The last stretch of summer is coming to a close, at least where I live. Right now, I'm on my patio in my backyard, enjoying the sunshine and soaking up nature and all of it's aesthetic beauty! Even though it's sad to think that summer and all of its happy memories will soon be leaving, I am sort of excited for fall. Fall is definitely my favorite season.
I love the changing of the leaves, the crisp weather, the apple picking, and the cozy nights. My favorite thing about fall is just taking in a big breath of air, smelling the chilly breeze, and crunching on the leaves on the ground.
Well anyways, enough of my rambling!
Today I wanted to blog about being healthy (duh.. that's what this whole blog is about), but I wanted to mainly focus on an issue that I have become aware of recently.
I've been scrolling through instagram, liking pictures and commenting and all of that.
(Follow me!: Foodfitnut)
And I am especially interested in looking at pictures of people's meals and snacks. I follow the "healthy" users on instagram. By that I mean, I don't follow the users who only post pics of brownies and cake. Instead, I like looking at users who post pictures of healthy breakfasts, recipes, snack, dinners. The pictures give me inspiration for my own meals and they are very cool to look at! (Does anyone else do this?)
Well so here's the dilemma. I have noticed that a lot of people's foods and pictures have captions like "whole wheat pancakes with zero sugar maple syrup!" or "No fat brownie recipe" or "low calorie peanut butter!"
It sort of frustrates me that these people posting these "healthy" food pictures thinking they are eating healthy... but they actually aren't.
Foods that say "zero calorie... no fat... low carb" are generally foods that just have extra additives in them. Take a peanut for example. A plain, whole peanut is naturally grown containing fats and calories. That's just life and mother nature. So when food companies boast that they are selling an "all natural" product that has low fat, low carb, zero calories... then something is wrong.
The brand Better'n Peanut Butter sells a peanut butter spread that they claim is an "all-natural product...and qualifies as a low fat food by USFDA standards."
So what? Everything nowadays can be labeled as "all-natural". All that means is that a minuscule fraction of the ingredients have to be made with reduced pesticides/chemicals. Big deal.
If you look at the nutrition facts of their peanut butter, it contains:
That's a whole lotta junk for just some plain ol' peanut butter, am I right?
I'll give another example:
I used to be obsessed with this salad dressing. My family and I put it on our salad basically every night at dinner.
The ingredients for this dressing include:
CULTURED NONFAT BUTTERMILK SOYBEAN OIL, BLUE CHEESE (CHEESE CULTURE, SALT, ENZYMES), DISTILLED VINEGAR, BUTTERMILK SOLIDS, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SALT, XANTHAN GUM, LACTIC ACID, SPICE, DEHYDRATED GARLIC.
And while the ingredients don't look awful (comparably to a Snickers bar), they're not very healthy or wholesome for the human body!
When dieters and people trying to "get healthy" are eating things that are "low fat, low cal, low.. whatever!" They're not giving their bodies the respect they deserve.
Our bodies were designed to eat whole foods.
Not xanthan gum, not partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and not artificial coloring.
These ingredients are not the type of things that we as humans should be eating.
So basically all I'm trying to say is this:
Generally, any product that is bragging about how it is good for dieters and has "low" of any bad stuff, usually has extra additives, chemicals, artificial ingredients, sodium, or sugars.
If you're trying to lose weight or get healthy and fit, do it in a healthful way. Eat whole foods that don't have lots of chemical ingredients. In fact, the less ingredients a food has, generally the healthier it is.
Do the 80-20 rule. 80% of your food should be whole and healthy, the other 20% is for cheating! (I like
eating Twix candy bars)
When you're looking at a food, first glance at the nutrition facts: look at calories, sugar, sodium... whatever is most important to you. But THEN don't forget to look at the ingredients!!!!! Even if a food is low calorie and you think it is healthy, it might be filled with additives and unhealthy chemicals.
Read ingredient labels!!!!!
I can do a post on how to read nutrition facts if you want?!
As always,
Emily
Sorry, I used a lot of "quotes" and (parentheses) in this post!
 |
| haha found this on tumblr |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments?