Do you read labels?

October 26th, 2009 by admin

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.” ~ Ayn Rand

In the Ultimate Healthy Lifestyle we are constantly aware of the importance of eating healthy and nutritious foods. We are often reminded to read the labels on the food products we buy.

I recently experienced an incident that reminded me how important it is to read labels even on so called health foods.

I drink almond or soy mild instead of cow’s milk. I ran out of milk and didn’t want to go to the store where I buy most of my food because it is quite a distance from my home. Instead I went to the local market because I had noticed that they had begun to carry soy milk.

The store had several brands and I picked one that said soy milk. The others did not say milk, they said drink. I assumed that it was a good product even though I was not familiar with the brand.

A couple of days later I had a bowl of cereal with my soy milk. The cereal tasted very good but was a little sweet. I use chocolate milk and no sweetener. It was the first time I have eaten that particular cereal so thought nothing of it.

However, the next time I had cereal I thought about how sweet it was and decided to check the label of the milk because I had read the label on the cereal and there was nothing in it to cause it to be so sweet. I checked the list of ingredients on the milk and did I get a shock.

Listed as an ingredient was Splenda, which is an artificial sweetener. Well that accounted for the sweetness. I do not consume splenda or any other artificial sweetener, such as aspartame or NutraSweet.

There is a lot of controversy over these sweeteners and I choose not to consume them knowingly. I say knowingly because in this case I did not know. I tossed the rest of the milk down the drain.

But this is a perfect example of why it is so important to read labels. There is so much deception in how our food is packaged and marketed. There are many food out there that masquerade as healthy foods. For the most part these foods do contain some healthy ingredients, but they slip in one or more ingredients that are maybe not so good for us.

This reminds me of a bakery where I used to buy our bread. They used only organic flour and only honey or molasses as a sweetener. The prices were quite a bit more than bread at the market but I considered it worth it. Have you ever read the list of ingredients on a loaf of regular supermarket bread? If not, the next time you are in the store do so. You will probably be surprised.

well the prices kept going up until I was paying 6 dollars or more for a loaf of bread and this was some years ago when the prices were a lot less. Then the bakery decided to franchise. They opened stores in other parts of the country.

Shortly after that we began noticing a difference in the taste of the bread. It seemed to be sweeter for one thing. I checked the list of ingredients, which I had not done for quite some time. One of the ingredients was corn syrup. I am sure this was to save money but it is not so healthy an addition to the bread.

I decided that I was no longer willing to pay premium dollar for bread that no longer met the standards we were looking for. I decided that I could bake our own bread. I went to the library, got a book on bread baking and have been baking our bread every since. I am absolutely sure of what is in that bread.

TODAY’S TIP: Always read the labels on products you are not familiar with and every once in a while read the labels on foods that you consume regularly. You never know when they will add something or take something out.

Are you sure the foods you consume are completely healthy?