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Three healthy options to find in the grocery aisles
02-17-2023

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Even for those of us living the quintessential airfare lifestyle—on the go, building new things, and pursuing adventure—there’s always a time when we regroup and reroot at home.

When we’re not on the move, we remain diligent about our health, especially what we eat. Unfortunately, the problem we encounter at the airport persists in grocery story aisles: products that claim to be healthy often are not.

To steer us in the right direction, here are three essential groceries that make the grade.

Healthy shopping and happy snacking.

Bread: Food For Life Ezekiel 4:9 Sprouted Whole Grain Bread

We often write about the consensus recommendation from experts around the world to eat more whole grains. Let’s start in the bread aisle with one important distinction: “100 percent whole grain” is not the same as “100 percent whole wheat,” a term not even defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Here is the ingredients list of a well-known bread brand labeled “100% whole wheat:” whole wheat flour, water, bulgur, wheat, sugar, soybean oil, wheat gluten, honey, yeast, whole wheat, cultured wheat flour, salt, soy lecithin, grain vinegar, natural flavors, citric acid.

Note that among the laundry list of ingredients are sugar, soybean oil, and honey. Those three grams of added sugar equate to an entire packet of sugar.

With Ezekiel, you don’t have to worry about that. Check out this clean list of recognizable foods inside each slice: organic sprouted wheat, filtered water, organic sprouted barley, organic sprouted millet, organic sprouted barley, organic sprouted lentils, organic sprouted soybeans, organic sprouted spelt, yeast, organic wheat gluten, sea salt.

That’s clean eating. Plus, there’s more fiber and protein, fewer calories, and zero added sugar or junk. Avocado toast coming right up.

Alternative milk: Three Trees Almond Milk

Full-fat dairy products contain lots of saturated fat, which most health organizations recommend keeping less than 10 percent of daily calories. Even fat-free dairy is controversial due because of its link to various health issues like lactose intolerance, inflammation, and even certain cancers.

Avoiding dairy milk seems like the safe route, but the alternative milk space presents its own concerns. These “milks” often use ingredients intended to add thickness, taste, and stability…basically to make them taste more like milk.

The almond milk used at many Starbucks, for instance, contains five grams of sugar per eight ounce cup. So that tasty Grande Almond Milk Latte contains 10 grams of added sugar—three packets worth—all from the almond milk.

Our preferred option is the clean Three Trees Almond Milk. It’s Original variation has only two ingredients: organic almonds and filtered water.

For a backup, MALK Unsweetened Almond solid choice. If options are limited to the larger brands like Califia, Silk or Almond Breeze, just stick to the unsweetened version, please.

Pasta: Tolerant Lentil Pasta

After nourishing our bodies with the benefits from whole grains in Ezekiel bread, let’s level-up even more with some pasta made of beans.

As we’ve detailed before, beans pack fiber, protein, and iron into one little power-plant. Consuming members of the legume family has been linked to benefits like improved heart health, decreased likelihood of diabetes, and increased gut microbial diversity.

But again, it’s not so simple.

Bean pasta is now quite trendy, and—like alternative milks and breads—the popular brands tend to add all types of nonsense.

One core principle of our #actuallyhealthy mantra is that every ingredient should be a real, whole food. So watch out for common pasta additives like tapioca, xanthan gum and various starches. It’s not real food, and we don’t need to eat it.

That’s where Tolerant pasta comes in. We love the branding, and we love the one-ingredient simplicity even more. Just chickpea flour, which is ground garbanzo beans.

We like to mix textures in our dishes, so we use both Tolerant’s Spaghetti and Red Lentil Penne. It’s a killer combo that, ironically, might keep you alive.

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