10 Secrets for Healthier Grocery Shopping

1. Look for Short Ingredient Lists

When you find a packaged food in the supermarket with a long list of ingredients on the label, just set it back on the shelf and look for a simpler version of the food. (We're talking here about the "Ingredients" part of the label. "Nutrition Facts" is another part, and more about that later.) The alarming truth is, many of those ingredients are various kinds of sugars and chemical additives, and they're not put there for you — they're there to benefit the company that processes the food. They "enhance" the looks, taste, or shelf life — which is all about marketing and shipping and not at all about your health. Most additives aren't known to be harmful (although the health effects of some are still open to question), but they aren't about nutrition or taste as nature intended taste to be. In fact, one of their main purposes is to make up for a lack of those things. So check the list of ingredients every time. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, says that almost always, the shorter the better.