5 Tips to Be a Health Conscious Consumer

Reading the first two posts in this blog may have urged you to wonder what steps you should take to gather knowledge about everyday healthy living, and to become more conscious about preserving your health. Accepting that more products are bad for us than we ever imagined, will be quite difficult. Below I'm going to give you some advice to transform your thinking and to tune it to healthy habits.

Source

    1. Be Curious

If you are still reading, than chances are that you are curious enough to make the change. For me it was easy as I am a naturally curious person. I don't know if it is possible to train yourself to be curious, but maybe the next steps will help you pique your curiosity.

    

    2. Be Concerned About Your Health

You can have anything you want, but at the end of the day you will eventually realize that your most precious property is your health. You should do everything to protect it! Unfortunately, for some reason nowadays it is considered snobbish and pointless to be health conscious (at least here in Hungary).

    3. Don't Trust Commercials or Claims by Companies

When you become curious and research, you will notice that commercials are almost always packed with false claims. No matter how appealing they sound, doubt them, always! A little research won't hurt you, but a dangerous product could. You should always know the compounds you consume. Always research the ingredients that you are not familiar with, and make sure they don't present a threat. (See "Useful resources" below!)

    4. Transform Your Thinking

At first it won't be easy to be conscious about your decisions. You will be tempted not to bother with thinking about and checking a product, and sometimes you will feel the urge to say "whatever, I'm going to buy this anyway". Sticking to your newly accepted principles will be harder than it seems.

It may help you to realize that when you used to shop, cute packaging and commercials gushing forth from your subconscious made decisions for you. Take that control back! When you put more and more products back to the shelf because you realize they are not good for you, you will see the ridiculous amounts of lies companies dump on us.

    5. Be an Advocate

Naturally, the health of your loved ones is one your priorities too. Help them to be healthier, and while doing this, you will reinforce your principles in your mind as well. It will be mutually beneficial: for your loved ones and for you. (I am noting this because you will need to convince yourself from time to time that the effort is worth it and it helps to put your life and health back into your hands.)

Useful resources:

www.ewg.org/skindeep/ Excellent website to research cosmetics and their ingredients, complete with scientific research studies cited. I highly recommend this!

www.consumerreports.org/ For any kind of product

If you speak Hungarian: 

antalvali.com/ The biggest consumer safety site in Hungary