What initial impressions come to mind when viewing this photo of food? How would you classify it? - "good", "bad", "healthy", "unhealthy", "clean" or "a cheat meal"? Would eating this lead to feelings of guilt, shame, or a sense of failure to maintain a certain way of eating? Would this meal change the way you eat for the rest of the day? Would you advise someone against consuming these items based on x, y or z?

This is what I ate for a snack today after donating blood. Well, I actually also had chocolate milk and another chocolate slice technically beside the point.

I don’t feel guilty for eating these foods. It doesn’t make me a “bad” person or a “bad” dietitian. It doesn’t mean I am “unhealthy”, it wasn’t a “cheat meal”. I don’t understand this concept, Who am I cheating on? An apple, a bowl of pasta, or myself?

This is one meal of many meals that make up my dietary pattern. A pattern of eating that contains a wide variety of foods including the above foods, fruits, vegetables, bread, pasta, rice, legumes, cheese, steak, chicken, salmon, chocolate, peanut butter, wine, potatoes, couscous, risotto, duck, nuts, pizza, garlic bread……you name it and I probably eat it.

It is essential to eat a wide variety of foods and that includes foods from each of the food groups. This ensures that our body receives adequate nutrition as each food is composed of different nutrients. Imagine how boring life would be if we only had to eat one food to get all of the nutrients our bodies needed.

Once we remove the labels, emotions, rules, nutrition nonsense, and diet culture from food we are left with food. Once we reconnect to our bodies and are able to listen to their signs, signals, and cravings we can eat intuitively knowing when our body needs more vegetables, a piece of fruit, a juicy steak, or chocolate cake. It’s not always easy to drown out all of the nonsense out there and get to this point but it is possible.

Now when you look at this picture of food, what do you see?

I see coffee-flavoured milk, 2 mini meat pies (that nearly burnt my tongue), a mini sausage roll (that was a touch dry), a chocolate slice, a packet of chips, and tomato sauce.