Get REAL! That is my passionate plea to you and everyone else. Why? A new report finds that an eye-popping 61 percent of the calories in foods purchased from grocery stores come from highly processed, industrial foods. To make this determination, researchers analyzed at least one year of grocery store purchases from over 157,000 households between 2000 and 2012, making this the first study to provide an accurate picture of what the typical American is putting in their grocery carts.

Given the enormous impact diet has on health and the irrefutable evidence that highly processed foods provide more unhealthy fat, sugar and salt, and less overall nutrition than real foods, these results are ominous. I cannot stress enough how vital it is to focus on whole real foods as the pillar of you and your family’s diet. Based on thousands of published studies, we can say with certainty that the two essential ingredients in the healthiest diets are:

1.  Mostly whole foods and minimal processed foods.
2.  An abundance of plant-based foods.  ( Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting, Boston March 2015)

If you want my very best guidance on exactly what foods should and should not make their way into your grocery cart, check out my laminated healthy grocery lists here.