We live in a society where everything is all about labels- you have to have the newest Nikes, you need to rock the Louis Vuitton purse, the Apple computer. All these labels matter, they mean high quality, high status, and the same thing applies to your food.
Believe it or not, food companies lie on their packaging and the government doesn’t really care that they do. There are bunches of knock off foods running around and the FDA and the USDA really don’t regulate shit. Hostess Bakery could plaster “Whole Wheat” all over their Twinkie packages and swear up and down that their Ho-Ho’s are “Organic”; doesn’t mean that they are and it doesn’t mean they’ll get in trouble for it either.
Just because you pick up a package that says “All Natural” doesn’t mean it is. If you really want to know what you’re eating you either need to grow it your damn self or you need to read the ingredients list. It’s the only way to know if what you’re eating is safe and isn’t full of growth hormones and pig feces.
Bread is the best example of this. Breads (and pastas) with labels and packaging that says 100 percent whole wheat can in fact only be made with whole wheat flour; products that are 100 percent whole wheat are usually organic and can be found at health food stores. Anything that isn’t 100 percent whole wheat is made with white flour, stripped of nutritional value and full of sugars and carbs that give you cellulite.
So other not so healthy breads try to get away with looking healthy by putting things like “multi-grain” and “made with whole wheat” on the labels to seem like they’re just as healthy as their competitor – fucking posers. Breakfast cereals like Trix say that they use more whole grain than any other ingredient- they do, they use whole grain corn which has basically no nutritional value at all.
Wonder Bread and Wheat Thins do the same thing; claiming to be made with healthy grains when in reality they just food coloring to make their white flour look more like whole wheat- SMH.
The same goes for eggs- labels that say things like ‘cage-free’ and ‘free-range’ try to make it seem like the eggs you’re eating come from cute little chickens that pranced around on a sunny farm their whole life. The only qualification for eggs to meet that labeling guideline is that the hens were not raised in a battery cage. The hen could still be full of steroids and grew up in a warehouse, was beaten on a regular basis and literally never saw the light of day - so freakin’ messed up. The best way to check your egg quality is to buy them from a local organic farmer or to look for the “Animal Welfare Approved” label.
Like stated earlier the only way to really know what you’re eating is to grow it your damn self, but the second best way is to read the ingredients list. A good rule of thumb is- if you can’t pronounce it don’t eat it. Another good rule of thumb is to use your common sense-duh.
If you’re eating something that’s bright neon green, covered in sprinkles or can be fully cooked in the microwave in under 10 seconds and says “All Natural” on the package it’s pretty obvious that it’s not. Don’t be an idiot.
Another rule of thumb; the less ingredients the better. One time I was craving mashed potatoes but I didn’t have time to cut and peel them so I opted for the instant kind. I had a package of instant potatoes from Idahoan, I took one look at the ingredients list and stopped counting after 25. I then went to Whole Foods, bought a box of potato flakes and the only ingredient was dehydrated potatoes. That’s 1 ingredient compared to over 25, and the Whole Foods brand is cheaper!
Eating right isn’t this black and white thing, it’s a big gray mess, but the quality of your food matters just as much at the calories you eat, what you’re eating, when you’re eating and how much you’re eating.
I always encourage people to shop at places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s because they’re companies dedicated to providing you with quality, ethical foods and they don’t sell anything that isn’t made with top notch ingredients. Even though I read the labels to everything I buy it’s nice to go to store and not have to worry about picking up something that might be infected with E coli or get recalled for having traces of lead and arsenic in it - and for the last damn time, eating healthy is not more expensive.
That's all I got for now.
XoXo,
AminaZena
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/aminazena
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/aminazena
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AminaZena
Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/aminazena
Instagram: http://statigr.am/aminazena
E-mail: aminazena@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment