How to Spot Processed Foods
- Sandro Torres
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
How to spot processed foods
Last week I was in the stores when I ran into one of our members. She also was doing her shopping when I glanced into her basket and found a protein powder and almond milk.
So I reached to grab one of the products and asked, “Are you buying this?” She answered yes and replied, “What do you think about it?”
This member, we will call her Mary, has been with us for around 5 months and she has delivered very good results losing around 13% body fat, starting at 35% and now she is at 22% body fat.
One of the reasons why she has transformed her body is because she listens to my advice. Mary is eating healthy and lifting heavy. She knows that processed foods are bad for her and she prepared her foods at home.
So that specific day I asked her, “Have you read the ingredients?” She replied, “No.” Let’s go over together. We found many artificial ingredients and sugar as one of the main ingredients in the protein powder.
Then I reached for the almond milk and said, “Do you think this is good?” She looked at me wondering. We started checking the ingredients and found vitamin and mineral blend calcium carbonate, vitamin acetate, vitamin palmitate,vitamine d2, gellan gum, ascorbic acid, vitamin c and natural flavor. The truth is that all these chemicals are hidden as vitamins.
When we finished going over those products she was happy she ran into me and learned how to read the ingredients.
All the time I was wondering why she did not take the time to read them before I ran into her…
Then I realized that even though I take my time to tell all of our members to read the ingredients, many don't because they don’t know how important it is, some don’t know how to and others focus on the label instead of the ingredients.
I am not going to go over how harmful these ingredients or chemicals are because I have many other articles about it. Plus many other knowledgeable people also mentioned the impact of these chemicals on your health and weight gain. However, I am going to teach the basics on how to read the ingredients.
To begin with, the ingredients are not the same as the label. The label tells you how nutritionist the product is and to be honest with you, is useless. I never look into it. Does not really tell you something. When a food is in a natural state all nutrients including fats and sugars are good.
So let’s have that cleat, reading the ingredients is not the same as reading the label. So don’t confuse the…
Second, when you are reading the ingredients, you want to make sure that is what is claimed to be. If it’s potato chips then it should be potato chips not flour and other things. So the first ingredient that you are going to find is what the package has the most, then the second and then the third and so on.
Third, make sure all ingredients are real. If you are buying canned beans (of course, depending on the beans), it should have, for example, beans, water, onion, garlic, canola oil, sea salt. Do you see? Everything is real. Nothing like sucrose, glucose, maltodextrin, artificial flavor, vitamin d and so on.
Fourth, if the ingredients are organic, even better…
And last, don’t go for what the product says in front such as organic, diet, low fat, natural, all natural, healthy, delicious, approved by the FDA and so on.
If you want to stay safe when buying anything that is a package, then read the ingredients and apply what I just taught you.
Now if you don’t care about your health and weight loss, just trust what the product says in front and focus on the label. You can also just choose by the attraction of the color. Or even better just grab it and don’t read anything. How to spot processed foods is very easy.
Comentarios