Do's & Don'ts of the Grocery Store

In becoming the healthiest version of "me" to date, ingredients lists have become my best friend in the grocery store. That being said, I'm sharing with you the biggest tips I've learned to properly fuel my body free of sneaky added chemicals, artificial ingredients, or hidden sugars.

1. Ingredients: Less Is More

The biggest, most influential habit I've learned in my personal health journey is that when it comes to ingredients lists - less is more. Put it this way, if any given item has more than let's say 7-10 ingredients it goes right back on the shelf. Chances are, if you've got a bag of chips with 20 ingredients, a handful of those will sound like a foreign language to basically everyone...sodium guanylate, tertiary butyl hydroquinone (TBHQ for short), and tartrazine to name a few. These are what I like to call foods that aren't really food - food imposters, if you will. For example, take the famed Cool Ranch Doritos. This popular munchie is made up of 34 ingredients, three of which are artificial colorings, and a whopping

that hide under the guise of cheddar cheese.

34 ingredients in a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Photograph by Dwight Eschliman, from Ingredients: A Visual Exploration of 75 Additives & 25 Food Products (Regan Arts, September 2015)

Doesn't that blue dye look a little bit scary to you?! Not only do we know very little about the impact that these chemically manufactured ingredients have on our health in the long term, but they are also purposefully made with the intention of hooking us. Essentially hijacking our taste buds to make these "frankenfoods" irresistible, while at the same time, making those foods more natural to human biology like whole grains and sustainably raised meats taste bland. This topic is the premise of the book Salt, Sugar, and Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss which revolutionized this idea for me. If you're interested in diving deeper into this subject, I highly suggest checking this resource out.

"You can walk through the grocery store and, while the brightly colored packaging and empty promises are still mesmerizing, you can see the products for what they are" - Michael Moss

2. Whole Foods Only

No I'm not talking about the grocery store more commonly referred to as "Whole Paycheck". Stemming off of the last tip, when it comes to ingredients lists, I now purchase only those that consist of entirely whole food ingredients. If I can't easily pronounce it, or find the ingredient on grocery shelves itself, I don't buy it. This is as simple as high fructose corn syrup versus table sugar. You won't be able to find this extra-refined, blood sugar spiking material in a bottle at Wegmans, and there's a reason for that. It's an industrially processed ingredient, one not natural for consumption on its own as it is extremely unpalatable...so why eat it alongside artificial colorings and sweeteners that make up a box of Fruit Loops then? While these highly marketable products may taste damn good, I promise you, a few weeks of eating simply whole food ingredients will have you questioning how you persisted off of such artificially-crafted foods in the first place. One bite of a PopTart after following a whole foods way of eating will taste extremely fake sweet. So, when I'm shopping for soups, for example, instead of reaching for the classic Campbell's Tomato Soup who's label looks a little something like this - calcium caseinate, flavoring, ascorbic acid (to retain color) - I opt for one that only contains real foods. Think vegetable/chicken broth, tomatoes, and onion. If I can't find an alternative in store that is free of all of these artificial, fake chemicals, I make it on my own! Not only does this allow me to know exactly where the ingredients making up my meal came from, but it instills in me a sense of pride and self-confidence knowing I can nourish my body in a way that aligns with my health.

3. Reject Refinement

Corn, as most of us eat it today. Photograph by Dwight Eschliman, from Ingredients (Regan Arts, September 2015)

Although many of the core ingredients making up the majority of the most commonly consumed foods are technically natural (wheat, corn, soy), these ingredients are most often preceded by the word "refined". A refined food is one that no longer contains all of its original nutrients. You will not be able to find said ingredient in a refined state in nature, anywhere. In terms of grains like wheat and corn, refinement removes the bran and germ of the grain which otherwise allow our bodies to slowly absorb and release their sugars into our bloodstreams over an extended period of time. Without them, refined grains spike our blood sugars quickly and drastically, which, if continued over a prolonged period of time, often leads to insulin resistance (a precursor of diabetes). It's not just grains that receive this treatment. Many of the popular oils in processed foods like canola, sunflower, and safflower seed oils are refined to, which we'll discuss down below. Along with the removal of their outer coverings, refinement of seeds in the making of oils also gets rid of many of the antioxidants that you would receive if you consumed them in their natural state. Simply put, I do not spend my money on any product that touts the word "refined". Why give your dollar to a product that can spike your blood sugar, leaving you with mood swings, fatigue, and a whole host of other side effects.

4. Skip the Rancid Oils

This just in - the majority of the oils used to cook with in restaurants and found in our processed food products, are spoiled, otherwise known as rancid. Oils such as soybean, sunflower, safflower, canola, corn, and cottonseed (the list goes on) go through a refining process that makes them more susceptible to natural spoiling, and looks a little something like this:

1. Neutralization

2. Degumming

3. Bleaching

4. Deodorization

5. Winterization

This process is implemented to increase their shelf life and create a characteristic "oil" color, flavor, and aroma - but what they don't advertise, is that the solvent used in many of these steps is the neurotoxin hexane. Then, when these unsaturated oils high in inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids come into contact with light (aka sit on kitchen counters, hit the sunlight during the transportation process, etc.) or are heated (cooking!!!), they become chemically unstable, oxidize, and spoil. The oxidation products that result, when consumed in an overabundance, have been found to increases the risk of inflammation, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and autoimmune diseases (Simopoulos, 2002).

"Increased consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils, which are highly inflammatory to the body and unstable, has subsequently increased inflammatory diseases." - Dr. Mark Hyman

So how do these widely used oils affect our health? One monumental study published in the journal Anticancer Research discovered that consumption of corn oils rich in omega-6 unsaturated fatty acids "could be involved not only in tumor promotion, but initiation as well" (Perjési et al., 2002). The epigenetic phenomenon was reiterated just earlier this year by UC Riverside researchers who found that soybean oil, the most widely used rancid cooking oil in our processed food products, induces obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, and fatty liver in animal studies (Deol et al., 2020). Going deeper to examine these effects on a genetic level, the same scientists revealed that consumption of this oil effectively suppressed the expression of the gene responsible for producing oxytocin, otherwise known as the "love hormone". Not only do these effects most likely translate to human biology, but they clearly impact that of animals - including the conventionally farmed ones we consume on a daily basis here in America. Noting that these animals, factory-farmed cows, pigs, chickens, etc., are often fed diets high in grains and are then slaughtered and prepared using rancid oils in restaurants, a lot of us are getting a double dose of these detrimental genetic side effects.

So, while one bag of chips coated in soybean oil here and there won't kill you, be mindful of your prolonged consumption. These oils are hiding everywhere - Earth Balance Vegan Butter (heck, it's essentially a solidified combination of the top rancid oils!!), Nature Valley "100% Natural" granola bars, even green superfood hydration tablets that are marketed as health foods (I'm calling you out Amazing Greens!).

Resources:

1. Deol, P., Kozlova, E., Valdez, M., Ho, C., Yang, E.-W., Richardson, H., Gonzalez, G., Truong, E., Reid, J., Valdez, J., Deans, J. R., Martinez-Lomeli, J., Evans, J. R., Jiang, T., Sladek, F. M., & Curras-Collazo, M. C. (2020). Dysregulation of Hypothalamic Gene Expression and the Oxytocinergic System by Soybean Oil Diets in Male Mice. Endocrinology, bqz044. https://doi.org/10.1210/endocr/bqz044

2. Eschliman, Dwight, Steve Ettlinger. Ingredients: A visual Exploration of 75 Additives and 25 Food Products. NY: Regan Arts, 2015.

3. Moss, M. (2013). Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the food giants hooked us. New York: Random House.

4. Perjési, P., Pintér, Z., Gyöngyi, Z., & Ember, I. (2002). Effect of rancid corn oil on some onco/suppressor gene expressions in vivo. A short-term study. Anticancer Research, 22(1A), 225–230.

5. Simopoulos, A. P. (2002). The importance of the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 essential fatty acids. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & Pharmacotherapie, 56(8), 365–379. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0753-3322(02)00253-6