Nourishment

Ultra-processed foods

They have a negative effect on your health and should be avoided

Eat as naturally as possible and eliminate processed foods from your diet. You can also implement the “clean eating trend” in your everyday life. Although this may sound like a new nutritional trend, the idea behind it has been around for a long time. Basically, it’s a wholefood diet. This means that you use natural, wholesome and fresh ingredients for your meals. Sugar and wheat are eliminated from your diet.

Minimally processed foods are subjected to simple procedures. This includes processes such as baking, heating or freezing a food. Bread or cheese, for example, are also processed foods, but these are not necessarily unhealthy.

Ultra-processed foods, on the other hand, are extensively processed and are often far removed from their original natural state. These include, for example, ready-made products such as instant noodle soup and pizza, but also sweets, soft drinks and your breakfast cereals. 

Food Additives and E numbers

E numbers are codes for food additives and are usually found on food labels throughout the European Union

ut why are processed foods unhealthy?

Most harmful to our bodies are so-called ultra-processed foods that have undergone major industrial changes.

These products typically contain a long list of additives, artificial flavours, colours, sweeteners, preservatives (e numbers) and don’t contain enough of the beneficial nutrients that the body requires. The more ultra-processed foods we eat, the poorer the overall nutritional quality of our diet. These foods are also suspected of causing cancer and weakening the immune system.

And the processed products have other major disadvantages:

• They are not filling.
• Instead of filling the stomach, they often provide energy mainly in the form of calories. This is because they usually contain a lot of sugar and white flour instead of fiber and carbohydrates.
• People who eat a lot of these foods have a higher risk of obesity.
• Few nutrients as vitamins and minerals are not found in these manufactured foods.

It’s also important to know, that even organic products are not always on the safe side. They can also contain additives, so the list of ingredients should be as short as possible.

Fotosource: https://return2health.com.au/articles/food-additives-and-e-numbers

Vegetarian versus vegan

The big difference

These two words describe not only a diet but also a way of life.

Both vegetarians and vegans are people who do not eat meat or fish.

However, vegans go one step further. They abstain from all foods that come from animals.

They do not eat cheese or eggs, do not drink milk and do not use honey.

The vegan diet

A vegan diet prevents many diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer and diabetes. The healthier diet will benefit your body, and it will certainly thank you for it

A vegan diet is good for the environment

With this diet, you are not only doing something for yourself, but you are also protecting the environment, as a vegan diet has less impact on the environment. Poisoned waters or landscapes, released greenhouse gases or destroyed natural landscapes are not an issue with this type of diet. Some even claim that a vegan diet is more important than a diet based on organic products.

But not only is the environment protected, you are also helping our animal inhabitants. As vegans do not eat meat at all, no animals have to die for them. In many farms, animals are reared on a mass scale and slaughtered in extreme suffering. The animals will be very grateful to you if they can live on thanks to you.

It’s a way of life

Being vegan doesn’t just mean not eating any animal products, it also means not using any animal products in everyday life.

Many shoes, belts, handbags and purses, for example, are made of leather. However, as leather is made from animal skin, vegans do without it.

Another example is wool. It has to be shorn to make wool scarves, wool socks or wool sweaters, so vegans would not wear such items of clothing.

Seaspiracy

How to save the ocean

Seaspiracy is the groundbreaking Netflix original documentary that seeks to highlight the impact of the fishing industry on the world’s oceans and challenge concepts of sustainability.

CodeCHeck App

Your personal shopping advisor for healthy and conscious shopping! Scan the barcode of food and cosmetics with the app or search by product name.
You can find out what’s behind the ingredients in real time.

You can see at a glance whether products are vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free or lactose-free or whether they contain palm oil, microplastics, nanoparticles, parabens, kerosenes, too much sugar and much more.

Yuka

With Yuka, you can decode the labels of your food and cosmetic products to analyze their impact on health.

The app is independent, sustainable and offers you recommendations for healthier products and additives.