There is a multi-billion-dollar food industry with teams of experts designing food to appeal to its “users” and “heavy users.” Those are, in fact, the terms they use to describe consumers of their addictive products (Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hook Us, Micheal Moss). These experts have scientifically determined the perfect combination of sugar, salt, and fat, and have coined the term “bliss point” to ensure you can never get enough of their snacks or processed foods. So, take a deep breath and take a moment to appreciate that you didn’t get to the place where you are now alone. We have been manipulated by this powerful industry for decades, from a young age, starting when governments began allowing these companies to advertise directly to children—right around the time most of us were growing up. These messages are everywhere, and they start us young with fun-colored and shaped boxed “cereal” that is nothing more than a toxic combination of sugar, salt, food coloring, and highly processed grains. Right from the get-go, we grew up developing a higher and higher tolerance for these fabricated foods. Artificial sweeteners, dyes, and highly processed grains and oils are the basis of ingredients in most processed foods.
Let it go.
Once you get off these products, it is difficult to go back. You will become re-sensitized, and your taste buds will tell you that processed food is not food. It is not nutritious, it is not delicious, and in fact, it is making us sick. After years of enduring messages from the processed food industry, we are waking up. Processed food is not real food. Real food is what is found in its natural state, which spoils quickly, that is, the products found in an organic or local farmer’s market and on the outskirts of the supermarket.
Eat things that contain the sun’s energy.
We want to eat things that are ALIVE. We want to eat things that contain the sun’s energy. We want to base our diet on plants. We do not want “foods” that can remain unchanged on a store’s shelves for months. What allows it to stay the same for months on end is precisely what you want to avoid in your life. This type of food is full of sugar, gluten, sodium, chemicals, highly processed oils, and, in short, lacks nutrients. Processed food is designed to be in the supermarket and then in your home for a long time without spoiling. But how does this huge and powerful industry manage to create food that won’t spoil? The answer is simple and devastating: they remove the natural nutrients and the living characteristics of each ingredient so that not even insects are interested because, at the end of the process, there are no real nutrients for them to feed on. So, take some direction from nature, which tells us that it is not worth eating crackers on a regular basis that can sit unopened in a cupboard for a year without expiring.
I know you are maybe thinking, “I already know this! I eat relatively healthy.” Maybe you do. However, it is worth becoming well-versed in how the food industry works to design food that is addictive and that sells. They are aware that there is a growing population that is ‘health conscious’ and therefore are attracted to labels that say “low-calorie,” “zero fat,” “GMO-free,” “all-natural,” “organic,” “farm fresh,” etc. Bottom line: the best strategy in the long run is to stop purchasing anything from the aisles in the center of the supermarket.
#ADDTOCART
Try to fill your cart with things that don’t have an ingredient list but are, in fact, a whole food ingredient. This is a big change for most of us, so you need to be realistic and patient with yourself. Manage your expectations so that you don’t feel like you are failing. Make small changes, little by little over a year, for example.
“You want to eat food that is ALIVE because that is how you are going to feel ALIVE.”
Megan Swan
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