“If you had to choose between eating tacos every day or being skinny for the rest of your life, would you choose hard or soft tacos?” This quote can be and Etsy, and, while it seems innocent enough, the implication is that tacos are tasty, yes—but also unhealthy. When in fact, tacos can be a healthy food.

The idea that cultural foods (i.e., not Westernized cuisine) are not up to healthy standards and should be treated as “cheat” meals is not regulated to Mexican foods. Many different cultures also believe the foods that they eat aren’t up to par. , a dietitian based in Trinidad and Tobago, says that people in her country regard Caribbean foods as unhealthy or bad, a result of misinformation about the cuisine. “In the health and wellness spaces, we don’t see our foods represented, and if they are, maybe they’re on the Ìę‘red list’ of foods,” Charles says. “What’s out there are foods that are ‘American’ or European, and we struggle to see how we fit into health spaces, and how to use our foods.”

So, What Is a Healthy Food?

There tends to be a black-and-white mentality when it comes to eating healthy food, especially here in the States: some solely imagine whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables when they think of the phrase. While foods that are hailed as “healthy” do provide much-needed nutrients for the body, oftentimes they conform to Western food standards, leaving other cultures feeling as though their foods are inferior. “I often hear that our cultural food doesn’t have many vegetables and that many of our staple foods are unhealthy, like rice and corn,” says , a Latina dietitian based in Los Angeles. “Often people only count green leafy vegetables and overlook some of the other really healthy vegetable options we have in Latine food, or they think that vegetables have to be their own side dish to count.”

This viewpoint disregards other aspects of eating that go beyond macro and micronutrients, including autonomy, culture, preference, ancestry, and variety. A between food and ethnic identity in a group of Mexican American women names food as an important part of culture and of cultural expression. , a dietitian based in Kansas City, Missouri, defines healthy eating based on what it is not: “It’s not restrictive, punitive, or rigid,” she says. “It’s not disrespectful or dismissive of individual needs, taste preferences, or cultural practices.”

What Happens When You Label a Cuisine “Unhealthy”

Framing a cultural food as “unhealthy” indicates at least a couple of assumptions: that health is the primary motivator for its consumption, and that the food would be more acceptable according to Western health standards if it were modified and improved. No matter what the intention, attempting to “improve” and “healthify” a culture’s food, especially when you are not of that culture, is troubling—you are saying that you set the standard when it comes to health and healthful eating.

Take the decades-long misconception that MSG (monosodium glutamate), a flavor enhancer used in many different cuisines, is unhealthy and even toxic. This prevalent thought can be traced to a bad review of MSG from the ‘60s when a physician reported getting sick after eating Chinese food. This spiraled into a negative association with the cuisine and perpetuated racism against Asian Americans, even though there actually isn’t strong scientific evidence linking MSG consumption to the ingredient’s alleged side effects. (Once more, most of the glutamate we consume is found naturally in foods such as anchovies, parmesan cheese, tomatoes, potatoes, seaweed, and walnuts.) “If you hear something enough times, you start to believe it,” Harbstreet says. “If you constantly hear that white rice is inferior, or that MSG is toxic, you eventually start internalizing that message.”

There is room to add nutrients to cultural meals, but again, this doesn’t mean that the culture as a whole is “unhealthy,” or that even the dish needs to be completely altered. As a dietitian, I think there are ways to improve the nutrient density or nutrition composition of any recipe through different cooking techniques or ingredient swaps. Still, “it’s important to have competency with cultural humility before ever attempting this, and is likely best done on an individual level,” Harbstreet says.

Once more, when broadly labeling a cuisine as unhealthy, you also ignore wider systemic barriers that can contribute to health—it doesn’t only boil down to what we are eating. Factors such as safe housing, education, income, access to healthcare, and literacy skills, among others, also play a role in our overall health and quality of life.

How We Can Celebrate Culture

Recently, I attended a retreat in Tulum, Mexico, a destination with a vibrant history and amazing food. But instead of celebrating this, the retreat decided to “healthify” the meals: corn tortillas were replaced with grain and seed bread; white rice was swapped for brown rice and beans. These changes weren’t listed as an option for allergies or intolerances—to me, it seemed like they were decided on because Mexican food was not considered nutritious and needed to be healthified.

