Watch out for hidden sugar

Sugar is hidden in nearly all packaged, bottled, and processed foods. This is an important lesson: Turn every package of food around and read the ingredients. Even if it’s a food you’ve bought many times before, the ingredients can change at any time. So read them again.

Even many of the seemingly “clean” dried fruits contain added sugar, which serves as a preservative or flavor enhancer. Does it make sense to you that fruit would need added sugar? It doesn’t. Fruit is naturally sweet, so never buy any type of fruit or juice with sugar or any other sweeteners on the ingredient list.

When you avoid consuming added sugar, you do yourself the additional favor of eliminating many packaged, factory-made, non-whole foods from your diet. You also eliminate many other harmful added ingredients, including synthetic chemicals.

HOW SWEET IT IS

Check out the Guide to: Sweeteners see here for more information.

Know this: Do not trust anything written on the front of the package. Please! Remember: The word “natural” on a food label essentially means nothing. According to the FDA food-labeling regulations, anything that originated from nature at one time can be called “natural” on a food label, no matter what has been done to it since it was in its natural state.

Here is what the FDA has to say about it: “From a food science perspective, it is difficult to define a food product that is ‘natural’ because the food has probably been processed and is no longer the product of the earth. That said, the FDA has not developed a definition for use of the term “natural” or its derivatives. However, the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances.”*

What about your breakfast cereal that says it contains 100% of the required vitamins and minerals? The truth is that your cereal has been fortified with those vitamins and minerals, and fortified foods have been refined and stripped of their nutrients from nature. This is why the nutrients have to be added back into the product. What’s wrong with that? The nutrients that are added are synthetic forms, and your body is smart enough to recognize the difference.

*source: http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm214868.htm?utm_campaign=Google2&utm_source=fdaSearch&utm_medium=website&utm_term=natural%20food%20label&utm_content=2

Let’s compare your cereal to the sweet potato mentioned earlier in the chapter. In that one little vegetable, you get all of the exact nutrients you need to metabolize carbohydrates. They’re all present right in the “package” of the whole food sweet potato, and those nutrients are not synthetic. What’s so powerful about whole food nutrition is that the nutrients work synergistically in your body in the appropriate balance for their proper use.

When we try to outsmart Mother Nature and add synthetic nutrients to foods in a factory, we make serious missteps.Manufacturers typically add the latest, most popularly hyped nutrient to foods that wouldn’t even contain that micronutrient naturally. The most recent trend is adding omega-3 fatty acids, known for their beneficial anti-inflammatory properties, to items like yogurt and bread. Reality check: Omega-3s naturally occur in foods like fatty cold water fish and some nuts like walnuts and pecans, not in yogurt and bread! When nutrients are added to foods in synthetic forms and without their other nutrient co-factors (the complementary nutrients that are needed for proper absorption and utilization in your body), you simply cannot use them appropriately.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14