10 Pillars of Healthy Eating (pt. 1)

In this two-part series of articles, you will learn the 10 pillars of healthy eating according to naturopathy. A comprehensive guide to give you a good foundation on how to eat well in a balanced and non-dogmatic way. Discover the 5 first principles in this blog post. 

With its holistic and preventive approach to wellness, the main role of naturopathy is to make us aware of the importance of making more beneficial food and lifestyle choices in order to reach homeostasis in our bodies, while equipping us to do so. Homeostasis means achieving a certain balance, a harmony between the various beneficial elements in our body. It creates an environment conducive to good health.

In the past 10 years, I have navigated extensively the wild world of wellness. Through this journey, I have learned so many things, especially through research (in books, articles, videos, online programs etc.) and first-hand personal experience. However, my most solid source of information for this particular article series is a course in healthy eating that I completed in a naturopathy school a few years ago. Although I am not a certified health practitioner. 

With this article, my intention is not to give you the perfect diet, because it doesn’t exist! If you read until the end of the series, you will understand why. My hope is to transmit to you a good understanding of the main pillars of healthy eating. It will be a long one, so grab yourself a cup of your favorite warm beverage, get yourself cozy and let’s dive in!

1- Eating a balanced diet

Eating a balanced diet is one of the most important pillars of healthy eating. This principle can be broken down into 3 important keys: eating a variety of foods, consuming that variety in proper balance, and eating in the right quantities for your personal needs.

Key 1: Eating a variety of foods

It is essential to eat a bit of everything in reasonable proportions. By eating a varied diet, we increase the nutritional potential of our plate, as we get access to a greater diversity of nutrients. Not only does this help to cover our daily nutritional needs, it also improves the balance of our intestinal flora. In turn, this has a positive impact on our immune system and overall health.

To do so, we can eat a wide range of foods: fruits, vegetables, roots, flowers, leaves, nuts, seeds, legumes, cereals, seaweed, eggs, meat, fish, dairy products, beehive products, etc. A wide-open field of possibilities from both a taste and nutritional point of view!

Key 2: Eating in the right balance

The adage “The dose makes the poison” is worth bearing in mind. For each of these foods, the ratio on our plate is very important. Among natural foods, there is not one that is perfectly healthy, nor one that is horribly bad. Read that again.

In the world of healthy eating, we see all kinds of movements advocating the total elimination of certain foods or food groups from our diet. I have been experimenting with this myself for the past decade, and I can assure you that this type of approach has caused nothing but imbalances within my body. No matter how good I felt at first (being months or years…). I will go into more detail on this in another point later, but this is the reason why I realized just how important eating a bit of everything is.

A super easy tool for bringing balance to your meals is to use the plate method. It’s a visual indicator of how to compose our plate in a healthy balance. Each main meal of the day would be composed of around 50% vegetables or fruit, 20-25% starchy foods and 25-30% protein. These proportions may vary slightly according to the season and individual metabolism. Being slightly more modest in my starch portions (without eradicating them) and more generous with proteins is what works best for my body.

Key 3: Eating in reasonable amounts

In our post-WW2 society, we got used to a fast-paced food production. With the rise of mass agriculture and supermarkets, having an emphasis on massive production over quality, we have learned to eat to the point of over-fullness. Perhaps you were forced by your elders who remember the war, to always finish your plate, even when you were no longer hungry? 

At the same time, diet culture has encouraged many women to eat way less than their bodies actually needs. This constant contrast in the media and around us may well be one of the sources of some eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. As these subjects are sensitive and complex, I won’t go into them any further here.

However, I invite you to think of our ancestors. They naturally tended to eat in moderation, partly to make their provisions last. Some ancestral medicines even recommended not eating until “there’s no more room”. In fact, the stomach functions optimally when it is not fully stretched. Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda both suggest eating about 75% of your capacity. If you put this into practice a few times, you may be surprised at what your body really needs.

