A few weeks ago, I shared a simple rule of thumb with my audience:
If your grandmother would recognize it as food, eat more of it.
It wasn't meant to be a perfect rule. It was a mental shortcut.
Nutrition advice has become so complicated that many people don't know where to begin. Every week there's a new superfood, another ingredient to avoid, or a new diet claiming to have the answer.
I wanted to give people a simple filter.
If a food still looks like something your grandmother would recognize, a sweet potato, beans, eggs, fresh fish, tomatoes, millet, oranges, it's probably a better choice than something that has been heavily reformulated into a product with a long list of ingredients.
Then a viewer asked me a question I couldn't answer immediately.
"Nsima, I understand your framework. But I now live in a different country with a completely different food culture. My grandmother wouldn't recognize most of the foods here. How should I apply your advice?"
It was one of the best questions I've ever received.
Not because it disproved my framework.
Because it revealed where the framework stopped being enough.
Every framework has edge cases
Good mental models simplify reality.
But every mental model has situations where it needs another layer.
My original framework worked well for filtering highly processed foods.
It didn't fully answer another question:
How do you make good food decisions when the foods around you are completely unfamiliar?
Imagine moving to another country.
You walk into a market and see vegetables you've never seen before.
Fruits you've never tasted.
Grains you've never cooked.
Legumes you've never heard of.
Your grandmother wouldn't recognize any of them.
Does that automatically make them unhealthy?
Of course not.
They're unfamiliar to you.
That doesn't mean they're unnatural.
That's when I realized I'd been solving only one problem.
I had created a filter for processing.
I hadn't created a filter for unfamiliarity.
Those are different problems.
Healthy people don't memorize food lists
The more I thought about it, the more I noticed something.
Healthy populations around the world eat remarkably different foods.
Traditional Japanese meals look very different from traditional Mediterranean meals.
Traditional West African diets differ from those in South America.
The foods change.
The principles don't.
People learned to eat from the environments they lived in.
They worked with local crop
They adjusted as the seasons changed.
They developed ways of preparing the foods available to them.
They weren't following a universal food list.
They were following a decision-making system.
That distinction changed how I think about healthy eating.
The goal isn't to memorize foods.
The goal is to learn how to evaluate foods.
The Two-Filter Framework
Today, I think healthy eating becomes much simpler when you separate these two questions.
Filter 1: Is this food still close to what nature produced?
This is the original framework.
The more a food resembles its original form, the more confidence I generally have in eating it regularly.
Fresh vegetables.
Fruit.
Beans.
Nuts.
Eggs.
Fresh fish.
Whole grains.
These foods are recognizable.
Not because our grandmothers were nutrition scientists.
But because they existed long before modern food manufacturing.
Of course, this isn't an absolute rule.
Some processed foods can still be nutritious.
Some minimally processed foods may not suit every individual.
This is a filter, not a law.
Its purpose is to simplify decisions in a world filled with thousands of packaged products competing for our attention.
But what happens when the food itself is unfamiliar?
That's where the second filter becomes essential.
Filter 2: How does this food fit its environment?
Instead of asking,
"Would my grandmother recognize this?"
ask,
"What role does this food play where I live?"
Is it grown locally?
Is it in season?
Have people in this region traditionally eaten it?
How do they prepare it?
What foods is it commonly paired with?
This doesn't mean every traditional practice is automatically healthy.
Nor does it mean local foods are always the best choice.
It simply recognizes that food cultures often contain generations of practical knowledge about growing, preparing, and combining foods.
That knowledge is worth paying attention to.
The Adaptation Loop
Once a food passes those two filters, there's still one final step.
Adaptation.
Whenever you're introducing unfamiliar foods, don't overhaul your entire diet overnight.
Instead, move through a simple cycle.
Observe.
What's available?
What's in season?
What's naturally abundant?
Learn.
How is the food commonly prepared?
How do local people use it?
Introduce.
Try it gradually.
There's no prize for changing everything at once.
Pay attention.
Notice your energy.
Your digestion.
Your appetite.
Your satisfaction after meals.
One meal tells you very little.
Patterns tell you much more.
Adapt.
Keep what consistently nourishes you.
Leave behind what doesn't.
Healthy eating isn't about proving loyalty to a particular diet.
It's about learning from experience.
Why this matters
We live in a world where people move more than ever before.
A food that's unfamiliar in one country may be a staple in another.
Children grow up eating foods their grandparents never encountered.
Global trade brings ingredients from every continent into the same supermarket.
If our approach to nutrition only works inside one food culture, then it isn't a very resilient approach.
We need decision-making systems that travel with us.
A better way to think about healthy eating
I still use my original framework.
In fact, I recommend it often.
If your grandmother would recognize it as food, eat more of it.
It's a useful first filter.
But it's no longer the only one I use.
When I'm faced with unfamiliar foods, I don't reject them simply because they're new to me.
I become curious.
I ask where they came from.
How people prepare them.
How they fit into the local food environment.
Then I make my decision.
That's why I no longer think healthy eating is about finding the perfect food list.
Food lists change.
Countries change.
Seasons change.
Even our lives change.
What lasts is the ability to think clearly.
Because the healthiest people aren't necessarily those who know the most about food.
They're the ones who build decision-making systems that continue to work wherever life takes them.
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