Clean Food Cheat Sheet
I recently spent three days at the Natural Products Expo West (NPEW) and have so much to share! Hours of educational seminars and hundreds (thousands?) of products to check out, mean more info than I can reasonably share with you here in just one post. So for this week, I’m sharing a quick list of favorite food products.
It’s no secret that the word “Natural” is a loose term with no meaningful definition (see my earlier post here) and my experience at NPEW just confirmed how much I need to work on continuing to spread the word about paying attention to what ingredients are in the food you eat! Of the thousands of vendors at the expo, just a fraction of the booths had brands I trust or shared new products that passed the “clean ingredients” standard of this blog. Ingredients like carrageenan, canola oil, maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast extract and soy protein isolate are far from clean or healthy, but showed up in many products.
In the interest of time and space, here are some of my favorite brands, in bold, that were at the Expo with a favorite product in parenthesis. Kind of like a little cheat sheet for your next trip to the grocery store. I know it’s much easier to just grab a favorite brand, so here are a few products you can just ‘grab and go’ the next time you’re at the store:
Food Should Taste Good (multi grain chip), The Chia Co. (chia shots, chia pods), Pamela’s (gluten free pancake mix), Go Raw (sprouted seeds for snacking), Lundberg Family Farms (organic brown rice), Bob’s Red Mill (rolled oats and whole grain pancake mix), Niman Ranch (humane and sustainably raised meat products), Amy’s (pesto pizza and Chinese noodles & vegetable with cashew cream), Organic Valley (grass fed butter and cream), Ancient Harvest (new ancient grain hot oatmeal), Late July (organic snacks), OrganicVille/Sky Valley (sriracha and dijon), Sun Warrior (protein powders), Navitas (superfoods), Tava (flavored ghee), To Your Health Sprouted Flour Company (sprouted flours), Alvarado Street Bakery (sprouted sourdough bread), Noosa (new pumpkin flavor in July), Theo (amazing peanut butter cup candy), Mary’s Gone Crackers (new line of thins coming out soon), Celtic Salt (lots of good flavor blends, too), Silk (cashew milk), Wallaby (awesome organic Greek yogurt and kefir) and...
· Bliss – well, this doesn’t quite count as grab and go if you live outside of Oregon or Washington, but if you want to try their amazing Cinnamon Chia Seed Peanut Butter bliss, it can be found online and is worth every cent of the shipping cost. It's my favorite product from the Expo - Delicious! (Better yet, if you can't find it, tell your local grocery store to order some for their shelves!)
If you try any of these brands and their products, send an email or leave a comment… reader feedback is always appreciated! Share what your favorites are with Grow in Wellness.
And don’t forget… the healthiest foods are those that don’t need an ingredient label like fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.
Coming soon – body care and home cleaning products to help you ‘live green’!