Sunday

Shopping Healthy | 3 Important Rules

Hello, my name is Caleb Metzler. Not sure how you found this blog, but I'm glad you're here! My hopes are that this information proves helpful to anyone who's interested in taking control of their personal health by providing a few basic principles for shopping healthy and navigating the confusing world of healthy eating. I don't claim to be anything more than a health-conscious individual who's been able to filter the misinformation, false advertising and marketing tactics that are aimed at convincing the "sheep", excuse me, I mean "general public" into believing what they should be buying and eating. Below are some very simple principles for shopping healthy that will help you combat this misinformation. These principles may sound "too easy to actually do much," but I assure the skeptic and encourage the hopeful, health-minded person who stumbled onto my blog, that learning and implementing these 3 principles around shopping healthy into their life WILL be an important piece to the puzzle of overall health maintenance. PS.. If my sarcasm annoys you, try to ignore it and only pull the important parts of each rule.. ENJOY!

PRINCIPLE #1. BECOME A LABEL READER! (Yes, I understand, it may take you more time to shop if you don't currently do this, but you will only need to do this on foods which you haven't applied these 3 simple rules to.) This principle comes stems from the common phrase which has been thrown around for decades, "You Are What You Eat." So, wouldn't it make sense to at least be aware of the actual ingredients that are going into that tasty looking frozen meal, packaged "you name it", healthy "you name it"... you get the picture? Keep in mind Rule #1, sub-clause, revision 27 (if you read to the bottom, you'll get used to my sarchasm): THE ORDER OF INGREDIENTS MATTER! THEY ARE WRITTEN IN THE ORDER OF AMOUNTS THAT THE FOOD PRODUCT CONTAINS. ie. (Most tasty, kid favorite cereals, will have our country favorite, "SUGAR" as usually the 2nd or 3rd ingredient..that's why we love them!) *When you've made the decision to master this important rule to shopping healthy and to good health, then apply principle #2

PRINCIPLE #2. LESS INGREDIENTS IS BETTER! If the food you are purchasing is simple, ie (a frozen bean rice and cheese burrito, which by the way is a great whole food meal and snack, pre workout, post workout).. then the label should be nothing more than the ingredients for the tortilla, which if its a white flour tortilla, (buy only if whole wheat isn't an option) it will contain the FDA's string of "enriched" ingredients added to the flour (only neccessary because of the "factory processing" of the pure wheat kernal to make flour, strips the natural vitamins and minerals away), whole beans and cheese. Any extra chemicals, preservatives, "natural flavoring", or words that belong in a college chemistry class are unneccessary! (Rule #2, sub-clause, revision #8.. Important Note: IF YOU'RE SEEING THESE UNNECCESARY INGREDIENTS ON EVERYTHING YOU PICK UP, TRY SHOPPING AT SMALLER, "HEALTH CONCISOUS STORES", OR IN THE NEW "NATURAL" ISLE's (usually right in the middle of the store) THAT ARE SHOWING UP IN CHAIN-TYPE GROCERY STORES ALL OVER THESE DAYS *After mastering the concepts of Principle's #1 and #2 for shopping healthy and you have taken the entrance exam to the final class of your Phd program, "Health Shopping 202: The Final Principle" and passed, you may proceed to the final principle below.

PRINCIPLE #3. BE AWARE OF THE SERVING SIZE! This is the one that gets the hasty, amateur, rookie, healthy conscious, weekend aerobic go-er, yoga fest, cleansing, bike riding, flash in the pan health nut (sorry for the run on..but you know the type). Don't be the "sucker" that marketing companies love and fall for the "total calories" for the Chicken / Veggie / Pita Wrap which is labeled at 250 calories. Spend the extra 1.5 seconds of time on that area of the label and direct your reading to the "serving per container" section. At this point and time, this exercise may require you to pull from your 3rd grade multiplication skills. For example purposes, our Chicken / Veggie / Pita Wrap is most likely sliced in half and the serving size is probably a 1/2, which is 25o calories. Here the servings-per-container would of course be 2 (unless of course if you were buying this from a foo-foo coffee / smoothie shop where is might be cut in thirds just for looks.) So, this tasty gem of a lunch sandwich would of course be 500 calories, not 250 (of course not counting the "special sauce" to dip it in.) OK..OK..enough sarcasm, but do you see how easily it is to be deceived? This rule is very helpful for the "father of weight gain/loss," TOTAL CALORIES, but also for the other American favorites, like Sugar, Fat, and the long lost favorite who's making a comeback, Sodium.

Well there you have it. You've just read 3 of the most basic, yet powerful principles to shopping healthy. Now its time to implement them! *Feel free to print this, forward it, copy it, plagiarize me.. please.. I insist!

A comment below would be appreciated, and I'd love to hear any "label reading war stories" from those who decide to take this to heart and implement it.

Caleb.

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