Why I spend a lot of money on food
And a few rules of thumb to reduce food anxiety
1.
When I buy groceries, I usually never look at the receipt. I pull a meager (by Tokyo standards) $2,000 salary from my startup, so you would imagine that I’d be more frugal. This isn’t poor budget management or an irresponsible “fuggit, yolo” oversight on my part, but a rather deliberate choice. It’s because I know that, generally speaking, higher price equals higher quality. I eat food that makes me feel good, gives me energy and probably increases my lifespan. I have zero stress around dropping a pretty penny on grass-fed ribeyes and organic almond butter. It’s all guilt-free, baby.
In Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food, which I highly recommend, he points out that in the 1960s Americans used to spend 17.5% of their income on food, and 5.2% on healthcare costs. Today, this has flipped, and Americans spend less than 9% of their income on food and more than 16% on healthcare costs. People get the convenience of cheap processed foods, in exchange for empty calories, diabetes and more visits to the doctor. This seems like a terrible trade-off.
Conversely, when you look at countries like France and Norway, you’ll find that they spend more on food, eat better and — surprise, surprise — live longer. And they’re not just spending more, but they eat differently. Compared to Americans, on average, they eat slower (less scarfing down food texting or watching Netflix), eat more whole foods (both plants and animals), spend more time cooking (less UberEats, more farmers markets), and are less likely to eat alone (because eating is social). Western habits have spread and many cultures have changed their eating habits, but the above represents communities who have more or less kept with tradition.
Okay, spending more on quality food has an intuitive logic, and perhaps eating slowly with others. But it doesn’t answer the question of what I should eat. Vegetarian? Vegan? Flexitarian? Low carb? Locavore? Fruitarian? Carnivore? A monthly Master Cleanse Juice fast (maple syrup, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and water)? What about a lamb chop and pineapple diet? You could just pick one from this extensive list of diets. Good luck.
If you’re standing paralyzed in the supermarket thinking, ‘God damn, this shit is confusing,’ you would be right. How did we get to this culinary mindfuck of overwhelming and contradictory information?
2.
Technological progress combined with leaps in biology have made it easier to measure what’s inside food. It’s just in the last few decades that we’ve learned about cholesterol, vitamins, proteins and all the other stuff that health labels are preoccupied with. Today, we can zoom in on a micro-level.
There’s no doubt it’s beneficial to know what’s in our food. Unfortunately, the conversation has been hijacked by sloppy science, media misinterpretations and government subsidies. What’s measurable now seems to be very important — whether that’s your 10,000 steps per day, your calories, or the vitamin C content in that chewy gummy snack. But is it really that important?
The idea that we can understand how healthy food is by its individual parts is called nutritionism, and it’s been taken to an extreme.
“Nutritionism is a paradigm that assumes that it is the scientifically identified nutrients in foods that determine the value of individual food stuffs in the diet. In other words, it is the idea that the nutritional value of a food is the sum of all its individual nutrients, vitamins, and other components.”
The problem is, food is very complex. There’s more sugar in an apple than there is in a mini Rice Krispie – does that mean an apple is worse for you? Right now in Japan, polyphenols are all the rage, and I’ve noticed chocolate bars boasting their polyphenol content. But what is the trade off between the sugar, calories, fat and caffeine in the chocolate, and am I better off just eating artichokes or blueberries, which are also high in polyphenols? These questions don’t have right or wrong answers, nor can foods be easily categorized as “good” or “bad.”
You can think of countless examples. We’re learning and unlearning new science every day. One day coffee is okay, the next day it’s the devil. There’s always a new study that comes out, and boom!, suddenly crucial vitamin X or antioxidant Y is missing from your diet. But we’ve seen what happens when governments make sweeping dietary guidelines based on reductive assumptions – “fat is bad,” only to discover that actually, no, we were wrong all this time. Whoops.
It’s hard when society, supermarkets, and the media are all dishing up their own advice. At the end of the day, you just want to eat well. But when we worry too much about measuring what’s in our food, whether it’s the calories in calories out approach, or trying to adhere to one miracle diet (which somehow never works out), we never get off this hamster wheel.
I’m not denouncing the value of scientific progress. I’m not saying we should stop measuring these things. I, for one, wear an Oura ring and have experimented with many diets, fast regularly, and enjoy tracking everything from my ketone levels to the various biomarkers in my blood. The point is that focusing too much on numbers, ingredients, and nutritional components can be a very big distraction (not to mention, stressful and hard to keep up with for most of us). In other words, I don’t think it’s actually necessary to know the nutritional content of everything you eat in order to eat healthy.
