Health-wise
shopping guide
Copyright
2008-2015
Ken
Young, all rights reserved
We have heard all of our lives how
all the additives in our processed food are bad for us. We have also
heard all of our lives that we shouldn't buy food with all that junk in
it. So we decided to ease into the healthier lifestyle gradually. Here
is our simple shopping guide. We were able to buy healthier food just
by switching brands.
Count the non-food
ingredients on the
label.
If there are more
than 9, don't buy it.
Sounds simple, right? Here are the
variations:
- Rice, beans, and grapes are food. Sugar, oil, and "natural
flavor" are not.
- Food that has been extracted, concentrated or modified no longer
counts as food.
- Corn is food, corn syrup is not.
- Potatoes are food, potato starch is not.
- Sea salt is food, salt (sea salt stripped of dozens of important
minerals) is not food. It is sodium chloride.
- All those sub-ingredients in parenthesis count.
- A bunch of color additives count as one item.
- A bunch of flavor additives count as one item.
- A bunch of vitamins & minerals count as one item.
- White flour is wheat flour with the nutritious part removed. What
you are left with is mostly starch. White flour is everywhere and is
widely accepted as food, but it is really just wheat starch. This is
true, even though many people will not accept it. White flour is not
food.
What does all this mean?
- Food will be more nutritious.
- Food will be a little less expensive.
- Food will taste a little better.
- Food will take a little longer to prepare.
- Food will take a little longer to buy.
- It is a big adjustment at first to look at every package.
- If you want to buy it but can't, look at other brands. One will
probably be OK.
What about the stuff already in the
house?
You were going to eat it anyway, so
go ahead. Just don't buy any more of that stuff. If you accidentally
buy something wrong or someone gives you something, then eat it. You'll
eat more bad stuff than that at the next restaurant.
By buying healthy you will improve
the quality of your life without being in bondage to rules.
What next?
After you get used to the 9-item
limit, lower the limit to 8 items. If that is fine, lower it to 7, and
so forth. Plan on spending a year or more gradually easing into your
new lifestyle and finding out what additive limit is best for your
family.
And wean yourself off of restaurants.
They take your money by the fistfull and give you salty, greasy food
for it.
Refined sugar
Most processed food has an unhealthy
amount of sugar. This shopping guide becomes easy if you decide to not
buy anything
with refined sugar. Almost everything with lots of non-food ingredients
contains some type of refined sugar. Honey, agave nectar, maple syrup,
and molasses
are not refined sugar. Almost
every other sweetener is.
These unrefined sweeteners still don't count as food, though, because they are
highly concentrated plant juice.
This was downloaded from http://ken.dinodudes.com (all lower case)