Tips for reading food labels

​I never read food labels until my daughter got sick. I wasn’t into counting calories and I figured if I bought a lot of the name brand food… I would be eating ok. Well, when she got sick I learned that I needed to start looking at what was in the food we were eating.

The first thing I did was get rid of anything that had “high fructose corn syrup” in it. What is high fructose corn syrup?  It is a sweetener made from cornstarch, some of whose glucose has been converted to fructose, that is used in commercially produced foods and soft drinks as a cheaper alternative to sucrose. Here is a great video to watch to learn why high fructose corn syrup is so bad for you… https://health.clevelandclinic.org/avoid-the-hidden-dangers-of-high-fructose-corn-syrup-video/  I was surprised to find that it was in all kinds of things that we ate from our tomato soup to our bread crumbs.

The next thing I did was start cooking more and eating less ultra-processed foods. What qualifies as ultra-processed food? Look at the label… in processed food chances are that you won't have a clue what some of the ingredients are. That's because many of the ingredients in there aren't actual food... they are artificial chemicals that are added for various purposes. My suggestion is look at the labels on your food and if you know what the ingredients are, then it is something to put in your cart. If not, you probably shouldn’t be eating it.
​
The final thing I try to do is buy Organic. Organic foods typically contain the same amount of nutrients, vitamins and minerals as non-organic foods. ... However, foods that are Organic typically contain fewer pesticides, fewer multi-drug resistant bacteria and no genetically modified organisms or foods. If I can’t afford to buy all Organic then I at least get food that is Non-GMO. GMOs are Genetically modified organisms and I don’t want those in my food. If you want to learn more about GMOs in your food… check out https://livingnongmo.org They have a great FAQ page that can answer all your questions. Note: Organic food will be Non-GMO but Non-GMO is not automatically Organic. Organic food is more expensive and if you don’t have the money to buy all Organic then here is the list of foods that are most likely to have GMOs in them…alfalfa, canola, corn, cotton, papaya, potato, soy, sugar beet, and zucchini.

---