Thoughts about food

So, I am currently a little obsessed thinking about food lately. My main obsession is how to eat cleanly.  By cleanly I mean little to no processed foods. If you have ever seen Food Inc, it is a total eye opener about food.  I saw it a few years ago, and let’s just say that grass fed beef was a priority after seeing the film.  If you have not seen the film, I highly recommend it!  Now that I am counting my calories, I am seeing actually how many calories are in processed foods. Now I can clearly see why we have an epidemic of diabetes and obesity.

Last night I was reading Food Rules by Michael Pollan, and it basically gives you a guide to eating healthy.  The rules make so much sense!  I love how he talks about “food like substances”.  Food like substances are basically processed foods that resemble real food but in actually are not real food.  It makes me think about all the cheese puffs my girls eat.  Yeah, I’m pretty sure those are just food like substances.  Then this puts me off onto another tangent that yes, I may be working on what I feed myself, but I also need to focus on what I feed my girls.  I know I have created these cheese puff eating monsters, but how do I change that? 

Another thing that I have been thinking about is how expensive real food can cost.  Grass fed beef…cage free chicken = expensive!  Organic fruit = yikes!  I can definitely see why we eat more processed cheaper stuff.

Updated:  I wrote this blog post last week as a draft, and I now have started Mission Impossible: Can I get my kids to eat better?  Well, the answer is yes, it is possible!  I made a trip to Sprouts this weekend and replaced some of their favorites with more expensive, but healthier favorites! Now I am not going to tout that I am perfect in this arena, because they are still eating stuff that ideally they shouldn’t, but they are at least better replacements.  Sprouts has a great assortment of snacky stuff that they were happy to eat in place of their usual Cheetos and fruit snacks. 

The girls HATE the food served at their Pre-K, so I am excited about sending them to school next year with their own lunch from home.  I am totally digging the whole Bento phase right now…and would love to experiment with it some this summer.  Although, ask me next year how I like making lunches, and my whole excitement about it may be long gone…ha! Although if it saves me money, I’ll be making those lunches!

 

Okay, enough talking about food! ;)