An Effort to Be Healthier
Imagine this: you’re walking down the grocery store aisle. You’ve made a resolution to start eating “healthier” and your eye is caught by all these promises. In essence, the marketing on food packaging promises that their product is healthier than the next company’s.
How do you discern what is real and what is an empty promise? In today’s post I’m going to explain what some of these “health traps” are at the grocery store. The more you know, the better choices you can make!
What are these health traps?
- Low calorie – Calories are how we measure the amount of energy in a food. If you want to lose weight, you may be looking to have a calorie deficit (expending more energy than you eat). However, calories are not made equally. Lettuce is low in calories, but so is a diet soda. Yet one is clearly healthier!
- Low fat – This promise is built on the belief that all fat is bad. This is not true! Some fats you do want to avoid, like hydrogenated or trans fats, and processed seed oils like soybean, canola, and cottonseed oils. These things cause inflammation in the body. But other fats, like virgin coconut, extra virgin olive, and avocado oils are healthy for you! Our bodies need a certain amount of fat every day.
- Sugar free – It’s commonly known that too much sugar is unhealthy. But usually when a food is billed as “sugar free,” it means that it contains an artificial sweetener. This includes aspartame and saccharin, which are totally foreign to the body and not good for consumption either!
- Low sodium – Many people are told to lower their salt intake to avoid high blood pressure and heart disease. But did you know that REAL salt is actually necessary for healthy electrolyte balance? You do want to avoid processed, iodized salt – which is usually in processed foods. But it is good to include a moderate amount of sea, Celtic, or Himalayan pink salt in your diet every day!
- Low carb – “Going low carb” is one of the latest diet trends and I could write a whole post on this! It’s true that the standard American diet contains way more carbohydrates than is necessary or healthy. But just like “low calorie” or “low fat,” quality matters! Healthy carbs include things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, and moderate amounts of gluten-free grains like rice and quinoa if tolerated.
- All natural – Everyone wants to be “natural,” right? But the problem is that there is no regulation or official definition behind it. So we can’t even fully debunk it because there’s no way to know exactly what it means!
- Gluten free – This is a promise that does have legitimacy. If a person has celiac disease, non-celiac gluten intolerance, or a wheat allergy, then eating gluten-free is very important. However, even for those people, just because something is “gluten-free” doesn’t mean it’s healthy. A gluten-free frosted cupcake is still a sweet dessert, most likely filled with refined flour and sugar.
- Organic – Certified organic foods are actually regulated by the USDA, so it is a legitimate term. But again, there are sugary, processed organic foods out there! Organic sugar is still sugar.
- Keto friendly – The ketogenic diet (or “keto”) is another modern diet trend. It means that you’re getting most of your calories from fat and protein, and very little from carbs. But again, there are “keto friendly” junk foods that have unnecessary fillers or are made with artificial sweeteners.
- 100% vegetarian fed – This label is on eggs and chicken meat packaging. The problem is that chickens aren’t supposed to be vegetarian! They thrive from eating insects, worms, and food scraps. They shouldn’t subsist on a diet of corn and soybeans!
What should you be shopping for?
Now that you know some typical health traps, you might be asking: what should I be looking for? It’s actually pretty easy. You want to look for foods that are closest to their original form as possible. This means avoiding many of the inside aisles and end caps of the grocery store. That’s where most of the processed foods are with their empty promises!
So peruse the produce section and pick up a variety of colorful vegetables, starchy root vegetables, and fruits. Choose fresh meats that are minimally processed without any additives or flavorings, like ground beef and whole chicken or chicken parts.
When you do enter the inner section of the grocery store, read ingredient labels carefully. Do not rely on the flashy marketing on the front of the package! Choose packaged products with ingredient lists that you can understand. This doesn’t mean that products with long ingredient lists are necessarily bad. You just need to understand what the ingredients are so that you can judge whether it’s good for you or not.
Some good packaged foods might include: plain tomato sauce or canned tomatoes, sea salted nuts and seeds, unflavored whole grain rice and quinoa, unsweetened dried fruit, lentil-based pasta, organic dairy products if tolerated, unsweetened nut butters, and plain frozen veggies and fruits.
Feeling empowered at the grocery store
If this topic interests you but you feel like you still need help, I’m here to offer assistance! I want to help you feel empowered at the grocery store. Comment below with your questions on grocery store best practices and I will get back to you with an answer! Also, stay tuned for a future webinar on this very topic.