By: Caroline Maas, Staff Writer

If you know anything about me, you know that I am infamously high-maintenance when it comes to food. I do not eat gluten and, since completing the Whole30, have taken dairy out of my diet as well. While behind these decisions lies, in part, the logical component of an extremely sensitive digestive system (who’s with me?), it has come to my attention the past few years that a sensitive digestive system is actually completely irrelevant to the desire and need to forage a healthier diet.

The kind of healthy eating to which I am referring is all too often mistaken as “dieting.” Now, before you tune out, I want you to hear my point: Dieting is not a lifestyle because dieting, in most cases, is negatively associated with the desire to lose weight or change something about our external appearance.

The kind of health kick I am advocating for is not for the purpose of losing weight or gaining weight or having the ability to subconsciously sway an entire group’s restaurant choice because of your “food modifications” (although the latter is a benefit that most definitely accompanies it).

No, the healthy eating I am shouting, dancing, screaming at the top of my lungs for is a lifestyle, a love letter to our bodies, an ode to doing all we can to make our bodies be able to run and play and dance like they were so beautifully created to.

The healthy-eating I am singing for is the kind of eating that makes our stomachs satisfied, our energy restored and our moods instantly lifted.

The kinds of food that we put into our bodies are important.

I hope that this column will challenge us to think twice about what we fuel our bodies with. I hope that we would begin to expect the pure things, the fresh things, the true things. I hope that this column will serve to share the things I have learned on my adventure for true food that I have wound up on over the past couple of years.

Mostly, I hope that it will open doors to conversations about creativity in the kitchen (or microwave or toaster oven), and creativity in the ways that we go about respecting ourselves and others in the ways that we modify the tables in our dorms, apartments and houses for them.

Tip #1: There are good carbs and there are bad carbs. Sweet potatoes are the good guy in this scenario. Argued by some as being the world’s healthiest food, these veggies are good sliced, diced, cubed or French fry shaped. Sprinkle with coconut or olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Throw these guys on a cookie sheet @ 350 degrees (or a toaster oven sheet if that’s what you’re working with) until golden brown and you have half a meal. Or you can take the old-fashion approach and toss one in the microwave until soft (make sure you poke a hole it it!). Not only are sweet potatoes a safeguard against constipation (that’s right, I said it) and average a mere 100 calories per potato, but you can throw the extras in the fridge and eat them for breakfast!