The devil in the details

Healthy eating is scary!  The last thing that you would think of is that healthy eating is scary, it should be the exact opposite, shouldn't it?  The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater is an amusing read on how delving in to healthy eating can be quite terrifying.  Not that I'm not guilty of most of that myself.  I eat low carb, no/little wheat, no grain, no soy (due to my thyroid), if anything it does make eating more difficult, but tasty.  Though I did find myself looking longingly at a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

But sometimes you're eating healthy, sometimes you aren't really eating healthy.  People fall into false the false belief that eating 'organic' means eating healthy, and that simply isn't true.  While 100% Organic fods must be 99.6% fully organic (205.302   Calculating the percentage of organically produced ingredients.),

organic and 'natural' foods can still container filler ingredients of wheat, soy, syrups, artificial colorings.

205.301   Product composition.
(b) Products sold, labeled, or represented as “organic.” A raw or processed agricultural product sold, labeled, or represented as “organic” must contain (by weight or fluid volume, excluding water and salt) not less than 95 percent organically produced raw or processed agricultural products. Any remaining product ingredients must be organically produced, unless not commercially available in organic form, or must be nonagricultural substances or nonorganically produced agricultural products produced consistent with the National List in subpart G of this part. If labeled as organically produced, such product must be labeled pursuant to § 205.303.

And just in case you think it's just the Organic foods that can hide things, did you know that some salts have sugar added to them?  Because that's just what I need with my salt!  125g serving (little more than half a cup) of Ragu spaghetti sauce has 6 grams of sugar, with it being the 4th ingredient, falling behind soybean oil, and salt.  Compare that to an Oreo cookie that has 5 grams of sugar.  And let's not assume I'm just picking on sugar, as there are hidden ingredients such as Yellow #5, aka Tartrazine, which has been banned in the UK, and which the FDA regulates the creation of, because there is a potential link to hyperactivity in children, and a insensitivity, and is used in products such as One a Day Women's 50+/Active Metabolism, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

What it comes down to is, that ulultimately the best food is fresh food you cook, where you know what all the ingredients are.  Bypassing that (as time and convenience get to most of us), read the labels always, my mom always told me this, but it was the nutrition not the ingredients she was talking about.  Understand what the items are in the food you're eating, if anything else, it may just encourage you to pick up that banana, instead of that bag of chips.