Let’s cover the topic of FOOD LABELS, in particular addressing what we should be looking out for when grabbing food at the supermarket.
When you're trying to make health conscious decisions, the inclination may be to look at the calorie content and often the overall amount of fat and sugar. However, with this approach, we are completely missing the sneaky inflammatory ingredients that we should be looking out for.
Highly palatable refined foods (most things that have been processed and packaged) contain many ingredients that contribute to weight gain, digestive issues, immune reactions, cardiovascular disease, systemic inflammation etc. However, these ingredients are often hidden in the tiniest of print in the ingredients list and come under a wide range of nondescript names.
So here's my 5 KEY POINTERS for reading food labels:
1. Remember the calorie and macro content tells you nothing about food quality, your priority should always be to have a quick look over the ingredients list rather than assuming it's all about the calories.
2. If there's more than 10 ingredients on the list, or you don't recognise many of the names as whole food..... put it back on the shelf
3. Watch out for vegetable oils such as rapeseed, sunflower oil, canola oil etc.... These were once thought to be healthy, however these polyunsaturated fats are highly unstable at high heat and are bad news for lipid levels, cardiovascular health and systemic inflammation.
4. Avoid refined sugars which are hiding in nearly all processed foods under various names such as corn syrup, sucrose, maltose, dextrose etc. This will play havoc with your blood sugar consequently encouraging fat storage.
5. Watch out for other artificial ingredients such as sweeteners, preservatives, 'natural flavouring', emulsifiers, thickeners, gums, anti-caking agents etc.... these are all terrible for damaging the lining of your gut and contributing to autoimmunity, poor blood sugar regulation, diabetes, cardiovascular disease etc
Basically if it's not actually REAL FOOD... it's probably not going to be good for you so the easiest thing is to stick to the outside isles of the supermarket and opt for whole foods..... you'll hopefully never need to check the ingredients on a bag of organic potatoes :)
That actually brings us to another quick point to consider....try to buy organic, free range, grass-fed and line-caught where possible as that will limit the other sneaky toxins found in mass-produced food (eg pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics etc).
Stay well everyone! :)
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The content in this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding your health.