The real jumping off point for me came from reading information on Sue Dengate’s “Fed Up” website http://www.fedup.com.au. This site has a great list of additives to avoid and became my starting point. (I should point out that this is Australian-based so the additives are referred to by numbers but the names are listed so you can make it applicable to other countries and there is a list of additives to avoid in the U.S.)
I started in small steps by cutting out (or at least reducing) artificial colors, switching to bread which doesn’t contain calcium propionate (Brumbies in Australia) and margarine that doesn’t contain sorbates (I use Nuttelex in Australia). Not difficult at all. The biggest change was really starting to read all the ingredient labels at the supermarket, learning to identify which ones to avoid (again using the information on fedup.com.au) and then finding out whether there was a better alternative. Sometimes this could be found in the supermarket, for other foods it meant more home cooking (more on this later) and sometimes (with some protest from my boys) cutting it out altogether.
Note: I should point out that the “fed up” website isn’t geared towards those of us trying to eat more unprocessed, organic, non-GMO food but it is a great resource for identifying and avoiding all those additives in processed foods.
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