice cream, and snacks were introduced to the marketplace, compared to just 230 new fruits or vegetable products.

Of course, food marketers do a masterful job at making it seem like fast foods and junk foods are the obvious choice, and they spend mega-billions every year to convince you and your kids to choose highly processed convenience foods over REAL foods.

But there are some rays of hope shining through.

With the huge amount of social media platforms we have in our hands, we are able to show off about our lifestyle, including at the same time, the way we eat. It's becoming a trend to eat healthy, unbelievable but confusingly truth. With just the click of our camera phones, our lives are being exposed out there, letting others see what we are really into (or maybe faking it). But the truth is that, with this kind of platforms we are able to confirm the fact that junk food is the trendy sin of our society, a trendy sin that we are trying to hide.

When you hear the term “what’s old is new,” it most often applies to fashion or slang terms … but it can also be applied to food. That is, increasing numbers of people are reverting BACK to the ways of our ancestors, and choosing to purchase food directly from local farmers, and cook it using slow, traditional methods. Here is when the rays of hope shine through.

Food has been assumed as nutrients and calories, instead of food, instead of real food. We speak in terms of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals ... when all that has nothing to do with health. Health has to do with food, which is much more than the sum of its nutrients and calories. Food has a complex dietary matrix, which is healthy in its natural and minimally processed form. We have overlooked the degree of processing of these raw materials, ignoring the possible effects that may change food and have a direct impact on our health.

For all this, the Realfooding movement was born, for the defense and dissemination of real food. For the fight against the "fatty-genic" environment and the ultra-processed food. The objective is to improve the health of the population through food.

We are facing an epidemic of chronic noncommunicable diseases such as overweight, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmune diseases, etc. In Spain more than 20 million people suffer from chronic disease and represent the main reason for morbidity and total mortality. All are of multifactorial origin, however, in my opinion they all have something in common that contributes to the cause: the consumption of ultra-processed products.

According to a study, 90,000 people lose their lives every year in Spain because they follow a bad diet, and the cause is known to us. "The consumption of processed foods with excess of added sugars, salt and unhealthy fats is the first factor of loss of health and cause of diseases". Processed food represent a 70% of the food in Spain. Although their ingredients often go unnoticed by effective marketing campaigns that hide them, the abuse of those represent almost half of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and stomach and colon cancers that occur, regardless of a significant increase in health spending public. Basically, a total ruin.

In addition, the health costs generated by these diseases is the main economic burden of most of these. This involves a large opportunity cost, which means that a huge part of these economic resources could be used for other social needs. Highly processed products generate more poverty than wealth in our society and are comparable to the damage generated by wars or tobacco.

In order to fight against the processed, the best weapon is to make visible the real food. That's the idea of the #realfood movement, one of the latest nutritional trends on Instagram and that already has almost 170,000 followers. Defined by its creator, dietitian-nutritionist Carlos Ríos, as a movement and lifestyle that is based on eating real food and avoiding ultra-processed products, the objective of this informative initiative is to fight against the myths and conflicts of interests about nutrition.

Although realfooding does not invent anything new, the way of approaching and spreading nutrition has been a success. With a style in which visual impact, graphic and argumentative explanation predominate, providing daily nutritional tools and advice and exposing his followers to the routine of an expert in the field.

With all this being said, it is not difficult to agree with the following opinion: The most decisive factors in our health and well-being are the choices we make in our daily lives. Eating real food is not an expense, it's a long-term investment where your health will return it.