5 Ingredients Or Less - Do You Really Know What Is In Your Food?

David Katz, MD coined the term and the program, "nutrition detectives" to teach kids how to be able to read labels to distinguish healthy packaged foods from unhealthy packaged foods. To this end, the first problem that I have is that foods in packages are inherently unhealthy and I have been trying to teach my clients, especially my young clients to be nutrition detectives by reading labels and knowing what is in the foods they consume. While, in a perfect world I would love if there were no foods in packages and we could all subsist on fruits, vegetables, meats, pastured eggs, unpasteurized dairy (or no dairy at all, the horror) and make our own grain specialties from whole grains without pulverizing them into flours and other refined products like pasta. But, I know that people are going to buy packaged foods, but I'd prefer if they are going to consume these products that they consume those foods had 5 ingredients or less. Those foods should be simple and minimally processed and a person should be able to pronounce and be familiar with all the ingredients listed on the package.
One a recent shopping trip with one of my younger clients I tried a method for the five ingredient rule that had one caveat. There was a three strike rule: strike 1: high fructose corn syrup, strike 2: hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil, strike 3: any substance with a color or number such as yellow number 5 or blue lake number 2. If any of these substances were on the ingredient list, they were automatically disqualified from the 5 ingredient rule. My young client responded to this game with excitement and understanding. A breakthrough! To learn more about David Katz's nutrition detectives program, please visit this site: http://www.davidkatzmd.com/nutritiondetectives.aspx. I have been using his methods and would love to give a lecture to your children or PTA meeting about how you can teach your children to become nutrition detectives and how you too can learn to read food labels. I believe that the father of my young client who I met with this past week in Food emporium on the upper west side learned just as much as his eleven year old son using my three strikes and 5 ingredients or less method.

Once the food has passed the three strike rule, I teach children and adults to read ingredient labels and only purchase food that have 5 ingredients or less. Of those five ingredients - you should know what they all are and you should be able to pronounce them. "Enriched" flour does not count as one ingredient. Anything "enriched" is a fake non-whole food because otherwise it would not need to be enriched. I urge you to stay away from foods that are enriched or which have nutrition claims on the package. You can add flax seeds or flax oil to bread when you make it yourself or buy it from a bakery that does this without adding stabilizers, preservatives and trans fats to keep the bread good past when its naturally supposed to be. I like to buy bread from natural or organic bakeries such as le pain quotidien where they sell gluten free breads. I don’t recommend large amounts of bread for those people trying to lose weight and restrict bread intake for those maintaining weight to 1-2 ½ inch thick slices per day. Eggs should not be fortified with omega 3’s. Chickens that get outside and eat a natural chicken diet of bugs and feed will produce all the natural omega 3 you need to consume. Fortified foods are ones that are naturally lacking in nutrients because either white flour is used or if it’s an animal product the animal is not eating the proper diet or getting outside as it should.

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