Is that the worst cliche title you’ve ever seen?
Michael Pollan says- don’t eat anything with an ingredient list your grandmother wouldn’t recognize. I read somewhere else that if a 2nd grader couldn’t pronounce an ingredient you shouldn’t eat it.
Both good ideas. My personal ingredient mantra is to allow only those ingredients that
I recgonize as ‘real’ food. Things that had a start from the dirt and a real plant.
Starting to read ingredient lists is opening a big fat can of worms. If you take an active interest in what you are consuming suddenly some of your favorites are off the list. Ice cream, no thanks. It can be heartbreaking. None the less sometimes it is a necessary evil. If you want to look and feel your best, you need to eat the best. Sodium benzoate doesn’t make the cut.
I sometimes get tripped up following a recipe and it calls for a pre-made ingredient. Even heart smart, low-fat, ultra-healthy cookbooks do this. It might be curry paste, hoisin sauce, taco seasoning or jam. I used to just pick it up blindly but now I inspect the ingredient list, in most cases I leave it on the shelf. Course then you have to do a last minute change to your meal plan on the fly. This can be tricky, even for a seasoned meal planning veteran.
Other ingredients that don’t pass my ingredient test- high-fructose corn syrup (Lianne sent this link yesterday about the evils of HFCS) aspartame or any other fake sweetener, natural flavours, artificial flavours, any colours, sodium benzoate, any sulpur compound, MSG.
I will exclude any items from my grocery cart if one of the top 3 ingredients is sugar. Or any of it’s cousins, fructose, glucose, sucrose… Look here for the big list. I will exclude anything that has soy products, corn too. I am not sold on genetically modified, soy and corn are the most modified crops going. Greenpeace Canada has a shopping guide for those looking to avoid genetically modified foods. It is something to think about, there haven’t been any tests to prove the safety of eating genetically modified foods and some evidence points to it rearranging the DNA of our digestive bacteria. Good times.
I’ve searched out some great alternatives in my grocery store’s natural food section. Coconut milk usually contains sulphites, organic coconut milk doesn’t, just coconut and water. The price is comparable. Same with mustard and soy-sauce. The organic varieties contain fewer ingredients, all of them easy to pronounce for about the same price. Check out the natural or organic section of your grocery store, chances are you can find healthier alternatives for a reasonable price.
Thursday- Some products to try
Friday- Making diet changes. A how-to guide.
