Dr. Sears- Avoid the Bad Words on Nutrition Labels

Nutri-Tip--- Avoid the Bad Words on Nutrition Labels

Think about how valuable your child’s brain is. It enables your child to learn and to love; to laugh and to cry. More than any other organ, the brain is affected- for better or worse-by what your child eats. Kids are more sensitive to additives than adults are. A child’s growing brain is more vulnerable to the neurotoxic effects of chemical food additives. Many food products on store shelves are filled with additives. There are over 6,000 chemicals used in commercially produced foods. It is estimated that adults will ingest up to 5 pounds of chemical additives in a year's time. You may feel like you need a degree in science to decipher many of today's food labels. The NDD Book lists many ways your family can make better-informed choices on the foods you buy to feed your family. Reading labels; know what’s in your food. The easiest way to separate junk food from real food is to avoid certain foods containing the following artificial additives. I've created a list of "bad words" commonly found on labels for you to avoid.

“Bad words” to avoid:

• MSG
• hydrolyzed vegetable protein
• BHT and other preservatives
• red #40
• blue #1
• yellow #6
• any other color-number combo
• aspartame
• High fructose corn syrup
• Hydrogenated oils

Not only are these additives harmful for your family’s health, they are guilty by association. As a general rule, if a packaged food contains any of these chemicals, the rest of the ingredients are nutritionally suspect.

- Dr. Sears