The Shocking List of “Health Foods” That Aren’t Healthy At All

12. Frozen “Diet” Meals

Or any frozen meal, really. In order to properly freeze and preserve whatever combination of food the package boasts, companies have to go the “extra mile,” so to speak.Just take a look at the ingredients list on most frozen meals, and you’ll understand: they’re obscenely long, and riddled with hard-to-pronounce names of chemicals and compounds you’ve never even heard of.

A good rule of thumb to have when shopping is: the shorter the ingredients list on the packet, the better.

Instead of turning automatically to frozen meals, buy your own ingredients – fruits, veggies, meat, bread, spices, and oils – to make your own meals. You can even prepare meals ahead of time and freeze or refrigerate them yourself, saving you time when staring down the barrel of an exceedingly busy week.

The great thing about making meals and freezing them yourself is you don’t have to add strange chemicals and compounds to do it.

The reality of an industry that has to provide food for hundreds of millions of people across the country is that additives and preservatives are necessary to prevent spoilage and reduce waste.

But they’re not all created equal. There are good additives and preservatives that may be unfamiliar to you, the most common being:

Niacin – Also known as vitamin B3, niacin is commonly added to bread and flour to help eliminate the nutritional disease pellagra
Ascorbic Acid – Basically, just a fancy name for good old vitamin C.
Iodine – Added to table salt, iodine has played a major role in virtually eliminating the nutritional disease known as goiter.

Looking for shorter ingredients lists helps to avoid the many unhealthy chemicals and compounds added to processed foods, but the best way to know what’s good for you and what isn’t is research.

If you don’t recognize items on an ingredients list, write them down and then look them up when you get home.

Educating yourself is the best way to know what’s good for you and what isn’t. Then again, that’s why you’re reading this, isn’t it?