Rich Food Poor Food: Your Grocery Purchasing System by Jayson Calton, Mira Calton

This book is an excellent resource for everyone who wants to eat a more healthy diet and get unhealthy preservatives and other chemicals that are put in food our of their diets. The authors begin by explaining that just because a processed food may call itself healthy, that certainly does not mean that it is actually better than other processed foods. In a comparison of Classic Lays Potato Chips vs Baked Lays Potato Chips, the baked ones appear to be healthier based on the fact that they have lower calories and lower fat and sodium content. However, when you look at the ingredients - the Classic Lays contain just Potatoes, Vegetable oil and salt. The Baked Lays contain Dried Potatoes, Cornstarch, Sugar, Corn Oil, Salt, Soy Lecithin and Corn Sugar - actually a less healthy option than the Classic chips. This book explains what many of the poor food ingredients are - since some of them are chemicals and most of us have no idea what they really are or where they come from or how they are created, and how and why they are bad to consume. The authors advocate a whole foods, non-gmo food, organic when possible diet free of as many processed foods as possible. They give recipes for making your own foods like almond milk, mayonnaise and ketchup and they rate and list a variety of foods by brand name as being rich or poor foods. I found the book well written, highly informative and easy to use. It is limited by the fact that it does not - and cannot rate all foods in any category and also by the fact that processed food companies change their products from year to year. However, it is an excellent and timely resource and I highly recommend it.