Processed vs Natural Foods: What's Good During Perimenopause
The types of foods you choose to eat during perimenopause are so important. Diet is key to helping reduce the impact of perimenopause symptoms.
If you're going through perimenopause, now is the times to nourish yourself with foods that will:
- Reduce inflammation
- Support your body with good and varied nutrients
- Not trigger food allergies and
- Support your gut health.
In the supermarkets, as you know, you will find a huge range of natural foods such as fruit, vegetables, meats such as chicken, beef and lamb and so much more. These are classed as natural foods: that is, that they haven’t been changed from their original form.
And then of course, you have processed foods that generally come in a packet.
HOWEVER....
Not all things that come in packets are created equal.
There are major differences between foods that come in a packet i.e. commercial foods vs whole foods or functional foods.
How To Tell If Something In A Bag Is Okay For Me To Eat?
The best place to determine if a product is made from real whole foods is to always read the ingredients and nutrition labels. You can tell pretty quickly from those if a product is going to nourish you or aggravate perimenopause symptoms you really don't want to be aggravating!
Start by reading the food ingredients list as that lists everything that is in the product. Do you recognise them all as foods? Are there colours, additives or flavour enhancers? Are there codes there you don't understand?
The Big Difference Between Whole Foods in Packets and Not-So-Great Foods in Packets
You know when you eat a tin of baked beans or your favourite cereal or biscuits, they always taste, smell and look the same?
That’s because mass produced, commercially-made foods have food additives such as colours and flavour enhancers to make sure they always taste and look the same: every single time.
As good as it may be to know that no matter what that packet of Tim Tams will always be there for you and always the same, we don't need to tell you that alllll those additional ingredients keeping that taste the same really aren’t conducive to good health.
A Guide to Additives on Food Labels
Here is a general guide to the numbers you may see on the nutritional panels:
- 1xx - this code represents colours – they are sometime listed using their name i.e. sunset yellow (eek!).
- 2xx this code represents Preservatives
- 3xx 321 this code represents Antioxidants
- 620-641 These are flavour enhancers. Numbers 620-625 are all forms of glutamates which act like MSG
- 951-967 Artificial sweeteners.
What About Natural Foods in Packets?
Foods made from natural ingredients have batch to batch variation in colour, taste and texture, so you might see slight colour variations or taste differences between batches.
This change occurs due to differences across growing conditions, in harvesting procedures, the seasons or during production.
Health Benefits of Whole foods in Peri
The health benefits of a mainly whole food diet during perimenopause is that you're swerving away from any nasties that will increase inflammation (inflammation can causes alot of very uncomfortable perimenopause symptoms). During perimenopause, we recommend you do everything you can to reduce anything that may be causing inflammation in your body as, due to the hormonal shit show going on, we're already in a pro-inflammatory state (we don't need to be adding, more fuel to that fire!).
Get More Info to Support Your Peri Self!
Want to find out more about inflammation? Go here for the lowdown and here for an anti-inflammatory smoothie recipe.
To find out how to get really good gut health, go here.
To learn more about the best diet for perimenopause, go here.
If you want to get serious about reducing inflammation and are seeking a natural product to reduce your perimenopause symptoms, we recommend having one Peri Chai Latte twice a day to reduce your symptoms. Find out more here.