What are CRAP foods?
CRAP foods is an acronym for foods that not only contain empty calories but also contain ingredients that rob your body of essential nutrients.
Empty Calories are not zero calorie foods, they generally contain a lot of calories but provide no nutrients for the body.
CRAP foods take essential nutrients from the body leaving you feeling tired, they can cause over eating and rapid weight gain.
Anyone looking to lose weight, maintain health or live a healthy lifestyle should severely limit these foods from their diet.
Carbonated Drinks
One of the possible leading causes of today’s obesity epidemic is the consumption of carbonated drinks. Minimise or eliminate coke, lemonade, Fanta or similar drinks including their diet counterparts from your own diet.
The C in CRAP foods also includes drinks like milkshakes and fruit juices.
I personally believe fresh juices should not be included here. It is wise to limit them as they are high in sugar and the juicing process removes some nutrients and most fibre from the juice. However, it is more beneficial to eat the actual fruit instead.
Refined Sugar
it’s time to skip the cookie or pastry with your mid morning tea or coffee. This CRAP foods category includes white flour, refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
You will find all three of these combined in most pastries, cakes, cookies, cereal and even yogurt.
It’s worth reading the packaging on these foods to see exactly what you’re putting into your body.
If the ingredients list any of these three items, do your body a favour and make a different choice.
Artificial Colours & Flavours
these are anti- nutrients, foods that not only rob your body of essential nutrients but cab eventually cause a toxic overload on the body.
These CRAP foods are most often found in confectionary such as sweets or candies, soft drinks, processed party foods and crisps.
These foods offer little to no value to your health, and should be eliminated from your diet.
Alcohol is included under the A in CRAP foods as it is considered a toxin.
While having an occasional glass of red wine can provide antioxidant value to the body, other alcoholic drinks do not.
I suggest limiting your alcohol intake to 1-2 drinks per week if you are seeking optimum health.
Processed Products
You may be thinking, most foods are processed. This section of the CRAP foods acronym refers to heavily processed foods.
These include foods such as ice cream, sausages, smoked and cured deli meats, hams and party foods.
These foods usually contain trans fat as well which is a danger to our health.
CRAP foods Recommendations
We all love to treat ourselves to sweets, ice cream, alcohol and we want to enjoy the occasional party foods. I can appreciate it may seem daunting to eliminate these foods from your diet completely.
Rather than focusing on eliminating, try to choose healthy nutritional foods first so that the body can obtain its recommended daily intake of vitamins and minerals before plying it with CRAP foods.
If two thirds of your diet consists of the foods listed here, there is very little room for the body to receive its essential nutrients.
Aim first to nourish your body rather than focusing on what you can’t have.
Easy Substitutions
Here are 5 easy substitutions that you can begin using today and be on the way to a healthier you.
- Instead of drinking carbonated drinks try adding fresh lemon juice or sliced mint to your water for added flavour.
- Exchange white bread and pasta for the whole grain, whole wheat or seared variety.
- Beat sugar cravings by eating a snack of fresh blueberries, banana, strawberries and/or raspberries. You will still get a sugar fix from the fruit as well as some excellent antioxidants.
- Choose a small glass of red wine over a sugary cocktail next time you are desiring an alcoholic beverage.
- Rather than buying smoked or cured deli meats, if you are a meat eater: cook fresh chicken or beef at home and thinly slice that for your sandwich instead. Be sure to add some vegetables such as lettuce, tomato, spinach and/ or avocado to your meal too.
Call To Action
At HEALTHY MindBodyLife we question how we can be our best healthy selves for our friends, family and community.
Therefore, we are freely sharing our Nutritional Immunity Assessment (NIA). It is a short survey with immunity, environmental and nutritional based questions to give you an indication of how to best support your immunity.
In 2020, good immune health is more important than ever for you and your family and we really hope our NIA can help support this. check out our Nutritional Immunity Assessment here.
If you have any questions regarding your own personal nutrition, please comment below or email us to discuss your nutritional needs.
You may also like these articles:
- What are the best antioxidants?
- Top 5 Superfoods!
- Everything you need to know about Fibre in your diet
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Free Additional Health Advice
To lose weight, maintain weight, improve your health and to further decrease anti nutrients from your life;
- stop smoking!
- Don’t eat fried foods
- Use antibiotics and painkillers sparingly
- And avoid foods that come in plastic containers or canned foods.
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Love and Light
Lauren x