Fortunately, if you’re like me and want to step out of this paradigm, there’s an easier way.
3.
I remember a time when food was simple. I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to a wide range of cuisines from a young age – my mom’s Russian pelmeni served with sour cream and dill, the delectable simplicity of beef bourguignon during a stint in France, and now living in Japan, a revolving carousel of mouth watering otoro, raw fatty tuna, and fresh wasabi. Yum, good food.
I also remember when food was low quality. Like pepperoni pizza stained with yellow grease and drenched in ranch dressing from my middle school cafeteria in the USA. It would usually make me feel sleepy and farty. Yuck, bad food.
This brings me to a simple rule of thumb: Pay attention to how you feel when you eat.
Our feeling is the simplest and most reliable measure of all. Paying attention is noticing how happy you are with a delicious home-cooked meal. It’s noticing the physical sensations after eating — do you feel light, heavy, energized — and adjusting your diet based on that. It’s the joy of knowing what you’re eating and where it comes from (if you have to spend 20 minutes reading a label at a supermarket, put it down and walk away).
The opposite of paying attention is getting takeaway every night. It’s drinking a meal-replacement beverage because it has “all the nutrients” you need, but then feeling sad because you’re not sharing a regular meal with friends/family and looking at the mirror way too often. It’s also hard to pay attention when you’re rushing between meals, never cooking and are on your phone as you eat.
The next few meals you eat, maybe take note of how you’re eating and how you feel before, during and after. Obviously, if you notice that you feel rushed, or tired, this is a hint to adjust. It can be tricky, but if you can, you can also start to question some assumptions: do I really have to eat three meals a day, what is the true price I am paying for “convenience,” and am I eating this because I like it or because someone told me it was good for me?
I remember on the rowing team in college, my coach told me to drink chocolate milk after practice because it’s a great recovery drink. Every time I did, though, I would have a terrible stomach ache and spent the morning on the toilet. ‘But, coach said so…’ It took me several weeks and many rolls of toilet paper to finally admit that perhaps chocolate milk at 8am every morning just wasn’t for me.
If you actually take the time to stop and check in with yourself, you’ll find that you might naturally adjust your diet to be a little bit different.
4.
Nassim Taleb talks about the Lindy Effect – the longer something has been around, the more likely it’s going to be around. And probably, the more you can trust it, whether that’s a book, idea, or institution. This is why your grandma is usually right and why school kids around the world are still going to be reading Shakespeare next year. I think this principle of longevity also applies to food choices.
This brings me to a second rule of thumb: Eat what your ancestors (or great-great grandma) ate.
You could, instead of worrying about your macronutrients – the ratio of proteins, carbs and fats — just choose a dish and way of eating that has stood the test of time, and who’s population seems to be pretty healthy. Some good ones are Greek, Japanese, Mediterranean, Swiss, Norwegian. Pick one, or a few, that you like. The people that eat this way have been around for a while, so it’s safe to assume that decades/centuries of trial and error and survival is worth something. Unlike the micro approach of nitpicking on what’s in your food, this is a more holistic, macro approach of just choosing a cuisine that works. (You should, of course, still experiment with this and pay attention to how you feel).
And, don’t forget the context in which these diets developed – it’s likely they cooked and shared meals together. This is a little bit harder to do nowadays given the grab-n-go nature of our lives, Hustle Culture, and the cult of productivity. But it is equally important to slow down, as studies have shown that if we eat while we’re on our phones or watching TV, we tend to eat faster and eat more — binge watching leads to binge eating. There’s a correlation between weight gain and how we eat. So if you want to be true to this approach, it’s not enough to just order sushi and scarf it down watching X-files reruns.
And lastly, fasting seems to be a pretty traditional, tried-and-true activity, too. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Jainism, and Hinduism all practice seasonal or ritual fasting. Modern science tells us that they were on to something. Occasionally, I go without eating for a couple days and less frequently 4 or 5 days. I feel great when I do this and it gives me a ton of energy. Fasting usually wasn’t a solo activity, so you can fast with a friend. Since I lack the religious context I started a local fasting group to make this more social (feel free to join if you’re in Tokyo!)
5.
So, there you have it. In a way, it’s really simple. If you don’t feel like worrying too much about food, digging into all the science and are looking for a way to still eat healthy, you can start here. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Follow what worked for your great-great grandma — her cooking got you here, after all — and notice how the food is making you feel. And of course, if you can afford it, don’t be afraid to spend a little money on what matters. :)
Your insights are spot on! I find that eating has less to do with nutritional needs and more to do with emotional needs.I eat very well but way too much and at the wrong times. Food addictions are the hardest to break.