I’m going to start by saying that I have an extreme dislike for the phrase “nutrition rules.” Let’s be real, none of us follow perfect diets and “rules” indicate that you need to follow them all the time. Nope. Not my style. Doing my best (and sometimes that means a stomach full of ice cream) beats being perfect (but miserable) every time.

Despite all that, I am going to share with you what I consider my number one “nutrition rule.” Or guideline, you could say.

Eat foods made with the fewest ingredients possible.

Ideally fruits. And lots of vegetables. Because you guessed it, they tend to be only one ingredient. Avoid refined flour, added sugar and chemically preserved foods. As Michael Pollan suggests in his book In Defense of Foods, start shopping the outer rim of your grocery store. There you will find the fresh stuff. That’s the stuff our ancestors would recognize as food. Not the puffy cereal that is sent through a “gun puffer,” exploded, left void of all nutrients and then re-dyed, re-fortified with nutrients and re-flavored (with some extra sugar on top).

Labels can be misleading (not to mention extremely confusing). The scary truth is that the FDA has very loose control over what actually goes into our food and how it is represented to the public. And besides the new update on the ingredient label here in the U.S. (if you haven’t heard about it, you can read more about it here), as consumers we have to learn how to navigate this space by ourselves, for ourselves, because the regulatory administrations are light-years behind systematically, and are scrambling to catch up.

Let’s take a modest Subway sandwich as an example of a food seemingly simple, but deceptive.

People opt for Subway because they believe it is just as healthy as a sandwich they make at home, only more convenient. I know I did this exact same thing not more than a year ago. But unfortunately, convenience has a cost. Because… here comes the whopper (nope, not that burger)… Did you know that your Subway Sweet Onion Teriyaki sandwich has 105 ingredients? 105 ingredients! That is crazy! I read this little factoid in Pandora’s Lunchbox (written by Melanie Warner, it comes highly recommended) and I was blown away. A third of those ingredients are substances added to preserve, stabilize and “enhance” the foods.

Ummm… I am fine with my homemade sandwich and banana, thanks.

This shit is scary. But honestly, by using the above number one rule (ahem, guideline) you can minimize a lot of that added BS. Simplicity is key. And honestly, I find that a small bowl of juicy, tart raspberries beat that raspberry pop-tart any day.

xoxo,

Zoe Lauryn

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