{"id":375,"date":"2009-07-07T08:51:52","date_gmt":"2009-07-07T12:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/?p=375"},"modified":"2010-02-12T16:35:57","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T21:35:57","slug":"dear-fat-nutritionist-does-yummifying-my-food-make-it-less-nutrilicious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/dear-fat-nutritionist-does-yummifying-my-food-make-it-less-nutrilicious\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Fat Nutritionist – does yummifying my food make it less nutrilicious?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Yes, I just made those words up, and yes, I’m aware that they are completely stupid. Therefore, I will continue using them at every future opportunity, until people beg me in droves to STOP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST STOP.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Just the other day, I received the following wonderful letter, and nearly broke my spine tripping over myself to thank the writer for writing it:<\/p>\n

Dear Fat Nutritionist,<\/p>\n

I am trying to improve my diet by adding things to it, in recognition of the fact that one’s diet is a vital source of vitamins and minerals. So far I have added a daily serving of orange peaches (about the only thing from the orange-vegetables list that I like) and a serving of green vegetables, and I have been eating fish at least twice a week. (I’m giving myself a gold star for that, because it’s progress even though I have far to go. Seriously, eight servings of vegetables every day?)<\/p>\n

What I’d like to know is whether there is any truth to the idea that nutrition-free additions to nutritious foods make them less nutritious. Is there something about pouring caesar dressing on a bowl of romaine lettuce that makes the lettuce less nutritious? Are chocolate coated almonds less almondy than unsalted ones? Does cooking my zucchini in butter make it less zucchiniful?<\/p>\n

I know these things raise the count of calories and calories-from-fat, but these are things that I am deliberately ignoring.<\/p>\n

Thanks Fat Nutritionist,
\nBookwyrm<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dear Bookwyrm,<\/p>\n

Wow. I’m actually really impressed with how you’re stretching your food-related horizons, especially with more “challenging” foods like fish and vegetables. I’m not a huge vegetable fan myself, so I know that can be a rough one. And as far as the eight-a-day goes, eeeehhh — I treat all those rules as more of a suggestion from a super-paranoid health-freak friend. Which is to say, with salt. <\/p>\n

Lots of it.<\/p>\n

So, in response to your question, “What I’d like to know is whether there is any truth to the idea that nutrition-free additions to nutritious foods make them less nutritious. Is there something about pouring caesar dressing on a bowl of romaine lettuce that makes the lettuce less nutritious? Are chocolate coated almonds less almondy than unsalted ones? Does cooking my zucchini in butter make it less zucchiniful?”<\/p>\n

Basically — no.<\/p>\n

Stuff doesn’t magically become less nutritious because you add butter or dressing. There are always tons of crazy nutrient-nutrient interactions, but many of them are so miniscule, or there are so many of them going on at once, that you’d drive yourself crazy<\/em> trying to account for them all.<\/p>\n

You can also always point out to any random nutrition police<\/em> that, for every nutrient interaction that actively interferes with absorption (like calcium interfering with iron), there’s another nutrient interaction that enhances absorption (like vitamin C with iron.)<\/p>\n

So, basically, let’s assume it all evens out. Roughly speaking. <\/p>\n

The wider the variety of food you learn to eat, the better your nutrient intake becomes. So, whatever gets the food up off your plate and into your mouth<\/em> is effectively enhancing its nutritional value.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Because: <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You’ll eat it today, and<\/li>\n
  2. You’ll like it enough that you might eat it again another time, and<\/li>\n
  3. You’re going to be way more likely to stretch those food horizons even farther in the future, since you’ve had awesome experiences with, I don’t know, gravy on your broccoli.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And, going even further, a lot of flavour-enhancers (especially the fatty ones, like butter and oil and salad dressings) actually improve your ability to absorb nutrients in the food (fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K.) What’s more, fat slows down food on its trip through your gut — meaning, your gut gets more time to absorb all the goodness. <\/p>\n

    Now, of course, it is true that cutting, mashing, and cooking vegetables (and other foods) can destroy certain sensitive vitamins, as does letting them sit in the fridge too long, blah-de-blah-de-blah-everything-you’ve-ever-read-in-a-dry-nutrition-advice-column-blah-de-blah.<\/em><\/p>\n

    But, honestly, it’s really freaking hard to come by food that is so totally bereft<\/em> of nutritional value that this is going to make much of an impact — assuming you eat enough food to begin with, which most people living in rich countries do. If you’ve got a food-security problem, that’s a whole other ball of wax that needs to be addressed before you go around worrying whether your broccoli is is broccolicious as it can possibly be.<\/p>\n

    So, bottom line? If you’re eating actual food, and eating multiple food groups, and not starving or unduly restricting yourself, then yay. You’re doing well. <\/p>\n

    And anything you can do to make that food tastier, sexier, and more likely to end up in your mouth? Go for it.<\/p>\n

    Hope this helps,
    \nMichelle<\/p>\n

    Join the FOOD-FIGHT!!!! in comments<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    (Yes, I just made those words up, and yes, I’m aware that they are completely stupid. Therefore, I will continue using them at every future opportunity, until people beg me in droves to STOP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST STOP.) Just the other day, I received the following wonderful letter, and nearly broke my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-fat-nutritionist","category-eating","tag-normal-eating"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pw16f-63","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2554,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions\/2554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}