We all love a bit of junk food here and then - maybe some salty potato chips, or maybe your poison is a sweet chocolate chip cookie. (Mine? Nutella on just about anything! lol) Unjunk Your Junk Food shares pictures of different common junk foods (including brands!) and shows which items receive the bad choice seal and why. From pointing out which ingredients caused it to be branded bad, to sharing positive traits and better choices, this book is to help snackers walk away more informed with what they are eating.
The authors look at the ingredient labels first and then at the nutrition labels. The book also helps folks make sense of those ingredient labels. Have you ever read an ingredients list and gone "huh?" at some of the items listed? Like those big long chemically looking names? I know I have! It also breaks down what important terms such as "fat free" really mean. (Wonder why you're not losing weight on that low fat diet? Items can still contain up to .5 grams of fat!)
It also helps you to understand why you might be craving certain foods. For instance, did you know might be craving chocolate because you have a magnesium deficiency? There is also a glossary at the back of the book with detailed definitions of many of the terms used in this book, and a notes section, where you can add in lists of products to avoid or brands that are OK.
Now when it comes to the "Scary Seven" the authors talk about - HFCS, trans-fats, MSG, artificial flavors, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives, I'd already begun working on eliminating some before I even read this book. High Fructose Corn Syrup has been a no-no in our home for awhile, as has MSG and artificial colors as much as possible. I bake from scratch, so a chunk of the snacks discussed in here really don't apply to me. While it's not one of the scary seven, I did spot "propylene glycol alginate", a chemical food thickener, on the back of a bottle of Wishbone salad dressing, which I wasn't thrilled about. (That's what I get for not making my own!) The only soda currently in our home was Hansen's Black Cherry - which was actually a Savvy pick, so that was good. For potato chips, we had a bag of Kettle Chips, which again was a Savvy Pick - so I'm pretty happy with the way we've been changing out the foods in our pantry - with one exception... my beloved Nutella has vanilin, an artificial flavor in it. (Sob!)
The only one small pick I can see is that almost all of the better choices are more expensive organic and natural food brands that may be out of the budget for some families.
If you're trying to make small steps into changing your diet to become more healthy, Unjunk Your Junk Food can help give you some easy ideas of "stay away from this processed food, and try this healthier idea instead". It's best for those who still visit the middle aisles of the store where the processed foods are, of course, but even those of us who cook & bake mostly from scratch can still benefit from a lot of the knowledge in it - especially if you have kids who eat snacks at school or activities and want to make sure they are choosing better options.
Unjunk Your Junk Food: Healthier Alternatives To Conventional Snacks byt Andrea Donsky and Randy Boyer (creators of NaturallySavvy.com) with Lisa Tsakos is a paperback food book published by Gallery Books. It is 256 pages long. The suggested cover price of the book is $17.99, but Amazon has it available for $12.23 as of this posting. It is also available as an e-book.
I received a copy of this book in order to read it and share my thoughts on it. All opinions are my own, and not that of the author(s) or publisher.
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