How to Decide if a Food Product is Good For You

In your local grocery store, you can find a myriad of food products that allow you to just heat and eat. There is no real cooking involved; dump the bag into a skillet or a crock pot, heat for the required length of time and serve. But is this type of food good for you and your family? Yes, it’s convenient, but you're often doing yourself a disservice by using it.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• An ability to read food labels
• An understanding of the RDA (recommended daily allowances) of different vitamins, nutrients, fats and proteins

1. Download the latest RDI sheets from the FDA (see link below). Nowadays, the FDA is using the term RDI instead of RDA.
2. Pay special attention to the fats and sodium levels recommended for each person, by age and gender, in your family.
3. Learn to read food labels in the store. Many processed foods contain a whole days worth of sodium in a single serving. Avoid these foods.
4. Read the list of ingredients. Avoid foods that the main ingredients are sugars, i.e., corn syrup, fructose, etc.
5. Try reading the ingredients out loud (or even a whisper). If you can’t pronounce most of them, then you are looking at a product made with chemicals, not food.

Tips & Warnings

• Learning to read a food label is not hard and should provide you with the knowledge to know if a prepackaged food is healthy and nutritious or not.
• Just because a product is termed "all natural" or "all organic" doesn’t mean that it is not laden with sugar or sodium. Check those numbers.
• The occasional use of a quick prepackaged meal won’t hurt, but using them for every meal is not a good idea.