There are several food ingredients that are best to avoid as they offer no nutritional value and may be detrimental to your health. Reading the list of ingredients on pre-packaged foods should be the first thing you do when deciding if a product is worth buying.

A basic rule of thumb for choosing food products is if there are ingredients that you are unfamiliar with or cannot pronounce then the product is best left on the shelf. Typically, the least amount of ingredients a product contains, the better it is. Products with numerous ingredients are usually highly processed, making them a bad choice.

The list below is a good guide for determining whether a food product is of high or low quality. Generally, low quality products include these additives.

1. High fructose corn syrup and corn syrup
2. Hydrogenated vegetable oils
3. Artificial food colors
4. Nitrites and nitrates
5. Sulfites such as sulfur dioxide
6. Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose and saccharin
7. Artificial flavors
8. Modified corn starch
9. Preservatives such BHA, BHT, EDTA and THBQ
10. MSG (monosodium glutamate)