Healthy eating can be challenging when working, especially when on the go. With frequent travel, long hours behind a wheel and shift work we often end up reaching for snacks and ready meals – neither of which are the basis for a healthy diet. Healthier eating starts with a change to what we eat – but that’s a tough challenge when so much is actually processed food.
For most of us, eliminating processed food completely just isn’t viable. Therefore, this article isn’t about not eating processed food – instead we look at how to find a healthier approach while balancing convenience with a busy work life.
What is the issue with processed foods?
Processed foods are any type of food that has been altered in some way during the preparation. Although not all processed food is unhealthy, many contain levels of fat, salt and sugar which aren’t good for our health if consumed in high quantities. The danger with processed food is that we often aren’t aware of the levels they contain, in particular sugar.
There are hidden sugars in many forms of foods and snacks such as cereal bars, yoghurts, condiments, cereals and more. According to the British Nutrition Foundation, many adults are consuming close to double the recommended maximum daily sugar consumption of 30 grammes. For many a cereal bar is considered a healthy way to skip breakfast, but, as this article from Diabetes UK explains, not all are as healthy as we might think, often down to their sugar content. For example, a Go-ahead yoghurt bar has 73 calories, 7.1g of sugar and 13.1g of carbs per biscuit.
Processed food as a part of a healthy diet
You can’t control what ingredients are in processed food, only in what you choose to buy. To do this, the easiest way is to read the nutrition labels used on food products. On most pre-packaged food there is a label where it has a traffic light system telling you how much sugar, salt and fat content is in the food. The NHS has produced this guide on how to read and understand the data on food labels.
Once you have learnt what you need to look for on the label it becomes a lot easier to make better choices in snack foods. However, due to the increasing awareness of sugar in our foods, manufacturers often disguise the true sugar content in their products by using other names such as fructose, carob syrup, dextrin, ethyl maltol, glucose and so many more. These are all forms of sugar, often referred to as ‘free sugars’. This article from Diabetes UK explains more on the different types of sugar.
What’s more, the government recommends that these free sugars should not make up more than 5% of the energy (calories) you get from food and drink each day. The NHS have produced a helpful factsheet on sugar, with tips on ways to reduce levels of consumption.
Cutting back on processed food and the swaps you could make
An easy way is to begin swapping out your usual choices for low sugar options or choosing fresh fruit as a snack. There are many other choices you could make that will reduce how much processed food you eat. These include swapping lunch meat for white meat or fish, butter instead of margarine, instead of shop bought granola bars make your own protein bars.
This article from the BBC is a very helpful guide to avoiding processed foods. Written by a registered nutritionist, it looks at some of what it calls the ‘worst offenders’ and suggests healthier alternatives.
In conclusion
It’s very easy to reach for those snacks that get us through the working day, but many of us are unaware of the levels of sugar, salt and fat that exist in processed food. While it’s probably not realistic to expect us to cut processed food out of our diet completely, we could make smaller tweaks to our diet to help maintain a healthier relationship with food.
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
