You visit the supermarket today, and you’ll find literally hundreds of possible food choices for your week’s meal plan. Since you are trying to live healthy, you look for whatever has “healthy” printed all over it. Some have it printed on the packaging, while others have it printed on the labels. However, what you should be looking for has “healthy” in its very core. We’re not just talking of colorful fruits and vegetables here – we’re talking of food that provides a variety of real nutrients.
Many of these foods branded as healthy claim to have a certain amount of a certain vitamin, antioxidant or nutrient, despite your gut feeling that they are nutritionally lacking. They are usually “fortified” – meaning, the nutrients are made artificially and then added to the food during processing. That’s basically powdered vitamins derived from certain chemicals manufacturers don’t want you to know too much about.
These typical “health foods” also taste abnormally good. They taste even better than whole foods, which generally taste good. You can attribute this to artificial and “nature-identical” (artificial that tastes natural) additives that could cause a variety of allergic reactions and lead to severe organ damage with long-term regular use. Even those touted as safe for consumption still have many skeptics, including average people and medical professionals.
To avoid this bad stuff, you have to eat whole foods. These are foods that undergo little to no processing – the most they could go through is cutting and a little cleaning to meet food safety standards. These foods contain lots of nutrients with a reasonable amount of calories per serving.
Whole Food: Meat Dish with Veggies
Whole food doesn’t need typical hard selling to fly off the shelves – even without the marketing hype, you know in your gut that the beef you’re buying contains protein, fats, and a long list of vitamins and minerals. You know that the apple in your basket contains fiber, a little sugar since it’s sweet, and other vitamins you don’t need to have listed on the label. Instinct tells you it’s healthy.
On the other hand, there are dozens of cereal, oatmeal, and granola products in boxes that scream “healthy” with a listing of all nutrients possibly contained in a large serving. You can actually look at this list and find laughably low levels of the good stuff it claims to contain, along with higher calorie content mostly from carbohydrates.
Apart from these carbohydrate-loaded staples, there is also peanut butter, which is usually jam-packed with sugar, and when it’s not, it’s full of hydrogenated oils (read: Trans Fats), which is the worst kind of fat you can eat – it’s also typically found in deep fried potato and corn products.
Eating healthy means not just making a few substitutions here and there – it means totally eliminating food that is bad for you from your diet, and consuming only what is nutritious and good for your long-term health. Focusing on eating whole foods as a dominant part of your diet will ensure that you avoid some nasty chemicals the food industry wants to feed you and your kids.
For the latest information on Soy – a product branded as “healthy” – check out Newest Research on Why You Should Avoid Soy
Photo credit: Rakratchada Torsap, freedigitalphotos.net
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