Some months back I decided that I was done with foods with preservatives. I was watching one of those YouTube ads… (you know, the ones that are RIDICULOUSLY long)…. Well, in the ad the researcher was explaining why we can’t lose weight. She talked about how preservatives in our food are intended to keep the food from naturally breaking down, so when we consume foods full of preservatives our bodies can’t break them down. They just kinda hang out in there.
We can see how if we continue to consume foods that are full of preservatives that eventually we’re gonna run out of room and start to expand. Granted I’m no scientist, but that just kinda makes sense to me.
So I decided I was gonna stop shopping in the aisles. I was going to eat REAL food. I knew it was a commitment, but I was tired of not knowing what was in my food. So for months I stayed out of the aisles. No pasta, no canned beans, no pasta sauce, no cereal, bread only every once in a while.
I was surprised when friends and family began to ask me if I was losing weight. I wasn’t really doing anything intense, no dieting, not really working out… But then I thought about it. The only change I made was to stop eating preservatives. I got the idea from a friend who started to meal prep to save money. She was super committed to not going to restaurants. She was making all her food pretty much from scratch. She began to lose weight. Like really lose weight. And she wasn’t working out….
Anywho, so little by little, I started to slip back into shopping for convenience. It’s easier to buy chips than make chips. It’s easier to buy juice than lose half of my fruit in the hopper on my juicer. (Can’t quite afford the good masticating one so centrifugal it is. Well, it was, until I lost and entire juicy mango into the hopper. 😩)
But I digress.
Slowly, stress eating and fatigue won over my intentions to stay out the aisles. Couple that with not working out and I soon began to notice my body doing things it never did before. (Is my belly really lapping over my pants? Dafuq?) Only change was my drifting back into processed foods.
So this morning I get a message from my dear friend telling me that she watched an interview where she found out that the to bacco industry after taking a hit from the decline in use of their products took on a new industry to get their profits back. Guess which industry. Yep. Processed foods.
It made perfect sense to me that finding a new area where they could reach the masses would ensure their continued profits, through habit forming additives. I mean, clearly people’s health is not a consideration considering their previous business.
Since I am a person who likes to see it for myself, and not take another person’s word for it (not my friend, but who she heard it from), I immediately looked it up.
I did a quick Google search. This (above) is the screenshot of what I found. Disgusting right?
Guess I’m back to staying out the aisles. Done with people playing with my life.
Things aren’t set up for us to win. They’re set up for profits. If you’ve been struggling to lose weight, or have just been gaining like wild and can’t figure out why, Google how much exercise it takes to burn off your favorite go-to snack. Consider how much of your grocery shopping takes place in the produce, meat, and seafood areas versus the aisles and shelves.
Much of the food labeled as better for us is deceptive. We wonder why we’re not losing when we’re choosing “lite,” and “low sodium” options. They’re on the shelves. They’re full of preservatives….
A quick side story on preservatives. It used to bother me that when I bought foods that are meant to last (Ex. fruit cups) my daughter would only eat them that first week. I’d be looking at the expiration thinking, “Girl, this doesn’t expire for another three years. Don’t waste this good food.” Well, one day I was having one of those moments, and I thought about what I had just said to myself.
How did I become okay with the idea of consuming fruit that wouldn’t decompose for YEARS?! How did it become okay to put that in my body? I realized that she was right. We shouldn’t be consuming items that have been altered to the point that they can sit on shelves, be covered in dust, and still have not expired. It’s unnatural.
My daughter also won’t eat sandwiches from a very popular restaurant because she did an experiment when she was little (that I didn’t know about ’til years later). She received a fish fillet sandwich and didn’t eat it. She put it to the side and let it sit there for months! Gross? Maybe. But it was more telling than gross. It. Never. Molded. Looked exactly the same. And from that point forward she never ate them again.
I’m sure you’ve found a fry under the seats in the car before and noticed that it didn’t have a bit of mold. But we’re so conditioned to not think about that stuff, we just let it go…. Our kids are not fully conditioned like us. They still think for themselves. I learn from my daughter all the time. She’s a thinker. She makes sense. She’s very wise….
Anywho… I’m so glad my friend shared with me what she heard in that interview. It sent me searching for answers this morning. And it only took one roughly crafted inquiry to find out she was right…. (see image)
The information is out there, but the thought to look for it isn’t even on our minds, because we trust that “they” wouldn’t be able to sell it if it wasn’t okay for consumption. Well, maybe that’s the standard. Maybe “it’s okay for consumption” is the requirement. That’s not the same is healthy, good for you, won’t cause illness…. We have to do our own research to find foods meet that standard.
And I’ve definitely been in the space of trying to eat healthier foods before and then found out those items were covered in pesticides, or that they were not fully vegan, or etc. It can all feel so disempowering, but we don’t have to feel that way. Giving in to that discouragement will cause us to feel it’s pointless to try to take better care of ourselves.
Instead, we can just do what we can to control what we can. We can make small changes. We can reduce consumption over time. We can gradually eliminate certain kinds of products from our diet. We can select times of day when we don’t eat certain foods. We can learn how to properly wash our produce. We can learn where to buy our meat and seafood in its most natural state. We can buy a head of lettuce and a carrot, instead of a bag of salad. We can buy wild caught seafood, when possible instead of farm raised. We can learn one recipe at a time for making our meals from scratch. We can make small choices (one meal a week) or bigger choices (meal prep everything). We can do what we can do….
Anywho… I just thought I’d share. It was a bit jarring at first, but I’m glad I know because now I can make different choices, and get back out those aisles.
Blessings!
Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist
UPDATE: I just posted a podcast about this above.
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