I think there are bad foods but those bad foods are not necessarily what the general public thinks they are.

example: most people would tell you yogurt is healthy and a "good" food. It is, until you stuff it full of fake colorings, artificial sweeteners, and stabilizers (Activia, Yoplait though sometimes I eat that because it's cheap). example: cereal. specifically, raisin bran, touted as oh so healthy, full of sugar. (raisin bran is on my dietician's bad list!)

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Yogurt is good for you - but it has to be PLAIN yogurt. People have to break their addiction to sugar, particularly sugar paired with fat - it completely changes the way your brain responds to food.

Anytime you see more than 4-5 ingredients, forget it. Example: bread we buy from a local baker, 5 ingredients, tops. Bread from a mass producer like McGavins: well over a dozen ingredients, with sugar up waaaay too high. Last time I made bread, it didn't have more ingredients I could count on one hand.

So extend the same approach to cereals and you can see that most are simply not good for you. Pretend you're 3yo and can't count past 5, maybe 6. Makes eating much simpler.

Maybe we should have a ST "no sugar" challenge.

AP

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"How bad could it be?" - SimpleS

to pull a few responses into one-

bad foods- My standard line is that there are no bad foods, there are of course foods we would choose to eat more or less of. There are a couple of issues I have with using the term bad to refer to those foods we ought to eat less of. First, people take it to the next step of saying that if I ate that food I am bad. Kids especially cannot make the distinction in the same way that some grown-ups can. Second, it gives food power and food has none. It is food, it is a solid and its primary job is to nourish, then provide secondary pleasure or comfort in some cases. No power.

exercise- I so agree with the family activity comment made. The problem with kids not getting exercise, in my view, is mainly parents not getting enough exercise. My guess is that if you polled most tri homes you would find that most of our kids get at least some exercise. They might not all be star athletes but they will likely be very active kids. When parents don't do things with their kids, don't get outside with their kids, exercise themselves coupled with crazy commutes and often high recreation fees, it gets near impossible to promote active kids. Add to that yet again that many schools in order to cut back $ are eliminating whole teams, gym programs and don't even get me started with elementary teachers who use gym to discipline their class- "if you don't behave gym will be canceled"! That is crazy, gym is not a treat!!! If you wouldn't say let's cancel math, why would you say let's cancel gym? Finally, there is the fast fix nature of video games and easy entertainment factor, you gotta work at sports....

womens' shapes- yes, three cheers to all the bootyliscious women out there like J.Lo and Beyonce!

this is not meant to sound bitchy - real question.

Do you call some food "good foods" ? That gives them power too. Furthermore, to make a philosophical point, if some things are qualified as good, there is necessarily a bad food category, otherwise we have no way to define 'good.'

Some foods ARE bad foods. Twinkies? Bad food. (don't pull up the recent news story; tons of problems with that sort of sensationalism). It's sad that we call things that are so full of chemicals* "food" in the first place. If we must refer to them as food, I think they definitely qualify under the "bad food" category. Another example: soda. Phosphorus is bad for bones; the sugar is bad for our teeth. Bad food (beverage, rather).

*yes, water is a chemical, I'm using the word in a conventional sense and not a scientific one

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Absolutely no bitchiness taken :)

Most folks when they tell themselves that they can actually have any food they want (no bad foods), end up choosing what they enjoy and have fewer cravings for the food. Most people when they actually taste their food and feel what it is like to eat healthily and satisfactorily would choose not to eat Twinkies very often. As Kai mentioned you might want to have a Beavertail along the canal, poutine at your favourite fry stand but you would do these once and a while, not every day. When people renegotiate their relationship with food they cannot jump to this step, i.e. the eat what you want, when you want thing. It would spell trouble. So you start out by eating in a mechanical way, gradually introduce previously `bad' foods but in a safe way and then gradually move to the eat what you want, when you want thing.

Every which way you turn, something is bad for you- bottled water, cereals, breads etc.... It is way too confusing for most folks to keep up with and for many, the organic foods are just not affordable. In the end, for mere mortals, the best approach is all things in moderation. Boring old, moderation. If we were to eliminate all the things that are supposedly bad for us, there simply wouldn't be much left.

Additionally, so many folks who are already eating healthily get caught up in the minutiae of the food, they take the mainstream messages to the extreme.