Thank goodness anti-inflammatory eating doesn’t have to mean making all foods from scratch, because the concept of “semi-homemade” is one I rely on daily. Choosing products that are minimally processed is key. So how do you find those foods?
We often jump straight to the Nutrition Facts panel, which provides good nutrient info, but you get a better picture of a food’s quality (and ultimately health effect) by looking at the ingredients list. It takes a little bit of investigative work and decoding, but here are the facts I look for in the ingredients list and what they mean.
• Look for products that keep ingredients minimal. Typically, the shorter the ingredients list, the less processed the product.
• Choose those that you would expect the primary ingredients to be first in the list.
• Read through the ingredients. Do you recognize them as a food, spice, or seasoning? Does it make sense for the ingredient to be included? If so, this is a sign of less or minimal processing.
• Are ingredient names long, complex, or reminiscent of science class? Are there many ingredients that you’ve never heard of and/or don’t know why are included? These are signs of a more processed food.
So I became determined to figure out how to provide nutritious meals that make us healthy now as well as long-term, but without spending hours planning, prepping, and cooking. It took a few years, lots of trials and failures, and a few last-minute runs through our local Chick-fil-A drive-through, but I finally figured out a system. I rely on Simple Staples.
Identifying sugars on labels can be confusing, so here’s a trick that I use sometimes. When I can’t determine the prevalence of added sugar in a food product, I find another brand of the same product that I know has no added sugars. Then, I compare the total grams of sugar between the two products. If the number is the same or very close, you can assume there are no added sugars in the product in question. Below are some more straightforward facts to look for.
• Ingredients are listed in descending order by weight, meaning the ingredient listed first is used in the highest quantity and the ingredient listed last is used in the least. The closer the added sugars or sweeteners fall toward the end of the ingredients list, the less added sugar is in the product.
• On the Nutrition Facts panel, the total sugar grams are a total of the natural sugars and the added sugars in a serving. This tells you very little about added sugars, especially if the food contains both added and natural, like yogurts. Until new labeling guidelines go into effect, the best way to assess added sugars is to identify added sugars in the ingredients list and look where they fall in the order of ingredients.
• Natural sugars refer to those that are naturally found in a food, but when those natural sugars (like honey) are used in other products, they are considered added sugars.
• Only products labeled “100% whole grain” are made completely of whole grains.
• Many products use a mix of whole and refined grains, so try to determine if the product is predominantly made of whole or refined grains. What you want to see is that whole-grain flours (whole wheat flour, whole oat flour, brown rice flour, etc.) are listed before refined flours (unbleached flour, wheat flour, etc.) in the ingredients list.
• Many products use a mix of whole and refined grains, so try to determine if the product is predominantly made of whole or refined grains. What you want to see is that whole-grain flours (whole wheat flour, whole oat flour, brown rice flour, etc.) are listed before refined flours (unbleached flour, wheat flour, etc.) in the ingredients list.
• Know which labeling terms actually mean something about the food quality and which are marketing fluff.
Avoid any fat or oil with the words “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated.”