Healthy eating isn’t always healthful

Sadly, it isn’t just children and young adults who have come to believe that “healthy food” means only low-fat, low-cal, fruits and vegetables.

Tomato diet kills Brazilian model

A young model who lived on a diet of apples and tomatoes has died of anorexia on the eve of an international photoshoot. Ana Carolina Reston, 21, a Brazilian who had worked for Giorgio Armani, was 5ft 7in tall but weighed only six stone when she died on Tuesday.

She is the second young model this year to die after starving herself [Model Luis Ramos, 22, died from a heart attack in August after living on Diet Coke and lettuce.] and the tragedy has reignited the debate over the use of dangerously thin models by the fashion industry. Her death, after a three-week illness, was described as a “wake-up call” to the industry by her boyfriend’s mother and Ms Reston’s mother appeared on national television and radio in Brazil to warn other parents of the dangers.

But how many hundreds of stories like the one below confront young people and all of us daily?

Eat to your health with these 10 super foods

Can you eat your way to good health?...Here are 10 foods you should be eating:

APPLES: Apples are full of soluble fiber, which provides a feeling of fullness. They also are rich in flavonoids, to promote heart health and help prevent cancer and inflammation. Have one before dinner, to take the edge off your appetite....

TOMATOES: Lycopene is what gives tomatoes their red coloring. It's a powerful anti-oxidant related to beta-carotene, and foods rich in lycopene can reduce the risk of macular degeneration and breast and prostate cancer. Lycopene is easier to absorb from cooked tomatoes - spaghetti sauce, for example - but fresh works, too.

“The quest for healthy food can become a disease in its own right, as bad in a way as the disease it is meant to forestall or cure. To take a cue from the popular bumper sticker, LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO DRINK BAD WINE, life is too short to spend it all thinking about how to live longer.” — Dr. Steven Bratman, MD in Health Food Junkies - Orthorexia Nervosa: over coming the obsession with healthful eating (2000).