This always made my girls so sad when they would see me do this in a store.
Do you know why?
I was reading the label to discover ingredients that were chemicals,
food preservatives that are poisonous but not banned for many reasons.
If I saw any of those chemicals on the ingredient list, we weren’t putting it in the shopping cart.
All the gooey, yummy food that is easy to be addicted to, are generally the ones on the “No” List.
I started doing this because I was looking for answers that no institute or medical professional could give me at the time. My four year old daughter was definitely affected by food and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason why…until we did starting digging deeper. Because the solution kept coming back to ritalin, I wanted to find a healthier way.
She did’t fit all the criteria and therefore wasn’t being diagnosed, which today we see as a huge gift that still benefits our whole family. In the early 1990’s there wasn’t access to information like there is today. Without the internet to search for solutions or clues as to what we were dealing with, it was a struggle.
Most people don’t know what I’m about to tell you,
and many can’t believe it to be true.
I say, don’t believe me, do your own research. Learn to read food labels.
Find your own answers because many professionals that you may rely on either don’t believe it, or aren’t schooled in nutrition to identify the challenges with food preservatives..
This is not a small topic, what I share here is a tiny seed I’m planting.
For over 30 years I have shared info on food preservatives with friends and clients. It was astounding to me that the difference it made in our health, and that few people knew about it.
It had such dramatic impact, that I used the principles of clean eating when I facilitated retreats. Even as few as three days of clean eating could make a profound difference for people.
Become a label reader. You don’t have to be a scientist or chemist to understand
what the label is saying.
How I knew something wasn’t right was because of the training I had before I was a mom. I was trained by chemists in the beauty industry that formulated products.
Because my job was education and sales, I needed to understand what was in the products and what they did to the hair & skin.
I worked for very ethical companies that were passionate about the environment.
They wanted the best and healthiest ingredients in their products.
They were also concerned about what mom’s had available to them for their children.
They were ahead of their time.
When I first started reading food labels, I thought I must be wrong. How could it be that ingredients I wouldn’t want in my shampoo or other body products was in many of the food items on the grocery store shelf.
Today I want to red flag “Parabens”.
They are in cosmetics, food, hair & skin products.
Food products which contain parabens for preservation, include beer, sauces, desserts, soft drinks, jams, pickles, frozen dairy products, processed vegetables and flavoring syrups.
Some fruits, such as blueberries, contain parabens as a naturally occurring preservative.
Parabens are known to disrupt hormone function, an effect that is linked to increased risk of breast cancer and reproductive toxicity,” reports
‘Parabens are a group of preservatives that are widely used in topical pharmaceutical products. They’re also used in cosmetics, skin care products, medications, foods, and industrially in oils, fats, shoe polishes, textiles and glues.
Parabens started to be added to products in the 1950s and they are used primarily to prolong shelf life and also to prevent growth of bacteria/ mould etc within them. In chemical terms they’re a series of parahydroxybenzoates or esters of parahydroxybenzoic acid.
Look for the most common butylparaben, methylparaben and propylparaben.
Evidence shows that parabens can mimic the effect of oestrogen, which has again in turn been linked to cancer formations and infertility. Parabens can also commonly cause skin sensitivities and allergies. The skin sensitivities and allergies occur by repeated exposure of parabens to the skin, and then the immune cells in the skin slowly but significantly mounting an immune response to when parabens subsequently come into contact with the skin.
Parabens harm marine life, where they’ve been found inside sea creatures and are also believed to damage and kill coral.
Don’t be fearful, educate yourself. Ask questions. And if you don’t get the right answers, keep going.
The good news is that you’ll start eating much healthier and you’ll notice the changes fairly quickly. Your body works really hard to keep you going that when it’s being fed a clean diet it is so easy to feel happier, have more energy and function at a higher level in general.
