n the first installment of this three-part series, I talked about the all-important difference between natural and healthy (we often make the mistake of thinking that something is good for you just because it’s all-natural or organic).  In the second part, I talked about quality vs. quantity (even when a food is good for you, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you can eat as much of it as you want). And today, in the final installment, I want to talk about focusing on the average (or, mean) rather than the extremes in your diet.

This article is also available as a podcast. Click to listen:

The Thanksgiving Trap

A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, a writer called to interview me for a piece she was doing. The average Thanksgiving dinner is said to contain 3,000 calories. Her story was on ways to burn 3,000 calories over the course of the Thanksgiving-day weekend, ostensibly neutralizing the effect of the big meal.

It was a cute idea but it’s a perfect example of how we tend to overestimate the impact of our most extreme behavior and underestimate the importance of our typical behavior. Obviously, a single day of over-indulging is not going to make you fat, any more than a single hyper-active weekend is going to keep you slim. How much you eat and exercise on all the rest of the days of the year is what’s really going to determine your size and shape.

The Sin and Repent Cycle

We seem to be wired to pay more attention to the exception rather than the norm. If we’ve been really “bad,” our impulse is to make up for it by being really “good” for a day or two. But in reality, it’s not our worst days or our best days that tell the story. It’s not the day that our team wins the Superbowl and we celebrate by polishing off an entire tray of nachos.   Nor is it the next day, when we do penance by eating nothing but cabbage broth. It’s all the days in between.

Think of it like a grade point average. Getting an A is great. So is going an entire week without French fries. But a single A has a relatively minor impact on a solid C average. And a single French-fry-less week doesn’t do too much to offset the effects of eating French fries the other 51 weeks of the year. Your grade point average would be higher if you focused on getting all Bs—even if you never got a single A. And you’d be better off nutritionally if you cut your French fries consumption in half over the course of the entire year than if you cut them out entirely for a single week.

To put this concept into practice, download the free Nutrition GPA app!

Focus on the Mean, Not the Extreme

In other words, small positive changes that become a permanent part of your routine have a much bigger impact than big dramatic gestures that last only a few days. So don’t waste too much energy fretting over a particularly bad choice you may have made—and don’t exhaust your willpower on an extreme but short-term correction. Focus instead on improving your nutritional grade point average by making your typical day a little healthier.

This article was originally published at QuickandDirtyTips.com

Most of my readers are pretty savvy about nutrition. They read a lot on the topic, seek advice from reliable sources, stay on top of the latest developments, and think carefully about their food choices. But over the years, I’ve noticed a few traps that even health-conscious people often fall into. One of the most common mistakes is to assume that foods are good for you simply because they’re all-natural.

This article is also available as a podcast. Click to listen.

I think it’s especially easy to fall into this trap when shopping at health or natural food stores. Everything you see is the healthiest possible version of itself. The sodas are sweetened with organic cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. The potato chips are made with olive oil and air-dried Celtic sea salt. The ice cream is made from rBST-free cream. The jelly beans are colored with all-natural dyes. That’s all very well and good, but at the end of the day you still have a cart full of soda, potato chips, ice cream, and jelly beans.

It’s just as easy—and damaging—to over-consume natural sugar as it is to overdo it with refined sugar. And frying a potato in olive oil and sprinkling it with sea salt doesn’t turn it into a health food any more than coloring a jelly bean with beet extract turns it into a nutritious choice. I know that sounds ridiculously obvious. But you would be amazed how easy it is—even for nutrition-savvy people—to get distracted by the so-called “health halo.”

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

Just like the magician who does something eye-catching with his right hand so that you don’t notice what he’s doing with his left, marketers can often get you to forget what you know about nutrition by focusing your attention elsewhere.

If I asked you whether organic foods are lower in calories than non-organic foods, for example, most of you would answer—correctly—that being organic has absolutely no bearing on a foods’ caloric value. But if I showed you a plate of food, described the preparation, and asked you to estimate how many calories it contained, you’ll probably give me a lower estimate if I include the word “organic” or “natural” in my description.

Do Organic Foods Really Taste Better?

