Don't Eat Anything Your Great Grandmother Wouldn't Recognize As Food.
I love the idea of this, I always tell clients to eat real food, whole foods, organic when possible. Being a Mum, now more than ever I am aware of what we are putting onto our plates and into our body.
There is a lot of label trickery going on these days. Food marketers recognize that consumers have become more savvy about their health, and you will see lots of healthy seeming promises emblazoned on their packaging. But not everything is as great as it claims to be.
Here are a few tips to help you decipher real benefits from sneaky marketing tactics.
SUGAR FREE: The product does not contain sugar, but just because it is sugar free does not mean it is calorie free, and chances are it has a lot of refined flour and fats to make it taste good. It also likely contains artificial sweeteners.
MADE WITH WHOLE GRAINS: A product can contain 99% processed grain and 1% whole grain and still make this claim. Hardly true is it?
NO SUGAR ADDED: These products don’t contain added sugars, but they still can contain sugar. For example, a jam jar made only from fruit is naturally high in fructose. So even though no processed sugar has been added, it is still high in sugar.
So my advice, READ THE INGREDIENTS: If you are buying packaged goods, use this rule of thumb:
If there are more than 5 things listed and some of them you cannot pronounce or spell, don’t eat them!