CHANGE #18

Don’t Eat More Than Three Servings of Foods with More Than Five Ingredients

SIMPLY PUT… Look at the back ingredient label of every packaged food you eat and drink. Limit yourself to three servings daily of foods or beverages that have more than five ingredients in them.

An actual conversation with my mom

ME: Mom, your whole cupboard here is full of boxes of processed food. Look at these ingredients! There’s gotta be twenty different words I can’t pronounce here. Seriously, read this box.

MOM: Alkali, diglycerides, sodi… bicar… lychsomething…?

ME: OK, forget it.

MOM: But it’s all low-fat… Does that count?

ME: No!! They’re low-fat because of all the junk in them!

MOM: Well, how many ingredients do you want us to eat?

ME: Maybe three.

MOM: That’s easy. Your father and I never have more than three at a time.

ME: Ingredients, Mom! Not servings!!

MOM: Oh.

Most people looking to eat healthier are so obsessed with the calorie, fat, and carb content in foods that they never bother to look at all their ingredients. And when they do, it’s almost a joke to try and pronounce some of the things listed.

Sodium erythorbate?

Disodium guanylate?

Carrageenan?

Three words you’d think you’d find in a biochemistry class are actually a preservative, a flavor enhancer, and a fat replacer. (A fat replacer??? Did you even know there’s actually such a thing?)

So ask yourself this: If you had a hard time pronouncing any of these three ingredients (or any ingredients in the foods you normally eat), why would you want to put them in your body? Think about that the next time you grab a box, bag, bowl, or bite of anything with a laundry list of ingredients. If you can’t say them, why would you want to eat them?

And a lot of those ingredients aren’t there to make the food healthier. Instead, they’re typically preservatives, sweeteners, and other additives shoved in just to flavor, blend, thicken up, color, and/or mummify (ooh gross… mummify!) your food so it tastes great, looks pretty, and can sit unspoiled on a shelf decades (who knows, even centuries) from now.

Now, I could rattle off all of the ingredients in all of the foods in all of North America, but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) already beat me to it with their database Everything Added to Food in the United States. (That’s honestly the name and I’m honestly not kidding when I say, “Really? That’s the name?”) It’s a running list of more than three thousand food additives. If you have an extra year or two, check it out, it’s a great way to spend the time (right up there with hailing a cab, changing a diaper, and watching paint dry). Fine, I’ll spare you the details so you can focus on that number alone: 3,000!!!

Do you need to know them all to make the right choices with what you eat or drink? Absolutely not, since most of the concerns about food additives are aimed at the man-made ingredients added to foods. Examples are antibiotics, artificial dyes and sweeteners, nitrates, sulfites—you know, anything that was probably created in a laboratory by someone who had more diplomas than dates. (Don’t get me wrong. I love diplomas.)

But the ingredients in healthy foods are almost always recognizable, never require a medical dictionary to understand, and most important, they’re few and far between. Want a mashed potato? Make one from scratch and the only ingredient you’ll see on the bag is potato. Make a box of instant mashed potatoes and enjoy the dozens of extra ingredients that come with it, such as calcium stearoyl lactylate and sodium bisulfite and FD&C yellow #5 & #6. (No snarky comment needed because I’m still trying to pronounce everything.)

From now on, you’ll be picking more food with ingredients that make your mouth water—not wonder.

Your Plan

The only thing you need to do is look at the ingredients in whatever you’re eating or drinking—that’s all.

If there are more than five ingredients, then you can enjoy a serving (one serving) of the item. Limit yourself to three servings per day of any food or drink with more than five ingredients. Whether you spend that allowance on eating three servings of the same food or one serving each of three different foods, it doesn’t matter. All I care about is that three is your limit for the day. By doing this, you will quickly see how easy it is to veer off track with this assignment. This will be challenging, but it’ll be worth it as you start fueling your body with all-natural, healthy, real food.

DON’T STOP THERE…

If you could change your diet to the point where you’re eating only single-ingredient foods, you would be my hero. Realistically, it’s hard to avoid all the additives all the time. It’s no secret at this point that my guilty pleasure is cold cereal. Put a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in front of me (make that any box of any cereal) and I’m putty in your hands. But I limit myself to sick days, pregnancy, and breakups. (Hopefully I’m done with two out of three of those.)

That doesn’t mean you can’t gradually tweak what I’m asking you to do to find a happy medium. If you want to challenge yourself even further, or feel such an impact from this Change after you implement it that you want to get even more from it, then you can try tapering down as you go in any of several ways:

• Reduce how many five-plus-ingredient foods you eat daily down to two, one, or none.

