The Fallacy of Food Quality

In a quest to eat healthy, its a good idea to focus on improving the quality of your food choices.

Replacing your afternoon bag of sun chips for a handful of baby carrots? Amazing choice!

Swapping out your Coca Cola for a sparkling water with lemon? Hell yes.

Skipping the butterfinger and instead choosing the gluten free, vegan, organic, refined-sugar-free granola bar? Well... let's talk about it.

Just because a food is made with quality ingredients doesn’t mean it’s good for your goals.

Think about all the "healthy" snacks on the shelves at the grocery store—protein bars, protein shakes, nut butters, granola, hummus, dried fruit... the list goes on.

All of these foods are just condensed calories in disguise.

But the label on the front will have you thinking you've added 10 years to your lifespan just by putting it your cart—making claims like:

Organic
Non-GMO
Vegan
Gluten-free
No refined sugar
Packed with superfoods
Keto-friendly
Paleo
Plant-based
All-natural
Dairy-free
Whole grain
Heart-healthy
No artificial flavors or preservatives
Made with real fruit
Made with ancient grains
Cold-pressed
Raw
“Clean ingredients”
Zero trans fats

(All of which can easily be true, by the way.)

But here's the part they don't mention, which is more important than you think: They’re energy-dense, meaning they pack a lot of calories into a very small serving. The reason? They’ve had the water and volume removed, or they’ve been processed down into more concentrated forms.

Because food density matters—whether you are trying to be mindful about calories or not. When you remove water from food—or compress it, blend it, bake it, fry it, or turn it into a bar—you condense its calories. Think of it this way:

• A handful of fresh grapes? Low calorie, lots of volume.

• A handful of raisins? Same grapes, way less water, way more calorie-dense—because now that same handful contains double the amount of grapes.

So while it’s great to choose foods with better ingredients—yes, we want to nourish our bodies—it’s just as important to pay attention to how much energy those foods are actually providing. If your goal is fat loss, body recomposition, or even just better energy balance, you can’t rely on the marketing on the front of the box.

Moral of the story? The "natural food section" of the grocery store isn't an isle, it's the perimeter of the store.