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The Additive Principle of Nutrition
Jan. 13th, 2022 02:01 pmI have discovered the idea of additive nutrition and I'm finding it really helpful.
Most of American food culture runs on the idea of subtractive nutrition-- the idea is to eliminate all the bad things from your diet. The problem is that this leads to people just... not eating, because they're not interested in the "healthy" food left to them. (This is in fact what happens every time I decide I'm going to Eat Healthy-- I pretty much stop eating for a week and then remember why this is a bad idea.)
Additive nutrition focuses on adding the healthy food without much caring what else you're doing. According to subtractive nutrition, if you're eating carrots with ranch dip, you shouldn't eat it because of the ranch dip; you should just eat the carrots. Which usually results in not eating the carrots either. Additive nutrition goes "yay, you ate carrots!"
So yes, I'm eating mac and cheese that came out of a box. And I dumped broccoli and homemade meatballs into it; it's fine. Though the place where this comes up the most is if I'm spreading almond butter and nutella on my breakfast toast, yay, there was almond butter.
On a completely unrelated note, what is the point of owning a cookbook called How to Cook Everything if it contains nothing on chicken hearts? (Or at least nothing in the index; I admit I have not read it thoroughly.) It's the revised and expanded edition, even! I have plenty of cookbooks for the more common things; I want my cooking encyclopedias to give me instructions on the less common things. Joy of Cooking would have had it, I'm sure. I really need to track down what happened to my copy of that, or find my mother's.
Most of American food culture runs on the idea of subtractive nutrition-- the idea is to eliminate all the bad things from your diet. The problem is that this leads to people just... not eating, because they're not interested in the "healthy" food left to them. (This is in fact what happens every time I decide I'm going to Eat Healthy-- I pretty much stop eating for a week and then remember why this is a bad idea.)
Additive nutrition focuses on adding the healthy food without much caring what else you're doing. According to subtractive nutrition, if you're eating carrots with ranch dip, you shouldn't eat it because of the ranch dip; you should just eat the carrots. Which usually results in not eating the carrots either. Additive nutrition goes "yay, you ate carrots!"
So yes, I'm eating mac and cheese that came out of a box. And I dumped broccoli and homemade meatballs into it; it's fine. Though the place where this comes up the most is if I'm spreading almond butter and nutella on my breakfast toast, yay, there was almond butter.
On a completely unrelated note, what is the point of owning a cookbook called How to Cook Everything if it contains nothing on chicken hearts? (Or at least nothing in the index; I admit I have not read it thoroughly.) It's the revised and expanded edition, even! I have plenty of cookbooks for the more common things; I want my cooking encyclopedias to give me instructions on the less common things. Joy of Cooking would have had it, I'm sure. I really need to track down what happened to my copy of that, or find my mother's.
