What is Clean Eating’

You heard this term from your bodybuilding friends or you heard about the book from Tosca Reno. Clean Eating means,  eating food as close to its natural state as possible. Basically, if you can grow, fish for it, pluck it, that’s clean eating. When you eat clean your goals are to avoid eating additives as much as possible. So what are additives’  I tell all my clients read the back of your food to really understand what is inside the box. The front of the box is where food manufactures try to sell you on what’s inside, the back of the box is where the FDA requires them to come clean with what’s inside. So the less ingredients you see the closer to the source the food is.

Here are just a few of the more popular additives.

• Aspartame: better known as Equal/Nutrasweet and is 180 times sweeter than sugar, plus in my humble opinion has an after taste. Be careful with how much you eat, as too much may cause headache and vision issues. For more information on Aspartame dangers.
• High Fructose Corn Syrup: is a highly processed sweetener made from corn that more than 40% of all food products in the US contain. When processed by your body, it’s sent directly to your liver, because it can’t be absorbed by your cells. Once processed by your liver, it’s stored as FAT!
• Mannitol: the sugar alcohol that is in many of those “sugar-free” products.  While it doesn’t have calories, it does a dosey on your stomach, causing some to spend some quality time in the bathroom, if you know what I mean.
• Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (trans fat): This is the “trans fats” that you have been hearing so much about.  They are in baked goods and margarine. It’s a low cost way of increasing the shelf life of foods.  Why are they so bad for you’ They aren’t good fats, and increase your changes of heart disease, raise the bad cholesterol levels while reducing the good cholesterol levels. Bottom line — STAY AWAY!
• Sucralose: Also known as Splenda, it’ 600 times sweeter than sugar and honesty the jury is still out. So similar to aspartame, take in small doses.