Of course, be careful not to under-eat. Perhaps eating up to 80% of your satiety is a more realistic approach for you. In any case, it’s important that your meals are made up of a variety of nutritious foods to cover your body’s nutritional needs. This means avoiding the empty calories and processed foods mentioned below.

Pro tip: to make your meals last longer and eat less in volume, consider eating meals with nutritionally dense foods, higher in protein and in fiber.

2- Eating locally and seasonally

Choosing to consume more foods that are produced locally and seasonally presents environmental benefits by reducing carbon footprint. However, did you know that it also has health benefits? I dive much deeper in the benefits of eating locally and seasonally in another article. But in a nutshell, here are the 2 main reasons why this practice is better for your health.

First of all, fresh produce such as fruits and vegetables quickly lose their nutrients after harvesting. When we eat foods that are out of season and/or have been imported from other countries, we lose enormous nutritional potential. The longer the time between harvest and consumption, the more nutrients are lost. In other words, we want to eat fruits and vegetables to cover our nutritional needs… but we barely can achieve that because of how poor in nutrients those foreign produce actually are.

Second of all, our body’s physiological needs vary slightly with the seasons. In the cold season we need to be warmed up, and in the hot season we need to be refreshed. Fortunately, nature has a very good way of doing things! Did you know that foods grown in the conditions of the seasons in which they are harvested have properties that, when ingested, help our bodies adapt to these seasonal changes? That’s why eating what’s in season is so good for your health.

3- Choosing organic & GMO-free foods

Since the Green Revolution (monoculture and large-scale agriculture) in the beginning of the 20th century, our soils have been greatly depleted of their nutrients and minerals. For this reason, since then, our food has become increasingly less nutritious than ever before.

Moreover, this depletion of nutrients in our food has severely weakened those plants’ (and animal’s) organisms. Which, in turn, lowered their defence mechanisms. To counter these weaknesses, in order to avoid harvest losses, mass producers have no choice but to use xenobiotics. These are substances foreign to living organisms. They include pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, chemical fertilizers and GMOs.

As well as having disastrous consequences for the environment, these agricultural practices make food less nutritious and less tasty. Exposing our bodies to chemicals that need to be detoxified by the liver. In turn, the liver will have to work harder to do its job. To compensate this effort, it will use even more micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) which are already scarce in those nutrient-depleted foods…

This is why choosing to eat organic and GMO-free food is so crucial to the proper functioning of our bodies. By definition, organic farming is a form of agriculture that respects living organisms and is in symbiosis with the rhythms of nature. It is subject to rigorous requirements that must be met in order to obtain a certification.

Keep in mind that this matter is highly nuanced. Between greenwashing, certifications, practices and consumers’ budgets. Which is why I wrote a comprehensive article to demystify the subject of organic and GMO-free farming.

4- Eating colorful & fresh foods

One of the nutritional advice we hear the most is to eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Our whole lives, we heard health campaigns claiming “eat 5 fruits and vegetables per day” but it is important to understand why. Here are the two main reasons why it is vital to eat an abundance (in quantity and variety) of fruits and vegetables.

The main reason of eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables is to benefit from the antioxidants. Of course, those foods cover many of our body’s needs for micronutrients. They also are a great source of fiber, which we will talk about later on. But here, we will specifically focus on the importance of antioxidants.

Why do we need to eat a lot of antioxidants-rich foods?

Because on a daily basis, especially in our modern world, we are exposed to free radicals. In short, free radicals are harmful substances that damage our healthy cells. This is an inevitable phenomenon that occurs when we breathe oxygen, so please don’t get paranoid with it.

Of course, breathing oxygen is vital, so holding our breath isn’t a good idea. But, simply note that our exposition to free radicals increases significantly with external aggressive factors that we face on a daily basis, also called oxidative stress.

Oxidative stress is increased by external factors such as: stress, sunlight, pollution, junk food, alcohol, lack of sleep, drugs, excessive sport, aggressive cooking methods etc. This leads to premature aging and the development of pathologies.

