Plant-Based Magic 101: High-Quality Foods Day 4

For high-quality eating, you want to be on the look-out for  *ultra-processed* foods. How many of these do you eat?

-Plant-Based Magic 101- High Quality Foods-

📷@bensdesignstudio

Yesterday, we talked about how the United Nations NOVA food classification can help you choose higher quality foods. The NOVA report found that in general, the more processed a food is, the lower its nutrition quality is. So, more processing generally means less good stuff- fewer health-promoting vitamins and minerals. More processed foods also tend to include more salt, sugar and fat than our bodies need, which isn’t a good thing.

Now, to make matters worse, the foods that have had the highest level of processing have a bunch of “non-food” products added. These foods are called “Ultra-processed”. The additives to ultra-processed foods might be food dyes, thickening agents and artificial flavors that you wouldn’t dream of using if you were cooking food at home. A scarily large number of these ultra-processed foods are staples in most Americans’ everyday eating. According to the NOVA report, you especially want to be on the look-out for “ultra-processed” foods like these:

• Carbonated soft drinks (soda/pop)
  

• Energy drinks
  

• Packaged candy
  

• Packaged cookies, pastries, cakes, and cake mixes
  

• Many breakfast cereals
  

• Cereal/Energy bars
  

• Milk drinks (flavored milk, milk shakes)
  

• “Fruit” yogurts
  

• “Fruit” Drinks (containing fruit juice concentrate, or food coloring)
  

• Pre-prepared and ready-to-heat meals like pasta/pizza dishes and pies
  

• Chicken nuggets
  

• Fish sticks
  

• Processed meat like sausage, burgers, hot dogs
  

• “Instant” soups and noodles (powder and packaged)
  

• Powdered dessert mix (i.e pudding/jello)
  

• Many Health/Weight loss products including meal replacement shakes and powders
  

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