Friday, October 21, 2011 By Yasmine Bouzid [ArticleImageHyperLink] Advertising Eating Real Aspartme. Monosodium glutamate. Red dye 40. Mmmm sounds delicious. “Food” today is laden with heaps of preservatives, dyes, and artificial ingredients. Every ingredients list is inches long--reciting incomprehensible synthetic materials. Packaging advertises food made with ‘real cheese’ and such, as if it’s a delicacy, which it shouldn’t be. Maple syrup is now made of high fructose corn syrup with caramel coloring and flavoring instead of sap straight from the trees of Vermont. Even fruits, vegetables, and meat are splattered with pesticides or injected with the latest growth hormone. If America isn’t going to eat healthy, we should at least aim to eat real food. It’s much more appealing to eat a cake made with flour and sugar and butter than one filled with impossible-to-pronounce preservatives. Rule of thumb: if your food could potentially outlive you, you probably shouldn’t be ingesting it. The best way to avoid impostor food is to seek out natural and organic products from places like Trader Joe’s and Nugget. There is a type of Haagen Daas ice cream that has a mere five ingredients, making the treat more simple and a little less regrettable. One can also make food and meals to definitively know what one is eating. Healthy eating habits go beyond eating natural, legitimate foods: there are items that should consumed in great moderation. Red meat should be replaced with fish or poultry as often as possible to avoid the need to take a bulldozer to artery plague later in life. Excessive carbs turn into sugar as fat-afflicting as Twinkies once in the body. We only have one body to take care of in our life, so we should be cautious about what we’re putting into it. Planning for future health starts in the present.

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