Remember these words I have listed every time you walk into a grocery store, when you pick up a box of processed food (read the label)  and when you’re thinking about what you’re feeding yourself and your kids. Is it really worth it?

Today it is increasingly difficult to maintain a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle. You’re always eating on the go and not thinking how this may shorten your life or increase your chances of becoming ill, or even worse, sick with a disease that is irreversible.

We have been talking a lot about whole foods, organics, GMOs and good farming practices most recently in our blogs, inspiring you to buy better and think about the food you’re consuming from it’s state. What are you going to do to achieve your personal dietary lifestyle goals? Buy cheap, non-organic, GMO foods at the best price possible and not care about the nutrients left behind in the process? Is this not somewhat like eating sawdust?

Just imagine you’re a food processor, so you want to make a living and be profitable. What would you do to enhance the food’s flavour and/or increase your food sales? How can you make the customers buy more than they need? The manufacturer’s goal is to create an addictive, fun and interesting food that will stay on the shelf as long as possible, until you buy it. Six months old or later, it is still for sale to you, the consumer.

#1 New York Times Bestseller- Michael Moss-author Salt Sugar Fat-  helps dissect the processed food industry.

5 Reasons to avoid processed foods

Here are 5 of the most important reasons you should avoid processed foods now and start eating whole foods sourced locally, organic and/or as natural as possible.

Your future health starts with healthy eating habits as a child, so this is very important now for your kids, as well as for your later adult life.

1. You can avoid diseases like cancer of the breast, prostate, stomach and colon.
2. Avoid becoming obese, processed foods are packed with added sugars, fats and  salt.
3. Processed foods trick the body into eating more; avoid them at all costs.
4. Diabetes is a preventable disease; processed foods trigger sugar highs.
5. Removing processed foods from your daily diet will save money in future health care costs.

5 Tips to help you to stop eating processed foods

1. Clean house! Buy fewer processed foods, replacing them with whole foods.
2. Every day, prepare simple, seasonal dishes and meals that transport easily.
3. Roast whole chickens, turkeys and fish for up to three days of meals.
4. Always have fresh apples, pears, celery and carrots ready for quick snacks.
5. Eat more local grains, legumes and whole grain breads, and less red meat.

Our main problem with food today is that we are addicted to processed foods like smokers are addicted to cigarettes.  The only difference between smoking and processed food is that we have a few laws now in place to warn the public of the dangers of smoking by labeling them and an age restriction in place to try to prevent the sale of cigarettes to our youth. The processed foods carry no warning labels to indicate that the food you may eat over time can cause diabetes, breast and colon cancer, obesity, heart attacks, stokes, food sensitivities and the list goes on.

The right thing to do is to cook simple dishes prepared fresh at home and sit at the kitchen table with your family and eat whole foods vs. stuffing slices of pizza/subs/fries/burgers/and sugary drinks into our bodies and our children’s throats before soccer, baseball or hockey games. We use our vehicles as kitchen tables, eating from paper bags & cartons, seldom using forks or knives to eat anymore. We have no need to chew our food and we can gulp and swallow these processed “products” of whole foods without much effort.

I am not saying that everyone is eating the same, but the signs are there that there is a problem with the North American diet.  I would like your feedback on these issues and want you to re-think why we are so addicted to processed foods.  It has become quite obvious that we are not aware of how dangerous they really are.

It is essential that we to go back to way things used to be by eating whole foods grown locally, organically and without GMO’s.

Stacey Fokas

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