Saturday, April 28, 2012

Unjunk Your Junk Food—Healthy Alternatives to Conventional Snacks - Book Review!


I recently reviewed the book "Unjunk Your Junk Food—Healthy Alternatives to Conventional Snacks." The purpose of Unjunk Your Junk Food is to provide better options. They want people to know that if you are going to indulge in a treat, that you can choose from products that don’t contain any chemical additives—which are responsible for serious issues including heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Most of us read the Nutrition Facts panel when deciding which products to buy. However, in Unjunk Your Junk Food, their approach to eating is very different. They start by reading the ingredients and then they look at the Nutrition Facts panel. They do this because they believe if a product contains harmful ingredients, it doesn’t matter how much fat and calories it has—it is considered a “Bad Choice”.
 
‘The Scary Seven’:

  • HFCS: High-Fructose Corn Syrup (AKA glucose-fructose in Canada)
  • TRANS-FATS: Anything listed as ‘partially hydrogenated’ or ‘hydrogenated’ (includes vegetable shortening)
  • MSG: Monosodium glutamate
  • ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS: Any artificial flavoring
  • ARTIFICIAL COLORS: Any type of artificial dyes
  • ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS: Chemical sweeteners including Aspartame, Splenda (sucralose), Ace-K (Acesulfame Potassium), Saccharine, etc.
  • PRESERVATIVES: Polysorbate 60, 65 & 80, TBHQ, Sodium Benzoate, BHA, BHT, Sulfur Dioxide (sulfites)


The Contents of this book


The biggest surprises that I found in my cupboard that wasn't healthy for me or my children was the Chips Ahoy (blue bag) Cookies! I buy these because giving my children one or two of these cookies every so often for helping out or eating their dinner on tough nights helps me out. But I don't want to put anything bad into their little bodies. After they are all gone, we will be switching brands. I don't believe in throwing things out and wasting food or money.

The biggest things that I took away from reading the book was to stay away from "The Scary Seven" ingredients. I will be writing these ingredients down and keeping them with me at all times to make sure that I won't be purchasing products with these ingredients in them ever again!

We have made changes in groceries. We read labels more, we purchase healthier foods with healthier ingredients in them for us and our children. It's good to know what what we are putting into our bodies isn't going to harm us anymore. We hope anyways.

The book is available at Barnes & Noble (both in stores and online) as well as Amazon and other online
retailers.

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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for my review. No other compensation was exchanged or received.

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