Real food…sounds simple, right? Yet a trip to the grocery store proves just how removed we’ve become from the concept of eating what is grown, picked, or raised. Packaged and prepared foods, with their long list of foreign ingredients have become the staples of the American diet. Long shelf life has replaced, “will spoil- cook and prepare within the week”. Busy lifestyles have driven marketers to sell us on the concept of healthy convenient food; already prepared wonders that will delight your family and taste just like home cooking. What?! Our inner voice reminds us that it doesn’t add up. The whole foods that nature creates to nourish our bodies cannot be exchanged for chemically enhanced food products. Our bodies do not do a good job of recognizing these foreign substances. We must do something- everyBODY does better with real food!
What to do? Breathe. Don’t panic or beat yourself up over the lost time spent in the inner sanctum of the supermarket. Create a strategy for a real food revolution in your home. Shopping the perimeter is a strategy that helps us limit food choices to what is “real.”
What do we mean by real? Real food is wholesome and nourishing. It is simple and it is unprocessed. Real food has been around since the beginning of time, it was available to our earliest ancestors. If it can be grown or raised and prepared and consumed in the same manner as our ancestors, it is most likely real food. Processed food can support life but real food supports health and adds to the quality of life.
Here are some tips to swap out unhealthy processed foods for nutritious real foods:
- Soda and juice- for clean pure water
- Margarine- for butter
- Canola/Corn/Vegetable oil- for Extra Virgin olive oil or Coconut oil
- White potato- for sweet potato
- Processed sugar- for raw honey or maple syrup
- White flour- just eliminate!
In addition to these tips it’s important to remember that a healthy plate has sustainably grown meat and a half plate of greens and colorful vegetables. ” Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Michael Pollan
Can’t wait to hear how you’re making these healthy changes in your home.
Here’s to real food!
christine and priscilla
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