Have you ever noticed how a lot of food no longer seems to contain, well, real food? If you look at the ingredients list on any pre-packaged food it’s likely that you may not recognise any of the ingredients as being naturally occuring food items.
This probably won’t come as a suprise when you look at heavily processed food items, for example ready meals and sugar coated snacks. However, it’s important to get used to reading the labels on all food items if you want to really understand what you are consuming.
What do you think the following list of ingredients is from?
Water, soybean oil, palm oil, palm kernal oil, butter (cream, salt), buttermilk, distilled monoglycerides, soy lecithin, natural & artificial flavours, sodium benzdate, potassium sorbate, vitamin A palminate, beta carotene.Quite a list of ingredients, right? Can you guess what it is yet?
It’s the ingredients for a ‘Buttery Spread’ that appeared with my toast while on a recent trip to America. Butter does at least appear on the ingredients list, but what is all the other stuff? Would you feel comfortable eating this product if you read the ingredients?
Now, anyone who believes butter is bad for you, take note! Butter normally contains just butter (made from cream) and salt, and yes, it’s pasturized which does have an impact on the raw ingredients. But you can still identify the raw ingredients, right?
So, which is healthier? It’s not a trick question. What does your basic common sense tell you? You don’t need to be a nutritionist to make a decision on this for yourself.
If you take a little time to understand what is in the food in front of you, you can start to make conscious decisions about what you are consuming. You may well decide that you are happy to eat certain products no matter what they contain, but you may also find you prefer to seek alternatives which have less ingredients, or at least ingredients that you recognise.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, it’s all about making conscious, informed choices
Following a nutrition plan which is focussed on sensible choices rather than complex rules can give freedom and flexibility, both with regard to food choices and how you incorporate those choices into your busy life.
Freedom and flexibility – isn’t that something we’d all like more of?
