What does "healthy" mean to you

amother

Mon, May 06 2024, 7:57 pm

Its after Pesach and I keep seeing recipes for "healthy" food/cakes/cookies and I keep wondering since when is 1/2 cup sugar healthy?
I'm curious what healthy means to other people. To me, sugar is the first thing to cut, and no artificial sweetners,
On the topic of sugar - Since when is brown sugar healthier????? All these recipes call for brown sugar, is it really healthier?

amother

Crimson

Mon, May 06 2024, 8:01 pm

For baked goods, I consider it healthy if it calls for nutrient dense unprocessed gluten free flours (almond, cassava, millet, buckwheat, chickpea, coconut), no seed oils or Trans fats, and unrefined sweetners like coconut sugar, maple syrup, honey. With the understanding that pastries are treats and meant to be eaten in extreme moderation.

amother

Poppy

Mon, May 06 2024, 8:06 pm

Brown sugar is marginally more healthy, because it takes white sugar and adds back in some of the nutrient-rich molasses.

For many people, they don't mean healthy, but healthIER.

In general I consider less processed to be healthier. I don't think that most baked goods or desserts are healthy by definition, but there is a continuum and one with less sugar is better than one with more.

AlwaysCleaning

Mon, May 06 2024, 8:14 pm

Its not healthy, just HealthIER.
And if half a cup of sugar is in a recipe that makes 24 muffins, it's not that many grams per muffins.
I'm perfectly aware when I eat one of these type of muffins that it's not a "healthy" muffin. But I am the type of person that enjoys a sweet with my coffee and a muffin like this is better than a reg store bought muffin from the bakery.

amother

Slateblue

Mon, May 06 2024, 8:20 pm

amother OP wrote:

I agree!!

chocolate moose

Mon, May 06 2024, 8:32 pm

I'm diabetic. for me and for many, Flour is just as bad as sugar. None of these recipes are healthy - half a cup of sugar isn;t better than 2 cups of sugar, if it's with flour. For the record, fruit is all sugar too - it's all carbs.

Healthy is really hard to define - it really depends on the person.

amother

Molasses

Tue, May 07 2024, 2:19 am

I believe a regular chocolate cake recipe you made crom scratch - 2 cups sugar, butter, white flour, etc is considerably healthIER than an ultra-processed store bought cake.

Then a cake with whole wheat flour and silan instead of sugar is healthier than that.

But if you ask me what is healthy, I'm with the Rambam: a 700 calorie dinner with 450 calories coming from avocado toast and fruit, and 250 calories coming from a piece of cake, is healthier than a 1000 calorie dinner where all the calories come from avocado toast and fruit. Assuming that you need approx 2,100 daily calories, so approx 700 per meal will get you that, whereas a 1000 calorie meal will put you over.

amother

SandyBrown

Tue, May 07 2024, 2:42 am

Health is dependent on context.

In the context of an otherwise balanced diet, a slice of cake or a cookie or 2 at a Shabbos meal, whether made with white sugar or silan, is fine.

But if you’re trying to make the most nutritionally conscientious choices, silan will be better than sugar (white or brown), whole grain flours will be better than white flour that has been stripped of much of its nutrition, and unsweetened apple sauce will serve better than oil.

I think most people can agree than non dairy whip is not the healthiest, and that in general aiming to reduce our intake of refined sugar is healthier.

For most people making a cake that has 1/2 cup of sugar in the WHOLE cake is better than making the one with 2 cups. And using whole wheat/spelt will be healthier than using white flour. But if you’re eating cake everyday it’s not healthy regardless. Sweets should be a *part* of a balanced diet, but a small part.

Comptroller

Tue, May 07 2024, 2:54 am

Healthy = in good health or conducive to good health

But

You should not use "healthy" to describe certain categories of food, because any food can be healthy, if you eat it in the right context, and unhealthy, if you eat it when you should not.

Especially, it is not wise to encourage children to eat "healthy" food, meaning categories of food they like less than others, because in this case, "healthy" will quickly adopt a negative meaning for those children, as in "there is tasty food, and then there is "healthy" food".

The Japanese and Korean traditions can inspire us if we aim for healthy nutrition:

great diversity,
small quantities, (rather 10 different small portions than 2 big ones)
many colors (make it pleasant to the eye)
many textures,
many tastes, (make it interesting for the palate),
lots of fish (and seafood),
not too much meat, (2 kilos enough for 600 students)
not too much fat, (not much fried food, but in small quantities, among lots of other stuff)
not too much sugar, (a piece of cake has the size of a poststamp, and they don't often serve cake)
sit down to eat (in Japan, nobody eats on the go it is considered very uncouth),
respect your food,
stop before you are too filled up

I love watching "a week of bento" on youtube, or the way they produce school or office lunches in Japan or Korea (also on youtube) because it really shows how they think in terms of diversity of foods served.

They often serve three types of protein in one meal (egg, fish, tofu), many different kinds of veggies, including algae, cooked or raw or pickled, rather small portions of meat compared to our habits, and they arrage it in a beautiful way.

And, lo and behold:
obesity rate in Japan: 5.6 %
obesity rate in the US: 42 %, more than 7 times that of Japan.

BmoreBubby

Tue, May 07 2024, 12:51 pm

amother OP wrote:

On the topic of sugar - Since when is brown sugar healthier????? All these recipes call for brown sugar, is it really healthier?

No. I used to think so. But all forms of sugar - including honey, including a glass of orange juice - all impact the body in the same way. Actually, the liquid sugars like orange juice are worse.

amother

Molasses

Tue, May 07 2024, 1:41 pm

BmoreBubby wrote:

No. I used to think so. But all forms of sugar - including honey, including a glass of orange juice - all impact the body in the same way. Actually, the liquid sugars like orange juice are worse.

Why? If I eat 2 Tbsp of white cane sugar, wouldn't it mix with the liquids in my stomach and become liquid sugar almost instantly?

BmoreBubby

Wed, May 08 2024, 1:24 pm

amother Molasses wrote:

Why? If I eat 2 Tbsp of white cane sugar, wouldn't it mix with the liquids in my stomach and become liquid sugar almost instantly?

You mean if you eat raw sugar? Probably. But to my knowledge no one thinks that that's healthy. My point is that many people think that OJ is healthy and it really isn't.