It’s a familiar struggle: You want to make healthier choices about the food you buy and what you and your family eat, but you are not sure where to start.
Whether you’re trying to lose weight or just feel like a healthier version of yourself, food transparency is a great place to begin.
What is food transparency?
Food transparency or accountability is a recent movement that has consumers asking for—and getting—accurate information about the ingredients in the foods and supplements they select.
Companies are learning that being transparent with shoppers also involves traceability, which is spelling out how and where something is made and where its ingredients come from.
As we try to make good choices, food transparency and traceability make it easier to pay attention to what is in our food. Understanding what is in each restaurant meal we order or each item we buy at the grocery store can help us make more informed decisions about what goes into our bodies.
In that sense, making healthy choices has never been so easy. To help you get a feel for this, let’s look at some of the best ways you can benefit from food transparency and traceability. Here are some things to look for.
Clear labeling
When buying fresh produce or packaged foods, the label is often your first brush with food transparency and accountability. Labels will tell you if a food is certified organic and soon will be required to say whether it contains GMOs, or genetically modified organisms.
Labels have a Nutrition Facts box on the back, which gives you detailed information on serving sizes and the amount of fat, calories and sodium in each serving. When looking at the ingredients list, focus on the first few ingredients, as they make up most of the food product.
Also be alert for artificial sweeteners, colors and preservatives – added ingredients you want to avoid if you are trying to make healthy choices.
Clean eating
As the clean eating trend has gained popularity, more restaurants and food makers are capitalizing on people’s desire to center most of their eating around whole, nutritious foods while avoiding processed foods and artificial sweeteners.
To cater to them, restaurants will mark certain menu items as “clean” to make the choices clear. Food makers, too, are joining in and labeling some packed foods as “clean” in larger text to help consumers make easier, healthier choices.
Sustainable sourcing
More and more, you might see foods or supplements labeled as “sustainably sourced.” That’s a sign the farmers producing the ingredients use more sustainable and environmentally-friendly practices, which are better for the planet.
Food traceability
You’ve also likely seen details on a label or a company’s website that help you understand a food item’s traceability – where all its ingredients come from. As consumers, that information is important because it makes us feel safe and confident about what we’re buying for ourselves and our families.
The team behind Nutrilite™ supplements has decades of practice when it comes to traceability. Traceability has been a priority since the brand was founded more than 80 years ago on a single farm.
They offer their customers peace of mind by keeping extensive records on every step of growing, harvesting and processing for each plant ingredient used to make their supplements – from the person who sowed the seeds in a particular plot on a farm to the date and time the plants were picked.
And supplement ingredients are double and triple checked for quality when they arrive for processing, whether they are coming from one of the Nutrilite-owned certified organic farms or trusted supplier farms.
Humane farming practices
Whether you are picking up a carton of eggs and a gallon of milk or selecting a cut of meat, many people want to make sure any animal product they are buying has humane farming practices behind it.
Sometimes you may see a “Humanely Farmed” label on products, a claim typically certified by a third-party organization. Other labels to look for if you’re trying to make ethical choices are “Raised Without Antibiotics” and “Pasture-Raised.” When it comes to eggs, you can look for “Free Range,” which means the animals were raised with room to move around.
Minimal processing
Look for these words when you’re trying to buy ingredients that are pretty close to their natural state. Many people, especially those aiming for clean eating, are trying to avoid highly-processed foods with refined grains, artificial sweeteners and chemical preservatives.
They want whole foods or at least foods that haven’t been altered too much. For them, this is a good label to look for. Examples of foods that have been minimally processed include a bag of pre-cut carrots or a container of roasted almonds.
Learn more
Now that you know what to look for as you shop, you’ll find that food traceability and supply chain transparency are two things that make it even easier for you to make healthy choices and picking food that is safe, good for you and good for the environment.
Want to learn more about the traceability process behind Nutrilite? Visit Amway.com or Amway.ca and check out more blogs at Amway Connections.
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