Marketing Fallacies in the Grocery Store?!
Most recently it’s been quite noticeable the growing number of individuals reconsidering the significance of food in their overall well-being. While traditionally overlooked by many, more and more people are doing their own research and analyzing studies—both historical and modern. The consensus is forming that food— type (whole/processed-macro/micronutrients), quality, and sourcing—is undeniably crucial in the pursuit of a restored, fulfilling, and healthy life. This mindset change is AMAZING!
But what foods are healthy? What should we be placing in the cart? What should we be feeding our bodies?
Also Quick Mention….
Feeling anxiety about grocery shopping is 100% a REAL THING!
If feeling overwhelmed while grocery shopping by the sea of options, the major sensory overload, possible dietary restrictions, and confusion of what foods truly nourish your body sounds familiar…You're not alone in this. Many share the sentiment of frustration and uncertainty while navigating aisles. But fear not, for this blog was created just for you! Dive in to find info, guidance, tips, and hopefully a sense of clarity to make your grocery trips a little less overwhelming.
What foods should we be eating to nourish our bodies??
While this is controversial topic, and I 100% believe there is no cookie cutter/one-size fits all diet out there; I do definitely believe there are foods that align with our DNA and support our bodies, and on the contrary foods/ingredients everyone should omit from their diet!
When I get a new client, I promote an animal based diet (adjusted differently for every client) - yes!, But most of the time I’m first an educator helping people open their eyes to how amazing the body is and what it can do if we support it properly! This process typically begins with transitioning away from the American Standard Diet - essentials to remove the following from their lifestyle (both diet and mindset)!
The Essentials to Eliminate from your grocery cart & your life!
Ultra Processed Foods
Processed/Refined Sugars
Seed Oils (& Hydrogenated Oils)
Artificial Colorings
The Fat-Phobic Mindset
The Demonizing Salt Mindset
Artificial Flavors
“Sugar Free” Promoted Drinks
“Enriched” Flours
Gluten
*You’ll notice 5 & 6 are not talked about below, and that’s because in this blog I wanted to focus primarily on specific foods and their ingredients, that are promoted with bright colored packaging, false advertising, and marketing ploys, that truly are not fit for human consumption! But don’t worry I’ll be posting a separate blog addressing the importance of shifting your mindset and the realizing the importance of fat/salt in the diet.
Ultra Processed Foods
Processed Foods: A Modern Day Conundrum…
In today's fast-paced world, convenience often wins over nutritional value. Processed foods, undergoing multiple complex processes like extrusion, molding, and milling, line our grocery store shelves. These products are crafted with tons of added ingredients, aimed at enhancing flavor, texture, and extending shelf life. However, the high level of manipulation involved in their production raises concerns about their impact on health and well-being.
Ultra processed foods bear little resemblance to their ingredients’ original/natural forms, their genetic composition twisted into unrecognizable substances by industrial processes. They brim with refined sugars, polyunsaturated fats, trans fats, excessive amounts of refined salt, and low quality refined grains. They endure many intricate treatments like hydrogenation and moulding. Teeming with a cocktail of additives - dyes, stabilizers, flavor enhancers, emulsifiers (gums), preservatives, anti-caking agents, and defoaming agents. Ingesting these "foods" amounts to flooding the body with foreign substances, that disrupt its balance and its biological everyday functions.
Some ingredients in these packaged processed foods like artificial flavors/dyes, and certain sugar replacements are literally 100% lab made and have no real nutritional value or real genetic composition that the body recognizes!
Most Common Ultra Processed Foods:
Breakfast Cereals
Protein Bars/Balls → There are exceptions yes!, but for the most part many contain ultra processed fibers and proteins, multiple refined sugars, soy, hydrogenated oils, fillers or “natural flavors”, and non-caloric sweeteners. * To list a few brands; Kind Protein, Clif, Quest, Pure Protein, Special K protein, One Bars, etc.
Plant Based Milks → These are loaded with emulsifiers, hydrogenated oils, vegetable gums, flavors, added synthetic or artificial vitamins/minerals, etc. *Again there are exceptions that aren’t ultra processed, if you must avoid dairy, just check for a minimal ingredient lists - but AVOID soy milk!
Breads → Exceptions for clean sourdough breads! however * many packaged breads lining grocery store shelves contain modified starches (altered or manipulated through industrial processes), emulsifiers, hydrogenated oils, vegetable gums, bleached and “enriched” flours, etc.
Yogurt → Exceptions exist, yes! Majority however * contain: additives like thickeners, refined sugars, artificial flavors, non-caloric sweeteners, etc. (With so much added sugars for taste and other garbage ingredients, is it at this point really a healthy food choice?)
