Trick or treat?

Happy Halloween readers, I hope you're enjoying some ghoulish antics
or even a spot of trick or treating this evening.

Overtime I have revised the dietary advice I give and follow inline with research and developments in nutrition but there are a couple of truisms that just get further reinforced:

- We should all be eating plenty of fruit and veg
- We should all avoid processed foods, especially those with non-food additives - which I'm afraid includes a lot of Halloween treats.

As further evidence of why we should be giving these kinds of ingredients a wide berth, I read today on the 'city girl bites' blog that phosphorous, another non-food additive, has now been identified as a possible cause of heart disease:
 
http://citygirlbites.com/blog/archives/9000

It doesn't surprise me - our bodies are designed to cope with foods and ingredients as we would find them in nature, not when they've been highly refined or artificially synthesised. Overtime I'm sure we'll discover even more negative effects from eating these kinds of foods.

This is why we should be eating a diet of wholefoods and home-cooked meals for our optimal health, however I appreciate that in practice that isn't possible.

To minimize the damage of any ready-prepared or processed foods you need to religiously start reading ingredients labels and avoiding non-food additives. By that I mean anything that isn't a standard ingredient you might use in your kitchen. So rice, that's a food ingredient, sulphur is a non-food additive. It only takes a few seconds but will help you avoid any nasty tricks in your treats.
------------------