Can I interest you in purchasing some overpriced heroin?

Posted on by mustardseedmia

Not sold?

How about if I very cleverly package it with the word “Organic” on it?  “Vegan”? “Gluten-Free”? “Reduces Appetite”? “No Sugar Added”? Oh oh, I know… “Fat-Free”!

We are all taught, from a young age, that heroin–no matter where you buy it, how much it costs, and how cleverly it is packaged–is garbage.   When it comes to what we eat, we have a harder time distinguishing between what is healthy, and what is garbage.

As a general rule, if you would be extremely concerned if your dog got into it, and ate it, then you probably shouldn’t be feeding it to your kids either.  It might also be a good idea for you to pass on it too.  All jokes aside, thanks to brilliant marketing, it is getting harder and harder to know how to properly read a food label, and then accurately assess if it’s nutritious, or toxic.

For the most part, real food is not preserved in a package,  which eliminates the space to write these tricky little labels, or a list of ingredients.   Real foods (healthy foods), have a short shelf life; are one ingredient long; can’t be stored in a cardboard box in your pantry for months; and are unrefined, whole-foods.  Thus, if you are reading a label, then that is a good sign, that it does not qualify as healthy.

That said, in this day, packaged foods are so popular for a reason.  They are convenient, and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Even I have some packaged foods in my cupboard at this very moment.  When I buy these foods, I read the labels, and do my best to determine which of the options, in my opinion, is less toxic to my body.  Words like “natural” or “calories” have little to do with my decision. To me, it’s all about the quality and quantity of the actual ingredients.  This post, which is #5 out of 5 Simple Ideas That Completely Changed the Way I Eat, is meant to help make reading these labels, a little less deceiving.

Each food in it’s natural unrefined state, contains in that food, all the nutrients needed to properly metabolize it.   For example, raw sugar cane, before separated into two parts–refined white sugar and blackstrap molasses–can actually be considered healthy.  Our body recognizes it; can metabolize it; and readily obtain nutrients from it.   White sugar is devoid of it’s nutrients, so in order to digest it, it must steal from your body all the vitamins, minerals and amino acids required to metabolize it.   Furthermore, refined sugar is robbed of it’s fibre.   Fibre is good because it slows down the rate at which a food is digested.  This is important because it reduces the likelihood that the sugar will be released rapidly into your bloodstream–causing a spike in blood sugar and insulin (the fat storing, stress hormone) release.   My top three choices for added sweeteners are, dates (a whole food), maple syrup (often not raw) and honey (not vegan), simply because consuming these doesn’t mean my body has to be pillaged of it’s own nutrients in order to digest it.

Then there is also the “5 ingredients or less” rule. The rule is…don’t buy anything that contains more than five ingredients.   Again, 5 ingredients or less doesn’t classify it as healthy, but I do think it’s a good idea to avoid most products that have more than 5 ingredients in it.    Greater number of ingredients can mean more processing, and greater toxic load.   Especially, if it sounds like one or more of those said ingredients were made in a laboratory.

One of these things just doesn’t belong here. Can you guess what it is?

A-is for Apple

B-is for Brazil Nut

C-is for Calcium Caseinate

And what about here?
Organic Limes
Organic Limes

 

20 Litres of Gluten-Free, Cholesterol-Free, Halal, Refined Vegetable Oil.
20 Litres of Gluten-Free, Cholesterol-Free, Halal, Natural Source of Omega 3, Refined Vegetable Oil.

 

Organic Berries
Organic Berries

Let’s start giving ourselves more credit… Identifying healthy, is this easy.    Go with your gut, not a fancy label.   While it’s true, when buying produce organic is often a better choice, that doesn’t apply to everything.   Don’t be a sucker for marketing, fancy brown paper bags, and expensive price tags.  A creative campaign never trumps the extraordinary intelligence of Mother Nature.