We can start to undo this type of mentality by realizing that all food still provides nutrition, and that cultural foods aren’t inherently unhealthy or in need of fixing. “Embracing your cultural foods is the greatest form of resistance against a society that’s constantly asking you to change how you eat and adopt other food cultures,” Alexis Charles says. As an individual, you might want to focus on altering one or two ingredients or foods in a meal—but this is vastly different than putting a culture as a whole in an unhealthy category.

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The questions surrounding what to eat—and when—in our society are abundant: Did we exercise enough to earn our spaghetti dinner? Did we eat less before an extravagant meal so that we can feel less guilty enjoying it? Almost everyone has probably heard, or uttered, phrases like, “I deserve this meal because I went to the gym earlier.” But you don’t have to earn your food, and a meal should not just be a reward. Calories are necessary for our bodies—even without exercise—and food is a vital connection between people, their communities, and their heritage. So it’s time we started thinking about it that way. Here’s why.

You Need More Calories Than You Think

In simple terms, calories are units of energy that our bodies need to function. If we eat 400 calories of food, that is 400 units of energy that our body can then use. Our bodies don’t just need calories for movement and exercise. We need them for everyday living. “Our body uses more than 50 percent of its calories for basic life functions, such as keeping your heart beating and lungs breathing,” says performance dietitian . On average, the brain uses 240 to 320 calories a day (and a tiny bit more if you’re doing focused work), the liver 200 calories, the heart 440 calories, and both kidneys 420 calories. That’s 1,300 calories total, more than some diets allow for a daily limit. How we utilize calories also depends on numerous factors, including the type of food we eat, the body’s metabolism, and our gut microbiome.

Why Should We Talk About the Term “Earning Food”?

“When we believe that food must be earned, we create a negative relationship with food, exercise, and our bodies,” says Jaimee Cooper, a performance dietitian based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This leads to us viewing food in a hierarchical way, and in doing so, we associate a moral value to ourselves we when eat, categorizing foods into good and bad groups instead of recognizing that it provides more than just nutrients. This can also apply to our relationship with movement: oftentimes, we see exercise as an activity that earns food, instead of an activity that can make us physically stronger and supports mental health.

We should also remember that food represents much more than fuel to our bodies. Our meal choices are based on individual preferences, cultural heritage, finances, accessibility, and more. “My hope is that people can connect with the benefits of exercise and recognize that eating enough food is the way to get the most out of those benefits,” says , a dietitian based in Brooklyn, New York.

What Should Active People Eat?

Diversifying your plate is both a simple and proactive way to think about how to eat. Different nutrients are going to come from different foods. Some foods, like animal proteins (beef, poultry, oysters, etc.) and plant-based foods like fortified cereals, beans, and spinach, provide us with iron, which is crucial for maintaining healthy red blood cells and enhancing performance by preventing dizziness and fatigue. Carbohydrates provide sustained energy for physical activity. A variety of foods in our diet is going to provide us with different antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals and can also help support our gut microbiome, which is important for the immune system and heart.

Have the urge to skip a meal due to inactivity? Think again. Eating every three to four hours helps keep blood sugar consistent and optimizes stomach digestion, prevents lethargy, and could guard against heart health issues. “You need to eat more food than you think,” Cooper says. “It’s a popular myth that training fasted will burn more body fat. While the body may burn fat as fuel, it will also break down muscle as fuel too. Training with food can help your body work more efficiently to get you to push your body further.”

Practice Makes Perfect…Sort Of

There is no such thing as perfect eating because our needs as humans are individual—we are not going to have the same needs and preferences as the person next to us. Our own nutritional needs will also change daily due to our different movements, hormones, and lifestyles, which is completely normal. Tsai encourages people to tailor their nutrition to the type of exercise they are doing that day—a three-hour run will require different fuel than, say, a 45-minute yoga class. “Trial and error is one of the best ways to understand which foods work the best for you before and after you work out, and can make you feel the most confident,” Tsai says. And if you are still confused, a professional performance dietitian could help.

Most importantly, establishing a healthy relationship with food is essential for all of us. This means viewing food as fuel, but also celebrating its social and cultural aspects as well.

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