Food Processing

   

FUELING YOUR BODY

Close your eyes and imagine yourself in the fastest and coolest looking race car you can think of.  Maybe it is RED or GREEN, maybe it has stripes down the middle or it may even have flames down the side. Now start up your engine and slam your foot down on the gas pedal! But wait a second; you are running low on gas! We better make a pit stop and fill up! You pull up to the gas station and have the choice of a low grade gas or a high grade gas. Which one do you think would be best to put into your car? Low grade will not allow your race car to run as well as the high grade would. Putting a low grade fuel into your car will make it run slow and feel weighed down.  High grade gas will help you go fast and win this race! The same thing goes for the fuel you put into your body. When you eat food with lots of vitamins, you will feel a whole lot better. Exercising and filling your body with awesome high grade fuel will make thinking a lot easier and make you feel happier.   

TRAFFIC LIGHT FOODS

An easy way to clearly understand what kinds of foods are good for you and not so good for you is by comparing them to a traffic light. Green light "go" foods are foods that are going to fuel your body the best way possible by giving your body energy and nutrients to make you perform your best. Yellow light "caution" foods are foods that it is okay to eat only sometimes. Red light "stop" foods are foods that you shouldn't be putting in your body at all.



GREEN, GO!
Green light foods are the kind of food that you can find growing in your moms garden. They are the things that make your body feel great and perform the best it can. They can also come from healthy animals that live on a big, open, grassy field.

• Cucumbers
• Cauliflower
• Apples
• Grapes
• Chicken
• Fish
• Eggs
• Milk

YELLOW, CAUTION!

Yellow light foods are foods that are only okay to eat sometimes. Just like the yellow light on the traffic light means slow down, you need to slow down on eating these kinds of foods. A lot of these foods are made with sugar and white flour. These are usually the pretzels that your mom buys in a bag at the grocery store or the store bought sugar cookies grandma makes you for your lunch. They can also be drinks. My mom used to pack little Hi-C packs in my lunch box that I loved. They sure are yummy, but they are filled with sugar and artifical flavors! Yuck!

• Pretzels
• White bread
• Lemonade
• Chocolate Milk
• Ice Cream
• Cookies

RED, STOP!

Red light foods are foods that you should never eat! These are the foods that are made in factories. The easiest way to tell if a food is a red light food is by reading the label on the back of the package. If the ingredient list includes words that you have never seen or can't pronounce, you've found one! Stay far away from these foods because these ingredients can cause harm to your body. Examples of specific ingredients you will want to avoid are high fructose corn syrup, butylated hydroxytoluene, and hydrogenated oil.

• Coca Cola
• Gatorade
• Lunchables
• Kraft mac & cheese
• Doritos
• Candy


BUT, WHY?

So why am I asking you to stay FAR AWAY from these red light foods? These foods are mostly processed which means that they go through procedure called food processing which injects food with a variety of chemicals and preservatives. The reason some foods go through this process is to make them tastier and keep them fresh for a longer period of time. When you ingest food that have these harmful chemicals and preservatives you can become extremely ill. Some side effects would be obesity, high blood pressure, and even cancer in some cases. No one ever wants to be sick, so do yourself and your family a favor and ask your mom or dad to buy only green light foods. Everyone will be healthy, have lots of energy and live much longer!