healthy vs. healthful

Matt Hoover, the winner of The Biggest Loser, is the proud papa of another boy and he’s already making plans to keep his sons slim. “We’re adding another healthy Hoover to our family and look forward to raising both boys in a healthy way with information we learned on the show,” Matt told People.

Let’s set this painfully common mistake straight once and for all. Healthy refers to a person (or personified thing, such as a company or an athletic team) in good health. Healthful describes something that promotes good health. We strive for healthful eating, for example.

So Matt was correct to say little Jax Paul is healthy. Just out of the gate, that’s the question we ask of newborns: Are they well? But Matt is planning to raise his boys in a healthful way — a way that promotes good health.

We like Bryan Garner’s take on healthy vs. healthful, written with a Grammar Guard kind of spunk. “Many writers use healthy when they mean healthful, and healthy threatens to edge out its sibling,” he writes in Garner’s Modern American Usage. “Such a development would be unhealthful, since it would lead to a less healthy state of the language.”

Right on, Bry. (Matt, are you reading?)