Is your food just food or...?

How often do you actually check the labels of foods you buy, including all the little extra words you cannot pronounce? Reality is, shopping would take hours if we did.

What is in our food that we unknowingly "indulge in" everyday?

Actually, you might not want to read this issue to be honest with you. This stuff always makes me depressed and then angry. Why can we not just have "clean" food on our plate? Basic great healthy good tasting food. Why is that so hard?

Well the good news is, we can. But it does mean staying away from packaged food, and maybe even learn how to cook. AND you do need to keep up the job of mindful attention when choosing your food.

So to help you with that - please read on.

Food Additives are legal, but do you want them?

At least about 3000 additives can be used legally in our foods here in the States. They are used for food preservation, coloring, texture, increasing taste and so on.

Avoiding processed and packaged food is of course the easiest way to omit these unwanted "extras". That not only means choosing whole foods, but also staying mindful of the pesticides and fertilizers used in non-organic foods. And yes, it is a bother to have to pay attention to all of this, I agree. Unfortunately, with our overconsumption comes production and with that comes all the extras to keep yield up for the food manufacturers. That is also a reason why supporting local farmers is a really good idea, and insisting on organic produce as much as possible.

Good first step is to know how to read the nutrition label.

Be mindful of serving sizes. Most packaged food contains more than one serving size but the label only gives you the nutritional information for 1 serving. Often we think one muffin or one bagel is one serving - it is not. A regular sized muffin is actually 2 servings and most bagels are more that 2 servings (and that is without the topping).

The Ingredients.

Ingredients are listed in descending order. What there is most of comes first. Often that also means that all the "little additions" come towards the end of the label and many will have stopped reading by then. Ingredients that make up less than 2 percent can be listed in any order after the heading "contains less than 2% of the following."

Other ingredients called "incidental additives" do not even have to be listed on labels. They are the substances that come into the food from the packaging and "ingredients of other ingredients" that are present at "insignificant levels" and have no "technical or functional effect." Yes it is scary.

Natural and artificial flavors are also often grouped together under one name. The manufacturers do not have to disclose what "artificial flavors" really means unless it is a food containing a "major food allergen". These would be such as milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat, and the food ingredients containing the proteins derived from these.

Even worse, the statement "All Natural" has no nutritional meaning. They can indeed include unnatural ingredients. It is actually not required by law not to in order to be called all natural. How messed up is that?

When it is "free from".

It actually might just mean that there is less than 0.5 grams per serving because the food manufacturer may round down to zero. Not to mention that you might eat more than one serving of something, as well as the fact that it is adding up over time too.

This is the same issue with transfat and partially hydrogenated oil. If it is less than 0.5 in one serving it is still listed as having no transfat. Yes they are deceiving us.

Not to mention, what is in a name?

Food manufacturers can use other names on a label so that we cannot recognize what is really in there. For example, if you are trying to avoid MSG, you need to look for all of the following terms, as they all contain MSG:

Autolyzed yeast, Calcium caseinate, Gelatin, Glutamate, Glutamic acid, Hydrolyzed protein, Monopotassium glutamate, Monosodium glutamate, Sodium caseinate, Textured protein, Yeast extract, Yeast food, Yeast Nutrient.

Not to mention - Misleading Ingredient Claims.

Sometimes foods that claim to include healthy ingredients actually do not or only have them in small amounts. For example, the strawberry yogurt with no strawberries. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) recently asked the FDA to "immediately stop misleading food labels." Another misguidance are so-called wholegrain products that are mostly made from regular white flour with just very little wholegrain, and additionally they often contain high-fructose corn syrup as well, which makes them rather unhealhty instead.

"Food manufacturers are shamelessly tricking consumers who are trying to eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains," said CSPI director of legal affairs Bruce Silverglade. "Too many processed foods contain only token amounts of the healthful ingredients highlighted on labels and are typically loaded with fats, refined sugars, refined flour, and salt, in various combinations."