10 Rules to Eat Safely for Life (and What to Remove From Your Kitchen)

Every day you have to navigate a toxic nutritional landscape. You have to hunt and gather in a food desert. You have to survive the American supermarket and dodge the dangers of industrial food. The good news is that if you follow 10 simple rules you can eat safely for life.

Think of them as shortcuts or tricks to use when shopping or eating. If you just do these things and nothing else, you will automatically be eating real, fresh food that will prevent, treat and even reverse most of the chronic diseases that drain our energy, stress our families and deplete our economy. You don't even have to understand anything about nutrition. Just follow these goof-proof rules for getting healthy, losing weight and feeling great.

1. Ideally have only food without labels in your kitchen or foods that don't come in a box, a package or a can. There are labeled foods that are great, like sardines, artichoke hearts, or roasted red peppers, but you have to be very smart in reading the labels. There are two things to look for: the ingredient list and the nutrition facts. Check out my special report on "How to Read Labels" for more information.

   
   Where is the primary ingredient on the list? If the real food is at the end of the list and the sugar or salt is at the beginning, beware. The most abundant ingredient is listed first and the others are listed in descending order by weight. Be conscious, too, of ingredients that may not be on the list; some ingredients may be exempt from labels. This is often true if the food is in a very small package, if it has been prepared in the store, or if it has been made by a small manufacturer. Beware of these foods.

2. If a food has a label it should have fewer than five ingredients. If it has more than five ingredients, throw it out. Also beware of food with health claims on the label. They are usually bad for you -- think "sports beverages." I recently saw a bag of deep-fried potato chips with the health claims "gluten-free, organic, no artificial ingredients, no sugar" and with fewer than five ingredients listed. Sounds great, right? But remember, cola is 100 percent fat-free and that doesn't make it a health food.
3. If sugar (by any name, including organic cane juice, honey, agave, maple syrup, cane syrup, or molasses) is on the label, throw it out. There may be up to 33 teaspoons of sugar in the average bottle of ketchup. Same goes for white rice and white flour, which act just like sugar in the body. If you have diabesity -- the spectrum of metabolic imbalances starting with just a little belly fat, leading all the way to diabetes -- you can't easily handle any flour, even whole-grain. Throw it out.
4. Throw out any food with high-fructose corn syrup on the label. It is a super sweet liquid sugar that takes no energy for the body to process. Some high-fructose corn syrup also contains mercury as a by-product of the manufacturing process. Many liquid calories, such as sodas, juices, and "sports" drinks contain this metabolic poison. It always signals low quality or processed food.
5. Throw out any food with the word hydrogenated on the label. This is an indicator of trans fats, vegetable oils converted through a chemical process into margarine or shortening. They are good for keeping cookies on the shelf for long periods of time without going stale, but these fats have been proven to cause heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. New York City and most European counties have banned trans fats, and you should, too.
6. Throw out any highly-refined cooking oils such as corn, soy, etc. (I explain which oils to buy in Week 1 of the program in my book The Blood Sugar Solution). Also avoid toxic fats and fried foods.
7. Throw out any food with ingredients you can't recognize, pronounce, or that are in Latin.
8. Throw out any foods with preservatives, additives, coloring or dyes, "natural flavorings," or flavor enhancers such as MSG (monosodium glutamate).
9. Throw out food with artificial sweeteners of all kinds (aspartame, Splenda, sucralose, and sugar alcohols -- any word that ends with "ol" like xylitol, sorbitol). They make you hungrier, slow your metabolism, give you bad gas, and make you store belly fat.
10. If it came from the earth or a farmer's field, not a food chemist's lab, it's safe to eat. As Michael Pollan says, if it was grown on a plant, not made in a plant, then you can keep it in your kitchen. If it is something your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, throw it out (like a "lunchable" or go-gurt"). Stay away from "food-like substances."

That's it -- just 10 simple goof-proof rules for staying healthy for life. It is a simple recipe for staying out of trouble and automatically leads you to a real whole foods diet. And the side effect will be weight loss, energy, reduction in the need for medication and saving our nation from the tsunami of chronic disease and Pharmageddon!

When you make these simple choices you will not only improve your health, and your family's health, but you will create a "wellness spring" that will shift the demand in the marketplace. You will not only take back your health, but also help America take back its health. You vote three times a day with your fork and it impacts our health, how we grow food, energy consumption, climate change and environmental degradation. You have more power than you think. Use it!

My personal hope is that together we can create a national conversation about a real, practical solution for the prevention, treatment, and reversal of our obesity, diabetes and chronic disease epidemic.

