I’ve always disliked the idea of studying labels in the grocery store, pulling out my calculator to determine ratios before putting things in my cart. But so many additives are being put into our food these days, we have to become more label-savvy in order to make sure that we’re not harming our bodies while we’re trying to help them.
I’ve recently been put on a low-sodium diet, and I’ve been amazed at the sheer amount of sodium that is found in most of our foods. Even foods that aren’t blatantly salty contain quite a bit of sodium—one brand of cottage cheese I picked up (and then put back down) at the store the other night contained 660 mg. of sodium per serving. That’s 66% of my entire day’s allotment of sodium in one little dish, and I didn’t even know it because I never looked.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to eat without being conscious of what we’re putting into our bodies. We need to read the labels and make sure that we’re not filling our bodies with an overabundance of chemicals and artificial ingredients. We must be aware of the sugar, salt, fat, and protein contents of our foods. How are we going to take good care of our bodies if we don’t examine the kinds of fuel we put into them?
It’s so easy to enter a store and go into autopilot mode. I know I tend to shop with my stomach rather than my brain – I pick up things that look good, rather than things that are good for me. But that hasn’t gotten me where I want to be.
Now, I’m not saying we should all keep little notebooks and jot down the nutrition information of everything we eat, but I am saying that we need to be more aware. We should look at the labels and determine just what we’re ingesting. We should check out the nutrition information guides at the restaurants where we eat and choose the foods that will be the most beneficial and the least harmful. We can’t go solely on taste and expect to serve our bodies what they need – the most delicious-tasting foods in the world are, for the most part, the most unhealthy. (It’s so unfair!)
We are only given one body to last an entire lifetime. While science is making incredible strides and we can now have certain organs transplanted, there’s no such thing as an entire-body transplant. If we want to have a long, productive life, we must learn to fuel our bodies properly and give them the things they need. We all know what happens when you put the wrong kind of gas in your car—the same things happen to our bodies. Let’s make a commitment to ourselves that we’re going to become more savvy and aware, and eat more consciously.
Related Blogs:
Let’s Talk Calories: The Bagel
Not Reading Labels Cost Me Money