The top 5 fake health foods to avoid ever buying even if they are certified organic and prominently displayed at a health food store with the label emblazoned with marketing buzzwords.
Consider yourself warned! Not all products at the health food store are healthy!
In fact, much of it can be classified as organic junk food.
You can always tell health food store newbies as their shopping carts are typically loaded up with these types of foods.
This pattern of behavior likely indicates that they have only recently made the transition from grocery store junk food and are simply replacing one type of highly processed boxed food with another.
Having shopped at health food stores for over 30 years and seen many a food fad come and go, here is my top five list of supposedly “healthy” foods that are anything but nourishing to you and your family.
Protein Powder (all of them are bad!)
Most people do not realize that protein is a very fragile macronutrient.
When you forcibly separate protein from its whole food source in a factory, it becomes denatured.
This is the case even when done at low temperatures. For example, the simple act of drying and powdering whey protein is denaturing!
Denatured foods are toxic and allergenic to the body. This is because digestive enzymes do not work as effectively on them. This results in an incomplete digestive process for protein powder.
Undigested food rots in the gut and is the perfect food for pathogenic yeasts and bacteria to thrive upon. Over a period of time, this leads the body down the path to autoimmune disorders (most of the immune system is in the gut!).
To reiterate this important point…whey protein is especially fragile and cannot be powdered or dried even at low temperatures.
For more information, this article includes additional details on the dangers of protein powders and other high protein foods.
Incidentally, I don’t recommend bone broth protein powder either. They do not offer the same healing benefits as homemade bone broth.
If you need a protein boost, go for Real Food! Skip the processed protein powder and eat a grass-fed steak, some pastured poultry, or an egg instead!
If you must have a powder to add to your smoothie, choose a third-party certified glyphosate-free collagen powder (such as this brand).
Plant-Based “Milk”
Soy milk and other types of alternative “plant-based” milk are not ancestral foods. Nor were they ever considered of value in traditional societies, contrary to modern claims.
Not only are there zero health benefits from soy milk, but commercial alternative milk brands are almost without exception completely toxic due to the processing and packaging.
These products are a quintessential modern fake food invention…a cheap, mass-produced product with an undigestible form of calcium and synthetic Vitamin D2.
Unnatural fortification of processed foods is linked with hyperactivity, coronary heart disease, and allergic reactions. (1)
Packaging is another very serious problem with alternative milk. Drinking them risks ingesting microplastics from the thin plastic lining hiding inside the tetrapaks.
The leaching occurs from the boiling hot liquid sealed in to sterilize the cartons for ultra-long shelf stability.
The horrible taste is covered up with sugar, “natural flavors” with solvent residues, and/or innocuous-sounding alternative sweeteners allowed under USDA Organic. (2)
Perhaps the most concerning aspect is the devasting impact of these beverages on the thyroid gland. Soy is one of the most goitrogenic (thyroid-suppressing) foods on the planet. Ingestion of endocrine disruptors from the microplastics and solvent residues is also a risk to this delicate gland. (3)
Interestingly, Dr. Harry Miller, the man credited with popularizing gag-worthy soy milk in China in the late 1930s which then spread to the rest of the world, specialized in goiter surgery in his medical practice!
Canned (and Tetrapak) Broth and Soup
Canned soups and broths even if organic are never a healthy food choice. Most brands are nothing but water, sodium, and MSG.
Organic bouillon cubes are no improvement and the tetra packs of organic broth should be avoided as well due to the same packaging issues described above for plant-based milk.
Anything that is in the store that is soup-related will usually have MSG in it.
Organic MSG is still MSG. The same damaging effects occur on the neurons in your hypothalamus.
Remember that the hypothalamus is the Master Controller of the endocrine system.
Thus, if you don’t want your metabolism messed up, then avoid canned soup of all kinds as this is a very big source of this toxic ingredient.
To get a sense of how big this problem is, just read the label of your favorite organic soup and then read the list of the dozens of MSG pseudo-names manufacturers use to fool consumers. (4)
There are a few brands of organic soup that appear to be free of MSG with no offending names on the ingredient list. However, I am skeptical that this is truly the case given that regulations allow unlabeled MSG in certain situations (same situation as unlabeled transfats).
Even for soup and broth brands that seem to not contain MSG, the packaging continues to be an issue. BPA or BPS cans are not safe nor are microplastic-laden tetrapaks.
