One of the key parts of living a healthy lifestyle is watching what you put into your body in terms of food. The choices you make about what you eat and drink can and do play a vital role in your overall health. Most of us eat a diet that’s riddled with processed foods that are incredibly bad for us when eaten over the long term and that doesn’t even come close to talking about takeaway or fast food that tastes great but is pretty toxic. Did you know that some burgers from takeaways don’t decompose even after they’ve been left out in the open for months? Yes months! What you should be eating is the freshest and healthiest food you can find and avoiding processed food altogether if possible.
The next step in eating healthily is understanding the psychology of how supermarkets are laid out and they all tend to have this in common. Have you ever noticed that one of the first things you smell when you walk into any supermarket is freshly baked bread or if not then the bread and pastry products are right in front of you? All the healthy food is then kept right behind this but because your sense of smell has already been switched on by all tasty treats you just smelled. This means your buying decisions are now controlled by appetite rather than common sense so all the fruit and vegetables you planned on buying are now being replaced by pasta sauces, cooked meats and all other kinds of fatty and very tasty foods that your body is craving. You’ve just been food hijacked.
Next you have to pay attention to how the shelves are arranged and where the supermarket puts the health food choices when it comes to tinned goods. The items they want you to buy, the heavily processed ones, are at the top of the shelf and the healthier items are stacked underneath. And even then you need to be extremely careful about what you pick up and put in your basket or cart. There is more and more pressure on supermarkets and brand name foods to list the nutritional content on a label for each item. Just remember that just because something says it’s “organic” or “natural” doesn’t mean that the ingredients are – some of it is just clever marketing. A perfect example of this is with fruit juices that are made from concentrate and not from the actual fruit – real apple juice is a cloudy green-ish color for example whereas most apple juices you buy are almost transparent and look a bit more like cider.
The real key to having the healthiest possible diet is to cut out processed foods entirely or as much as you can. This means nothing from a tin or a packet. You use fresh meats, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit and wholegrain bread, rice and pasta. You can even go as far as making your own pasta sauces if you want using fresh tomatoes and herbs and you are just going to love how amazing this tastes and it’s so easy you’ll be kicking yourself for not doing it sooner!
A great way to get started is to write out a shopping list before you go shopping and just buy the healthy food you’ve listed – otherwise you run the risk of impulse buying those fat-riddled cookies that are just screaming “Buy me. Eat me. I’m SO tasty!” at you every time you pass them.
The benefits of eating healthily are far too immense not to take advantage of.
