The higher the percentage of packaged foods in your grocery bags, the further you are from whole-food eating. Whole foods don’t have ingredient lists because they are the ingredient. Packaged foods are processed, preserved, and designed by food scientists for shelf life and consumption, not nutrition.
This companion explores the package principle, an audit framework with four categories from whole foods to highly processed, why this matters for calorie density and satiety, and the shopping shift toward the store’s perimeter. (4 min read)