Processed Meats → Many packaged cold meats are loaded with modified starches, high levels of nitrates, emulsifiers, thickeners, added fibers, and often they’re low quality sourcing (Cattle treated with & fed antibiotics, rBST hormone, grain fed etc.)
Margarine (& Other Non-Dairy Spreads) → Made of hydrogenated oils, multiple additives including emulsifiers, colorings or dyes, etc.
Meal Bases/Sauces → Pre-prepared sauces for pasta dishes or stir fries often contain processed flavor enhancers, thickening agents, dyes, preservatives for long shelf life, and often are stored in plastic containers.
Soft Drinks → Coca-cola, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Mnt Dew, Sprite, etc.
Energy Drinks
Candy
Ice Cream → Ben & Jerry’s, Blue Bunny, Blue Bell, Great Value brands, etc. *there are clean options! Homemade animal-based options are amazing!
Packaged Soups/Mac n’ Cheese/Ramen Noodles → Contain artificial flavors, flavor enhancers, refined salts, dyes, thickening agents, emulsifiers, preservatives, etc.
Chicken Nuggets → Often made from low quality chicken containing antibiotics, hormones, and are processed with other ingredients like emulsifiers, hydrogenated oils, flavor enhancers, added fibers, etc. Breading often contains sugars, modified starches, bleached & enriched flour, etc. Look up Tyson chicken nuggets or even Chic-fil-A chicken nugget ingredients you’ll be appalled.
Packaged French Fries → Typically the ingredient list is quite extensive beyond the simple cut potato; many packaged fries contain hydrogenated vegetable oils, artificial colorings, enriched wheat flour, chemicals to promote color retention, etc!
Honestly there are too many things to list - but a rule to go by while shopping, if it has a laundry list of ingredients, or ones you don’t know or can’t pronounce it’s most likely garbage!
2. Refined Sugars
Natural occurring sugars, found in carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables or grains (plants), even honey are known as unrefined sugars. Unrefined sugars are untouched by man, naturally existing as God intended. They provide quick energy! When we eat or drink anything containing sugar it’s converted into glucose and delivered to cells as a fuel source.
Refined sugars, on the other hand, undergo a refinement process - where sugar loses its nutrients and becomes more concentrated. The result is a seriously sweet addictive substance that is overly energy-dense, (over-taxing and very stressful on blood sugar regulating organs/tissues/pathways) with a high calorie count and no fiber or corresponding gain in nutritional value!
Why do refined sugars overtax the blood sugar regulation system??
Refined sugar is metabolized rapidly, which causes a sudden rise (or ‘spike’) of glucose and in turn insulin levels within the bloodstream. Insulin, a hormone, is responsible for shuttling glucose into cells keeping blood sugar levels in a livable range (keeping you alive!). Overconsumption of refined sugars is linked with a slew of negative health effects - including insulin resistance (imagine your suitcase is stuffed, it closes but you can tell it’s most likely carrying more than what it’s rated for or intended too. But you stumble upon a few more items that you really can’t travel without, so you open the suitcase up and place them inside. Now when you go to close it you start feeling some serious resistance - you may even have to sit on your suitcase to compress it enough and force it to close! - this is very similar to whats going on with your cells, they’re filled past capacity with glucose and so your body produces more insulin aka force, but after a while cells lose sensitivity to insulin) which is a precursor of metabolic syndrome, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, etc. It’s a very serious matter!
3. Linoleic Acid, Seed Oils, & Hydrogenated Oils
When it comes to linoleic acid, found in abundance in seed oils, canola oil, vegetable oils, corn, soybean, cotton seed and so on, the mainstream media gets it twisted. These are not healthy fats and they didn’t even exist until the 20th century thanks to a complex extraction process that involves purification, refinement, and chemical alterations. Making them far from natural, wholesome sources the media claims they are.
These oils are highly inflammatory.
Seed oils after consumption are literally broken down into toxic aldehyde products that result in broken fat cells with impaired adipogenesis → the process of white fat cells aka adipocytes developing and becoming apart of adipose tissue (also called fat tissue, is a connective tissue that extends throughout the entire body; under your skin, called - subcutaneous fat, between internal organs, called - visceral fat, & even in the inner cavities of your bones, called - bone marrow adipose tissue) and can’t divide properly → forcing them to expand, and become distended and extremely inflamed. This causes increased levels of oxidative stress and free fatty acids in the bloodstream and an overall diabetic physiology.
Broken fat cells are at the center of insulin resistance; precursor to diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and overall metabolic dysfunction physiology.
What oil names should you look out for and avoid if listed on packaging labels??
