A guide to helping you make good food choices
When making choices about food to eat or cook with it really helps to put them in categories of good, better, and best. When I first read 100 Days of Real Food I was converted immediately to eating real food. However, I didn’t know if my food counted as real or how far off from real it was. I wanted Lisa Leake to tell me what she bought and what she’d approve of. Since I am now teaching you about real food, I’m offering you a “good, better, best for food” table to help you make good choices about ingredients and food you eat.
Real Food
First off, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, read my What is Real Food? post. As a refresher, real food is anything that is picked, hunted, gathered, milked or caught. Any fruit, vegetable, bean, nut, legume, animal, and dairy product. It only has one ingredient. It is what it is.
If you make something from scratch use ingredients that are as close to nature as possible. Eggs that came from a local farm, for example, or at least are free ranged as opposed to factory farmed eggs. Whole wheat flour instead of refined white flour. Stay away from boxed mixes that don’t have real food ingredients in them.
If you buy packaged foods, check the label and try to get things that only have 5 ingredients or less. This goes for condiments, sauces, gravies, soups, cereals, crackers, bread, etc. If it is something like “mulit-grain” it’s ok that there are more than 5 ingredients because several of them should be different grains. Just make sure everything is a real food and not preservatives and other unrecognizable junk.
Good, Better, Best Table for ingredients you’d use in cooking
Good, Better, Best Table for packaged food
What about when you want to buy a packaged food like tortillas or pasta? Here’s a table I made of good, better, best for packaged food to buy.
I don’t eat any foods in the “good” list, but stick with “better” and “best.” I encourage you to do the same. You will feel so alive. After all real foods are alive whereas processed food is dead. Check out my Benefits of Real Food post for more amazing benefits.
I hope this helps you make the best choices for the best health! Let me know if you have any questions!
PS Check out these Real Food books to learn more about real food and convince you to ditch processed food forever!