We Don't Need all That in Our Food!!!

I keep hearing all this buzz about how processed food is bad for you. I’m really starting to realize the truth behind this after seeing just how many unnecessary ingredients are pumped into the food that we eat. For instance, look at the ingredients in a box of popular cereal.

Raisin Bran:

Ingredients: Whole wheat, raisins, wheat bran, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, salt, malt flavoring

It starts off sounding healthy, but then we get to the sugar, high fructose corn syrup, etc… etc… Totally unnecessary

I bought some cereal today that is sweetened naturally with fruit juice and contains the following ingredients:Organic whole oat flour, organic concentrated grape and/or pear juice, organic brown rice flour, organic whole millet, organic oat bran, organic barley, sea salt

You can, of course, throw in a “fun cereal” every now and then and don’t have to stick to twigs and berries, but isn’t it refreshing to see that there are healthy options out there? I just wanted to illustrate the fact that things can be naturally sweetened with fruit juice, honey, agave, etc… and not pumped full of sugar and other unpronounceable ingredients.

I’ll confess that when I used to shop, I’d pay attention to:

-If it was organic

-How many calories it had

Period. End of story.

Everyone always talks about reading food labels but I never really got the importance of that until now. If starting this cleanse has done anything, it’s really made me pay attention to what I eat. Last night Greg and I went to Trader Joe’s and took our time. We carefully read ingredients and picked out things like: a jar of peanut butter that had three fresh and all natural ingredients in it versus one with an endless list of nonsense, unsweetened rice milk versus the flavored variety that probably tastes better but is pumped full of sugar and flavor substitutes, trail mix that contained raisins and a variety of mixed nuts versus the trail mix that contained cranberries with added sugar etc… I have to say that all the food label reading wasn’t tedious at all, as I had originally thought it would be. In fact, it was fun - almost like a scavenger hunt to see who could find the healthier variety of a product we were seeking out. I would, of course, recommend that such a feat be attempted at the nonpeak hours of a grocery store or else you will be that girl bent over holding three bags of crackers while clearly blocking the aisle as angry people put forth their best efforts to ram their shopping carts past you.

After just a few days of this cleanse, I can already tell that leaving out caffeine, alcohol, and processed sugar is what is truly making me feel great. The mornings are a little tough, as it’s a little more challenging to wake up properly without the caffeine, but once I get outside and snag some vitamin D and get some natural sugar from fresh and organic fruit, I’m ready to go. I will definitely be more conscious of my food labels going forward and will be making a huge effort to blast those processed sugars out my ballpark.