Fresh fruit, vegetables,
poultry, seafood and meats don't need ingredients labels. They are "real
foods". If the food is packaged into bags or boxes, then the contents must
be identified. The ingredients should be "real food" (i.e., "100% natural
rolled oats", "stone ground whole wheat", "unpolished rice"). More and
more items available at the grocery store are more "food artifact" than
"real food". These food artifacts are loaded with chemicals and compounds
to help eye appeal, smell, extend shelf life and sell the product. It is
possible to spend more on packaging and chemicals than real food inside
the box!
Look at the size of
the ingredients label. The shorter the better. The ingredients should list
water and real food product. Beware the long ingredients list. If the ingredients
list contains more chemical compounds than food product, put it down! If
it's difficult to pronounce then don't swallow it. There are exceptions:
often vitamins that have been added (i.e., in bleached, "enriched" white
flour) are listed by their chemical names instead of their commonly recognized
names.
Check out the list of
often used ingredients below. This is NOT a complete listing of food ingredients
the industry uses. The FDA permits over 3,000 ingredients to be added to
food. The list shown here was compiled from ingredients found in food actually
purchased on one person's "typical" grocery shopping trip. Most of these
ingredients are safe...safe until new medical research links it to some
disease or condition that forces the FDA to ban it. The question remains:
if it's not real food, why take risks and eat it? |