Now I'd like to hear from you:

What are your rules for eating heathy for life?

How have you transformed your health with food?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

To learn more and to get a free sneak preview of The Blood Sugar Solution go to www.drhyman.com.

Mark Hyman, M.D. is a practicing physician, founder of The UltraWellness Center, a four-time New York Times bestselling author, and an international leader in the field of Functional Medicine. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on YouTube, become a fan on Facebook, and subscribe to his newsletter.

For more by Mark Hyman, MD, click here.

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Comments

[Beecancerfree]

01:10 PM on 04/03/2012

I gradually moved into a healthy eating regimen. By doing this, my body was not screaming, I gradually added the good stuff which in turn left little room for the bad stuff :) Baby steps everyday will make a huge change in your life. www.nu-mewellness.com

[HolisticHealthCoachSam]

09:29 AM on 02/28/2012

It's amazing how many clients still think boxed cereals are good for you because it says on the box Healthy, Organic, Fortified etc etc. Thanks Dr Hyman for helping to spread the word that if you can't pronounce an ingredient then it's not likely to be a Whole Food. Great article that needs sharing!

[Anne Duchard]

01:50 AM on 02/27/2012

Great article. It takes a real commitment and a change in lifestyle to eat healthy. Sometimes it is financially difficult. Keep it simple seems to be the best way to achieve this.

[DSevere]

12:37 PM on 02/18/2012

I subscribe to the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time, I eat pretty much like recommended, above.

But occasionally, there are some churros or something equally inappropriate...

[skamveris]

06:48 PM on 02/10/2012

These solutions aren’t really that “simple” and can be financially challenging. Buying fresh, perishable foods is a great goal, but not always convenient. Long workdays leave little time to shop on a daily basis. A snapshot of my own “dietitian-stocked” kitchen pantry includes boxes of whole grain cereals and pasta, canned legumes, light tuna fish, and all natural peanut butter – they all have labels on them. Since we all know most rules get broken, I prefer to encourage balance, which means having fats and sugars in moderation. It also includes exercising, managing stress, and including a little fun in our lives whether that be an occasional treat or a night out dining with friends.

Sophia Kamveris, RD and consultant to food and beverage industries, including Coca-Cola

[lorraine hairston]

06:19 PM on 02/07/2012

“You are what you eat” is more than just a prosaic expression­. It takes about six hours for the food you eat to become building blocks for the body (JacobS, sic, 2011). Given that this is true in a very literal sense, would you have the ABC’s of vitamins, minerals and proteins that make up your child’s body come from cheese burgers, french-fri­es and Twinkie cakes or fresh vegetables and fruits, cereal, and low-fat fish and chicken?

To read the rest of the article log on to http://spr­outcare.bl­ogspot.com­/

[misterpete]

10:47 AM on 02/06/2012

"If it came from the earth or a farmer's field, not a food chemist's lab, it's safe to eat"
Unfortunately, unless it's ORGANIC - untrue in many cases.

[okornot]

10:04 AM on 02/06/2012

Any more you can become simply neurotic over the topic of whats healthy and whats not. My advice would be to relax, follow your heart when shopping at the grocery, and follow a common sense diet. The irony is that the common sense diet comprises much of what's on the above list. We hear on a daily basis, we've had it pounded in our brains the dangers of what the food industry is producing. I think people read articles like this and by the time they throw out all the junk there's nothing left to eat. And it doesn't help that one day something is bad for you then the next day some study refutes it.

[floydmcg]

09:46 AM on 02/06/2012

There are only two rules in my book.
1) Know what you are eating. If you don't know what an ingredient is, LOOK IT UP. All the information is available on wikipedia. Find out where it comes from, how it is grown/raised.
2) Be smart about what your food choices. In moderation, sugar, oil, refined grains, are OK, and they taste good. Food food can make us healthy, but food that tastes good is good for morale. We all need to treat ourselves once in a while.

As you eat more and more healthy foods, you'll notice that they are more enjoyable just because you know how good they make you feel in the long run.

[paxaquarius]

03:47 PM on 02/16/2012

AMEN!

[Tiggy]

11:50 PM on 02/05/2012

I love this! As of late of I have been wondering about water. In doing a bit of research on bottled water I found that most USA waters are more acidic while European bottle waters are more alkaline. I wonder what if any part that plays in our health in regards to diabetes and cancers.

[Juena Suk MD]

08:59 PM on 02/05/2012

LOVE these rules! My 11 and 7 yo kids also know and follow these rules MOST of the time. I also make sure my canned foods are BPA free and try to opt for dried versions of beans or glass jars of food.

