Following a pure food diet packed with organic, biodynamic foods is a great health choice. Go you. Eating only the foods nature intended and only the nutrients you’ve evolved to enjoy is a great way to live well.
Once you’ve made the decision to switch, you’ll begin seeing your diet through new eyes.
You begin to see choice.
A choice to…scout the grass fed poultry from the grain fed alternatives.
To switch the salt full pre-packaged hummus for a homemade superior.
To wave goodbye to processed cookies in preference for a raw cacao protein ball.
You begin to see all the small ways you can make positive change to the fuel you feed your body. Steps towards feeling better, having more energy and to glowing from the inside out.
By making just one simple change every day, you’ll quickly be finding your way to a pure food diet. How you do this is completely and uniquely up to you and today we have 4 not-so-well-known helpful steps to help ensure your new biodynamic food choices really are 100% chemical free.
1: Choose Organic, Pure Foods by Learning their PLU Code
Organic foods are a great way to immediately kick start your chemical free food pantry. Organic products by law adhere to specialist regulations which dictate, ‘to be named organic, you must not use man-made fertilizers, you must not use livestock feed additives, you must avoid the use of pesticides and you must not use genetically modified products’.
The result is a chemical free apple, carrot or pork chop that grew up the way nature intended, with all of the nutrients it was designed to have and none of the chemical additives our western world invented.
Foods to help you harness biodynamic wellness.
Now, next time you visit your local supermarket and ask yourself, ‘Is this product truly organic?’ know this. A simple 5 digit code holds the answer.
This is a well-kept stock tracking secret. Supermarkets need to identify the foods they sell and to do this, each food receives a specialist PLU code.
Most PLU codes are 4 digits long.
Organic PLU codes are 5 digits long… starting with a 9.
For example, 4129 is the code for a small Fuji apple, however 94129 is the PLU code for a small organic Fuji apple. It really is that simple.
2: Switch Canned Beans, Pulses and Lentils for Dried Pure Food Alternatives
Canned food stays fresher for longer, but they don’t accomplish this alone. In addition to sealing off a product from air, canned foods also often contain additive chemicals. Beans, pulses and lentils in particular contain firming agents (e.g. calcium chloride) to help keep their bean, pulse and lentil shapes from becoming mush. They also often contain antioxidants (e.g. sodium metabisulphite) to help prevent your pre-hydrated beans, pulses and lentils from becoming rancid.
By law these chemical additives must be listed in order of quantity on a foods ingredients list.
Which means when purchasing a can of ‘butter beans in water’ you may see an ingredients list looking like this;
Ingredients: Butter Beans, Water, Firming Agent (Calcium Chloride), Antioxidant (Sodium Metabisulphite).
To continue your journey to a chemical free food pantry, switch tinned varieties of wholefoods for their dried, pure food twins. Just take a look at this list;
Ingredients: Dried Butter Beans.
Now that’s an ingredients list worth bragging about.
Image via The Kitchn
3: Look for Emulsifier, Stabilizer Free Nut Milks
Whether you’re buying almond milk in a tetra-pak or coconut milk in a can, many milk substitute ‘health foods’ come partnered up with additive emulsifying and stabilizing ingredients. Some may be naturally derived e.g. carrageenan, whereas others are naturally man-made e.g. xanthan gum. If you’re mind has been boggled by health food ingredients list, this is most probabaly why.
These strange sounding ingredients are in place to hold together the fat of the nuts with the water of the milk and to therefore extend shelf life.
As chemical additives these ingredients are compounds your body has not evolved to process and may therefore lead to intestinal bloating (ref) and worsening of existing conditions such as IBS.
Help to protect your health by choosing pure food alternatives free from stabilizers such as carrageenan, xanthan gum and locust bean gum. They may be a few pennies more expensive but good health is priceless.
4: Choose Fresh, Preservative Free Meats
Meats that are not sold in chop, breast or drumstick form are usually accompanied by a handful of preserving additives. Ingredients like sodium nitrate and butylated hydroxyanisole or BHA for short are well known synthetic antioxidants. They keep uncooked meats like bacon a fresh red colour and they extend the shelf life of pre-prepared foods such as sausages.
Ingredients like BHA are more commonly being linked with cancer. Authorities such as the International cancer agency categorize BHA as a ‘possible human carcinogen’ and California’s proposition 65 lists it as a ‘known carcinogen’.
Other synthetic additives such as sodium nitrate may not pose you a health hazard when raw, but when fried, the high heats initiate side kick reactions forming carcinogenic N-nitrosamines (ref).
Avoid ingredients such as BHA, BHT and sodium nitrate by switching sausages and bacon for organic pork chops and chicken. If in doubt, check the ingredients list.
By checking the ingredients list of one new food a day, you’ll quickly create a pantry full of natural and organic biodynamic foods. Which switch will be your first?