Do you fall for this food label catch phrase?

There is many a catch phrase on food packaging. One of the most common is ‘no artificial ingredients’ or ‘additive free’.

Do not be fooled. This does not mean you can trust the product and skip reading the ingredients. Exhibit A is a product that had a big “No artificial ingredients or preservatives” on the front. It doesn’t matter what the brand was. It’s much more important for us to apply knowledge regardless of the brand rather than memorising a ‘safe brands list’ – this way we don’t get duped when a formulation changes or we’re in a different country.

It’s this sort of thing that is still catching well meaning people thinking they’re making a better choice. The best choice you can make is to make a batch of biscuits at home per week and not buy them. To make biscuits last a year of shelf life and be transported around the globe, it’s impossible to make it in a whole food approach.

The brand spiel also told a romantic story of “70 years of baking tradition” – Half of these ingredients didn’t exist 70 years ago. Stop buying the BS. The romance is in your kitchen or at your farmer’s market stall. It isn’t in commercial baking.

 

 

• This is 37% sugar
• It almost certainly contains genetically modified soy bean ingredients (always a giveaway when they don’t state “GM FREE” on their label and the product is made from local and imported ingredients)
• It contains refined wheat and brown sugar (which is just white sugar with molasses added back in. Go figure)
• It contains ‘vegetable fat’ twice, once mentioning palm oil and the second time which whether they’re covering up for using palm oil or inflammatory sunflower / canola oils high in omega 6.
• It contains ‘natural flavour’ which can mean MSG, beaver bottoms (I kid you not) or beetles treated in ammonia. Talk about abusing the term ‘natural’, right?
• 120 – ‘natural’ but cocchineal can cause anaphylaxis, asthma or dermatitis in some people, according the Chemical Maze (app)

Thank goodness the sugar is raw though, right? 😉

So if you’ve realised you’ve been falling for this sort of stuff up until now, please do not panic. I used to buy a very strange chocolate snack pack dessert simply because it said ‘fat free’ – everyone has stuff they’re not proud of.

Key is to ditch the guilt and get excited for what you’re going to change tomorrow!

My book can help big time. Read more here.

Or, try a couple of delicious REAL biscuit / cookie recipes on the blog like these vanilla shortbreads or these nourishing almond biscuits. For mega decadence, melt a little dark chocolate and dip the biscuits in once baked and cool in the fridge for half chocolate coated bikkies. Now we are talking.

Bye bye weirdo packets of weirdness trying to romance us with white lies.

 

They’re not welcome in our real food world and we’re smarter than a few catch phrases, aren’t we? Feel free to share any revelations or experiences you’ve had with this and please remember – there is always someone on day 1 of their real food journey. Welcome them. Don’t make them feel silly.

Feel free to share this, pin it or tweet it. So many people still get caught, thinking they’re doing the right thing and it’s not fair!

Real Treats. Happy Bodies.