HaHa!  I hope this nutritionist joke made you laugh! 

Laughter is really good for us, especially when we are experiencing stressful times.  My friend and business associate, financial planner Scot Whiskeyman, sends a terrific newsletter each week, and a recent one had a great quote from Norman Cousins, “Laughter is inner jogging.”  I love it!  Laughter makes everything better! And, indeed, it gives your abdominal muscles a good jog.

This joke often headlines my wellness presentations because it really is the truth! The food we eat is meant to nourish our bodies.  We need the most healthful, cleanest and nourishing foods we can choose.  This usually doesn’t include packaged, processed and fast foods.

Think about it….

Is it really healthy food if it comes through a window? (Michael Pollan wit)

Have you ever seen a donut growing in a field?

We should eat foods made from plants, rather than IN plants.

Our food should look delicious, but not perfect.  That huge, red, 2-inch, blemish-free strawberry is probably loaded with pesticides and insecticides.

While this is all true, there are times, and I’m with you here, we simply need to choose something processed and packaged.  There is help if this is the case!  Keep these things in mind:

• Look for a product with less than five ingredients. Your food is still food, and not so much a science experiment.
• Choosing quality might be more costly, but oftentimes, we eat less of the food, thereby saving money and saving your body’s biome.
• Choose local foods. This ensures better nutrition as the food is picked at the best time and hasn’t traveled miles and miles to get to you.
• Eat foods grown locally in season. There’s a whole science behind eating what is currently being grown.  Squash, potatoes, etc. are grown in the fall when we’re looking for warmer, heavier, nourishing foods to sustain us over the winter.
• Shop at your local farmer’s markets. Get to know your farmers and what they’re growing and how they’re growing it.
• Watch out for GMOs (genetically modified foods). GMOs have been modified to be disease and drought resistant.  Do you want what you eat to be a science project?
• Eat r-e-a-l Think about things like “non-fat cream cheese” which doesn’t have fat or cream in it, or ginger ale, which has no ginger.  Read labels to see what’s in that fake food!

You will feel your best if you make the healthiest choices most of the time. Don’t pick fast, cheap, easy or fake.

To Your Vitality!