My #1 Nutrition Tip

Can I borrow a cup of high-fructose corn syrup? And a teaspoon of monosodium glutamate? No? You don’t have any? If you don’t have it in your kitchen (or your grandma didn’t) you probably shouldn’t be eating it in your food. That’s why my #1 nutrition tip is to start reading the labels on the food you buy, specifically the list of ingredients.

March is National Nutrition Month! I just found out on March 1st and decided to do a nutrition tip of the day on my Facebook and Instagram pages. (Obviously not saying much about my planning skills- I’m working on that! But I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kinda girl and sometimes I just need to roll with it.)

So my first tip was, “Read Labels.” I made this my first tip because I think it might be the biggest, most important step to eating better food.

Remember Snackwells?

I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, in the time of Snackwells and “Lite” everything. We were taught to look at calories and fat before anything else.

The tide shifted and you started to hear more about other things like carbs and sugar. But our label reading still consisted of the nutrition facts, not the ingredients.

Looking back, it wasn’t the fitness kick I embarked on in 2012 that got me reading ingredient lists at first. It was my child’s food allergies.

Years later, my label reading and fitness kick would coincide and lead me to clean eating.

I won’t get too much into clean eating here (you can check out this post for more) but it basically comes down to eating whole, unprocessed foods as close to their natural state as possible.

If you’ve read any food labels you know how foreign most of those ingredients are. I think it was Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, that said you shouldn’t eat foods with ingredients that weren’t in your grandmother’s kitchen.

So, if you don’t already, start reading ingredient lists. You don’t have to go down the rabbit-hole that I did and google strange sounding additives. Just start by being aware.

Then, once you realize how much processed crap is in the foods we eat, you can pick your enemy #1. For me, it was high fructose corn syrup. Then it was hydrogenated oils. You’ve probably heard of those. For a while, it was BHT (banned in other countries) and TBHQ (a preservative found in lots of snacks, including many microwave popcorns and cookies).

You can decide how all-in you want to go. You don’t have to become a food warrior and swear off anything but locally grown kale and sweet potatoes. But at least you’ll know what you’re buying and putting in your body.

If you do want to learn more you can check out this post on Foodbabe.com. She is a food warrior for sure. While I find her a little extreme for most people, you can learn a lot from her site.

My friend was doing Weight Watchers at the time I got into clean eating. She liked it and she got results, but what I was doing got her curious about what was in the foods she was eating. When she started reading labels, she was surprised. And disgusted. And ultimately began eating clean.

There are a lot of foods out there that claim to be healthy alternatives that are just highly processed crap.

I’m not sure where this quote originated, but I used to literally think, “chemical shit-storm,” every time I was at the store.

So, in summary…My #1 Nutrition Tip

Read your ingredient lists. Become aware of what’s in our food. Decide what you’re comfortable with and what you’re not.

And if you want to take it a step further…

• Aim to eat foods with no labels more often.
• When you do eat food with labels, try to eat ones with shorter ingredient lists. (Off the top of my head I know that Lays potato chips have 3 ingredients. They don’t count! The amount of oil and the type of oil used makes a difference.)
• Think about cooking and baking at home. Even if you only commit to doing it one night a week (or month) you might be surprised by how it changes your view of food.

Awareness is the first step to any change; just being aware of what’s in your food might be enough to spark a healthy change. It doesn’t have to be hard, it doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. Most people do best with baby steps, some do better going all-in.

Do you read ingredient lists? Is there a particular ingredient you avoid most? I’d love to hear from you!

 

 

 

 

 

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