Real Food vs. Fake Food

Wow, September is flying by! It'll be Christmas before we know it.  

From some of my previous posts, you should all know I'm kind of into healthy eating.  (Unfortunately, I'm also way into dessert eating--I  have dessert like 6 or 7 times a day. But that's another post.)  And you probably realize that there's lots of advice out there on how to eat healthy--like, eat "superfoods" every day, cut out refined sugar, eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, and so on.  Sometimes I have a hard time remembering all that when I'm hungry or out grocery shopping.  So, to make life easier,  the one rule I try to abide by is simple:

Eat Real Food

So simple, it seems like common sense, right? I mean, who wants to eat fake food?  Well, I'd venture to guess that most people do not follow this rule.  A lot of "food" out there is processed and filled with artificial ingredients--stuff that your body has a harder time processing and converting into good energy.  An easy way to be a little healthier is to simply eat food that is made from ingredients that are close to their original state and are not created in some factory.   But eating this way doesn't mean you have to turn into some health freak.  Here is the number one thing  I do to ensure that I (and my loved ones) eat real food.

Read ingredient lists

Easy, so effective, and yet, I bet most people don't do it. 

You know this thing that's on all the food you buy at the grocery store?

A lot of stuff on here is important, especially if you are trying to watch your weight or your fat intake or whatever.  But what I look at most is...

...the ingredient list.  This is what tells you if what you're eating is real food.  If you know what all of the stuff is in the ingredient list of a food you're eating, then chances are, you're eating real food.  

Every time I think about buying something that I've never bought before, I always, always read the ingredient list.  Even on things like bread or yogurt, because some weird stuff can be hidden in there.  Take this ingredient list from a loaf of "healthy", 100% whole wheat bread:

Whole Wheat Flour, Water, Yeast, Wheat Gluten, Contains 2% or Less Of Soybean Oil, Salt, High Fructose Corn Syrup (Adds a Trivial Amount Of Sugar), Cultured Wheat Starch, Ethoxylated Mono and Diglycerides, Calcium Sulfate, Calcium Stearoyl Lactylate, Enzymes, Calcium Dioxide, Vinegar, Sucralose.


It starts out well.  But then there's the high fructose corn syrup and all that stuff ending in -ides and -ates.  What is that anyway?

Image courtesy of AP.

Personally, I prefer to eat this:
Whole Wheat Flour, Water, Yeast, Sugar, Wheat Gluten, Cracked Wheat, Cultured Wheat Flour. Contains 2% Or Less Of: Honey, Salt, Brown Sugar, Soybean Oil, Molasses, Wheat Bran, Raisin Juice Concentrate, Vinegar, Soy Flour, Whey, Soy Lecithin, Cultured Corns Solids. Contains Wheat, Milk And Soybeans.

Now, I can recognize what most of that stuff is.  And this bread is said to be 100% natural.  Not just, "made with natural ingredients"--because that can also mean it's made with un-natural ingredients, too.

Let's look at yogurt:

Yogurt's a health food, right?  Well, yes, but to really have it be good for you, you've got to pay attention to the ingredient list on the yogurt you're consuming.

This--

 Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Lowfat Fat Milk, Sugar, Strawberries, Modified Cornstarch, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Nonfat Milk, Kosher Gelatin, Citric Acid, Tricalcium Phosphate, Natural Flavor, Pectin, Colored With Carmine, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3. 

--not so good.

This--

CULTURED PASTEURIZED NONFAT MILK, STRAWBERRIES, SUGAR. CONTAINS FIVE LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES INCLUDING S. THERMAPHILUS, BULGARICUS, L. ACIDOPHILUS, BIFIDUS, AND L. CASEI.

--much, much better!  This yogurt, (Chobani strawberry, in case you were wondering) actually only has three ingredients--milk, strawberries, and sugar.  The fewer ingredients something has, the better.

I also check out the ingredients on not-so-healthy foods, like potato chips.  

Image from fritolay.com

My potato chips of choice (Lays) contain three ingredients: potatoes, sunflower oil and salt.  Now eating a whole bag of these is not healthy.  But I feel much better about putting that stuff into my body than I do if I were to eat chips with ingredients like these:

DRIED POTATOES, VEGETABLE OIL (CONTAINS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING: CORN OIL, COTTONSEED OIL, SOYBEAN OIL, AND/OR SUNFLOWER OIL), RICE FLOUR, WHEAT STARCH, MALTODEXTRIN, SALT AND DEXTROSE. CONTAINS WHEAT INGREDIENTS.

So, no matter what it is, from granola bars for my kids, to onion soup mixes for dinner, I always base my decision about whether or not to buy or consume a food item on that item's ingredient list.

There are lots of other ways to "eat real food" and so many great blogs and resources out there on ways to do it, but I'll save some of that info for future posts!  Actually, I just really need to get this post up! :)