If you want a decent bowl of soup, embrace the fact that you probably need to make it yourself unless you have a local business that makes it from scratch. Consider one of these healthy soup and broth recipes to get you started.
Fish Oil Supplements
Fish oil is a very delicate oil highly subject to rancidity due to the high concentration of omega-3 fatty acids.
Omega 3 fats can never be heated. Even exposure to light and air hastens their rapid breakdown to a rancid state.
With this in mind, how could plain fish oil supplements be anything but unhealthy given that they are all processed at extremely high temperatures?
They are then packaged in capsules or bottles that sit for goodness knows how long on store shelves until the unwitting customer buys them.
The best type of marine oil is virgin cod liver oil from sustainable and clean waters. The delicate omega-3 fats are completely unheated and raw. In addition, natural vitamins A and D are present for a legitimate health boost.
Krill oil is marginally acceptable if low-temperature processed.
For those allergic to fish and seafood, these alternatives to cod liver oil are worth considering.
Gluten-Free Foods
Gluten-free went mainstream in 2010 when Chelsea Clinton requested a gluten-free cake at her wedding reception.
Since then, the gluten-free boondoggle has continued to expand with some health food stores dedicating entire aisles to products certified free of this loathed plant protein.
Don’t be fooled by the hype.
In most cases, gluten-free processed foods are a crutch for those who are very allergic to processed foods but aren’t yet ready to switch to Real Food.
The mark-up on a product that is gluten-free is also quite ludicrous, especially given how high in carbs and lacking in nutrition they are!
If you are allergic to gluten, it is much better to work on your gut health by focusing on a legit traditional diet (from sourcing to preparation) rather than the band-aid approach of buying gluten-free processed foods.
Once you rebalance and rebuild your gut (aka, “heal and seal”) so that beneficial bacteria dominate rather than the pathogens, you will likely be delighted to find that food sensitivities that you had before are greatly minimized or even completely resolved!
Conclusion
I hope this list helps you become a savvier health food store customer.
Beware of falling for the siren song of highly processed organic junk food marketing with faddish buzzwords.
Stick with organic or (even better) local produce grown in rich soil and minimal ingredient foods such as sprouted nut butter and traditional sourdough bread.
If you are allergic to wheat, prepare nutrient-dense gluten-free dishes at home (here is my recipe for gluten-free flour blend with no gums).
This simple change will put you far ahead of the pack and well on your way to loading your pantry and refrigerator with foods that will really enhance your health and not just give you a false sense of security.
(1) Not Milk and Uncheese: The Udder Alternatives
(2) Neotame: USDA Organic’s Dirty Little Secret
(3) How Common Chemicals Are Harming Your Thyroid
(4) MSG Aliases
Thank you for saying that about the Gluten Free foods!! People think they are “healthy” just because they are gluten free, when in fact it’s just refined food like all the other problem foods in a regular super market. Trying to go gluten free by using these products doesn’t help any health concern improve. And, of course, like anything else, there are some exceptions, but if people don’t know they need to read and understand ingredient lists they won’t know the difference. Knowledge about what we are putting in our body and making sure it is real food, not fake food, is so important. Thanks for imparting your knowledge : )
Are there citations for any of these claims? How can we blindly take your word for what you say?
I have quite a few links to additional info in the post plus a source for the soy info at the bottom.
Awesome you are spreading real info around! I’m amazed at how many people think this type of food is healthy! 🙂 Thanks!
Agree on all the listed items, and would also add organic milk near the top of the list. The UHT pasteurized milk is such a waste, and when I check the organic milk nowadays, that’s all I see.
I remember buying it when I first started towards eating real food. It’s funny looking back now. It’s raw from the farm or nothing.
Nice article Rachel.
thank you for the information. and i think we can learn alot from the comments also. i also agree, that unfortunately, not everything in “an organic food shop” is organic. u still have to read your labels.
I so thought you were going to say things like “organic milk” and “omega-3 eggs” and all those other fancy terms for foods that really aren’t that much better than store-bought. Buy them from a FARM!
Shopping at a health food store is really even more of a minefield than a regular grocery store. At least in a regular store you KNOW it’s junk. But at a health food store a lot of people figure, “If they’re selling it here, it can’t be TOO bad, right?” Wrong. There are exceptions, of course (anything that’s fresh; a FEW snacks, like Larabars), but generally — ehhh.
If you’re gluten-free and craving pasta…buy yourself some spaghetti squash. It’s cheap. It’s slowly growing on me and my kids seem to really like it. And way, way healthier than any form of pasta you can buy.
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. I think there are even more “traps” at the healthfood store than there are at conventional grocery stores! Mostly because people are lulled to sleep thinking that everything in a healthfood store is automatically healthy…. Argh.
There are actually very few items I purchase at our local “natural” food store. I either go farm fresh, or order my grains/legumes/etc in bulk from Azure Standard.
The other day I saw a guy with an entire cart FULL of soy milk! It was all I could do not to rush over to him and say “Stop buddy! You’re confused!” 🙂
Sarah, what about Vital Choice Salmon and Krill oil capsules? Them too even though Vital Choice is mentioned in our WAPF Shopping Guide? How about Green Pastures CLO capsules? Okay, or not? I sure agree on all the others and loved what you said about the “newbies!” I see these young moms with their carts just loaded with processed organic junk, lots of kiddie foods all prepackaged with great advertising gimmicks to hook the kids just like regular commercial junk.
Thanks!
Green Pasture Products is the only one I would take as it is unheated. From what I understand, the krill oil is processed using high heat.
Thanks! I will ask Vital Choice about their salmon oil and let you know.
More of my cousin’s passionate response. 🙂
‎”Organic MSG is still MSG”. False statement. There is no “organic MSG”. Organic soups would have no MSG in them since there would be no food additives (MSG) in said soup.
I didn’t mean to start a war. 🙂 LOL
MSG is a naturally occuring substance in bone based broths as well as other foods that naturally contain the amino acid glutamic acid. If you eat soup, you eat MSG. Now, homemade soup made from organic, homemade bone broth will not have the massive amounts of MSG that canned soups will have, but MSG can, in fact be legally called *organic* because it can be produced from fermenting organic sugar beets, organic sugar cane or organic molasses.
All I can say is CLUELESS. Tell him to read the labels! Organic soups most certainly have MSG in them – he obviously didn’t even read the post thoroughly to see what I had to say about that.
While I would never eat canned soups, I was just curious about what was in them and decided to read some labels. Here is Amy’s Organic Tomato Soup:
Ingredients : Organic tomato puree, filtered water, organic cream, organic evaporated cane juice, organic onions, sea salt, organic black pepper.
I can’t see where the MSG would come from. There were quite a few others like this. The Vegan “No-Chicken” Noodle soup (not organic), however, was really creepy. There were many chemicals and I think there were three different forms of soy. Ick!
I have the Amy’s Organic Vegetable Soup and Amy’s Organic Alphabet Soup, neither of which has MSG, just a simple ingredients list. Maybe the author does not have Amy’s soups in her area?
There is an Amy’s soup ingredients list for a different flavor below which does have MSG in it. This one does look ok though. But, sugar in soup? I wouldn’t buy it for that reason alone and it’s listed before the onions even so it wouldn’t be insignificant.
After the big initial scare about MSG, a lot of studies were done. Very few people have any kind of adverse reaction to MSG; it’s not anything most of us should be worried about.
Monosodium glutamate is a common amino acid bonded to a sodium ion. That’s it. Neither of those are harmful unless if taken in large doses… in fact, they are both vital for life function.
Rats fed MSG get morbidly obese. I would suggest reading “Excitotoxins” by Dr. R. Blaylock. The naturally occurring form of MSG is NOT the same as the manufactured MSG. Not by a long shot.
regardless of sensitivity or not MSG is a known appitite increaser .. I am quite fat enough so avoiding something that tells my body it needs more food regardless of metabolic requirement is just good sense.
MSG as a trace nutrient would not be my concern but the fact that it is a byproduct of just about any protein, oil or fat processed food product when any kind of hydrogenising process is used means that the process food diet menu is very must overloaded with a chemical that will tell our pure brains to eat more … whether we need it or not
I put your article on my facebook page and my cousin responded with this: “Gluten free foods are not healthy and are not any better than regular store bought processed versions.”…I think this author has no idea what an allergy to gluten entails and completely skips over the reason some people have to eat glute…n free: Celiac Disease. There aren’t too many alternatives and the choices that are available require research to see what is sufficient enough to make up for the loss of nutrients that gluten contains. A gluten allergy person’s “real food” is corn, rice, quinoa, flax, etc. based. Not everyone gets to live in a perfect world (like the author) and eat gluten every day without fear of becoming sick from constant gluten exposure.”
