Buy Simple
An easy way to look at foods is they should have the fewest ingredients possible, look at the label and if you don’t know what the ingredients are, put it back. A good rule of thumb is products should have 10 ingredients or less.
Seed Oils & Cooking Oils
Seed oils include canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, safflower oil as the most common types and are very present in most of our diets and processed foods. They’re production includes the use of heating oils to high levels and using chemicals to make them liquid and clear. Seed oils have been suggested to be linked to causing damage to our mitochondria (our cells), obesity, diabetes and inflammation, and are a fairly recent introduction into the human diet.
Healthy replacements for seed oils include tallow, butter, coconut oil and avocado oil for cooking and cold pressed olive oil
Avoid Glyphosate
Glyphosate is a pesticide used across north America on the majority of our corn and wheat supply. Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide sold under the common trade name Roundup®. Since the late 1970s the use of glyphosate-based herbicides has increased approximately 100-fold (by volume), although some estimates put it at a 300-fold increase. It is found in foods like pastas, cereals, breads, crackers, corn products and many others.
Glyphosate has been labelled as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization’. The chemical is now the subject of several lawsuits brought by people who have developed cancer after years of using Roundup®. There is also some suggestion that the chemical is an endocrine disruptor in humans, meaning that it adversely affects hormone balance
Focusing on organic grains and oats helps limit our exposure to glyphosate and its damaging effects. Glyphosate is also becoming popular in all non-organic produce.
Avoid Dyes and Colors
Food dyes and colorings enhance the look of our food, especially for foods targeted at children, with no benefit to its nutrition. Many are found in foods not expected by consumers such as canned goods, sauces, cereals, chips and even fruit and vegetables. Food dyes have been found to be linked to cancer, ADHD and behaviour issues such as mood swings and irritability. Some of the most common food dyes include:
Instead of artificial food dyes, healthy brands are now focused on using more natural sources of colouring such as beet and carrot juice, spirulina, turmeric and others.
Conclusion
There are a couple “danger” ingredients we note above which are best to be fully avoided. While living in today’s world it is hard to fully avoid these from our bodies, a strong effort to avoid them in our day to day consumption allows our bodies to effectively deal with smaller levels of exposure naturally.
