Are You Eating "Phood" or Food? Tips for Eating Real Food

As you probably know by now, I consider myself a real food advocate. I don’t fall into any particular diet category – I’m not a vegan, vegetarian or a meat-eating cave woman. Quite simply, I focus on eating food that nourishes my body, gives me sustainable energy and keeps me joyous!

I realize that it’s more mama-earth-loving to eat plant foods and if you follow me on twitter, you will notice that at least 85% of my diet is plant-based, because I often take photos of my meals to inspire you to eat real food! But I do eat fish, sheep’s milk yogurt, happy eggs to name a few.

Whether you subscribe to a particular diet or not, these are tips that everyone can learn from. I’m seen my fair share of meat-eaters chowing on a 2 Big Macs (scary) to vegans eating veggie burgers (scarier), both of which are not real food. I’ve also looked in many clients’ refrigerators and seen food with expiry dates that are going to outlive me – and I plan on being here a looooong time! Okay okay, I exaggerate here, but you know what I mean. How long have you had that bag of dried soup or those canned beans? If you eat junk food such as cheetos or doritos then I know they don’t last long because if you buy them you probably eat them, BUT… if you did not eat them, how long do you think they would stay fresh in your kitchen cabinet?

If you want to get healthier, start simple, eat real food. Whether or not you are vegg-head or a meat-head, these tips apply:

1. Avoid purchasing foods with a long shelf life. The longer the shelf life, the more salt or other chemical preservatives to prevent mold growth.

2. Do not buy canned foods. Now more than ever studies are showing us that Bisphenol-A is getting into our blood stream and our tissues. It is an endocrine disruptor – in simple terms, it messes with our hormones, particularly estrogen. BPA lines the cans of tins. It’s a plastic resin that slowly leaches into the food. More info: www.ewg.org

3. Buy foods that are brightly coloured as that indicates a high level of antioxidants (apples, kale, carrots, spinach) as opposed to foods that are brightly coloured from a high level of chemicals (Lucky Charms, Cheetos, Kool-Aid).

4. Ask yourself how long it took to get from mama-earth to your kitchen table. Then ask yourself, how much processing did it go through to get from mama-earth to your table? Was it picked hard as a rock, shipped thousands of miles, ground down to a powdery pulp, bleached, added to a packaged food with 25 other ingredients? At this point, it barely resembles food. It’s now PHOOD. Or was it picked from the ground on the weekend or a week ago and bought by you at the grocery store?

5. Avoid food that has a health claim. This is my all-time favourite. Real food doesn’t need a health claim. Just look at VitaminWater, Cheerios or Kellogg’s GMO’d Corn Flakes. They all have health claims that barely ring true. If you want to eat a whole grain that’s going to be loaded with fibre, nutrients and lower your cholesterol then actually EAT a whole grain: quinoa, kamut, millet, brown rice, rye, wheat.  If you want to hydrate, drink water. If you want to get your vitamins eat some fruits and vegetables – not sugary drinks with almost as much sugar as a can of Coke.

If after reading these five tips, you are not sure where to start and how to get real food, then have a look at my 80+ recipes because they are all made with REAL FOOD. When you eat real food it’s not going to be as convenient and tossing a frozen dinner into the microwave. Eating real food actually takes a little bit of effort, but not much more. I rarely spend more than 15-minutes in the kitchen prepping any meal.

When you make the switch to consciously eat more real food the benefits are endless: you reduce the risk of cancer and degenerative disease, improve your energy, skin health, increase your sex drive (woohoo!), look better, feel better and last but certainly not least, when you choose real food over fake phood, this is when we as the consumer take the power back in our hands and force real food prices down. Fake phood is cheap because we keep buying it and the fake phood companies are getting richer and richer, but guess what? It’s at a cost, because we are getting sicker and sicker.

Eat real food for your most joyous health.

Joy McCarthy, Registered Holistic Nutritionist and Health Coach of Joyous Health, loves to inspire others to eat well, live well and be happy. Joy is the resident holistic nutritionist at 889 Yonge, a Yoga & Holistic Lifestyle Spa in Toronto. Joy provides complimentary 15 minute consultations.

Joy has clients from all over the world and consults via phone and Skype. Contact Joy today and take the first step to achieving joyous health.