• Try eating only three servings of foods with four or more ingredients each day (then start tapering it down to three or two ingredients).

• Stick with eating only three servings of five-plus-ingredient foods on the weekends, but only two servings on weekdays.

• You get the idea… But again, if you stick with the original Change and that’s all you ever do, you won’t hear me complain.

Tips and Tricks

Eat any food in its most natural state and odds are, you’ll never have to worry about any artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives disappointing you when you stare down the label. But having a little more information at hand can help you make the most of your five-or-less quest.

If it’s in a box or bag, it’s probably processed. Maybe not every time, but snack foods, white rice, regular pasta, cereal (sadly), instant oatmeal, and baked goods (including most pancake and waffle mixes) are usually packaged this way. The problem is that the carbs in these types of foods are typically made with refined grains—grains stripped of the good stuff (fiber) that can spike your blood sugar and cause you to store excess fat.

Go organic if it’s an option. Organic fruits and vegetables may not always look as perfect, large, or tasty as nonorganic versions, but they have more vitamins and minerals—and none of the worries of chemical fertilizers and pesticides or wondering if what you’re eating is a GMO, a genetically modified organism altered by science to take on particular traits (like needing less water to grow, or being herbicide resistant), which some fear could be behind certain health issues. Bonus points if you buy in-season foods that are locally grown.

Cook your own junk food. For those times when you really crave French fries, potato chips, cookies, cake, or any fried food, make it yourself. You’ll not only be eating something that’s void of additives, but you’ll probably eat those types of foods less often because of all the effort involved.

The more convenient, the more you’ll be counting. Ingredients, that is. Any food that calls itself instant or ready-to-eat—including frozen and pre-made meals—typically finds itself on the processed food list, bringing with it a bunch of additives. For the record, most fruits and veggies are also ready-to-eat—minus the additives.

If you don’t recognize it—do your research. Whenever you read an ingredient you haven’t seen before, make a habit of looking up exactly what it is. There are more than fifty different names for sugar, for instance, so what may seem harmless could be something you may want to avoid.

Think mini—not maxi. If you’re going to keep a few five-plus foods around, buy the smallest serving possible, even if it’s a single serve from a vending machine. That way, you’re guaranteed to stick with only one serving. Buy the family-sized bag or box to save a penny and you’ll only increase your risk of eating a bigger portion, or more portions than you should. It may be penny wise, but it’s literally pound foolish.

If it claims it’s “whole grain,” look at the first ingredient. According to the Whole Grains Council (yes, this actually exists!), if the first ingredient listed contains the word whole (“whole-wheat flour” or “whole oats,” for example), it’s likely—but not guaranteed—that the product is predominantly made from whole grain. But know this loophole: If there are two grain ingredients, and only the second ingredient listed is a whole grain, the product may contain as little as 1 percent whole grain!

Go with foods you know won’t keep for long. If it doesn’t rot, there’s a reason for it. Although honey is a rare exception to the rule, the longer something lasts in your kitchen, the more ingredients you’ll probably find on its label. The more perishable foods you buy, the more likely you’ll have no problem sticking with the three-servings-or–less rule.

Mix as many five-or-below foods as you like. Just because I don’t want you to eat single foods with more than five ingredients doesn’t mean you can’t make foods with more than five—so long as the foods you’re mixing together still qualify. For example, if you whip up a smoothie with four types of fruit, a little Greek yogurt, a tablespoon of peanut butter, and some chia seeds, what’s in your blender will be well over five, but at least it will be additive-free.

If it’s canned, rinse whenever possible. Nutritionists estimate that only about a quarter of your daily sodium intake comes from the salt you sprinkle. The rest is already inside the foods you’re eating, which can lead to everything from bloating and hypertension to an increase in your appetite. To minimize the damage, try rinsing canned vegetables and beans before you cook or eat them—a trick that can reduce their sodium content by as much as 40 percent.

If it has trans fats, substitute it with something else. I don’t care if it’s a five-ingredient-or-below food, if you see the words partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated, it has trans fat in it. That means you’re eating a molecularly altered unsaturated fat that boosts your levels of bad LDL cholesterol and lowers your levels of good HDL cholesterol. Worse yet: A label can still say “0 grams” of trans fat if the food contains less than 0.5 grams per serving.

To avoid them when cooking, try to switch to healthier monounsaturated oils (such as olive or canola oil). But if they’re in any foods you love, see if you can find another version that’s free of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils.