The best thing to eat is… food. Sounds obvious. But people eat all kinds of things that aren't food. (This is an excerpt from The Spartan Diet Journal email newsletter.)

In fact, almost everything that comes in a box, bag, bottle, carton, can and almost every pre-prepared food product that you buy in the supermarket contains things that aren't food.

In order to keep the product from spoiling, separating, showing its age, or revealing itself as the bland, stale industrial factory product that it is, manufacturers add preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilizers, thickeners, artificial flavors, flavor enhancers and artificial colors to create the illusion of quality and freshness. Examples from common bottled salad dressing include Xanthan gum, polysorbate 60, Yellow #5, disodium guanylate and disodium inosinate.

That’s what you’ll find on the label. What you won’t find on the label are all the non-food ingredients manufacturers are allowed by law to add without putting them on the label. They’re considered “manufacturing aids.” They’re not on the list of ingredients. But they’re in the package. And they’ll go into your body if you eat the food.

Sometimes literally in the actual package. The boxes, bags and cans that contain packaged foods are often permeated with all kinds of non-food chemicals. This is especially problematic because packaging itself is unlabeled, so it’s hard for consumers to choose less harmful packaging alternatives.

Canned food doesn’t just come in a can. That can is usually lined with acrylic, polyester or a lining that contains bisphenol A (BPA), which is an endocrine disruptor linked to cancer, reproductive and metabolic disorders. Produce wrapped in plastic or in plastic containers might also contain endocrine disrupting chemicals. Paper cups, like the kind you get with your to-go coffee, also tend to have plastic linings.

Takeout containers used by restaurants and supermarkets typically contain fluorine, which means they were treated with a group of chemicals called PFAS, known to cause reproductive and organ problems in lab animals.

And one of the biggest and fastest growing non-food substances in our diets is collectively known as micro-plastics. Because of humanity’s irresponsible use and handling of plastics, tiny particles of plastic are now everywhere — in the air we breath, the water we drink and the food we eat. Some people eat the equivalent of a credit card worth of micro plastic each week.

It comes in drinks sold in plastic bottles, including bottled water.

One of the biggest sources of mircoplastics is bottom-feeding seafood: mussels, oysters and scallops, and to lesser extent shrimps and crabs. These bottom feeders are getting second-hand plastic garbage that has sunk to the ocean floor, and collect it in their bodies throughout their lives. The oceans contain millions of tons of microplastics. Around 80% of ocean litter is plastic.

Microplastics damage cell health throughout the body, and can even pass through the blood-brain barrier. They’ve recently been correlated to inflammatory bowel disease.

Over the months and years and decades, we ingest an enormous quantity and variety of non-food chemicals and substances that nature never anticipated and that our bodies doesn't know what to do with.

The only solution is to make the effort to consume only food. Avoid packaged foods. Avoid food in containers. Avoid bottled drinks. Avoid consuming bottom-feeding seafood.

Here’s an example: Instead of buying bottled salad dressing, make your dressing in a ceramic or glass bowl using, say, organic extra-virgin olive oil; fresh squeezed organic lime juice; freshly pressed garlic; fresh dill, oregano and thyme; freshly ground pepper and salt. Now that's food.

Not only does a dressing made from such ingredients taste vastly better than any bottled dressing, it also nourishes and strengthens the body.

Why? Because it's food!