Navigating the Science of Eating 'Healthy' in the Western Hemisphere

via Dara Rain in Medium:

I wondered, “wasn’t food supposed to be, by definition, healthy? If the ‘food’ wasn’t healthy then why call it food?”

image of "Real Egusi Soup" courtesy of Kitchen Butterfly

...To navigate this western food wilderness, my rules are simple. First, I buy produce anywhere but the grocery store (preferably farms where I know the pesticides used, this also means full-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese) and I grow the bulk of my tomatoes. Secondly, I hardly ever get anything that comes in a jar, box, or can (this might be hard for Westerners to imagine or even try, but anybody used to garri will find this rule easy and perfectly reasonable). I’m wary of packaged foods because the process of harvesting a fruit or animal product and packaging it in such a way that it’s aesthetically pleasing and can stand the rigors of transport, usually involves chemicals that I want nothing to do with. Avoiding packaged goods is easy for me because many Nigerian foods aren’t sold that way. And thirdly, I cook my own food. From scratch.

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