Empowerment is the first step in achieving radiant health. But you might be asking, "How do I become empowered when I don't even know what I'm doing?" The answer is, ask Amanda! After all, that's why I'm here.
To help you start down the road to better health, I've created the following six easy steps to assist you in giving your kitchen pantry a facelift.
Step 1: Pull out all of the food from your kitchen shelves, pantry and refrigerator and place everything on a table. Have several boxes or bags close at hand, and begin by reading all of the ingredient labels on your packaged and prepared foods.
Step 2: Check the remaining labels for added sweeteners like sugar (including cane crystals, evaporated cane juice, demarara, turbinado, brown sugar, cane syrup), high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, dextrose, glucose, sucrose, cyclamate, saccharin, sucralose or aspartame. Put these items together and call it the “I am ready to let go of these foods and make a change for my health” pile.
Step 3: Sodium nitrite is a color fixer chemical and is linked to causing cancer. It's found in processed meats like hot dogs, bacon, and sausage to make them appear. Your next step is to look for sodium, sodium nitrate, salt, MSG or lard, and citric acid, in the food items you have on your countertop and put them in the same pile. .
Step 4: Look for hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated oils, corn starch, enriched wheat and enriched flour. Hydrogenated oils, or trans fat, are linked to heart disease, nutritional deficiencies, general deterioration of cellular health, and much more. Found in cookies, crackers, margarine and many "manufactured" foods, trans fats are used to make oils stay in the food to extend shelf life. I prefer to call them "plastic fat." Put these foods in the pile, too. (Is your pile getting bigger and bigger?)
Step 5: Search for excitotoxins like aspartame and monosodium glutamate on the labels. According to Dr. Russell Blaylock, these neurotoxic chemical additives directly harm nerve cells by over exciting them to the point of cell death.. They're found in diet soda, canned soup, salad dressing, breakfast sausage and even many manufactured vegetarian foods and are used to add flavor to over-processed foods.
Step 6: Take your "I am ready to let go of these foods and make a change for my health" pile and either donate it to a local food pantry or throw it away.
REMEMBER: ALWAYS READ THE INGREDIENT LIST. If you need a chemistry degree to pronounce the list, it's not real food. Most boxed food is "fast" food or "convenient "food. Mashed potatoes, chips, macaroni and cheese, pasta, instant rice, muffin and cake mix, stuffing, cereal, crackers and cookies. These packaged foods rob your body of real nutrients. Buy packaged foods that sound like you could make them yourself, with ingredients you could buy easily.
© 2008 Amanda Moxley