The role of antioxidants is to trap and neutralize free radicals. We can find antioxidants in many colorful foods, especially berries. The more colorful the fruit or vegetable is, the richer it is in antioxidant. This is where the expression “eat the rainbow” comes from.

Here are a few foods that are rich in antioxidants (this is a non-exhaustive list):

• Berries: blueberries, strawberries, blackcurrants, cranberries, haskap berries, goji berries etc.

• Dark leafy greens: kale, spinach, collard greens, watercress, etc.

• Vitamin C rich fruits and vegetables: plums, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, peppers, cantaloupe etc.

• Vitamin A (Beta-Carotene) rich foods: carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, pumpkins, apricot etc.

• Cruciferous vegetables: broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, etc.

If you are curious to learn more about antioxidants and free radicals, I recommend you check out this resource!

5- Choosing whole foods over processed foods

One of the plagues of the modern diet is excessive food processing. Whether it's premade foods with an arm's length list of dubious ingredients, or refined foods such as trans fats, refined sugars and refined grains. It's important to remember that the primary reason why we eat is to provide our bodies with the essential nutrients it needs to function properly. This includes a wide range of micronutrients (such as vitamins and minerals).

The refining of food greatly degrades its nutritional quality. Like an empty shell, it's called "empty calories", because these foods are nothing more than macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates and fats) that provides calories, but are empty of the micronutrients that actually nourish us.

Plus, some processed foods contain food additives such as food coloring agents and preservatives. These factors increase the amount of undesirable substances in the body, some of which are hormone disruptors.

Which processed foods should you avoid? Here's a non-exhaustive list to give you an idea:

• Refined cereal products: white flours, white breads, white rice noodles, white pasta, etc.

• Refined sugars: white sugar, corn and glucose syrups, industrial honeys, sweeteners such as aspartame, etc.

• Trans fats, especially certain PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acid) like processed cooking oils: margarine, canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, vegetable oil, walnuts oil, cottonseed oil, peanut oil, etc.

So, how to avoid processed foods? On the one hand, a good guideline is to eat unprocessed, unrefined foods such as fresh produce, whole grains and natural sugars.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of what you can replace some processed foods with:

• Wholegrain products: wholegrain flours (such as buckwheat flour, einkorn flour etc.), integral sourdough bread, brown rice noodles, alternative pasta (like organic brown rice pasta, soba, buckwheat, or legume pasta), etc.

• Natural, whole sugars: unprocessed and organic sugars (like cane and coconut), date and ripe banana purées, maple syrup, organic honey (ideally raw), etc.

• Good fats (ideally organic): grass-fed ghee, grass-fed butter, cold-pressed olive oil, cold-pressed coconut oil, avocado oil, nuts and seeds (as is and/or as nut butters), olives, etc.

On the other hand, opting for minimally processed preparations gives us greater control over the list of ingredients we ingest. There's no need to complicate your life: it's absolutely possible to switch to healthy eating by cooking yourself. 

It may not come to you naturally at first, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. To help you, you can have a list of quick and easy healthy recipes that are your staples. You may rotate between those recipes and trying new recipes here and there. 

You can also take your favourite recipes and swap the ingredients for healthier options!

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So, there you have it, the first 5 pillars of healthy eating on this two-part series! To summarize, we saw together the importance of: eating a balanced diet, eating locally and seasonally, choosing organic & GMO-free foods, eating colourful & fresh foods rich in antioxidants and finally choosing whole foods over processed foods.

This is already full-packed of information, and may take some time to assimilate and try to apply to your daily life. So please, be very gentle and kind to yourself, don’t try to switch it all at once, and give yourself some grace as change is an ever-unfolding process, not a race.

You can read the part two of the series right here, where you will discover the 5 last principles of healthy eating according to naturopathy. I hope it is helpful to you as much as it has been for me in my own journey.

With infinite love and gratitude,

- Anne 🧚‍♀️

***Let me know, what is the pillar that you feel the most excited and curious to try out first? Have you been surprised by any of the information in this article? I would love to hear more about your healthy eating journey.***