He’s obviously passionate in his response.
What is your response???
My son is allergic to wheat – different from gluten allergy, but gluten free foods are by default wheat free. So we spend a lot of time in the gluten free aisle at the store. And about the only thing I buy in the GF aisle is rice pasta and flours for baking.
The gluten-free foods Sarah is talking about are the granola bars, cookies, breads, snack-type foods, etc. – the GF version of mainstream processed foods. But people think they’re better because they’re GF. If you a have gluten allergy, then yes, you have to avoid the mainstream things. But don’t be fooled into thinking that the GF products you buy are healthier. The total ingredient list and how its made is what determines whether a product is healthy, not whether or not it contains gluten.
I just had to add to this. Sure, GF processed foods are still processed foods, but like Rebecca’s friend wrote, it is HARD to have Celiac’s disease. It’s not an allergy (as Rachel acknowledges), and no matter how gradually you build-up, if you have Celiac you will never be able to safely eat gluten. And that’s tough. My niece has it, and her symptoms were quite severe. (Diagnosed at 2 1/2, and she would not have lived another 6 months without a diagnosis.) For a 7 year old girl who has always had to be different, in a culture where food a real part of socializing, it’s nice to be able to give her the occasional pre-packaged GF snack.
I agree with the main point here, which is that any processed food is unhealthy and being GF doesn’t change that. But I think I understand Rachel’s friend’s “passion.” It’s not enough to just eat real food and teach your body to tolerate gluten. With Celiac, it just won’t happen.
(Full disclosure, I am getting tested next week and suspect I have it. So I guess I’m a little sensitive this week!)
Eating corn, rice, quinoa, flax will only make a person allergic to gluten worse. These foods don’t heal the gut. Heal the gut, don’t treat the symptom which is what celiac people typically do by eating gluten free foods all the time. Tell him to read the book Gut and Psychology Syndrome
Again, a gluten or wheat allergy is not Celiac’s disease. The latter is not an allergy. My niece had eaten nothing but breastmilk. As soon as she started solid foods–not junk, my sister’s extremely healthy–her gluten intolerance manifested itself. Please be careful here. It’s hard enough to have to deal with Celiac without being, in a roundabout way, blamed for having it.
Celiac is an autoimmune disease as are allergies.
Allergies are an autoimmune response, but they are not a disease.
Allergies are most indeed autoimmune disease just the same as celiac. An allergy to gluten can progress down the path to celiac if unchecked and the gut is not healed. Both can be healed. Autoimmune disease like celiac is not a life sentence which is why this gluten avoidance thing that celiacs follow is important but distracting from the main issue of poor gut health. If celiacs do not take steps to heal their gut they will become victim to even more autoimmune disease … autoimmune disease is a domino effect. One begets another then another then another. Fixing the root of the problem instead of simply avoiding gluten is very important.
I truly love most of your information, but this is not the first post to make a molehill out of gluten sensitivity/Celiac Reminds me of AMA misinformation. Allergies can result in death. Gluten sensitivity can result in death. Celiac, one subset of gluten sensitivities, can result in death. GS w/o CD can manifest in so many different ways and is not limited to gut malfunctioning. These can all be life threatening autoimmune responses, but these are so very different. Until you understand the difference between an allergy (immediate response) and a sensitivity (delayed response), please DO NOT claim it’s caused/cured solely by gut flora. Allergies can resolve, but not always. It would be easier, not less dangerous, to test for allergies. Food sensitivities are inherently a delayed reaction which may take days, weeks, months, or even years to determine the culprit because modern medicine is completely ignorant of this deadly and mostly “it’s in their head” misdiagnosed disease. Please learn more about gluten, ahem glue, before adding to all the misinformation about the ill effects of gluten. In my opinion those with GS are responding appropriately when their immune system encounters a manmade genetically altered protein.
Both are autoimmune problems, but have different mechanisms. Maybe that’s where we’re all getting confused?
Allergies create a histamine response that can effect that body in different ways. So ranging from breathing problems, skin reactions, behavioural issues (due to brain inflammation), etc.
Celiacs destroys the small intestine and can actually result in the affected person starving to death because they can’t absorb nutrients anymore.
So yes, both autoimmune (abnormal immune responses), but they “work” on the body differently.