When you’re on the path to better health, it can get quite overwhelming with all the conflicting information out there.

“Eat margarine!”

No, eat butter!

“Saturated fats are bad for us!”

No they’re not!

“Sugar is the devil!”

…

Okay, that one, I agree with.

You get the point, right? And you’ve heard it all, time and time again. For some of us, it gets so frustrating that we just give up.

But I don’t want you to. Please stick with it! I’m here to help you figure out what’s what.

Here’s the solution: keep it easy. Bring it back to the basics. What would your great-grandmother have eaten? What would your great-great-uncle have recognized as food? Asking yourself these questions when at the grocery store can help you navigate the aisles and separate the real stuff from the crap. Ahem.

When it comes to food, we must choose the least processed, closest to nature, realest stuff possible. (Yes, I made up that word, and yes, it makes total sense.) This means choosing vegetables; fruits; good quality oils like coconut, olive, flax, and Udo’s; butter; naturally raised/organic meats and eggs; wild fish; nuts and seeds; and true whole grains, if you swing that way.

It also means avoiding refined foods like white sugar; white bread (in fact, avoiding wheat in general is a good – slash great – idea); white pasta; white rice; artificial anything; “diet” or “low fat” foods; margarine; and “vegetable” oils including canola, corn, soybean, and cottonseed.

See? Just bring it back to the basics and it suddenly seems doable… even easy.

When deciding what’s real and pro-health when it comes to packaged foods, always look to the ingredient list rather than the nutrient facts. Sure, the facts will show you how much sugar or protein is contained per serving – and this is a great thing to know – but they don’t tell you the source of these facts. As in, we don’t know the quality of the ingredients. We don’t even know the ingredients themselves. So, always look to the ingredient list and rely on that rather than relying on the nutrient facts. Simple.

So the next time you hear about the latest and greatest health fad and start getting red in the face from frustration because it contradicts what you heard last week and your head is going to explode and you might as well give up because it’s all just so confusing anyway and arrrrggghhhhhhhhh…………..

Just go back to the basics. You’ll notice that they never change. So stay there. Stick with that.

It always has worked, and it always will work.