Read before you eat

When you purchase from the inner sections, read the labels carefully! If you aren’t accustomed to checking ingredients, you’ll be surprised how many seemingly innocent items are loaded with hidden sweeteners, preservatives, and artificial fats.

Become a label detective. If you don’t know an ingredient, i.e. if it has a scientific name, this is an item to put back on the shelf, not in your cart. There are some very common additives even in a few so-called healthy items. Look for any of the sweeteners listed in the guide see here or any of the forms of hidden gluten see here. Use the Paleo Pantry Guide see here to navigate the aisles of the store.

If there is more packaging than product, it’s probably not a great choice, so move on. If the packaging is trying hard to sell the product to you, it is almost certainly not healthy. This means claims like “Fat-Free!” “Low-Fat!” “Heart Healthy!” and “Whole Grain!” Real foods have no such labels and often have little to no packaging.

Buying anything labeled low-fat, non-fat, or fat-free is ill advised. Most dairy products found in grocery stores are produced from feedlot cows and are not real, whole foods. Fruity yogurts or yogurt drinks, sliced, string, or plastic wrapped blocks of cheese, and milk that has been enriched or fortified with vitamins A and D, are not in their whole form from nature, so avoid them. For more on dairy and how to choose it, see here the guide.

budget priority #1: fats and oils

Fats comprise the most calorie-dense source of nutrition in your diet, so buy the highest quality fats and oils available to you. Fatty acids incorporate into the “phospholipid bilayer,” a two-ply layer of cells that help to form your cell membranes. While all macronutrients incorporate into your cell tissues and contribute to the formation of new cells, fatty acids that incorporate into your cells can take longer to change over during natural progression of cell regeneration. For this reason, it is best to avoid poor quality or oxidized oils (damaged by light, heat, and/or air). Since battling cellular damage is one of your body’s full-time jobs, the more you can run damage control by avoiding poor quality or damaged oils, the better.

Prioritizing your budget toward the highest quality fats is a very important first step. This means never eating trans fats and avoiding highly processed vegetable oils and rancid oils. It also means only choosing high quality, fresh nuts and seeds. If the nuts or seeds you buy smell off or rancid, toss them and buy new ones. The “Fats and Oils Guide” later in this book will help you make intelligent choices.

There are only a handful of healthy fats and oils you will need to buy at the grocery store as outlined in the next pages for both hot (cooking) and cold (salads and finishing) uses.

Keep coconut oil and ghee in a cool, dark cupboard, and keep butter and bacon fat in the refrigerator. Do not refrigerate coconut oil, as it will become extremely hard and difficult to use without re-melting. If you are concerned about the ghee, you can keep it in the refrigerator, but it should be shelf-stable for quite some time since it is pure fat with no dairy proteins.

If dairy products are a problem for you, grass-fed ghee is the best choice since, again, the dairy proteins have been removed, leaving only the butter-oil behind.

Unsaturated oils like olive and cold-pressed sesame should preferably be stored in dark containers or bottles and kept in either cool, dark places or in the refrigerator.

guide to: fats & oils

Cleaning up your diet by using the right fats and oils is essential to improving your health from the inside out. Changing the fats and oils you use at home is the first step toward creating dishes from nutrient-dense, whole foods based on what you have on hand. Avoid overly processed and refined forms of fats and oils. Opt for organic whenever possible. Refer to the “Guide to Cooking Fats” for more details.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14