Sinfest (c) Tatsuya Ishida
It’s practically a given – if you buy a pre-packaged “healthy” meal, it’s all but guaranteed to have broccoli in it. This penchant for bundling the ubiquitous green stuff is so pronounced that some metalhead friends of ShrinkGeek have likened an unwanted opening act that performs at numerous shows headlined by more desirable bands, “The broccoli of metal.”
What, however, is behind this? Why does broccoli wear the mantle of “default healthy food” in the same way that bacon and cheeseburgers are shorthand for “crap that is bad for you”?
Apparently, it’s because broccoli is actually good for you. Shocking. I know, right? Dark green vegetable that can be eaten fresh, raw, steamed, or have stuff slathered on it. I’m only half kidding here; until reading the info on that particular link, my general thought was “lots of fiber, a decent amount of iron, some vitamins.” In other words, to my mind, it was interchangeable with most other fruits and vegetables, and got top billing because it’s cheap and most folks can deal with it (former President GHW Bush notwithstanding). So, yeah, it was a bit of an eye-opener to see that a cup of the stuff has more than the full RDA of Vitamin C and K, and non-trivial amounts of just about everything else you’d want.
Quigley up there is illustrating one of the most common misconceived stereotypes of taking a shortcut to wellness – jogging off a bad meal and eating a healthy one makes you “even.” Health and nutrition aren’t like balancing Merits and Flaws. In the macro sense, maybe – calories in vs calories burned – can nudge your weight one way or the other, but the quality of those calories matters. The timing of those calories matters. The nutrition you derive from those calories matters.
You could, quite cheaply and easily, get plenty of calories to survive (and probably even gain weight) while becoming fantastically and dangerously malnourished eating nothing but Ramen noodles. I almost said “happily,” but even at my most Ramen-tastic, I don’t think I’d have happily eaten them for every meal, even jazzed up with a couple frozen meatballs and a cut up carrot or two. NPR recently touched on the subject of malnutrition and obesity among folks who have to cut financial corners when it comes to what they have to get by on – one person they interviewed mentioned how you can get a whole lot more glasses of “orange drink” from a $3.29 canister of sugary powder than you can from a gallon of milk.
I don’t think anyone would argue the nutritional imbalance there, but reality is a big, ugly, nasty place when making ends meet becomes a scramble. If a pull goes pear-shaped or an enemy ambushes your position, you react with the first things that come to mind; those may be a short-term solution, but they’re probably not the same things you’d employ if you had more control and command of the situation. Nutrition on a shoestring budget is often the same way – today’s tactical decision might not be the best overall strategy. Trying to plan (and cook) ahead can help keep things on a more stable footing if this is something you’re struggling with.
So, remember to eat your broccoli. The skinny dude with the scythe can wait. Besides, his loot table sucks.
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