I have so many friends who are making changes and wanting to eat much healthier. But they end up coming back from the store with foods loaded with all kinds of jargon and additives, parading as healthy alternatives to food they really aren't much different from anyway. My friends might hand me a can of soup at work or tell me over the phone what they bought, and they ask - what about this, pretty healthy isn't it? And no matter what it is - unless of course we are talking about raw food in the form it was grown - I always ask, well what is the ingredient list? And 9 times out of 10 there is stuff in there that is NOT food. Manufactured substances that do not occur naturally, that are flagged as toxins and foreign objects to our immune systems and bodies who can't do anything with them but try to expel them.
Take Lean Cuisine for example - a quick search pulls up their
Alfredo Pasta.
First off, when an ingredient list is this long, you've got red flag #1. A great rule of thumb I hear is that we shouldn't eat anything that wouldn't have been in our great great grandparents kitchens - ie grains, fruits and vegetables, versus corn syrup, derived soy protein, hydrochloride (which is an ingredient in the above Lean Cuisine!). Plus, imagine all of the substances you are trying to break down all at once! Think of a meal of brown rice, steamed broccoli, chicken and yams compared to the ingredient list above. You are commanding your body to handle so much all at once.
Second, broccoli that has been frozen and reheated months after it was grown has a fraction of the health benefits that fresh, raw broccoli has. And every other fruit or vegetable, or grain or meat that you can buy in a can or box. So never assume you are getting a serving of veggies or whole grains when you eat fast foods.
Third, look for hidden ingredients - you could buy tomato sauce or BBQ sauce, or wheat bread (or any processed food for that matter) thinking it appears to be quite safe and very healthy. But when you read your ingredient list you might see that there's corn syrup added for flavor, soy lecithin added (for those concerned with health risks of soy), or maltodextrin or caramel color (two MORE non-food ingredients found in the Lean Cuisine).
Many people argue that because these ingredients seem miniscule in comparison to the "real" foods they think they are eating daily, that maybe they are harmless. The truth is every single thing that goes into our bodies has to be sent somewhere, whether it's our colon for excreting, or trapped in a fat cell, detoxed through our skin, or even worse absorbed into the blood and sent to our vital and even non vital organs for further damage. No, you won't wake up tomorrow with cancer. But think on 40 to 60 years of life with daily toxin intake and what would you imagine could happen to your bodies and cell structures? Not too pretty my friends :(
So the hope is this - you have the power in your own hands and eyes to stop feeding yourself fake foods! It takes 30 seconds to read a label, probably less - if you see something you can't pronounce or have never heard of, put it back. It will save you a lifetime of worry, ailments, and disease. Happy label reading!
