Eat Right Tips: Eat Real Foods

Picture courtesy Brent Shetler / Istock

Why eat real foods?

 If your grandmother wouldn't have immediately recognized it as "food" there's a good chance it's less food and more manufactured good. Who wants to eat a manufactured good? 

Real foods are the basis for a common sense diet. The only processing food needs is the cooking you do at home. Chances are, the less processing a food has been subjected to, the less energy and fewer resources have been expended manufacturing, packaging and transporting it to your grocery store. And real foods haven't had all the nutrition processed out of them. 

So read labels, and look for those foods with the shortest, most direct list of ingredients. Better, choose foods without labels because the items in the produce aisle are as real as it gets.