Say the word “Obamacare” and you’re likely to be met with groans and eye rolling. Fortunately for us, it’s not the only option. Alternative medicine and treatments are starting to gain steam in mainstream America. One popular website Mercola.com, offers daily newsletters on how to address health problems and even better, how to minimize their occurrence with a healthy lifestyle.

No one can argue that a good diet and at least moderate exercise make sense if you want to lead a healthy lifestyle. But what if the food we eat isn’t all that great for us? Sure, it says on the package that it’s all “natural,” but the current FDA labeling laws are so lax and have so many loopholes, there are up to 25 different allowable names for Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) alone! MSG is a neurotoxin that makes your brain think that food tastes better than it actually does, allowing food companies to sell you lower grade food and you’ll still actually buy it and enjoy it, never mind it’s killing off your braincells while you eat it. Sorry Doritos lovers out there, this snack food is chock full of MSG.

Since I started learning about the toxins and chemicals that are in most of the processed food at the grocery store, I’ve become a compulsive label reader. I had made a New Year’s resolution a few years ago that I would do my best to switch to an organic diet and be a better informed consumer. This ended up being a lot more eye-opening than I had originally anticipated.

First, I started with my pantry. I pulled out every item in the pantry that had ingredients in it that I didn’t recognize, lined them up on my desk and started searching the names. One of my personal favorites, TBHQ or butylhydroquinone, is related to butane and is a petroleum product. It’s used as a preservative and is considered toxic if ingested in high enough levels. This potential carcinogenic can have the following side effects, although rare: nausea, vomiting, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), delirium and collapse.

Which immediately makes me wonder why the heck are we putting petroleum products in our food?!?! Since when is this an acceptable practice and where is the government oversight? Oh right… the FDA oversees that and they surely have our best interests at heart. Right…?

This was just the beginning of my journey about healthy eating habits and how it’s not just about picking the label that says “healthy” or “natural”, it’s about really knowing the products that go into our food.

I knew I was on the right track to cut out everything I could that was processed and genetically modified when I stopped getting headaches. I was getting a headache almost every single day. I’d get a migraine that affected my work about once every two weeks. I couldn’t figure out why for years. I had seen my doctor and we had tried all kinds of different medicines and therapies and nothing seemed to work. Within a month of changing my diet, I wasn’t getting them anymore. Now I find eating anything with MSG in it or some of the other more toxic chemicals will give me a headache and leave me feeling lethargic.

While my experience wasn’t a scientific experiment or likely to be true for everyone, I do believe it’s a darn good reason to educate myself as much as I possibly can about what’s in the food we are eating and how I can ensure I’m getting the best nutritional bang for my buck. If we want to see an overall change in our health, we have to start with the basics, real food.