Don’t be Anxious About What to Eat, Become an Expert Label Reader for Incredible Health!

Fats:
One of the simplest changes you can make that has a tremendous impact on health from a cellular level is to replace your refined vegetable/seed oils with a nourishing real food fat that your body knows how to digest and utilize properly.
 
There are two steps involved in this stage, replacing standalone fats and fats as ingredients in packaged goods.
Vegetable/seed oils will be abundant in condiments, dressings, mayonnaise, chips, crackers, bars, and other packaged foods you are used to buying
You do NOT want canola, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed, soybean, corn, peanut, rice bran, margarine, and generic “vegetable” oil.

Replace with tallow, lard, ghee, bacon fat, duck fat, or coconut oil for higher heat cooking (depending on budget, availability, and sensitivities), and olive oil, avocado oil, and butter for finishing or low heat cooking.

All olive and avocado oils should be COLD PRESSED.  NOT Expeller pressed or any other form of pressed.  The heat from those changes the biological make-up of the oils to forms our bodies are not made or able to use.
 
Look for anything that says “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” as these are trans fats, which cause free radical damage to our cells.
 
Chemicals:
Food dyes, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, MSG*, artificial flavorings, thickening agents, the list of manmade chemicals being added to our food today is staggering. These fake ingredients can cause direct damage to our endocrine, digestive, cardiovascular, immune, and neurological systems and offer no nutritional benefit—so they have no place in our homes or on our plates.
 
REAL food does not need flavoring agents, coloring, carrier solvents, sweetening, bleaching etc.!

You can refer to a food additives glossary such as https://nutritiondata.self.com/topics/food-additives to help see the types of language and words we are looking for, but in general these items are going to be easy to spot because they simply are not food. If an ingredient is not recognizable or pronounceable, uses a number or acronym (red #5 or BHT for example), or has a process attached to it (hydrolyzed yeast extract), your body likely doesn’t know how to use it either.

*MSG is often hidden in other label ingredients. If you are sensitive, it is important to pay attention to other ingredients that indicate MSG is likely present.  Using an online resource like http://www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html can help you stay aware of these ingredients.
 
Sugar:
While most of us are not going to be totally derailed from our wellness journey by having a scoop of ice cream at a birthday celebration or enjoying a slice of pie during the holidays, processed cane sugar does not provide nourishment to our bodies as an everyday food, and it is wise to remove most of it from our homes as it is tempting, addictive, and very easy to consume mindlessly when it is readily available. This can be one of the more emotional parts of the process of removing foods as we tend to have strong memories associated with sweet treats, and they can provide a source of comfort, stress relief, and feelings of joy to some degree. Because of this emotional connection, you should really focus on the importance of balance and the good-better-best continuum. For example, if you look in your pantry and you have an entire basket of fun-size candy bars that you turn to for energy, emotional release, celebrations, etc., you may not be ready to just toss that out cold turkey. Instead, you can begin by replacing the candy bars with a darker chocolate that is sweetened with organic cane sugar and has minimal added ingredients. There will be time later in your journey to move even further ahead to very dark chocolate that is sweetened with coconut sugar or a little honey.


Refined Grains:
While not everyone is going to need to be on a grain-free diet, bleached white flour or wheat flour enriched with synthetic vitamins and minerals is not a whole, nourishing food and is not going to add value to your diet. If you tolerate grains, this stage can either involve swapping white flour-based products for homemade versions with sprouted flour (you can purchase pre-sprouted or make your own). The phytates in grains block absorption of nutrients, including iron. Soaking and sprouting grains (nuts and legumes) removes the phytates.  Learning to make foods with a sourdough process or finding store-bought versions of the product made with traditional grains like einkorn, spelt, kamut, sorghum or pseudo-cereals like amaranth, quinoa, and buckwheat, depending on your time and budget. If you suspect or are certain you do not tolerate grains, this can become an opportunity to move further on your good-better-best journey to find more food options that do not use grains at all. Whether that involves learning to use alternative flours made from coconut, cassava, tigernut, arrowroot, tapioca, etc., buying premade products that use these specialty ingredients, or using other whole foods like fruit and vegetables in new ways (kale makes fantastic chips and sweet potatoes make fabulous “buns” for burgers.), this can be an exciting way to exchange less nutrient-dense foods for more nutrient-rich options.

​​Again, with this can come a balance and a realistic evaluation of where you are on your unique journey. If your family is going out to a new wood-fired pizza restaurant in town, and you know they use un-soaked, non-fermented white flour in the crust—but you do not have Celiac or gluten sensitivities—by all means, you should eat some pizza, as that will nourish the soul even if it isn’t a huge win for the body. The very reason for getting refined grains out of the home is so that they are no longer a readily available staple that we consume on a regular basis, but instead can make those random appearances in the “less than optimal but goodness it’s delicious” segment of our diet that is part of living a rich, full, enjoyable life.