In a world where food has become something to sell rather than something to nourish, we have to become more discerning than ever.

Supermarkets are full of beautiful packaging, clever marketing, and “healthy” claims that can easily cloud the truth. But beneath the buzzwords, many modern foods are stripped of their essence, devoid of real nourishment, integrity, and life.

Here are 7 red flags to look out for...

1. Fortified or “enriched” labels

You’ll often see bread, cereals, flours and even snack bars marked as “fortified with iron, B12, folic acid” or “enriched with vitamins and minerals”. 

This is a red flag, not a selling point.

When foods are stripped of their natural nutrients during processing, manufacturers often try to add them back in synthetically. But these lab made versions aren’t well absorbed by the body, and in many cases (like synthetic iron or folic acid), they may even disrupt natural mineral balance or overload sensitive systems.

True nourishment comes from food that contains these nutrients inherently, not food that needed to be rescued by a factory.

2. Food that looks perfect, and tastes like nothing

If your tomatoes are huge, red and glisten in the sun, but taste like water… Those strawberries that appear flawless, but don’t carry the nostalgic scent of being freshly picked.

If your eggs crack open to reveal pale, flat yolks that break without resistance and leave no richness on your tongue…

These are signs of nutrient depletion, often due to monocropped soil, rapid growth cycles, and produce bred for shelf-life rather than flavour or mineral content.

Trust your senses. If it doesn’t smell like food, feel like food, or taste like food… it probably isn’t nourishing like food either.

3. "Low-fat” or “fat-free” versions of traditional foods

It all started to go wrong when we were first taught to fear cholesterol.

Once revered as a vital part of the human diet, cholesterol suddenly became the villain of the century, blamed for heart disease, clogged arteries, and poor health. But in reality, cholesterol is not the enemy. It’s the precursor to hormone production, a raw material your body needs to create estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, and vitamin D.

And hormones? They’re the invisible conductors of nearly every system in the body,  from metabolism to mood, digestion to detoxification, reproductive rhythms to deep sleep.

Traditional cultures consumed whole animal fats, raw or cultured dairy, liver, egg yolks, and rich broths,  because they understood, intuitively or directly, that fat was life-giving. It carried flavour, satiety, and soul. It nourished mothers through pregnancy, supported children’s brain development, and grounded the body in times of stress.

But then came the low-fat era.

• Low-fat yoghurt? Usually pumped with sugar, gums or starch to mimic creaminess.
• Fat-free dressings? Full of seed oils, artificial flavourings, and emulsifiers.
• Lean meat only? A recipe for nutrient imbalance, blood sugar instability and metabolic stress.
  

The human body was designed to grow and be sustained on whole foods, not manipulated versions engineered for market trends. And fat, in its unprocessed, ancestral form, was never the problem. It was the processing all along.

4. “Natural flavours” in the ingredient list

This one sounds harmless, even good, but it’s actually a legal loophole that allows manufacturers to hide hundreds of synthetic chemicals under one innocent-looking label.

“Natural flavour” doesn’t mean it came from a whole food source. It just means it originated from something natural... and was then chemically altered, stabilised, and engineered for intensity.

These engineered flavourings override your body’s natural satiety cues and train your palate away from real food. They hijack the senses.

5. Seed oils hidden in everything

Seed oils (like canola, sunflower, soybean, grapeseed, and rice bran oil) are some of the most common, and most inflammatory,  ingredients in modern food. They’re often used in products marketed as healthy: hummus, plant milks, snacks, protein bars, roasted nuts and almost every premade meal you can find in the supermarket (even the seemingly healthy ones, and ready-to-go sides like olives or marinated cheeses).

Why is this a red flag? These oils are highly processed, deodorised, and heated to unstable temperatures. They oxidise quickly, are often rancid before you’ve even opened the packet, and interfere with mitochondrial function, metabolic health, and hormonal signalling. 

This wasn't the fat our ancestors thrived on. Like them, we should cook with tallow, butter, ghee, duck/goose fat or coconut oil, fats that are stable, nourishing, and deeply satiating.