Before Professor Martinez destroyed my lifelong perception of peanut butter as a healthy alternative to junk food, I was comfortable in my belief that peanut butter was, well, a healthy alternative to junk food! I knew it was a high calorie, high fat food item, but I didn't realize how much of what goes into processed peanut butter probably should not go into the human body - or any body, for that matter.
Actual Food Ingredients: Roasted Peanuts, Soy Protein, Salt, Sugar, Palm Oil.
Chemicals and Scientifically Altered (arguably food items, but they shouldn't be) Food Ingredients: Corn Syrup Solids, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils (to prevent seperation), Mono and Diglycerides, Minerals (Magnesium Oxide, Zinc Oxide, Ferric Orthophosphate, Copper Sulfate), Vitamins (Niacinimide, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Folic Acid).
I'll be honest - right now, I am concerned about eating healthy. I go in cycles, where sometimes I'll eat whatever I want without a care in the world (for weeks or months on end, "pass the ice cream, please!"). Then, I look in the mirror, make up bad words while I scream at the scale, and hit the gym hard and shop only the perimeter departments at the grocery store.
The steps I take to eat healthy are pretty standard stuff, but I know I could be a lot better about it. Instead of simply looking at nutrition facts (and, really, I only look at the calories, fat, sodium, and vitamins listed on the package), I could be looking at the ingredients of the items I put into my body. Dinner tonight is actually going to be boneless, skinless chicken breast, baked, with a side of white rice and a side of spinach sauteed with turkey bacon. Like I said, it's healthy... ish. I could be doing a better job, but I feel that I could also be doing a whole lot worse (what I really wanted was In N' Out, but that's a story for another night).
I, too, had no idea that peanut butter is as bad as it is! In fact, I had eaten a peanut butter sandwich for lunch the day we got the news. I can somewhat relate to your steps to eat healthy. The one or two times I did try, I also would only read the calorie, fat, etc. count on the back. Before last weeks lab, I never thought to look at the actual ingredients of the 'food' that I am putting in my body!
ReplyDeleteMy goal in life (or rather, the goal way in the back of my mind somewhere behind graduating college and solving world hunger) is finding a way to eat healthy but make it taste good. I think it's true about what the text said about us Americans having an overlarge sweet-tooth. But it just tastes so good to eat fattening and sweet things! (I LOVE my icecream...) But there has GOT to be a way to make healthy taste good! Spinach sauteed with bacon isn't a bad start at all!
ReplyDeleteWhen I started looking in my cabinet to check out some of the ingredients one of the first things I grabbed was the peanut butter and I was really suprised how un-natural the ingredients were I figured that it would have been one of the "healthier" food options. I was better than some things but definatly not has natural as I believed it would have been.
ReplyDeleteAll you guys need to do is get natural peanut butter! Just ground up peanuts and salt! That's it! (and it tastes yummy!)
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