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Food can be wonderful or plain awful. At its best, it nourishes us, gives us energy and delights our taste buds. At its worst it clogs up our arteries, fills our bodies with unwanted toxins and makes us fat.

The secret of losing weight is to choose the delicious natural healthy kind and to eat just enough of it so you feel great.

But with so much awful food on offer out there, it's easier said than done.

No one is paying huge sums to advertise fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds and organic lean meat.

Instead we have major food manufacturers with big budgets pushing snacks we can do without and products loaded with thickeners, sweeteners, salt, corn syrup, mechanically recovered meat, preservatives and every other semi-edible chemical known to man.

Sure, the food tastes Ok - after all it's full of sugars (or artificial sweeteners) and salt for that very reason. Food manufacturers aim to bring you palatable food otherwise you wouldn't buy it. But it has to turn in a huge profit too so they pile in preservatives to give it a long shelf life and use the cheapest ingredients they can get away with, padding them out with fillers. But is that really how you want to nourish your body?

If you buy cakes and cookies, snacks and processed foods without thinking about what you are really putting into your body, you are doing your health a huge disservice and playing right into the hands of the food manufacturers. You are paying good money for food which has no value to your health and questionable ingredients which you really don't want to feed anyone you care about (including you!)

Now there are some good processed foods out there - but you do have to seek them out - they are not the major profit producers of the big advertisers. Most of the advertising money goes into persuading us to purchase vast quantities of worthless soft drinks, chocolate bars and salty snacks.

Read the label on any product you're considering buying to check that the ingredients include only those items you would use if you were making the product at home. If there's anything that sounds like it belongs in a chemical laboratory leave it on the shelf and choose something else.

And whatever you choose make sure that you accompany it with ample fresh vegetables or salad - very few processed foods will contain adequate amounts of these. After your meal, if you need anything else, swap sugar and sweetener-laden profit-making desserts and cakes for fresh fruit.

Even better than being highly selective in the processed food you buy, get a good cook book full of healthy delicious recipes and learn to make fantastic food for you and your family. Enjoy the whole process of nourishing yourself and the ones you love from fresh basic good quality ingredients. Taste the difference and you'll never look back.

Our health is precious. Be super critical about what you put into your body and don't let the food manufacturers profit from feeding you and your family junk food.