The Importance of knowing

I've had many discussions over the years with various people - many of whom are well read and well educated. But it seems that educating themselves about food is not, surprisingly, something that is at the top of everyone's agenda. I say surprisingly, because, well, we need food to live and thrive (in part). Eating is a key part of many cultures. Food is a major source of our energy. Yet for some reason many simply go through their lives trusting the quality of what they eat to food manufacturers, producers, and of course to marketing.
Few ever stop to think that they themselves are completely responsible for what they put in their mouthes!

I honestly don't know how many people do what I do...

When I'm standing in a queue at the food store, every food item that the person in front of me places on the conveyer belt gets automatically broken down in my head to its base component parts. I don't see the food as a whole. I see a list of ingredients, and the volume of carbs, protein and fat. I'm not saying for one moment that I actually know every ingredient in every known product. What I'm saying is that I've learned enough over the years about food production to be able to give a pretty accurate guess as to what products contain.
But then it gets worse... I look at the person and mentally assess their health. When I marry-up what they are buying with their general health I often see a pattern. It takes so much energy to not say out loud "Trust me; you should not be eating that!"

We all have busy lives. We all use it as an excuse for eating the stuff we shouldn't... all in the name of convenience, or comfort eating. Even I, the food nazi, cut the odd corner for the sake of expedience. And I say to everyone that it's OK to do so. What's not OK is cutting those corners every single day, every single mealtime. What's not OK is NOT understanding the implications of cutting those corners. There's also varying degrees of corner cutting. My main corner cut is that I buy bread instead of making it myself (which I do on occasions when I have time). But I minimise the degree of the corner by only buying bread that contains the least inoccuous ingredients... a.k.a the same or similar ingredients to what I would use baking bread myself at home.

I buy sausages - in Sweden a classic 'korv med bröd' is a stable quick lunch food for kids. And the degree of corner there is somewhat larger than with the bread. The reason being, it's pretty much impossible to find any sausage in Sweden that does not contain Sodium Benzoate and Ascorbic Acid. I'm not happy about this corner, so the frequency of sausage consumption in my family is kept to maybe twice a week. The sausage buns I source from a small Swedish baker that uses no additives http://www.balstabagarn.se/. 
The ketchup is Felix, not Heinz because Felix contains more tomatoes and less sugar. Yes, I could of course make the ketchup myself - but as I say, I do cut some corners. 

Cut corners by all means. But think about how often you are doing it, and to what degree. Keep foods as 'clean' as possible... 
Cut out the additives. By that I mean it's a number that begins with E, or has chemical sounding names. If the ingredient is not something you've ever been able to buy for your own pantry, then it's not something you should be eating.