The world is filled with plenty of myths about health and your body, many of which have been productized. One of the worst offenders is body detoxification, which attempts to sell you products based on the idea that your body is toxic. It's not, and buying related products is an attempt to fix an issue that doesn't exist. Brian Dunning of the myth-busting show inFact explains why:

Our bodies have kidneys and livers that remove toxins and other waste from our systems, but in the past few years, clever marketers have said "Forget all that, you need our magic pills and potions to detoxify your body." It should be very telling that they never happen to mention what these supposed "toxins" are, or what your doctor should look for in a blood test to see whether you have them. They simply assert that we're all full of toxins, and that buying their miracle product is the key to health.

The above video goes on to explain how several detoxifying products actually work to fool you into thinking that something is happening. In reality, the best you can hope for is a placebo effect. So if you're currently wasting money on this myth, or considering it, now's a good time to stop worrying about body toxins and just concentrate on a healthy diet.

Detoxification | inFact

The convenience of frozen and prepared foods is wonderful, but they're not so great for your diet or your wallet. Many of the foods you pick up in the freezer section can be created at home for less money with a very small time commitment, and they're healthier too. Here's how.

I used to buy all sorts of frozen foods for when I didn't have time to cook. I noticed that after awhile, I was eating frozen and prepared foods far too often because I got in the habit of simply relying on them. This wasn't only bad because frozen foods tend to cost a minimum of $5, but also because they tend to be unfulfilling thanks to low fiber content. That doesn't stop them from staying high in calories, however, and the salt and sugar you'll find in these foods is usually unnecessarily high as well. If you've ever had a truly fresh meal you know why this happens. Fresh food retains the most flavor after you cook it. When something gets frozen, it loses nutrients and its natural taste. Companies make up for this by adding sugar and salt. It may seem like that solves the problem, but it's really just transferring the burden from your tongue to your gut. When I decided I needed to get back in the habit of cooking more, I realized that many of the frozen foods and prepared meals at the grocery store were pretty simple and I could recreate them for about half the price and calories. When I started doing this, meals became much more fulfilling. Because they were more nutritious, I found I didn't require as much food. With the right methods, I didn't really even need more time to cook. Here's what I've learned.

Don't Buy Frozen Meals, But Do Buy Frozen Ingredients

There are all sorts of benefits to eating fresh food, but generally the produce that shows up at your local supermarket has lost quite a bit of its freshness in transit. While it may have a little bit of an edge over the frozen veggies you'll find in the store, that edge disappears pretty quickly once the formerly fresh product has spent a few days in your refrigerator. Unless you're planning on cooking a meal right after buying, using frozen ingredients is a good way to save money and time.

Find Alternate, Less-Obvious Ingredients

One of the biggest wastes of money is frozen pizza. It seems cheap because delivery pizza costs about twice as much, but if you're only feeding yourself you don't need an entire pizza in one sitting. If you're feeding others, individual-sized pizzas work well too. Either way, these little meals are often bereft of nutrients and so they're not particularly filling and are, nonetheless, pretty calorie-dense. You're looking at around 500 calories in most mini pizzas and they won't be particularly filling. Making your own can get kind of expensive because the dough is pricey to buy. It's also time consuming to make. Then there's the issue of pizza sauce and the cost of cheese. The solution? Pick out some alternate ingredients.

Instead of pizza dough, you can find high quality large bread rolls that are surprisingly less-expensive than buying an equivalent amount of dough. (The par(tially)-baked ones are the best, but anything works.) For the sauce, you can use sliced tomatoes. If you prefer, bruschetta or low-sodium pre-made pizza sauce also works but adds a little cost. Cheese is generally expensive, but you can usually find a bag of shredded low-fat mozzarella for a few dollars. Alternatively, you can get the circular mozzarella (or other cheese, if you prefer), for sandwiches and then you just use one slice per pizza.) When I go to the grocery store I pick up a bag of four high-quality large rolls, some tomatoes or pizza sauce, and a bag of cheese which runs me about eight dollars. Splitting the rolls in half, this makes for eight pizzas at about one dollar each. That's at least half the price of a mini frozen pizza, plus it doesn't have the added calories of frozen prepared food. It also has fiber because the rolls are naturally more fiber-rich than highly-manufactured pizza. It also tastes better, in my opinion. It takes five minutes to cook these in the oven, but you can easily pack them up and microwave them at the office if you don't have an oven where you work.

This is just one example of using alternate ingredients to make a better, healthier, cheaper product that only takes a few minutes to put together. If you like rice-based dishes, get yourself a slow cooker (or rice cooker that can do a bit more than cook rice) and let it do the work overnight so you have a lunch ready to go for work the next day (or dinner in the evening). If you're a fan of microwaving hot pockets, you can cut an open in the same rolls you use for pizza, fill them with whatever you want, and save them for later. The goal is to figure out what you can substitute to save money and, potentially, eat healthier at the same time. For the pizzas it was large rolls. Figure out what frozen foods you love and then look around the grocery store for alternate ways to make them. It can be fun and you can discover ways to eat what you want with far less impact.

Concentrate on Getting Full, Not on the Quantity of Food

As we've noted several times and you probably already know, fiber fills you up. The problem with many prepared foods is that they're stripped of their fiber content because high-fiber foods get too tough and unpleasant to eat when preserved for too long. This has given fiber a bad reputation, but in fresher foods it bears almost no downsides (unless you're looking for the unrealistic fluffiness of white bread). Fiber can help fill you up and keep you eating less, which means if you buy fiber-rich ingredients you can buy fewer and consume less calories. When you're making the switch from frozen meals to homemade options, you're probably going to estimate that you'll need to eat the same quantity of food. You won't. You'll end up too full. Instead of concentrating on the quantity of your food, figure out how much you need to feel filled and stop there.

When you're busy, it's easy to forget about your basic needs. You might find yourself skipping a meal, neglecting exercise, or spending too little time socializing. To keep yourself on task, here's a checklist to keep you from neglecting the things you need to do every day.

Last week we put together a daily personal inventory form to help you track potential problems in your everyday life so that you can correct them. Part of the problem, however, is remembering to take care of many of your basic needs. As a supplement, I've put together a checklist for keeping track of those basics. You can download it as a Word DOC and RTF file or just follow these instructions to add it to your Google Docs account:

1. Visit the checklist Google Doc page.
2. From the File menu (in Google Docs), choose "Make a copy."
3. Name that copy and save it to your Google Docs account.

That's all you have to do. The checklist will remind you to eat and drink regularly, get in your daily physical activity, and set aside some time for social activities and relaxation. You'll also be able to add any additional items that are specific to you. It seems silly to think that we'd forget these things, but it happens often when life gets filled with too many things. If you're neglecting the basics, keep this checklist handy every day and get in the habit of ticking those boxes. Even a tiny little reward like that can make it easier to remember the little things you need every day.

You might not want to know you've probably consumed a delicious treat that was manufactured with the aid of the anal gland sacs of a beaver, but you should be more worried about the salt and sugar content in your food than most disturbing additives. Here's why.

When it was revealed that a large amount of ground beef used and sold in the United States actually consisted of an ammonia-treated cow byproduct lovingly called pink slime, people weren't very happy. The whole production process of this pseudo-beef came across as nothing short of disgusting, but we happily consumed it for years—just like we're currently licking our lips for food that often contains viruses, bugs, and even the anal gland sacs of a beaver. While it might be disturbing to realize that you've been swallowing beaver butt all these years, Consumer Reports ShopSmart notes that your health concerns really ought to be redirected towards salt and sugar instead:

[M]ore than 3,000 food additives are listed in the Food and Drug Administration database, but just four constitute 93 percent of the total used: sodium and three forms of sugar-corn syrup, dextrose, and sucrose. "We know that added sugars contribute to the obesity epidemic. We know sodium can raise blood pressure," [professor of environmental chemistry Gregory] Möller says. "If you want to have a big impact on your diet, that's where to look first."

You won't find such concerns with the additive castoreum, which is the beaver anal gland extract often used in baked goods, gums, alcohol, and candy. Even bacteriophages, a virus-containing food preservative, is considered safe and helps prevent a deadly infection called listeriosis. These things are weird and gross, but they're probably not going to send you to an early grave. If you're looking for something to complain about, complain about the high sugar and salt content in many foods. That's actually a known problem—it's just not disgusting.

What's really in our food (PDF) | Consumer Reports ShopPmart via The Consumerist

Photo by Lasly Ilyes.