The #1 thing to do at the grocery store – READ LABELS!
Food shopping can make me a little nuts. Over the years I’ve learned how to do healthy shopping but when I’m at the store and I get a glimpse of what ends up in other people’s carts, it’s obvious that the people who do the marketing for food and other grocery items are pretty good at their jobs. So here are a few tips to keep in mind when you’re at the store.
1) “Healthy” usually means “Less Toxic than our other crap. One of my nutrition professors once said “never ever believe anything on the front of any food label – ever!” The only things that matter are the ingredients and the nutrition profile. The rest is just decoration. You could have the most beautiful house with pristine landscaping and an elegant fountain and it looks perfect on the outside – but on the inside it looks like an episode of “Hoarders.” Many foods that are marketed as “healthy” contain simple carbohydrates, empty calories, and artificial ingredients. No natural health professional would call these products “healthy.”
2) Natural foods can have a dirty little secret. Maybe you read on the internet that walnuts are a great source of omega-3 fats so you go to the store and, looking for a healthy snack, you grab a bag of walnuts out of the bakery aisle. You feel pretty good about your choice and since the bag contains “only” walnuts you didn’t bother to flip it over and read the ingredients. That’s where you went wrong. You see, the walnuts were coated in BHT, a preservative with links to cancer. Read all labels, even on stuff you think is clean, pure, and natural.
3) The Personal Care aisle should be called the Poisonal Care aisle. Artificial colors, synthetic perfumes, and cancer-causing parabens abound. Your skin is a semi-permeable membrane. We know this because if things couldn’t be absorbed through your skin, there would be no such thing as a nicotine patch. What you put on your skin can be absorbed through your pores and into your bloodstream. Everything from shampoo, toothpaste and deodorant to hairspray and lotion, most people coat themselves in over 100 toxins every day. This is over and above anything toxins that you are exposed to via the air, water, and food that you eat.
Here are my suggestions.
Read the labels on everything that you buy. Avoid artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, dyes, perfumes, fragrances, and preservatives. Avoid fluoride and parabens. Remember, what goes on your skin goes in your skin. Keep it natural.
I use and recommend the personal care products available at www.TurboHerbal.com