When Well-Meaning Advice Goes Bad...

Hi everyone, it's Karen here and I have a confession to make: I shop the middle aisles of the grocery store. In direct defiance to the advice you always hear about only shopping the perimeter of the grocery store, I brave those middle aisles to get my instant oats, whole wheat pasta, canned tomatoes, peanut butter and frozen fruit. Maybe you do too. So let's make a deal -  I won't judge you if you don't judge me ;) 

I'm being a bit sarcastic here, but only shopping the perimeter of the grocery store is just one example of the oversimplified (and maddening) nutrition advice that is out there. I know it is well-meaning and intended to help people, but this kind of advice can actually do more harm than good. It creates false rules in people's minds and reinforces the idea of good and bad foods. This naturally leads to more doubt, anxiety and guilt around food choices (and believe me, we have enough of that already). 

True story: Just a few weeks ago, I had a client tell me that she was struggling to find healthful things to eat because she was scared to shop in the middle aisles of the grocery store (that incident is what inspired this blog post). She kept hearing that all the healthful stuff was on the store's perimeter and that the processed stuff was in the middle aisles, so she should stay away from those. At the end of the discussion, she was ecstatic to learn that she could go buy plain Cheerios and canned fruit from the middle aisles of the grocery store. I wish I was exaggerating, but I am not. 

Of course, the irony is that not only are there plenty of healthful foods available in the middle aisles, but there are tons of not-so-nutrient dense foods on the perimeter of the grocery store. Things you can find on the perimeter of the grocery store include bakery items, white bread, super sugary yogurt, cookie dough, pie crusts, Little Debbie snack cakes, highly processed meats and Lunchables (to name a few). 

I think I have sufficiently wrecked the "only shop the perimeter of the grocery store" advice. Maybe some other time I can talk about the "don't eat after 8 p.m." advice... :)