I did a bad, bad thing. I totally fell down in my job as my household’s Nutritional Gatekeeper. I find it deeply ironic that yesterday I’m posting about salt, sodium and processed foods, and today I discover this in my pantry:
What happened here?! I’ll tell you what happened…I failed to fully vet an item that Jeff put in our shopping cart. Bad Carrie! Bad! Bad!
We were at Trader Joe’s last week, and they had samples of this green curry tuna. It was tasty, and I’m not opposed to bringing carefully selected convenience foods into the house, provided they meet certain nutritional parameters. I must have taken a cursory glance at the back of the box, only to stop reading once I saw that the ingredients list was composed of actual real food. So foolish, because I know better than this!
It’s insane that this single serving of an otherwise healthy food contains more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium. I’ve rejected items for having 800 milligrams per serving, so had I fully read the Nutrition Facts box, I would have made Jeff put these nasties right back in the display they came from. Read labels! Read labels!
But alas, they are now in my pantry. I’ll try to mitigate the “damage” by stretching one serving to two with some steamed brown rice and extra veggies. And I’ll probably give Jeff an extra helping of grief with it (sorry dude, you can’t say I didn’t warn you!).
The moral of this story is twofold: One, read labels! Two, don’t assume that because a packaged food comes from a “healthier” store that it is actually healthy (read labels!).
I’ll tell you what, I’m going to be like a shark next time I shop at TJ’s. Or is that a hawk? Yeah, a hawk!
