The image above is a poster from artist Justin Perricone. It’s the first in a series designed to show you what’s in the food that you’re eating. For this particular poster, he took all of the ingredients that are in a Ham and Cheese Pizza Pocket and arranged them into this design. Looking at this could definitely make at least a few of us think twice about putting that food into our bodies.

And the poster got me thinking about how you could use tag clouds to actually analyze what is in the food that you are eating. If you’re familiar with the food rules popularized by Michael Pollan, you know that one of the most important things that you can do if you want to eat a healthy, natural diet is to avoid eating foods that have more than five ingredients and foods that contain anything that you can’t pronounce. This makes sense but it’s tough to get used to and I think tag clouds could help.

Here’s how:

Pull out an item from your pantry that you eat on a regular basis. Copy the ingredients into a document on your computer. Now, the way that tag cloud programs work is that the more frequently a word is used, the bigger or bolder it will appear in the tag cloud. Luckily, the ingredients in your food are listed in order of how much of them is in your food. You won’t get anything exact, of course, since you don’t know the percentage of each ingredient in the food, but you can get a general idea by copy-pasting the leading ingredients multiple times into your document.

For example, here are the ingredients for my supposedly healthy cereal bars; they’re in order although I’ve separated the outside part from the inside filling:

enriched flour, oat bran, canola oil, raisin paste, liquid whole eggs, molasses, glycerin, oat fiber, brown sugar, liquid invert sugar, baking powder, vitamins, minerals, wheat bran, salt, cellulose, honey, sodium bicarbonate, sodium propionate, niacinamide, zinc oxide, reduced iron, calcium carbonate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, folic acid

fructose, high fructose corn syrup, strawberries, sugar, glycerin water, maltodextrin, modified corn starch, sodium alginate, natural flavor, artificial flavor, calcium chloride, citric acid, malic acid, sodium citrate, xanthum gum, caramel color

Now, to keep things super simple, I’ve entered these into a tag cloud program. I’ve taken the first five ingredients from each part of the list and copy-pasted them five extra times. Then I’ve taken the following five ingredients and entered them an extra three times. Then I generated my tag cloud. Here’s the result:

Granted, this isn’t an exact science but it certainly gives me a decent picture of what I’m putting in my body. And I definitely think the process of doing this will make me think twice about frequently consuming some of the foods in my pantry!

If you try this, please come back and leave me a comment … I’d love to know how it works out for other people!!!

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Tags: diet, Food, healthy, ingredients, tag clouds

Any SmartChick (or SmartGuy) knows that it’s really important to be concerned about your health. In line with this, it is important to be concerned about your diet because we are what we eat in a lot of ways. One of the best things that a smart person can do for themselves is to learn how to incorporate different foods into an overall balanced diet to get all of the right nutrition so that the body always feels good.

Fiber is one of those foods that you hear enough about to know that it’s something that you need to have in your diet. But is it something that you pay attention to? Most people don’t – at least not until they get old enough that a lack of fiber starts causing some serious issues in their bodies. It’s always better to prevent problems than to treat problems so adding fiber to your diet before it’s an issue just makes sense.

Luckily, there are tons of easy ways to add fiber to your diet. Basically you just want to eat lots of whole grains, fruits and vegetables. You want to get a lot of beans and peas in your diet. You want to avoid white (as in white bread and white rice) in favor of brown. You want to leave the skin and seeds on your foods as often as possible and eat raw fruits and veggies instead of cooked ones. Someone who is already eating a healthy diet is probably already doing most of these things. Way to be smart!

Tags: diet, dietary fiber, fiber, Food, health, how to eat fiber, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, nutrition

Any SmartChick (or SmartGuy) knows that what we put into our bodies is the single biggest thing that affects our health. Sure there are major impacts on our health by genetics and environment. But what we take in every day is what courses through our bodies and really determines how we feel.

I had the chance to write an article earlier on 20 Foods that are Great for your Skin which really got me thinking about the foods that we eat and the way they can benefit us or cause us problems. It makes sense that if you drink a lot of water and eat foods that are rich in antiocidants, selenium, Vitamin A and Vitamin C then you’re going to have a healthy body and good skin.

So why is doing that so hard sometimes? I do tend to have a pretty good diet. I’m lucky because I like a lot of foods that are healthy for me. I also don’t particularly like to cook (although I’m learning new recipes that are changing my opinion on that) so I tend to choose methods of cooking (broiling, steaming and eating things raw) that are healthier for me than other options.

Nevertheless, I definitely indulge in junk food more often than I should. Mostly I think moderation is the key here but writing that article definitely has me thinking that if I really want to be smart, I needed to focus on being smarter about what I put into my body each day!

Tags: diet, Food, foods for skin, health, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, nutrition, skin

I believe that the key to living a healthy life is to live in moderation. I don’t always stick with this belief. I have some hedonistic tendencies. I like to indulge and imbibe. I like to revel and rejoice. But ultimately, I believe that most things work best when they are done in moderation rather than at the extremes.

I believe that this is true of both work and play. I definitely go through periods of being a workaholic. This is sometimes great since I really do love the work that I do. But ultimately the lack of moderation in my work causes me to dislike what I normally enjoy about it and to seek to regain that balance of work and play yet again. Likewise, when I play too much, I miss my work. When I am too social, I miss my solitude and when I stay home alone too much, I miss my friends. My life is constantly about trying to find balance and that balance comes with learning moderation.

One specific example of moderation that works is in dieting and weight loss. I don’t believe in fad diets. I don’t believe in rapid weight loss. I don’t believe in extreme weight changes. What I believe is that your body has a weight that’s right for it and that if you eat healthy and in moderation then you will naturally balance out at this weight, the right weight for you and the one at which you will feel your best. I don’t believe in over-indulging in treats but I do believe in indulging in what you enjoy on a regular basis. I believe, ultimately, in moderation – in weight loss, yes, but more importantly in life as a whole.

Tags: balance, being healthy, diet, eating right, ehow, happiness, how to, kathryn vercillo, life, moderation, weight loss, wellness