The less ingrediants the better!

As part of following the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, you must know what ingrediants are in the foods you are buying from the grocery store. In general, if you shop the perimeter of the grocery store you will find heathier food. The perimeter usually contains fruits, veggies, meats, eggs, and cheeses - all much healthier than items in the isles. Most of us on the SCD, cook our own foods at home made from trusted ingrediants. But occasionally there are premade items in the store that we may be able to use to make our lives easier.

Even if you do not follow the SCD you should always keep this phrase in your head - the less ingrediants the better! Peanut butter is a great example of this. Before I started the SCD I was eating a mainstream peanut butter that most in the US eat. The ingrediants were as follows: roasted peanuts, sugar, molasses, fully hydrogenated vegtable oils, mono and diglycerides, salt. Compare that to store bought, SCD legal peanut butter, which contains the following ingrediants: peanuts and sea salt. Clearly the later is going to be better for you!

Another great example is marinara sauce. When you go to the grocery store there are probably 30 different types of marinara sauce you can purchase. One of the most common jarred marinara sauces contains the following ingrediants: diced tomatoes, water, tomato paste, onions, olive oil, sugar, salt, garlic, parsley, basil, oregano, spices, calcium chloride, and citric acid. While this may not sound too horrible, you need to ask yourself, why is sugar necessary in marinara sauce, what is included in "spices," and are calcium chloride and citric acid needed? Here are the ingrediants to Rao's marinara sauce, which is SCD legal: Italian whole peeled tomatoes, olive oil, onions, salt, garlic, basil, black pepper, oregano. Rao's is clearly the healthier choice.

If you cannot pronounce it, ditch it!

Another item to keep in mind, when looking at the ingrediant list, is the word complexity. If there are words in the ingrediants that you have never seen before, cannot pronounce, or are unsure as to what they are, do not buy it! Let's use the peanut butter example, what are mono and diglycerides? These are emulsifiers that allow foods to blend together that normally separate, such as oil and water. Monoglycerides contain trans fats which have been linked to heart disease and stroke. Probably not something we should be ingesting.

In the marinara example, there is additive called Calcium Chloride. This is often used in foods to prevent browning and keep fruits and vegtables fresher longer. Calcium chloride is also used to remove ice from roads, is added to concrete to allow it to dry faster, and as an anti-moisture agent in some medicines. The FDA has approved calcium chloride as safe to ingest in the quantities that have been used in foods but in larger doses, ingesting calcium chloride can cause vomiting, stomach pain, and burning of the throat. Always check to see if there is a similar food, without this ingrediant, as it may be a healthier choice.

Why do food manufactures use these crazy ingrediants!?

There are a number of reasons that food manufacturers use ingrediants that are unnecessary and harmful. A lot of times they are used to affect the consistency, texture, and look of the foods we eat. Other times they are used as filler to make food more cost effective. They can also be used to make food taste better, such as sugar. They can be marketed as a healthier, lower fat option, such as artificial sweeteners. Consumers want foods that taste good, look good, don't spoil easily, are fast, cheap, and don't make us fat. That is a lot to ask of the food industry and is just about impossible!

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet will get you back to the basics and allows you to really see everything you are putting in your body. The food on the diet takes time to prepare and cook but there are shortcuts you will learn along the way to allow you to fit it into your busy schedule.

The next time you go to the store make a promise to yourself to not shop blindly. Look at the ingrediants in the food you are buying and think of how it will affect both your short term and long term health. Life is all about the choices we make and you have the power to make healthy choices.