Soybean
Cottonseed
Safflower
Rice Bran
Rapeseed
Peanut
Sesame seed
Vegetable Oils
Corn
Canola
Grapeseed
Sunflower oils
*Olive oil is better than all those, still more linoleic acid than ideal for the body.
*Avocado oil isn’t my first choice for oil to cook with either as it commonly poor quality or sourcing, oxidized, or even mixed with vegetable oils and is not pure.
Great options of fat to eat/cook with:
Tallow
Ghee
Butter
I’m trying too keep this blog short and information packed! But to learn more on this topic and the dangers of seed oils I highly recommend checking out the following resources:
The History & Dangers of Seed Oils
The $100 Billion Dollar Ingredient making your Food Toxic
4. Artificial Colorings
Most people know artificial colorings are far from natural and are actually quite harmful to the body. Many sports/energy drink and other food processed labels read, Red Dye 40, and artificial flavors, but what let’s be honest what even is that?? - what are these mystery ingredients?
Red Dye 40 is the most consumed dye so let’s start there.
“The synthetic food dye, Red 40, causes DNA damage, causes colonic inflammation, and impacts the microbiome in mice.”
Now before you say, “well I’m not a mouse, this won’t affect me.” Remember if its causing DNA damage to a mouse which shares 97.5% DNA as us humans, it’s very likely affecting us too.
Here’s a snippet from an abstract of a study I found very interesting below:
Analysis of Synthetic Food Dyes and Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer
The rise in early-onset colorectal cancer (EOCRC) amongst young individuals over the last four decades has prompted a closer examination of potential contributing factors. Recent studies are shedding light on the impact of consuming ultra-processed foods and eating pro-inflammatory diets are definitely in relation with the increasing diagnoses of colorectal cancer amongst the young demographic.
One significant aspect that has come under scrutiny is the use of synthetic food colors, particularly the widespread inclusion of Allura Red AC (Red 40) in many ultra-processed foods. The surge in synthetic food dye usage aligns with the concerning trend of EOCRC.
Additionally the appeal of ultra-processed foods to children further deepens the concern regarding the influence of synthetic food dyes on colorectal cancer development. As young individuals continue to be exposed to these harmful additives through their (and their parents’) dietary choices, there is a growing urgency to explore the implications of synthetic food dyes, such as Allura Red AC, on CRC.
If you’d like to read more on this study I linked it here!
Aside from early on set colorectal cancer, food dyes especially Blue 1, Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 are linked to causing hypersensitivity, cancer, asthma, and can cause allergic reactions. Some research specifically links Yellow 5 to aspirin allergies and asthma.
In 2008, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) based in Washington, DC, pursued a petition urging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to consider banning artificial food dyes due to their suspected connection to behavioral issues in children. This call to action was truly concerned about the impact these dyes have on children's well-being. Two years later, the CSPI released a comprehensive report titled "Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks" that delved deeper into the topic. The report highlighted that the nine artificial dyes permitted in the United States may pose risks such as carcinogenic properties, hypersensitivity reactions, behavioral challenges, etc. Notably, a prevalent number of food items including breakfast cereals, candy, snacks, beverages, vitamins, and other various children-targeted products contain petroleum-derived artificial dyes.
Little not so fun fact: Daily consumption since 1955 of these dyes has increased 5 fold, Red 40, Yellow 5 & 6 alone make up 90% of dyes used in food today in the U.S. *more to read here
There is a widespread presence of these potentially harmful substances in the typical daily diet here’s some examples of commonly consumed foods/beverages/OTC products:
(they’re not just in our food but our laundry detergents, hand soaps, shampoos, cosmetic products, etc.)
Gatorade
Jello
Whipped Frostings
Dill Pickles (Mt. Olive brand for example)*not all!
Ibuprofen
Flinstone Vitamin D gummies
Lunchables
Fruit Roll ups
Fiber One Bars
Children’s Metrin
Crystal Light Lemonade (powder mix)
Doritos
Quakers Oat’s Oatmeal
Yoplait yogurt
Red Bull/Monster
Dark Sodas (even certain light ones too)
The list goes on and on!
7. Artificial Flavors
Artificial flavors are 100% lab produced. Often when we see “natural flavors” on the ingredient list we assume thats better, but often even that can’t be trusted. The science of flavoring has gotten so advanced the chemical structure make up of these artificial flavors match their natural counterparts almost exactly, and so they’re allowed to write 100% natural, instead of artificial on the packaging! Both no matter what word is written before “flavor” on the packaging, are created in laboratories. Both are added to foods to make them enticing and yes, even addictive! However artificial flavors are petroleum based (yes, similar to artificial dyes).
And the natural flavors are processed in a lab. First extracted from their natural source, say an African Violet whose leaf offers a beautiful greeness and enhances watermelon flavor. The extracts are then used as a base that are diluted with water, glycerin, or ethanol. Say they want a tropical flavor they’ll add pineapple, maybe or citrus notes and blend… even though this concoction was processed/blended in a lab it’s still considered “natural.”
Chemicals used to enhance both artificial and “natural” flavors have a slew of side effects. Children who are still developing their body’s, brain’s, immune system’s, etc. are quite susceptible to adverse side effects - impacting how they feel, think, and act.
Artificial flavorings to every age demographic affect our brains, tricking the reward center of the brain to activate and hormones like dopamine to be released. These flavor enhancements confuse our own physiology - causing cravings, binge eating, and even addiction. It completely changes our pallets! (this can be reversed though I promise, your taste in time will reset). Overeating doesn’t just come from pallet alteration, but our brains literally tell us to eat more because we aren’t receiving the nutrients that we need to biologically function. So we feel empty or hungry even after eating a bag of chips, some cookies, and a couple candy bars - and we eat another bite, and another, and another.
These cravings replace the real ones our bodies have when we are deficient of certain macro or micronutrients (ie. minerals and vitamins). Like when you’re thirsty instead of reaching for a water with electrolytes you grab a soda that dehydrates you even more - but it satisfies a false craving… or maybe you want something citrusy like an orange because your body needs vitamin C, but instead you eat some tropical pack flavored gummy bears and your body receives no needed nutrients.
Artificial flavors are fillers in your food and they alter your brain! They don’t belong in your body or in your grocery cart - so why not just remove this stressor?
8. “Sugar Free” Promoted Drinks (aka artificial sweeteners)
While sugar-free promoted drinks may sound like a healthier alternative, the reality is often different. These beverages, touted as guilt-free options, are typically anything but sugar or guilt-free. The sweetness that mimics sugar in these drinks comes from artificial sweeteners like aspartame, cyclamates, saccharin, acesulfame-k, or sucralose. Despite the facade of being sugar-free, these types of drinks often are filled with artificial ingredients, which sere as a clever marketing ploy but don’t really align with the health-conscious image they project. It prompts us to question what we're truly consuming when we reach for that seemingly innocent sugar-free beverage.
Cleveland Clinic posted an article in 2023 saying,
“Really, both sugar and artificial sweeteners are a problem for your health,” says functional medicine specialist Melissa Young, MD. “But if we’re comparing what’s worse, artificial sweeteners are far worse than sugar.”
Take the new promoted Coke Zero for instance, it’s sweetened by a blend of aspartame and acesulfame potassium (or Ace-K), doesn’t exactly sound natural does it? Well let’s break this concoction down…
For those of you wondering aspartame is an artificial non-saccharide (or a non-carbohydrate, basically an umbrella term for compounds that don’t contain sugar and are not considered carbohydrates) sweeter that’s 200x sweeter than sucrose - it’s commonly found in processed foods like yogurts and gelatin desserts, but is mainly found in drinks like diet soda or sugar free promoted sodas, juices, iced teas, flavored sparkling water beverages, and even powdered drink mixes or liquid droppers. It’s also popularly found in chewing gums and breath mints!
Studies examining the effects of aspartame on human health have revealed harmful impacts on weight management, kidney function, and potentially cause mood swings. Furthermore, there are concerns about links to specific cancers, toxic liver disease, and risks for preterm delivery. Read more about about aspartame here!
Acesulfame potassium (or Ace-K), is also an artificial, calorie free, (aka non-nutrient containing) sweetener thats 200x sweeter than sucrose. This chemical product, found in many drinks, cannot be broken down by the human body so it’s forced to circulate in the bloodstream until excreted through the urine - Scary if you ask me!!! Research is more limited on this specific sweetener, but one study I found interesting, in particular, preformed on mice concluded; Ace-K caused weight gain and shifts in the gut microbiome both of which potentially can cause obesity and chronic inflammation. Other studies showed increase risk of cancer and troubled pregnancies.
Ace-K, Acesulfame K, or Acesulfame potassium which ever name they use on the packaging isn’t just found in sugar free promoted drinks but also:
Frozen desserts
Candies
Baked goods
Chewing gum
Sauces
Yogurt
Instead of looking for sugar free drinks, look for the label no sugar added! That’s typically your best bet!
Some healthier options for sodas include:
And when looking for juices it’s always best to buy organic with no added sugars!
9. Enriched Flours
This term is often used on labelings for breads, pastas, pastries, etc. It may sound healthy like they’re enriching your food with lots of added nutrients, but sadly that’s not the case!
Enriched flours, derived from refined grains, undergo a process that involves removing the germ and bran from the wheat grain, resulting in a smoother texture for the flour. However, this removal also strips the grains of vital vitamins and nutrients. Back in the 1930s, a deficiency in essential nutrients among the US population prompted a closer look at dietary habits, leading to the fortification of refined flour with added nutrients to combat these deficiencies. Processing removes 20 essential nutrients, but only 5 nutrients- Iron, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and folic acid, are added back in to enriched wheat flour. While this fortification may seem beneficial, a significant concern arises from how the body digests enriched wheat flour, prompting further examination of its impact on overall health.
Global Healing says it well,
“Consuming enriched flour products is like eating pure sugar and popping a multivitamin.”
The issue with removing the germ and bran creating an enriched white flour vs. whole wheat, is now you’re only consuming what’s called the endosperm - the starchy component of the wheat berry (whole wheat means you’re receiving the whole wheat berry; the germ, bran, and endosperm). When we consume these refined flours that no longer are whole, our bodies break them down quickly and easily sure - but as pure sugar. This causes some pretty major blood sugar spikes, resulting in a dump of insulin into the blood stream to pack all the sugar into our cells, and lower blood sugar level.
This doesn’t sound too bad, but continue to induce this type of stress on your blood sugar regulation system and you’re looking at weight gain and insulin resistance. And when insulin resistance kicks in and your body no longer produces enough insulin to keep blood sugar levels down in proper range, this leads to blood vessel damage, increased levels of oxidative stress, depleted antioxidant activity, increased risk of diabetes, obesity, metabolic dysfunction, and high blood pressure with other associated cardiovascular health concerns. (read more here!)
Least to say, this stuff isn’t natural and its been processed down to a pro-inflammatory and pro-blood sugar dysregulation, nutrient absent flour that really isn’t worth eating!
10. Gluten
This one can get pretty controversial and if I didn’t live in the United States I may not even take this stance… but I do live in the U.S. and chances are if you’re reading this, you do too, so let’s dive in!!
On a molecular level, gluten (proteins found in wheat, barley, and rye) contain a higher content of immunoreactive protein in today’s wheat varieties compared to past. Why you may ask? For starters industrialization which lead to agricultual revolution and mass production of foods and harmful growing methods - like spraying our food with pesticides, herbicides glyphosate, genetically mutating foods/strains of seeds, and polluting our fertilization/soil which gives plants their nutrients!!
Gluten is composed of two main types of proteins, gliadins, and glutenins, both of which are lectins* - carbohydrate binding proteins that are well known to open tight junctions in the gut aka leaky gut*!
*Lectins: proteins found in plant based foods that bind to carbohydrates. They’re also refered to as antinutrients, because they’re compounds that interfere with your body’s ability to properly digest food and absorb the nutrients in it! (nutrients that we need to preform literally every biological function!)
* Leaky gut: Caused by junctions of the gut opening, or becoming permeable. This allows food to seep directly into our blood stream - resulting in an immune system reaction. This results in food sensitivities, other immune issues (especially with chronic flare ups - it’s quite draining/fatiguing on the immune system), and a damaged gut microbiome - in example overgrowth of fungus, dysbiosis, or yeast - things like that are overgrowing in this moist, inflamed climate. It also can get easier for pathogens and bacteria to lodge themselves in the tissue and continually be a presence there. I could keep going… but this topic is a rabbit hole!
Gluten specifically causes issues with the gut, due to one of those proteins I mentioned earlier, Gliadin!
Gliadin triggers a protein in the body called zonulin. Zonulin regulates the intercellular tight junctions in various tissues and organs of our body’s. But when triggered by gliadin, zonulin quite literally tells our gut to become permeable!
Eliminating gluten is a good idea to promote a healthy gut, gut healing, resolve food sensitivities or chronic flare ups, lower lectin content in your diet, and to remove poor quality grains laced with toxic chemicals!
What Should We Put In The Cart???
Well if you’ve made it this far reading, you’re probably beginning to wonder what should I be putting in the shopping cart. And for everyone, my answer may slightly change, this is something I prefer to discuss with clients individually. But speaking in generalities the best things we can feed ourselves that aligns with our DNA and is nutrient dense are grass fed organ meats, grass fed red meat (ruminative animals), pasture raised eggs, grass fed raw milk (or A2 if you can’t obtain it), raw/grass fed butter, grass fed tallow, raw/grass fed kefir, raw/grass fed cheese, fruits - and of course always look for the best sourcing/quality if able!!
