Real Ingredients Matter

Obtaining knowledge, actualizing healthy eating, and exercising daily are part of my 66 days to form a habit challenge. I’m going to spotlight the importance of food choice based on real ingredients, which play a key role in your health. Ingredients on packaged food are listed in the order of quantity from greatest to least. If you have “wheat” listed first that means that there is more wheat than anything else in the meal.  If sugar is listed last, then it means that sugar is the ingredient least used.  Many meals use less than quality ingredients/preservatives in the food to make it last longer.  

If you can’t pronounce or recognize every ingredient on the package, it’s probably best not to eat it. Go for food you can vouch for. For example, I love lemons, but I often use lemon extract rather than actual lemons for the sake of convenience.  I checked out the label on my lemon extract and I noticed that there were many ingredients I didn’t know. I did a taste test between lemon extract and fresh squeezed lemons.  Not surprisingly, fresh-squeezed lemons came out on top. The best part? There was only one ingredient: lemon. 

Some people look at whether they can spell an ingredient as their yardstick. I’ve never been good at spelling, so I’m going to stick with pronounceable food items and stay away from all the weird ingredients starting with “x, y, and z.” Haha. So moving forward I will take a look at my labels and grab the shelf option that provides real ingredients.  I totally encourage you all to do the same.  

Until next time,

Grant