[00:01.1]
Hi, welcome to the Own Your Health podcast, I'm Cyndi Lynne and I can't wait to help you step into your health power. Today's episode is from a client of mine who had probably, I'll say, the courage to ask a question that many of us have probably had on our minds at one time or another as we're planning menus, as we're figuring out what to eat, as we're figuring out what's healthy, and that is "what the heck is real food anyways"?
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I'm sure you've seen the recommendation. I have. You see it all over. I've said it. Just eat real food and you're already halfway there. So I think it's no secret that our food industry has gotten pretty complicated.
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There's a lot of super high processed foods out there. A lot of combination of foods that are shelf stable forever and body stable never. They're just not a really good idea. And they're sold as foods, a lot of them sold as prepackaged meals, as convenience foods, and a lot of them sold as healthy foods.
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So I'm going to talk about some of the myths that we've picked up over time, dispel a few, and maybe these were ideas that really worked at one point. But the way food and food products have evolved, these myths are no longer serving us very well.
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So the first one is shop on the outside of the grocery store and avoid the inside. The idea being that that's where you're refrigerated your produce, your meat, your dairy, and typically frozen around the edges of the grocery store. So if you shop the edges, you can be much healthier.
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Unfortunately, that has changed a lot. It's still true that the produce and the meat and some of the dairy that you'll find around the perimeter of the grocery store is going to be healthier than what you find on the inside.
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But having lived in the refrigerator case does not guarantee that that food is going to be healthy at all. And if you walk down the dairy aisle, you'll see it. You'll see all kinds of food products, things that are labeled cheese food or non dairy this, non dairy you know, non dairy creamer.
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Well, if it's not cream, what is it? One of the favorite ones I saw the other day was fat free half and half. If it's not half and half, which is a fat product by definition, then what is it?
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If it's milk with the fat removed, that's skim milk. But the fat free half and half in fact started its life as a dairy product at one point, but when you looked at the ingredients, it's completely morphed into something that unfortunately, your body wouldn't even recognize.
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And that's fundamentally the problem with these super, super processed foods, that our body doesn't recognize what they are, doesn't know what to do with them, and very often fights with them. So the perimeter of the grocery store is not nearly as safe as it used to be.
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Unfortunately, even organic produce can come in contact with chemicals that don't have to be disclosed. So what does that mean for that particular shopping, then? It means that you have to be aware, that you have to stay on your toes even if you're shopping the perimeter of the store.
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Reading, looking at what produce you get, what produce you can peel, looking at the fish counter, is it farmed fish? Is it wild caught fish? That's going to be very, what, what it's fed or what it eats is going to be very different.
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And then how your body responds to it is going to be different as well. Is it grass fed and finished? Is it grass fed grain finished? Is it grain fed beef? Where does the pork come from? Where does the chicken come from?
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These kinds of questions are things that you're going to have to ask yourself, and you're going to have to pay attention to what it is that you are buying. So the other, the other, the second myth that we'll talk about here today is that of, well, just buy single ingredients.
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Well, there was a time that that was probably fairly safe when the stores carried food. But right now, grocery stores carry loads and loads, literally tons of food products. So even single ingredients, if, for example, you're going to have corn oil.
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Corn oil is a single ingredient, and it's one ingredient on the label corn oil. But in fact, turning that corn into oil requires a tremendous number of chemicals and processes, and it's really tough for your body to deal with any of that.
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So single ingredients aren't the magic bullet that they once were. On the other hand, multiple ingredients don't necessarily mean that something's bad. You can buy very good canned beans that already have spices in them. And if you can actually read and identify what each of the spices are, then that multiple ingredient product can be just as healthy as if you were to make it at home.
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The next myth that I want to talk about, the one that I've seen more and more lately, is just eat what your grandparents ate, or if your grandmother didn't recognize it, don't eat it. And I think that comes up short on a couple of reasons.
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I think maybe 20 years ago that was a lot more valid. But I know even at my age, my grandmother was, was one of the, you know, big users of the oleomargarine it was called at the time.
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And I think when it was first introduced it was white and it actually came with a little color packet because artificial or substitute margarines couldn't be sold colored. I'm not quite old enough to remember that. I remember hearing about that.
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But oleo and margarine was already, when my grandmother was cooking, was already touted as the healthier choice. So we might have to go back one more generation in order to say if your grandmother didn't recognize it, you probably don't want to eat it.
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The other flaw with this myth or this recommendation is that we have access to so many more cultures and types of food than my grandparents did in the Midwest. And it would be a shame to lose all of those flavors and all of those spices and all of those wonderful traditions simply because it wasn't something that was around or available to our grandparents.
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So I certainly encourage people to look at a wide variety of cuisines. Again, making sure you're eating actual food. So what the heck is real food? We already talked about, it's not necessarily what we thought it was with those three myths.
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There is real food to be found in the perimeter of the grocery store. You do have to read the labels and you do have to be savvy and know that even though salmon for example, is one ingredient. Salmon, if it's farm raised, it's probably corn fed, amongst other things.
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And that changes the actual fish, that changes the composition of the fish, the fats in the fish, it makes them much higher in omega 6s which tend to be pro inflammatory and they are necessary. They're part of the Omega 369 profile.
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But our diets tend to be out of balance in that we tend to already get too much inflammatory omega 6 oils. So wild fish is going to be a much better choice, for example, for omega 3s, whereas farm fish is going to be typically higher in omega 6s.
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And that's just one example where even a single ingredient, salmon fresh is going to have a very different nutrition profile. It's a very different food depending on what it ate. The same is true with our meat.
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So and, and the same is true with how our vegetables are grown. So it's not what our vegetables eat, it's what the plants that grow our vegetables eat and consume. All of that makes a difference. So it is going back into the generations of our food in terms of what it is consuming, what makes it up, and we need to be aware of that.
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So again, perimeter of the grocery store, still a good place to start. You still need to be really aware so that you're having real food that is going to nourish your body and not add to the toxic burden. The same perimeter, single ingredients.
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And again, what would your, what would your grandparents recognize? Probably a lot less than what you come in contact with on a day to day basis. And a lot of it is super healthy. It is real food. So I want you to think about rather than just what it is.
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If this a good food, is this a bad food? Rather than trying to memorize all kinds of things, I want to have you really engage in the critical thinking part. Okay, where did this come from?
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How long? So if you, if you pick up a piece of produce, where did it come from? How long was it on trucks or in containers getting here? What was done to it to make sure that could actually last the whole trip? What coatings are on it?
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Is it something that you peel? And you don't have to worry as much about a coating that would stay on the outside. These critical questions that you ask yourself are going to make you a much better consumer and they're going to end up with real food in your cart. Real food, nutritious food that your body actually recognizes and can process.
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If you'd like some help sorting through this, you too can be brave and ask, what the hell is real food? What are we supposed to be eating now? All of the messages are so confusing. I'd be happy to help you out. Go ahead, click a time with me below and we can chat through the particular grocery store struggles you might be having.
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So until next week, let's go out and own it.
