It’s Time to Mix It Up

By Siobhan O’Connor and Alexandra Sifferlin

THERE’S A BIT OF A FIB BAKED INTO the title of this book. Not that the list you’re holding is full of foods like french fries and Double Stuf Oreos. But ranking individual foods according to how healthy they are is more of an art than a science. Still, even if we can’t prove that the 100 foods on this list are, without a doubt, healthier than, say, pricey açaí berries (which did not make the list, by the way), we can promise that all 100 can improve your diet—and ultimately your health.

But while these foods are all astonishingly nutritious, they aren’t especially exotic. They’re not the kind of things that make their way from far-flung corners of the jungle onto “superfoods you need to eat right now” lists. They’re not the kind of foods exalted for their magical powers, either. Instead, TIME’s editors, along with nutrition experts, carefully vetted a very long list of foods. Then we narrowed it down, focusing on foods that are relatively easy to find at the supermarket, that are not overly expensive or trendy and, perhaps most important, that are pleasurable to eat. To that end, we included not just facts about the different foods and why they’re nutritional powerhouses but also straightforward descriptions of how our editors and experts like to eat them.

We went with 100 because we wanted to provide you with lots of options—but we also wanted to make the point that there are simply so many wonderful foods out there to choose from. Because while most of us know the basics of how to eat well—you can’t go wrong with vegetables; daily burgers are an objectively bad idea—sometimes trying to decide what to eat three times a day, seven days a week can feel like a chore.

Indeed, for many of us, the search for the healthiest way to eat has long been fraught. For one thing, nutrition science is known to induce whiplash. For decades you heard that fat is the ultimate diet saboteur, responsible for nearly everything that can go wrong in the human body. The next thing you know, it’s heralded as a critical part of a healthy diet that not only won’t make you fat but is good for you and may even play a role in keeping you slender. Then, just as you finally (and with great effort) developed a taste for egg-white omelets, you learned that the yolk isn’t just OK—it’s the very thing that makes eggs a healthy food choice in the first place.

Making matters more confusing is that nutrition experts are often loath to change their tune when the diet advice they’ve been dishing no longer lines up with the latest science. But the new truth is, when it comes to healthy eating, we could all stand to mix it up a little bit, eat a little more of everything but not too much of anything, and, ultimately, fuss a little less about what we eat.

WE COULD ALL STAND TO FUSS A LITTLE LESS ABOUT WHAT WE EAT.

You don’t need to take it from just us. Science says so too. In 2014, several nutrition researchers got together to answer an age-old question: What diet is the best for your health? They pulled together robust studies on some of the most popular diets, including Mediterranean, paleo, vegan and low-fat. They concluded that the best way to eat is to simply consume real food. That means there’s no diet that trumps another, regardless of what TV commercials and magazine headlines will tell you. Because that’s one thing the science is clear on—if you want to improve your diet and your health, you need to eat whole foods as much as you can. Cook them at home whenever you can. And except for the occasional indulgence, you should keep heavily processed and heavily sugared foods out of your shopping basket.

If you eat this way most of the time, those occasional indulgences won’t tempt you anymore—or at least not quite as much. Scientists at Tufts University recently found that eating healthier food for six months can recondition the brain to crave healthier options. And other research has shown that when you eat less fat or less salt or, especially, less sugar, you need a whole lot less of it to feel satisfied. Like all good habits, these ones tend to build upon themselves and multiply.

To get you started, we included more than two dozen recipes from the editors of our sister brand Cooking Light, which always makes nutritious eating feel enjoyable. We also canvassed editors and experts for unfussy cooking suggestions that, we hope, will serve as jumping-off points—rather than to-the-letter instructions—for your own experimenting in the kitchen. That’s because eating for pleasure and having fun in the process are so often left out of dietary advice—yet are so central to any healthy habits’ lasting for the long haul.

A very strong predictor of whether a diet will be successful is how hungry people feel while they’re following it. Feeling deprived all the time isn’t a great motivator. So while we’re certainly recommending lots of berries and deep-green vegetables in this book, we’re by no means trying to persuade you to eat like a rabbit. That’s why pork loin, fish, popcorn, high-fat oils and even alcohol make the list.

Eating well shouldn’t be complicated, and it shouldn’t be stressful. So on your next trip to the supermarket, maybe mix it up a little and try something new from this list. And if you’re intimidated by ginger’s twisted appendages or don’t even know where to start with kohlrabi, don’t sweat it. Just grab something else. Maybe grab something you know. Prepare it as simply as you like, in your own kitchen, and then eat. Simple as that.

O’Connor is editorial director for health at TIME. Sifferlin is a health writer for TIME and the author of the 100 food entries.