Ever go to read the list of the ingredients on your favorite food only to feel you need a dictionary in order to figure out what was listed? The great thing about processed food is convenience, however, the trade off is your left with food that your body might not know how to process or could even be harmful to your body. Labels can also be misleading. The FDA has different qualifications of what constitutes different claims such as “low fat” or “low sodium” in reality you may be getting a chemical concoction that will make you less satisfied and that does not equal eating healthy. Ever eat a whole bag of chips and feel ashamed that you just couldn’t stop? There is a chemical for that too. Mono sodium Glutamate (MSG) is a chemical that is added to a number of processed foods that turns off your body’s signal that it is full. It also makes things taste great making it that much harder to stop eating at the serving size. After this became more popular knowledge the companies were allowed to list MSG as different names making it harder to identify. Everyday there seems to be new studies showing the negative long term effects of different chemicals put into processed food such as aspartame, GMO’s, and sucralose. If that isn’t bad enough your body was not designed to know how to utilize chemicals so the food you might be eating because it has fiber or because it is enriched with a certain vitamin might not have the correct type of vitamin or fiber that your body knows what to do with. This means that you could eat a lot of food and still not get the nutrition that your body needs leading to malnutrition. The solution? Back to basics. Shop more along the outside of your grocery store to incorporate more fresh fruits and veggies into your diet. Get educated on the things to watch out for. There are always studies that say one things might be harmful while another says it is fine. To best see which one you might put more faith into try to look for independent studies or at least a study that is funded by a party that does not stand to gain anything from the study yielding any specific results. Read the labels of the processed foods you do get to see what is in them. If it looks more like a chemistry book than food that might be your first clue that it might not be something you want to put into your body. Taking the extra step to read and know what you are putting into your body is another step to live a healthier life style. It might seem like a pain at first but as you become more familiar with the ingredients you see the process will become faster. Incorporating this into your life will help you to make sure your body gets the nutrition that it needs and avoid putting harmful chemicals into it. This can also help you to feel more satisfied with the foods you do eat. It is amazing how much better you will feel when your body gets the nutrition that it needs to run better.
One of our favorite products that we use and can feel comfortable using for a bunch of our recipes is Nikki’s Coconut Butter. It comes with many delicious flavors and is all natural. It provides a dose of health brain boosting fats that also help to keep you lean.
Ingredients: Organic Coconut, Roasted Macadamia Nuts, Dates, Organic Honey, Organic Vanilla (Vanilla Beans, Alcohol, Water), Sea Salt
That is a good example of what you want to see on any of your “processed foods”. We will keep posting some awesome recipes using this as well so make sure you keep checking it out.
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Beauty starts from the inside 