Food Swaping: Choosing The Lesser of Two Evils

For fun, I picked up Eat This, Not That from a used bookstore recently. It made sense to encourage choosing healthy foods for unhealthy ones, and I wanted to see what kinds of suggestions they offered in this self-professed "no-diet diet."

I was surprised to see the editors steering people not to what's healthy, but what's less unhealthy, based on changing criteria.

Let me give you an example:
Don't eat Lay's Classic Potato Chips. Eat fried pork skins instead.

I kid you not.

The rationale for eating three extra grams of saturated fat and more than triple the sodium? Why waste calories on nutritionally void chips when you can get 16 extra grams of protein for the same amount of calories?

Some of the suggestions were not as jaw-dropping as this, but they weren't much better: one trail mix has "less chocolate," go for the smaller, baked cracker — oh, and try the pastry with less pudding crammed into it.

I understand the philosophy: swapping out "better" food with little effort chips away at bad eating habits. Next thing you know, you're eating fried pork skins and Goldfish every time you stop for snack food at the gas station.  And that's not a bad thing.

While that kind of life change isn't a bad thing, it isn't the best thing.

We live in a land where processed food is cheap and plentiful and requires no thought at all, where every day is a splurge. Swapping a pudding pie for a cake may be a good choice, but it's not the foundation of a healthy lifestyle.

Maybe if we put more thought into what we put in our mouths, we can eat better and feel better. String cheese may be available at that same convenience store. Sunflower seeds, sugar-free juice, even an apple or banana are available at convenience stores these days.

In a world where our entire lives are splurges, let's choose to splurge less, so our decisions are easier to make.

— Chris

Label Education

While shopping with Chris at Trader Joe's, I stopped to look at the canned tuna fish on the shelf.

The Trader Joe brand was lower in sodium and higher in protein than most name-brand manufacturers.

Some of the larger manufacturers of tuna, pre-cook there tuna before canning it. Salt is then added in the process. There is 250 mg of sodium and 13g of protein in a six ounce can of Bumblebee tuna packed in water.

In contrast, Trader Joe's solid white tuna in water has 16g of protein and 45 mg of sodium. The package touts "no salt added."

No matter how healthy you think you are eating, you should always check the nutrition labels ("nutrition facts") to make sure you are getting the best product available.

Also, compare the labels of different brands of the same product because they can contain very different amounts of the same ingredients.

Chris always checks the labels to make sure there are no hidden ingredients. She is constantly amazed at what has meat products in it, like most Hostess products. (Vegetable and/or animal shortening, anyone?)