6 worst things about supermarket food

You walk in for eggs. Maybe some butter. But within minutes, you’re weaving through aisles lined with harsh lighting, glossy labels, and “healthy” claims. The truth is, most supermarket food isn’t designed to feed you. It’s designed to last. To ship well. To look appealing on a shelf and cost as little as possible to produce.

Here are 6 reasons supermarket food is leaving you depleted (and what to do instead)...

1. It’s made to last, not nourish

Most supermarket food is grown, picked, processed, and packaged for one purpose… survival on a shelf. Modified atmospheres, wax coatings, anti-browning agents, ionising radiation, these keep produce “fresh” in appearance while nutrients quietly fade.

Take carrots. The ones sealed in plastic bags, pre-washed and trimmed to uniform size. They might’ve been pulled from the earth weeks ago. Scrubbed. Chlorine-rinsed. Stripped of their soil. Still crunchy, sure, but most of the beta-carotene has oxidised, the enzymes long gone, the soil memory erased. But they still look perfect in their plastic shroud. 

Buy local, seasonal, and organic when possible. Even imperfect fruit from a market stall is more vibrant (and flavourful) than jet-lagged blueberries in February.

2. Seed oils lurk in almost everything

Hummus. Pesto. Mayo. Dips. Crackers. Granola. Even sourdough.

The supermarket is drenched in seed oils, often hidden under unassuming names like rapeseed, sunflower, or just vegetable oil. They’re cheap to produce, long-lasting on shelves, and devastating for the human body. High in omega-6 PUFAs, easily oxidised, and deeply inflammatory, they burden the liver, disrupt hormone function, and embed into cell membranes where they stay, for months.

But seed oils are only part of the problem.Products that rely on them are often ultra-processed in other ways too…stabilisers, preservatives, synthetic flavours, gums. When you ditch the seed oils, you also sidestep the long list of lab additives that come along for the ride.

Read your labels. Opt for foods made with butter, olive oil, ghee, or tallow. And if you’re reaching for mayo or salad dressing, consider making your own. 

3. Factory-farmed meat is the norm

The truth is, most supermarket meat comes from animals that were never truly well.
Raised in crowded sheds, fed inflammatory grains, and routinely given antibiotics to survive conditions no animal should endure. And that metabolic sickness doesn’t stay in the barn. It carries through to you.

You get the wrong kind of fat (high in omega-6, low in CLA), lower levels of CoQ10, and a fraction of the fat-soluble vitamins your body needs to thrive. Not to mention the quiet stress chemistry of an animal raised in fear.

Whenever possible, choose meat from animals that lived well,  pasture-raised, grass-fed, regeneratively farmed. Build a relationship with a local butcher or small supplier. And don’t overlook the cheaper cuts...organs, bones, slow-cook joints. They’re not just more affordable,  they’re more nourishing, more mineral-rich, and more ancestrally aligned with how we’re meant to eat.

True nourishment comes from animals who were nourished too.

4. It’s designed to make you overspend

Nothing in the supermarket is accidental. Ultra-processed foods are placed at eye level, not because they’re good for you, but because they’re good for profit margins. End-of-aisle “deals” are often full of sugar, seed oils, and additives, packaged in reds and yellows because research shows these colours increase appetite and urgency. Even the so-called “health food” aisle is stocked with gluten-free cereals, vegan cheese puffs, and keto protein bars, all still ultra-processed, just with better branding.

Go in with a plan. Shop the outer aisles where the real food lives...meat, butter, eggs, produce. Eat before you go. Bring a list. And if something catches your eye, flip it over. If the ingredient list is longer than a short paragraph or includes anything you wouldn’t cook with at home, leave it on the shelf.

5. Fortification is a band aid to cover nutrient void food

Fortified. Enriched. With added B12, iron, folic acid, vitamin D... You’ve seen the labels. But here’s the truth. Fortification is not a sign of nutrient density, it’s a red flag that the food had none to begin with.  Modern industrial processing strips grains, dairy, and packaged foods of their natural nutrients.

The solution? Synthetics. Man-made versions of vitamins and minerals are sprayed back in, often in isolated, hard-to-absorb forms that don’t work synergistically with the body.

Folic acid (not folate), cyanocobalamin (a low-grade B12), and ferrous sulfate (an iron salt known to irritate the gut) are just a few examples. And these synthetic nutrients don’t act the same. They can build up, unabsorbed, triggering imbalances. Some are linked to worsened mental health, impaired methylation, and nutrient deficiencies when consumed in excess without real food cofactors.

Meanwhile, truly nutrient-dense foods, liver, egg yolks, bone broth, raw milk, fermented vegetables don’t need fortifying. They’re already perfectly balanced, with bioavailable vitamins in the exact ratios your body recognises and uses.

Eat food that doesn’t need a label to prove its worth. Prioritise real, whole ingredients. If something is “fortified,” ask yourself: what did they take out that now needs putting back in? And could you get that nutrient, in a better form, from real food instead? Fortification isn’t nourishment. It’s marketing.

6. It trains you to forget where food comes from

There’s an intimate connection with food that humans have carried for millennia, one rooted in soil, season, and story. For thousands of years, we gathered, bartered, harvested, hunted. We walked the land that grew our food, knew which neighbour raised the chickens, and which field would yield the sweetest berries come summer.

But in the past hundred years, barely a blink in human history, that relationship has been severed. We’ve been distanced from our food by fluorescent aisles, plastic wrap, and endless logistics. And in those same 100 years, food has quietly lost up to 75% of its nutrients.

Over time, this changes something subtle but profound. You forget that food was once alive. That it was raised, grown, harvested, not manufactured. That nourishment is a relationship, not just a transaction. And when you forget where food comes from, you lose part of your instinct to care for it,  and for yourself.

Eat close to the source. Choose real, whole foods. Learn the names of the people who grow what’s on your plate. And let the Organised App help guide you home, to farms near you, to seasonal eating, to the feeling of knowing where your food came from. 

We were never meant to be strangers to our sustenance.