Stop eating "a bit of everything"!

The rule to follow is to eat as much of the good stuff as possible, and as little of the bad stuff as possible. It sounds simple, but it's hard.

Marketing professionals paid to get you hooked

Think that for every type of chip, candy, sugary drink, there is one or more "product managers", who work Monday to Friday, all year round, thinking of ways to get you to buy more of them. .

These product managers are generally graduates of business schools, and are under the authority of a “group leader”, himself dependent on a marketing department.

In the end, there are dozens, and often even hundreds of brains studying, full time, “consumer behavior” to find your weak points. They know precisely the color, texture, smell, taste, packaging (shape, illustrations, material) that will make you fall in love.

Each week, they must justify the evolution of sales, and devise new strategies to make you give in to temptation more and more often.

How almonds became junk food

Take almonds, for example, the ultimate health food...originally.

Chewing 25 to 50 g of whole almonds, simply shelled, is part of a healthy lifestyle. This provides you with group B vitamins (especially vitamin B1, B6 and B9), magnesium (particularly well assimilated), potassium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, copper, proteins (2 to 3 g per serving ) and fibers. In addition, almonds are rich in monounsaturated (68% of their lipids) and polyunsaturated fatty acids, which contribute to good heart and artery health, among other benefits.

But our kings of marketing have noticed that, lightly toasted, almonds crunch better under the tooth. Then they saw that when salted well, they made people salivate more. But that wasn't enough so they added an irresistible smoky taste.

The problem is that roasted, salted, smoked almonds no longer have the same nutritional qualities . To make the salt stick, peanut oil had to be added (almond oil is too expensive). Cooking has destroyed valuable polyunsaturated fatty acids. Many vitamins are lost.

But it helps boost sales. Many people who never bought fresh almonds have come back to it. Currently, only roasted, salted, smoked almonds are sold in the aperitif department in supermarkets. And to top it off, if you want normal almonds, you'll have to go to the pastry department where they're sold...twice as much, by a well-known brand!! (€32.80/kg versus €16.20/kg).

Hundreds of products have undergone this same evolution, to the point that one wonders if the slogan "eat a bit of everything" was not invented precisely by these people who are trying to trick you.

But lucky for you, here are three useful guerrilla techniques to get out of your supermarket alive.

The Rainbow Diet

And its variant: “If it's white, don't eat it. »

White flour, white bread, white pasta, milk, mashed potatoes, most foods without a clear color should be avoided.

Generally, pallor betrays the absence of essential nutrients: we speak of “empty calories”.

Your objective, on the contrary, must be to provide your body with a maximum of:

vitamins;

minerals (in the right proportions);

antioxidants, in particular polyphenols.

These nutrients are mainly found in fresh and colored products. Polyphenols are those compounds that color fruits and vegetables, and which allow them to resist external aggressions, those who are not lucky enough to be able to move when the sun is too strong. You too need it to fight off the free radicals that damage your cells and age you, and your only way to get it is by eating colorful vegetables and fruits.

Thus, the purple of eggplant and grapes, the red of peppers and tomatoes, the green of spinach, cabbage and chard, the orange of carrots and pumpkin, are excellent telltale signs. .

The more your plate resembles the rainbow, the healthier it will be , provided of course that these are unprocessed products; the rainbow diet doesn't work if the colors on your plate are Haribo gummy bears.

The glycemic index

Forget the fable of slow sugars and quick sugars. It is the most deceptive system that has been invented in the field of nutrition, since the days when it was recommended to give children wine to fortify them.

Thus, baguette, white pasta and potatoes are considered slow sugars. But they raise your blood sugar level even faster than pure sugar !! Same for cereal bars, pastries, pizza, breakfast cereals (eg Corn Flakes, including no powdered sugar added). Indeed, grilled cereals (Corn Flakes) or puffed cereals (Rice Krispies, Smacks) raise your blood sugar (blood sugar) as quickly as table sugar. Eating it causes a spike in insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas that turns that blood sugar into bad fat. This bad fat accumulates especially in the viscera, the worst place there is. Then occurs hypoglycaemia, that is to say that your blood sugar level, after having risen too high, falls too low, due to the excess of insulin.

Eating a granola bar is like chewing on three sugar cubes .

A croissant: 4 sugar cubes. A bowl of cereal: 6 sugar cubes. One slice of pizza, 6 cubes of sugar!

You must therefore absolutely favor foods with a low glycemic index , in other words foods that do not raise your blood sugar too much.

They do not cause an insulin spike and therefore reduce the risk of gaining weight. They give a longer lasting feeling of satiety. You do not fall into hypoglycemia after eating them.

Foods with a low glycemic index are, for example, green vegetables, pulses, dark chocolate rich in cocoa, meat and fish.

But in this area where intuition is misleading, it is better to refer to a table of the glycemic index of foods.

Take advantage of price reductions

Seasonal products drop sharply at peak production: courgettes in July-August, tomatoes in August-September, grapes in September. Similarly, the price of fish can fluctuate greatly depending on arrivals. Take advantage of it: not only will you pay less, but the nutritional quality of your food will be better.

Avoid buying your fresh fruit and vegetables out of season : not only will the price be higher, but they will probably be grown in greenhouses and of lower quality. Or they will be flown in from the southern hemisphere (green beans from South Africa), which is bad for the environment.

On the other hand, out of season, buy your vegetables frozen: very often, they were packaged at the time of peak production, which will have allowed the producer to have them cheaper and you will find that they cost less than on the shelf. costs. In addition, a frozen product has the same nutritional value as its fresh counterpart. It is even sometimes better: frozen fruits and vegetables are often richer in vitamins than those bought fresh because they are frozen immediately after picking, while the fresh pass through cold rooms and on stalls, places favorable to the destruction of those -this.

Be careful, however: freezing does not stop the rancidity of fats. The fatter a product is, the shorter its shelf life in frozen form.

Happy reading and take care of yourself! Sources: Santé Nature