Reading 101—What the Fine Print Really Means

There are many food products out there that create the illusion they aren’t so bad, when in fact they are just as highly processed as the next option. No matter what the front of the package says always read the ingredient labels!

Wheat Thins

On the front of the package these crackers boast that they are 100% whole grain with a “Garden Valley Veggie” flavor, but when you turn them over you see many offending additives including four different artificial dyes, soybean oil (which is refined and likely GMO), monosodium glutamate (MSG), and other questionable ingredients most people would not cook with at home.

Real Food Alternative: It’s always best to buy packaged foods plain—like crackers, oatmeal, yogurt, etc.—and flavor them yourself! Our favorite store-bought whole-grain crackers are Ak-Mak brand, and we also sometimes make easy cheesy crackers at home.

Only the food industry could pass off this product as “coffee creamer” when it contains no actual cream or milk. According to the ingredients, this is basically water, sugar, and partially hydrogenated soybean or cottonseed oil (i.e. transfat that is likely GMO).

Real Food Alternative: How about just using real cream and sugar (or honey or maple syrup) and a touch of pure vanilla extract the next time you need to add a little something to your coffee? Or you could make your own homemade flavored coffee creamers with these recipes from Deliciously Organic.

This “lemonade” product is rather disturbing. Right on the front Crystal Light says this is “Natural Lemonade,” yet it doesn’t even contain a single drop of lemon juice! Plus both its sweetener (aspartame) and yellow tint (yellow 5) are completely artificial. There are currently no regulations associated with the word “natural” on a food package, so don’t let this terminology fool you.

Real Food Alternative: Unfortunately, even if you make lemonade from scratch at home it calls for quite a bit of sugar. You are better off just squeezing a little fresh lemon juice into your water or saving homemade lemonade for an extra special occasion!

What’s so smart about imitation butter that’s artificially flavored and made with refined oils (that are likely GMO)?

Real Food Alternative: Just go for REAL butter (preferably organic, from grass-fed cows). If you are allergic to dairy, try coconut oil or olive oil instead, depending on the application. If you are just intolerant of dairy try clarified butter (a.k.a. ghee). Since the milk solids have been boiled off, leaving the clarified fat behind, it’s much easier to digest.

I couldn’t believe it when I looked at the back of this taco seasoning packet and saw “Maltodextrin” as the first item on the ingredient list (meaning what it contains the most of). Maltodextrin is a filler found in highly processed foods and is usually made from (GMO) corn. I don’t know about you, but it’s not an ingredient I cook with at home. So then why would it be the main ingredient in something as simple as taco seasoning?

Real Food Alternative: Throw together a big batch of homemade taco seasoning by combining 1 tablespoon of chili powder and 1 ½ teaspoons each of cumin, oregano, and salt. Add some red pepper to taste then store in an airtight container. I use 2 ½ teaspoons of taco seasoning per 1 pound of ground meat. Also check out my taco salad recipe for a different take on tacos!

These are just waffles, right? Wrong—they contain much more than a normal person would use to make waffles at home, including yellow 5 & 6 (both artificial dyes), artificial flavor and other questionable ingredients. And most of the time you see added vitamins and minerals on the label this is actually bad—not good!—because it means the original ingredients have been stripped of nutrition. As a result, food scientists attempt to add back in what they think is missing. But attempting to reconstruct nature is a hard job, and according to Melanie Warner (author of Pandora’s Lunchbox), these vitamins are “not the same thing as getting vitamins from real food, which includes a whole host of other beneficial components, some of which may be necessary for those vitamins to work most effectively in our bodies.”

Real Food Alternative: Stop messing around with this highly processed stuff and make (and freeze) your own waffles from whole-food ingredients…totally worth the $25 investment for a waffle maker! Check out our favorite whole-wheat waffle recipe that our family uses all the time.

And last, but certainly not least: I was truly disturbed when I realized that a Lunchable as simple as a PB&J with fresh fruit could contain 85—85!!—different ingredients! If you were to make this for lunch at home, you would not use the majority of what’s on this list, including: Hydrogenated oil (i.e. trans-fat), high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavor, BHT, and propylene glycol, among many other disturbing items on this long list of ingredients.

Real Food Alterative: This one should be a no-brainer, but just make your own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at home using natural ingredients (without unnecessary additives), real whole-wheat bread (made from only 5 or 6 whole ingredients), and fresh organic fruit.

Yogurt seems like a pretty innocent snack until you take a closer look (at the ingredient list) and see that these “Strawberry Milkshake” and “Banana Split” flavored yogurt tubes don’t actually contain any strawberries or bananas at all! The flavors come from refined sugar and artificial flavors. And did you know that the artificial dyes this yogurt contains are derived from petroleum and require a warning label in some countries stating they “have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children?”

Real Food Alternative: Why not make your own yogurt tubes by filling reusable silicone molds with homemade smoothies, plain organic yogurt (that you flavor yourself), or even applesauce? My kids love the homemade versions!