Example: Eat It Like God Made It

Today's post is a quick example of eating foods as close to the way God made them as you can.  As I walk into my local grocery store, right past the carts is a rack of the pre-made pies in the wax paper wrappers-you know the folded over, baked and glazed ones that come in apple, lemon, berry and chocolate flavors most places and maybe a local flavor, like pineapple in Hawaii.  Just to the right of this rack starts the produce section.  Since I like these pies and will admit to eating them, I decided this would be a great example.

Here's what I did:  I picked up an apple pie for $.50 and then went over to the apples and picked out a gala apple, which ended up being 66 cents.  Doesn't seem like much difference, but it is actually 32% more expensive to get a piece of fresh fruit when the pies are on 2 for a dollar sale.

So I now have two different snacks that are both "apple".  One is pretty much unprocessed and apple only (well a little wax, which I'm not getting into here) the other a finished packaged apple "pie" with many ingredients besides apples.

The financial cost so far is overwhelmingly in the apple pies favor, but that is a very small part of the story.  Here's the label to the apple pie, and then I'll compare some info from the "label" I found online for the gala apple.  Right off the bat, two huge impacts from not eating foods like God made become apparent.  First, the apple pie as 5 times the calories of the apple, and 22 grams of fat.  It gets worse as we continue down the label-nearly 50% of the daily recommended saturated fat!  Over 300mgs of sodium and only 2 grams of fiber compared to 5 for the gala apple.  Also, look closely at the bottom of the package-0 vitamin C!  Somehow, the vitamin C in the apple is gone, as our raw apple provided 20% of the RDA.

While I like these pies, I know I'm going to limit how often I eat them!  I'm happy to report that apples are one of the two main fruits I eat regularly, both because I like them and convenience.  But I was reminded why eathing food's as close to how God makes them is so important!