Your Good-Better-Best Guide to Choosing Quality Food
Starting the journey to choosing high quality, healthy foods can feel overwhelming and sometimes downright impossible. Whether it is because of financial barriers or hearing too much conflicting information, you might not be sure where to start. As with any health or nutrition habits, starting with small easy-to-achieve steps is important for creating lasting changes. Sometimes it is helpful to imagine that your food choices fall into three different categories: Good, Better, and Best. Thinking about food this way can help to ditch the dogmatic idea that you need to shop and eat perfectly to be healthy, which really isn’t the case. Choosing the best quality foods that you can afford is important, but in general choosing whole, real foods even if they aren’t organic is better than anything processed!
Start With GOOD Food Choices
Start here with choosing whole, real foods in their natural state and realize that you’re moving in the right direction. At the grocery store, try to stay to the perimeter aisles where the fresh fruits, veggies and meats are usually located. When buying breads, pastas, and low-sugar cereals, aim to choose products with minimal ingredients on the labels. If you are buying packaged foods, choosing whole grains over commonly used white flour is an easy upgrade and often not too much more expensive. Find the most colorful produce you can find in either fresh or frozen form. Both are great options! Shopping “in-season” is also a great way to save additional money, as produce that is in-season is often less expensive. Not sure what’s in season? It may vary based on where you live, but this guide is a great place to start.
Choosing the best quality foods that you can afford is important, but in general choosing whole, real foods even if they aren’t organic is better than nothing!
Once you’ve moved on from the produce, your next stop might be proteins like meats, poultry, and eggs. There are some marketing words to pay attention to: natural, antibiotic free, cage-free, grass-fed, and free-range. Although many of these are trendy marketing terms, they also can be useful hints that you are buying better quality food.
Make BETTER Food Choices
Once we’ve mastered good food choices, you might feel ready to move on to the better category. Choosing organic produce is a great option if your budget can accommodate it, though you should know that it’s not always necessary to choose organic for everything as there are many conventionally grown fruits and veggies that are just fine. Referencing Environmental Working Group’s Clean Fifteen and Dirty Dozen lists is a great place to start as you begin to shop organic. When buying animal products, search for products with labels that include words such as pastured, wild-caught, or grass-fed.
Aiming For The BEST Food Choices
Buying locally grown foods is perhaps the best way to be assured that you are consuming the best quality foods, even if they aren’t organic. When you choose to purchase local foods, you are able to get to know your local farmers which helps assure you that your food was grown with the best care possible of animals and land. You are also able to ask questions and understand whether your farmer follows sustainable farming and soil practices. Shopping at local farmers markets, co-ops, farm shares or through community supported agriculture (CSAs) programs are all common options for buying locally grown foods. Resources for finding local farms near you include Local Harvest, Eat Wild, and Real Milk Finder.
Making healthy food choices can feel overwhelming and impossible, but it doesn’t need to. Instead of worrying about making perfect choices while shopping or eating, remember that any real and unprocessed food is a great first step! Need some ideas? Check out our Whole Foods Start Kit created specifically with our favorite real food options in mind.
Looking for more individualized support? Schedule a one-on-one consultation for personalized guidance from one of our experienced practitioners.
Emily Alexander, M.Ed, FNTP—Emily is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner with Curated Wellness. She is passionate about supporting others in their journey to improve their relationship with food and their body through gentle nutrition, and is a firm believer that understanding the bio-individual components of nutrition is one of the best ways to do so. Emily completed her Master’s of education in health education and promotion with a concentration in eating disorders, and draws from both her educational background and life experience to help her clients improve their energy, understand their bodies, boost their athletic potential, and break down diet myths one at a time. Read more about Emily.
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