By now, it should be no mystery that our health is 1000000% not a priority to the Big Food Industry. Making money is.
But I’ll hand it to them, they have a sneaky way of marketing their products to make us think otherwise. The best way to avoid the scams and see through their bullsh*t is to educate yourself and spend a few more minutes in the isle to determine what you want going into your body. So let’s talk labels!
So you pick up your bag of granola. Where do you start?
1. ignore the front of the box, bottle, or bag.
The front labels are where you will find marketing ploys to grab your attention. Claims like “All Natural, Low-Fat, Gluten-Free, Heart Health” etc. typically hold very little truth. Or if they do, there’s almost always a caveat. Flip it to the back.
2. Head straight to the Ingredients and worry less about the calorie/nutritional label
While the macros and content of the product are relevant, they aren’t if the ingredients are crap.
Alright, so we’ve found the back and we’re looking at the ingredients. What next?
1. Take note of how many ingredients there are. If there are ingredient lists that look like this, I put it back almost immediately
2. What are the first few ingredients? Ingredients are listed in order of product by weight from highest to lowest. Highest being listed first and lowest listed last. So, if sugar (or other synonyms for sugar) or oil is in the lineup first, I would proceed with caution.
3. Do you recognize the ingredients, or do you feel like you’re reading through a chemistry textbook? If you can’t pronounce it, put that sucker back on the shelf. You want to see foods as close to their whole food forms as possible. For example, if you are shopping for orange juice- look for “oranges” not “orange juice concentrate”. Catch my drift?
common ingredients/claims to look out for:
Dextrose (one of the many names for sugar) is a man-made sugar made from genetically modified corn. No thanks.
“Natural flavor” FOR THE RECORD does not mean that the ingredients came from a natural source. It’s kind of catch all ingredient name that could contain anything- including MSG’s. Not trying to mess with that chemical sh*t storm.
Citric Acid is produced from a certain type of mold. I’m sorry and WHY is this deemed safe for us to put into our bodies?
Low-fat or “skim” products are stripped of the nutritious fat that our bodies benefit from and pumped with sugar, synthetic vitamins, and fortified garb to replace it. I mean think about it- one of the best things about fatty foods is their amazing flavor. BUTTER- need I go further? So, when all the fat is stripped, companies must replace it with something (sugar) in order to make it taste good and keep us coming back for more. Same thing goes for the vitamins and minerals that are taken away with the fat- they have to get it up to “regulation” standards somehow.
