Change Your Grocery Shopping and SAVE Your Life

Sounds a bit of an exaggeration? Please keep reading.

Do you find yourself eating too much food -- especially too much processed and "junk" foods? Are you overweight? Suffer with chronic illnesses? Have trouble sleeping? Dealing with mood or energy swings?

Or perhaps you are frustrated with the results of your food choices but are not sure how to fix them?

This article will help you, but you are going to discover that real food only comprises about a third of the typical supermarket.

The sad news is that for the past several decades (and continuing today), Big Food has hired teams of scientists to craft a key set of ingredients to make their products highly addictive.

These products -- cookies, crackers, chips, snacks, sauces, and prepared foods -- are referred to as hyperpalatable.

Hyperpalatable foods use the savory-sweet-fat combination to overstimulate the reward system in our brains, helping make us crave the product while simultaneously feeling rewarded for eating them. These products have been carefully designed so that users literally cannot stop at just one bite.

But wait... it gets sneakier and MUCH worse. When these scientists manipulated the actual ingredients of the final product, they removed key nutrients and fiber that normally signal the brain that the stomach is satiated. By removing these barriers, the addicted consumer doesn't stop eating until the package is empty (and perhaps goes on to eat another package as well).

In comparison, fresh/whole foods -- food that occurs in nature -- typically only have one palatability element (such as the natural sugar in a blueberry) accompanied with one satiety element (such as fiber, water) that slow the absorption of the elements while also helping with signaling fullness.

The Solution? Buy Real Food

According to one expert and a key researcher in the field, Dr. Tera Fazzino, more than TWO-THIRDS (about 68 percent) of the American food supply is classified as hyperpalatable.

I always wondered why there was sugar in so many items in the grocery store, and I know how addictive sugar is on its own, but I was not aware of how truly evil/sneaky these food companies were in actually manipulating the ingredients to achieve such a high level of addiction and resulting over-consumption.

That Super Walmart or Albertsons just shrank dramatically in its healthy offerings, huh? You now have only a third of the store in which to shop.

But real foods have always been the answer, right? If we're being honest, most of us should have learned that fact at some point in our lives, right? If not, now you know.

When we cook or bake from scratch, we are using real ingredients (as found in nature), made fresh for that meal. Real food is nutrient-dense and much healthier for you -- and not filled with toxic chemicals, preservatives, and other additives.

Finally, this is NOT about a diet. This is about the importance of eating naturally-grown, nutrient-dense, real foods that you prepare for yourself and your family.

Final Thoughts About Hyperpalatable Foods

Can food really be addictive? Yes. (The reward system in the brain works the same if you snorted cocaine.)

Are food producers that evil, that focused on profits over health? Yes.

Can you do something about it? Yes.

We can't stop these companies from making this garbage and we can't stop supermarkets from selling it, BUT we can stop making ourselves fatter, sicker, and addicted. We have the power to make the choice to eat real foods.

Don't think eating out is the solution. All the big fast food chains have hired their own food scientists to tinker with the same sugar-salt-fat ratios -- to keep you going back for another bucket of chicken, a pile of tacos, a sack of burgers, and all the unhealthy fixings.

The solution is home cooking. And even if you have never cooked a day in your life, it's fairly simple. There are millions of recipes online, lots of devices to make cooking easier.

I absolutely love cooking -- but I am no chef; in fact, most of my meals are simple -- easy to make with just a few natural ingredients. (For example, the chicken soup I made today was a combination of onion, garlic, organic broth, fresh spinach, spices, water, and fresh chicken rib meat.)

Additional Resources on Hyperpalatable Foods

• Study Sheds Light on Unhealthy Hyper-Palatable Foods

• Hyper-Palatable Foods: Know The Risks

• Research Shows Effects of 'Hyper-Palatable' Foods Across Four Diets

• Big Tobacco's Legacy: Pushing Hyperpalatable Foods in America

• The 18 Most Addictive Foods