I am finishing up my annual Supported Spring Cleanse, which came right on the heels of a Sugar Purge. These groups are always such a great learning experience for me. The most salient point for me of this Cleanse has been our global reliance on convenience food. I am absolutely guilty of this as well: I always have a Kind bar in my purse and I often rely on green juice to get my veggies in on days when I’m teaching multiple fitness classes. I do try to use these meal replacements sporadically, but they very easily can become a daily habit. The Cleanse guidelines prohibit soy, dairy and peanuts, among other things. So, Kind bars are out for me for 2 weeks. I bought a couple Lara bars thinking they could be a possible swap, but for the 20 grams of sugar in those, I just couldn’t do it. Even breaking the bars into thirds made my mouth hurt from the sugar.
It got me thinking about our need for convenience foods and what we sacrifice in the wake. Cooking three meals a day is tough. I have the best most amazing work/life schedule ever (I work mornings, have lunch at home with my daughter and dinner at home with my whole family nearly every day) and it’s still very tough for me to make healthy whole-food based meals all the time. For those of you who work full time, it’s got to be impossible. SO: the rise of convenience food. Prep work shortcuts, frozen meals, packaged snacks…I totally get it. But what does it cost us?
I’m so torn about things like buying pre-chopped veggies at the store. One one hand, it’s a no-brainer: fresh veggies already prepped! You’ll totally eat them that way! (I’m always in favor of more vegetables in everyone’s diet). Save yourself the washing, chopping, cleaning up and TIME. But on the other hand…well, many vitamins are light sensitive, and you’re exposing them to light once the veggie is chopped. If you’re chopping and immediately eating, it’s not such a big deal. But if you’re buying food that was chopped two or three days ago, you’re losing nutrient density. And who knows how fresh it was to begin with. And you’re adding in all that packaging. But, once in a while, to save time, awesome. I buy cauliflower florets instead of heads of cauliflower all the time.
But what about straight up packaged foods? What about those Kind and Lara bars? Any time something is processed like that, some nutrients are lost. Many times preservatives are added. Calories are condensed, making them more intense in flavor and energy. I see Lara bars recommended ALL THE TIME among people who are educated about nutrition. They think that because the only thing that’s in them is fruit and nuts, they’re wonderful. The reality is that the dates are condensed: you’re eating way more dates in a Lara bar than you’d eat whole dates. And because of that, your blood sugar levels take a big spike. Kind bars are lower on the glycemic index, but definitely have stabilizers and preservatives.
I’m trying to avoid stabilizers and preservatives. I don’t want them in my diet and I really don’t want them in my kid’s. I’m trying to avoid spiking my blood sugar levels. So I’m taking a break from all of these bars. I’m packing an apple and cashews on my way to a client, hard boiling a dozen eggs at a time, baking muffins on Sunday to stock my freezer for a quick breakfast and swapping a green juice for a homemade smoothie. But I’m not giving up my cauliflower florets.