AL Wellness Guide to Packaged Foods

Meal Ideas

Jun 20

All contributions for this guide were made by Amanda from Amanda Lauren Wellness.

Okay Siwicki Fit Fam, I am sure all of you are gearing up for summertime. Hopefully that means pool days and vacations filled with some much needed R&R. The best food to eat is whole, natural food that isn’t processed. But this is real life, and sometimes we need to just be able to grab something and go. Amanda from Amanda Lauren Wellness offers suggestions on how to consume processed food in the context of an overall healthy diet.

Categories of packaged food

Minimally Processed - whole foods that have been physically altered (dried, frozen, pasteurized etc.) but have no added ingredients
Processed Culinary Ingredients - ingredients separated from the whole food and chemically processed (seed oils like canola and soybean oil, syrups/sugars, salts)
Processed Foods - combine 1 & 2 (fruit preserved in sugary syrup, processed meat, whole grain bread)
Ultra-Processed - combines extracted parts like protein, fiber, fat, from many different foods and/or synthetic ingredients/additives (nuggets, chips, cookies, crackers, cereal etc.)

What to look for when purchasing packaged food

High consumption of ultra-processed foods have been linked with increased risk for overweight/obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. But there is still room to eat processed foods as part of a healthy diet. Here’s how:

Avoid anything with added sugar, which has 56 different names! Including sucrose, dextrose, corn syrup, coconut sugar, honey, agave, maltodextrin to name a few!
Avoid anything with seed oils (canola, safflower, sunflower, soybean, palm oil etc.).
Select processed foods that have minimal ingredients.
Don’t rely on calories or macros alone to decide if a processed food is “healthy.” You HAVE to read the ingredient list too! If there are lots of additives and/or artificial ingredients, it doesn’t matter what the nutrition label says, it will wreak havoc on your microbiome, metabolism, inflammatory response, and cravings/reward center in the brain.

Upgraded Versions

It’s okay to indulge every once in a while. We are human after all! Here are some suggestions of packaged foods that are upgraded versions of typically purchased packaged foods: