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"Healthy Eating Shouldn't Be a Privilege"
Newsweek US|April 28 - May 05, 2023 (Double Issue)
Actress and entrepreneur Zooey Deschanel on making healthy choices and fighting "food deserts"
- ZOOEY DESCHANEL
"Healthy Eating Shouldn't Be a Privilege"

WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, I had lots of access to healthy food. My parents were both foodies and very good cooks. My mom was always baking homemade bread; she's an incredible maker of sourdough. My dad is half French and had a great appreciation for food and fresh ingredients.

I've always eaten pretty well. For a while I was vegan for ethical reasons, but for me it was just too hard to maintain. Now I'm a pescatarian-I like to be able to eat in most restaurants and find this is a great, sustainable diet that's versatile and it's easy to order off many menus.

During my first pregnancy I tried to be extra healthy. I didn't have any strange cravings, other than lemonade, which I don't normally drink. I tried to eat mostly a whole food, organic diet, since it seemed like a pretty safe choice for my health and that of the baby.

While I was really aware of what I was eating and where it came from, I found it hard to find real information about my food. I would look at the packet, which was marketed as "healthy," but found it difficult to determine what was actually in this product.

A lot of the time I would look up an ingredient and find that it was code for something else; what I thought I was buying wasn't always what I was getting.

Sometimes I would see an ingredient and think: "Is that a chemical? Is that a natural ingredient?" It felt like I needed a degree in reading ingredients to go to the grocery store and make a healthy choice.

This story is from the April 28 - May 05, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of Newsweek US.

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This story is from the April 28 - May 05, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of Newsweek US.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

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