This phenomenon has been documented over and over again. A couple of years ago, John Tierney of The New York Times found that people estimated the calories for a meal as being 200 calories lower when it was accompanied by a packet of crackers labeled “trans-fat free.” More recently, researchers from Cornell University asked people to compare organic and conventional versions of the same cookie. In reality, the cookies were identical but people estimated that the faux-organic brand was lower in fat and higher in fiber. Even so, people rated them as better-tasting!

Barron’s Dictionary of Marketing Terms explains it this way:

“In theory, an individual should be able to evaluate each feature of a given brand independently and should have no difficulty giving a high rating to one feature while giving another a low rating. However, in practice, researchers have noticed that respondents have a tendency to give a high rating to all the brand’s features if they like the brand, and a low rating to all the features if they do not like the brand. This is known as a halo effect.”

Be On Guard Against the Health Halo

There are a lot of good reasons to choose foods that are less-processed and more natural. You can reduce your exposure to pesticides by choosing organic foods, for example. Just don’t fall into the trap of assuming that a food is more nutritious (or less damaging) just because it’s natural.  And don’t let food marketers get away with the old magician’s distraction trick.

Hold organic and all-natural products to the same standard you’d apply to conventional goods. Check the nutrition facts label to see how the calories, fat, sodium, and sugars add up. Organic or not, make sure that fresh fruits, vegetables, and other whole or minimally processed foods are taking up most of the space in your cart and that chips, crackers, cookies, and other treats are in the minority.

See also:  Nutrition Trap: Quality vs.Quantity

This article was originally published on QuickandDirtytips.com

In the first installment of this three-part series, I talked about the all-important difference between natural and healthy.  People often make the mistake of thinking that something is good for you just because it’s all-natural or organic.  Today, I want to explore a different kind of nutritional blind-spot that has to do with quality versus quantity. Even when a food is good for you, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you can eat it in unlimited quantities.  Whole grains and fresh fruits are two examples of healthy foods that can easily be over-consumed.

This article is also available as a podcast. Click to listen:

Hold the Line on Whole Grains

You hear an awful lot these days about the benefits of whole grains.  People who replace refined grain products like white bread with whole grain products like whole wheat bread have lower rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and many other diseases.  But a lot of people have misunderstood this to mean that whole grains are like vegetables—the more, the better!

I have friends, for example, who wouldn’t be caught dead eating a forkful of white rice—after all, they’re watching their waistlines!  Yet they see nothing wrong with eating two or three cups of brown rice with dinner—and can’t imagine why they struggle with their weight.

Whole grains are definitely better for you than refined grains. But that doesn’t mean that portion sizes don’t matter. Despite being higher in fiber and certain nutrients, whole-grain foods are primarily starch. They provide a lot of calories and relatively little nutritional value. And although whole-grain foods are a little easier on your blood sugar than refined grain foods, they still have a moderate to high glycemic impact.

When it comes to grains, you need to pay attention to quality and quantity.  In fact, when it comes right down to it, quantity may even be more important.  I’d actually rather see you have an appropriately-sized serving of white pasta than an over-sized serving of whole grain pasta. Best of all, of course, would be an appropriately-sized serving of whole grain pasta.

Fruit: How Sweet It Is!

Fruit also has a place in a healthy diet—but, again, more is not necessarily better. Fruits and vegetables both provide important antioxidants, phytonutrients, fiber, fluids—nutrients that protect and enhance your health. However, compared with vegetables, fruits tend to be significantly higher in sugar and calories.

I think people often rationalize that the sugar or calories in fruit doesn’t really “count” because it’s coming from a healthy source. After all, fruit is a food we’re supposed to be eating, right?  And when we talk about limited your added sugar, you don’t have to include fruit in that total. But that’s not a license to eat a pound of raisins at your desk every afternoon.

Fruit is both yummy and good for you. And you’re much better off satisfying your sweet tooth with a piece of fruit than a candy bar. But to keep your diet balanced and your sugar intake within bounds, I suggest limiting fruit to two to four servings a day—and no more than one of those should be in the form of juice.

In the next and final installment in this special three-part series, I’ll have one more tip on how to avoid the biggest nutritional traps.

This article was originally published at QuickandDirtyTips.com