Sending love from Sydney,

Maria

 

 

 

 

 

5 Simple ideas that changed the way I eat.

Posted on by mustardseedmia

As a nutritionist, I do my best to practice what I preach and exercise all the tools I have learned in my studies.  Of course, like everyone else, I have days where I eat things that I know I shouldn’t be eating, but for the most part I make my best effort to be as healthy as I can be.   People often make comments about how “good”  I am or they say things like “you have so much willpower, I could never do that.”   The truth is I haven’t always been this way… In fact I started out on the opposite end of the spectrum… it was not an uncommon practice for me to eat ice-cream for breakfast.   It took years of learning about nutrition, the body, and lifestyle choices to get this far and I still have a ways to go.   I went from a junk-foodoholic, to what some people would describe as a health nut.  Day to day it appeared as if nothing was changing, but as I look back everything is different.   I would like to share 5 of the simplest ideas that largely changed the way I eat.

These 5 ideas will be spread out over 5 separate posts.  If any of it resonates with you, then I encourage you to try each one as we go along.   And of course your feedback is always appreciated.

#1.  SAY NO TO CRACK

What incredibly addictive substance is hard, white, crystal like structure; rots your teeth; and according to Psychology Today, gets you hooked through invoking a feeling of euphoria triggered by dopamine, the pleasure-inducing chemical in our brain?   Well if you guessed CRACK, you’d be wrong, cause I was talking about SUGAR.

I know what you are thinking, in my title it said “simple ideas” and we all know cutting sugar from your diet is as simple as shoving a pencil through your own eye.

Morning coffee with sugar and a low-fat muffin with extra sugar.

Healthy mid-day veggie snack, dipped in a sugary salad dressing.

Lunch: a cup of liquid sugar  (Pop or juice)  to wash down two slices of bread (baked with sugar) stuffed with some kind of luncheon meat containing sugar.

Dinner: something sprinkled, dipped, coated or marinated in sugar, with a side of something else sprinkled, dipped, coated or marinated in sugar… and don’t forget your pop.

Dessert: I think it’s safe to assume there is going to be some sugar.

There are a ton of variables that lead to the craving of sugar, but one of the most common and maybe easiest to manage is low-blood sugar.   When your blood sugar gets low, your brain sends some very powerful and impossible to resist signals for you to quickly eat something.  So, we do exactly that.. we tend to choose from the above meals, or something likened to them.  This is too much of a good thing, your blood doesn’t need all that much.  In fact, your blood only needs a very small amount at a time, even a tablespoon of extra sugar in your bloodstream can cause you to go into a diabetic coma.   After eating a sugary meal, we now have excessive,  toxic amount of sugar in our blood stream.   Once your body senses this extremely dangerous level of sugar in the blood, what happens next is–insulin (also known as the fat storing hormone…super awesome for us ladies! NOT!) comes to the rescue and saves you from what you just ate. Our bodies are really freaking cool this way.  They respond very quickly in this emergency state, buuuuuut, there’s always a but…Insulin rushes in and takes the toxic dose of sugar from your blood and stores it, mainly in the abdominal region, as you guessed it.. BELLY FAT!   What’s even more exciting is, when all that insulin is released, it can take with it from your blood, ALL the sugar you just ate.   Hey look, that takes you right back to where we started–low blood sugar again!  Don’t worry, it wasn’t a complete loss, you did gain all that super sexy abdominal fat. By now the low blood sugar has got your brain sending those oh so familiar signals, inducing cravings that seem near impossible to refrain… Good thing you packed that sugary mid-day snack.

The Point?

If you start your day with a huge hit of crack, chances are you’ll be hitting that crack-pipe all the live long day.

The sugar train works much the same.

Try a half-cup of fresh fruit (ex. grapefruit) or berries before you eat any meals of the day.   This will help bring your blood sugar to a safe level, which may reduce cravings and can quite possibly help you make better food choices for the duration of your day.

Unrefined, whole foods, like fruits and vegetables, are high in fibre, which slows down the release of glucose into your bloodstream.   Processed or refined foods (white sugar, sweeteners, white breads, pastas, packaged foods etc)  are striped of  their fibre, causing rapid spikes to your body glucose level, invariably leading to insulin release.

It is very important to refrain from baked goods, and heavy starchy or refined carbs, especially at breakfast.  Sure, you’re more likely to burn off these early-morning calories, but you’re also now highly likely to ride the sugar-coaster all day.

Vegetables all always a safe bet.

Physical exercise is an excellent way to help balance blood sugar levels, this is why we tend to have less food cravings when we are physically active.