I Have a Rule. No More Than Three Ingredients. I Have Had It Since I Was 40.

By Alli · Simply Simpatica · 7 min read

I have a rule. No more than three ingredients.

I have had this rule since I was 40. Not because I read about it somewhere. Not because a nutritionist told me. Because my body told me, loudly and clearly, that anything it could not recognise was something it did not want. Twenty years before clean eating became a trend, before seed oils became a controversy, before ultra-processed food made the news, I was standing in supermarket aisles reading labels and putting things back.

I still am.

If I see seed oils, preservatives, artificial colouring or anything I cannot pronounce — it goes back on the shelf. No negotiation. No exceptions. My body is not a laboratory for the food industry's chemistry experiments, and it has not been for twenty years.

This post is about what I do not let in. And why, after fifty, what you keep out matters just as much as what you put in.

What Ultra-Processed Food Is Actually Doing to Your Genes

Dr Lucia Aronica's nutrigenomics research at Stanford University shows us something that changes everything once you understand it. Ultra-processed food does not just add empty calories. It actively switches on inflammation genes and switches off repair and longevity genes. Every time you eat something your body cannot recognise, every emulsifier, every artificial colour, every preservative, you are sending a message to your DNA. And that message is not kind.

After 50, your body's ability to recover from inflammatory insults is already slower than it was at 30. Your cellular repair processes are less efficient. Your gut microbiome — which directly influences gene expression, hormone balance and immune function — is more vulnerable to disruption. Ultra-processed food exploits all those vulnerabilities simultaneously.

The three-ingredient rule is not a diet. It is not a trend. It is the simplest possible filter between you and the industrial food system that has been quietly making women sick for decades.

Seed Oils — The One I Feel Most Strongly About

Canola oil. Sunflower oil. Vegetable oil. Soybean oil. They are in almost everything processed, crackers, sauces, dressings, baked goods, and takeaway food. They are cheap, shelf-stable and utterly ubiquitous.

They are also, in my view, one of the most damaging things you can put into your body after 50.

Here is why. Seed oils are extraordinarily high in omega-6 fatty acids. Your body needs some omega-6, but the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in the modern diet is wildly out of balance, sitting at approximately 20 to 1 when it should be closer to 4 to 1. That imbalance drives chronic systemic inflammation at the cellular level. The same inflammation that shows up as cortisol face. As joint pain. As brain fog. As the generalised feeling that your body is constantly overreacting to everything.

I cook with extra-virgin olive oil and occasionally with ghee. That is it. Everything else goes back on the shelf.

Preservatives and Artificial Colouring — The Quiet Disruptors

Your gut microbiome contains approximately 100 trillion microorganisms that directly influence everything from your mood to your hormone balance to your immune function to your gene expression. Dr Aronica's research shows that the gut microbiome is one of the most powerful mediators of epigenetic change; what you feed it determines which genes get switched on and off throughout your entire body.

Preservatives and artificial colouring disrupt the gut microbiome. Not dramatically and not immediately, which is precisely why they are so insidious. The damage is cumulative. Gradual. The kind you do not notice until you remove them and suddenly feel dramatically better.

I removed them twenty years ago. The difference was not subtle.

Sugar — The Accelerator

I no longer eat refined sugar. What I do eat is raw local honey. And the difference between the two is not just philosophical — it is biochemical. Refined sugar spikes blood glucose, triggers an insulin response, drives inflammation, and, through a process called glycation, literally attaches to collagen fibres and makes them stiff and brittle. Glycation is one of the primary drivers of visible skin ageing. Every time you eat refined sugar, you are accelerating the breakdown of the collagen in your face.

Raw local honey is a completely different conversation with your body. It contains enzymes, antioxidants and minerals that refined sugar has had completely stripped out. It has a lower glycaemic response. It is prebiotic, feeding the beneficial bacteria in your gut that influence gene expression and inflammation. Local raw honey contains trace amounts of local pollen that support immune resilience. And it tastes extraordinary.

I drizzle it on my yoghurt. I stir it into warm water with lemon. I use it as my only sweetener in everything. My sweet tooth is entirely satisfied, and my body gets something genuinely nourishing in return.

Coffee — My One Indulgence

I drink coffee. Good coffee. I am not giving it up, and I am not apologising for it.

But I want to be honest about what coffee does to cortisol — because I wrote about cortisol face in my last post, and coffee is directly relevant. Caffeine stimulates cortisol production. For those of us already carrying a high cortisol load from work stress, grief or a nervous system that runs hot, too much coffee adds to that load.

I limit myself to one or two cups in the morning and never have any after midday. The afternoon cortisol spike from a 3 pm coffee is real, and it is not serving any of us.

I have mine with tiger nut milk — made clean with no nasties, no seed oils, no preservatives, nothing I cannot pronounce — and a small drizzle of raw honey. It is warm, slightly sweet and genuinely delicious. And every single ingredient passes the three-ingredient rule test. Even my coffee indulgence stays clean.

The Three-Ingredient Rule in Practice

It is simpler than it sounds once it becomes a habit. Here is how I apply it in everyday life:

At the supermarket, I read every label before anything goes in my basket. If the ingredient list has more than three items or contains anything I cannot immediately identify as a whole food, back on the shelf it goes.

At restaurants, I choose the most whole food option available. Grilled over fried. Simple over-sauced. I ask questions when I need to.

At home, my pantry contains whole foods. Olive oil. Raw honey. Good quality salt. Tinned fish. Legumes. Whole grains. Pasture-raised organic eggs. Things with one ingredient or things I have made myself from ingredients I trust.

It is not perfectionism. It is just a filter. A twenty-year-old filter that my body asked for and my DNA has been thanking me for ever since.

What Changes When You Clean It Up

I want to tell you what I have noticed over twenty years of eating this way because I think it matters more than any study.

My skin has always been one of my greatest assets, and I genuinely believe that two decades of clean eating is a significant part of why. My energy is consistent. My digestion is reliable. My inflammation markers, as far as I can tell from how my body feels and my bloodwork, are low. My weight, when not influenced by hormonal changes of menopause, stays relatively stable without effort.

I am not immune to the effects of ageing. I am not claiming clean eating is a magic solution. But twenty years of keeping the wrong things out has given my body a fighting chance to do what it was designed to do.

Your body is trying to heal itself every single moment of every single day. All you have to do is stop putting things in the way.

The Closing Thought

The food industry spends billions of dollars every year engineering products that your body cannot recognise, that light up your brain's reward centres and that keep you coming back for more. They are not on your side. They never were.

Your three-ingredient rule is.

You do not need a complicated diet. You do not need a meal plan, a program, or a subscription. You need a filter. One simple question every time you pick something up — can I recognise every single thing in this?

If yes, it comes home with you.

If no, it stays on the shelf.

Twenty years. One rule. Your DNA will thank you for it. 💛

Do you read labels? Have you ever removed something from your diet and felt the difference? Tell me in the comments — I genuinely want to know. 💛