[janereally]

09:07 AM on 02/06/2012

well you're lucky, my 13 year old won't go for it.

[zinxeb]

05:23 PM on 02/05/2012

Big food corporations make foods that sell...profit is their bottom line. The foods that they make are the ones that people will buy, so why blame them? If anyone is to blame, it's the consumers who want "tasty" foods...and tasty is salty, sweet and greasy. So food companies take perfectly good foods, and "doctor them up" so that the consumers will eat them.

I see beautiful, fresh fruits and vegetables rotting in the produce department, while people are grabbing up "boiling bags" of frozen, processed foods. Has anyone on this thread had any basic boiled zucchini lately...with no salt or sauces?

People have gotten so used to ultra-sweet, ultra-salty and ultra fat foods, that they don't even know what a plain vegetable tastes like anymore. And fruit is never as sweet as all of those cakes, cookies and candy that we call "delicious".

[Tiggy]

11:58 PM on 02/05/2012

I for one am blessed that my children love both veggies and fruits! Raw Broc. and apples go to school with them! I have limited there intake of other foods their entire life. An occassional soda is a treat and water the rule in our home.
Having said that, we are fortunate in that I am home to prepare fresh foods and we have the finances and transportation to allow for the same. Many, especially the poor, have such limited resources that they buy cheap to stretch the budget. Many don't have the means to drive every other or third day to the grocery store for fresh foods.
I would like to see the chemicals, sweeteners and colors removed from all foods!

[zinxeb]

01:18 AM on 02/06/2012

You're teaching your children good eating habits...good for you! My mom did the same for me, and I have her to thank for always being interested in health issues...it rubbed off.

People seem to be very intimidated by preparing fresh foods, or they think that it is very expensive, or time-consuming. It's way more expensive to buy prepared foods, and you have no control of what ingredients are in those packages. Sugar, salt and partially hydrogenated fats are added to make the food tasty, and any ingredients that might have given you some vitamins are so overprocessed that they only have empty calories left.

I have a Fannie Farmer cookbook, which shows you how to cook anything in a very simple way...it's a great book for the beginner, and the basic recipes don't take long to prepare.

Poor people can stretch their dollars by buying unprocessed foods...after all, you pay for the company to process it...they don't do it for nothing. Plain frozen veggies are cheap and have almost as many vitamins as fresh. Potatoes are cheap and have lots of vitimins and minerals. And fruits are cheaper than cakes, cookies and candy. A big box of oatmeal is cheaper than Lucky Charms, goes further and is much healthier...and on and on.

The way you get companies to change what they sell you is easy...don't buy their junk!

[RoughCollie]

10:06 PM on 02/06/2012

I grew up in what would be considered a poor household and here's how we managed to eat well. We weren't allowed to have candy except on holidays, dessert was a treat and usually homemade fruit pies; meat was a luxury, on Fridays we ate fish and on Saturday it was baked beans or liver (I hated both at the time). The biggest cost saving thing we did? We had a vegetable garden and my grandmothers always had bread baking in the oven.

[SuperMom101]

04:53 PM on 02/05/2012

Thank you for another terrific article Dr. Hyman. I had no idea that the American/W­estern diet was feeding and fueling our diseases until I was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer at the age of 38 - changed what's on my plate and have been healthy ever since - and that was over 11 years ago.

It's so strange - America (and her children) have never been fatter or sicker and we can't seem to figure out why. Meanwhile, we have individual­s in white lab coats with PhDs in chemistry "farming" our food and telling us what's "healthy".

I'd also add to your list food labeled "NON GMO" since geneticall­y modified foods don't need to be labeled and are another disaster that's been added to our food supply. And, of course, no growth hormones, steroids, antibiotic­s, or dairy in my diet ever...(tu­mor was hormone receptive.­)

I basically follow a diet you listed above with the best, organic, fresh produce and "real" food we can find in the Northeast. And yes, it might cost a bit more - what's the price of one's health? So, for me and my family - it's the quality of our food - not the quantity.

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. - Hippocrate­s -
(father of western medicine, 431 B.C.)

[rickthaluddite]

04:09 PM on 02/05/2012

Thanks Doc. I was going to buy a can of baked beans today until I looked at the label and saw 250mL of the beans contained 1000mg of sodium. I put the can back on the shelf and bought a bag of dry beans. I'll just wait until tomorrow to have beans that won't make me have a stroke :-)

[maxnificent]

03:35 PM on 02/05/2012

Now what about 9 and a product like stevia...or is that considered a natural sweetner? good bad or other?