Are We All Too Busy To Eat Healthy?

Every couple of months I write some cry your eyes out post about how I am so busy. And I get some awesome responses from you guys in support, telling me to hang in there. I thank each and every one of you who has commented or even just read such a post. But as I continue to hit patches of busy-ness, writing more whining and complaining posts doesn't make for good compelling reading. Or even a cathartic writing experience.

I have yet again hit another such patch. While I have been quite busy at the office (which is a good thing), it is our current school situation that is the biggest culprit. My children and I now spend just shy of 12 hours of every week day outside of our home. And of my just over 12 hours spent in the home, 6-7 are spent sleeping, 2-3 are spent caring for the kids or preparing food and 1-2 are spent in other chore related ways, like emptying the dishwasher or making lunches. That leaves little time for the things that I love, like writing. No wonder I never talk on the phone.

So I have now carved out a love-hate relationship with food preparation. When I started this blog I was inspired by all that I read. I tried new things, even on a weeknight! But today making homemade food sometimes feels like a ball and chain. But what choice do I have? Muster up the energy to cook something simple like sausages and boiled veggies, or order food that will make us all feel sick. Last week I was exhausted fighting some cold and I couldn't even think of stepping foot into the kitchen. So we picked up some pizza. What a mistake. I spent the whole night queasy and I couldn't sleep. Some convenience. Yes, the kids ate with no drama-rama, but I have to imagine that their bellies were tender that night too.

I love the idea of a local, organic and non-processed diet. But I will not sit here and tell you that it is a sustainable lifestyle for most people. The vast majority of people lack the skills to make a non-processed lifestyle work with all the commitments they have in life. And my 'experiment' to prove that any family can eat all homemade foods has lead me to dozens of amazing and inspirational blogs kept by full time bloggers, stay at home mothers and home schoolers. That's awesome, but not all the tips really work for me. I am not home to try all these cool recipes out.

So after 18 months of blogging, I have come to one succinct conclusion. We are all just too damn BUSY! The modern American lifestyle is overstuffed with way too many activities and we have made room for them by cutting out things we really need to do like sleeping and preparing healthy food. And we continue to convince ourselves that we need junky convenience foods and faster smartphones in order to do more work and brain cell sucking activities like searching the Internet. But wait, are we convincing ourselves? Or is it the companies that are selling us the phones, computers and junk food?

Today, The average American workday is 7.5 hours. That makes sense, 8 hour day, 30 minutes for lunch give or take a few. That number has remained fairly constant over the years. In this link, you can see that weekly hours worked has remained the same since the mid sixties at about 40-41 hours total per week. That is actually slightly less than in the forties when the average weekly hours worked was slightly over 43 hours. But no huge difference over the years. Then tack on the average commute, which is today just shy of an hour per day, or over 100 hours each year. I guess I can keep on complaining because my work day is 9 hours each day and I can boast a whopping 2+ hours of commuting time each day.

The change in sleep over the last 100 years is much more dramatic. The average amount of daily sleep has gone from 9 hours in 1900 to 7 hours in the 1970's to just over 6 hours today. I myself admit to getting only 6 hours of sleep regularly. I shoot for 7 hours but don't really feel good unless I get a full 8 hours. The fact that kids are getting less sleep saddens me. Reports show that School aged kids today average only 9.5 hours of sleep each day when they should be getting more. That is less than kids were getting 30 years ago. Sleep is important for everything from physical repair to hormone regulation to supporting memory. I know all this, but so many nights I stay up writing this blog instead of turning off the electric lights and the ever portable iPad.

But naturally it is the time spent in front of TVs, computers and Internet capable phones that is so troubling. According to this study and the article published in Businessweek, kids are now using more than 8 hours of media per day. That includes cell phone and iPod usage, texting, Internet, gaming and TV watching. I don't even want to know how many hours I spend using media. It is virtually all day at work. And then between various personal Apple devices, I overdo it a little. The problem I find with this trend is not so much that we are watching so much TV or reading online, it is that we are not setting down the devices to prepare healthy foods. It is that we cannot turn off the computer to go to sleep. We seem so afraid that we will miss something. Surely this cannot be good for us. And our health is surely suffering from the lack of rest and the abundant 'convenient' food.

I don't mean to say that we should just utilize our time better. That's a cop-out like saying we need to eat less and exercise more to combat obesity. The biggest problem in being too busy today is that in order to stay socially connected in today's world we HAVE to be computer literate and text and stay up on Facebook. There aren't quills for letter writing, parlor visits or calling cards anymore. Companies are pushing you to not even get mail anymore by sending you your bill via email. We cannot live without technology. It is not going away. I don't think we will get any less busy than we are right now. I suppose it could get worse. It could turn into The Matrix.

I bounce between wondering if blogs like mine make a difference to anyone who eats the Standard American Diet and not having any effect whatsoever. Or does my writing into the ether just solidify a group of people who have all independently come to the same conclusion, that we are too busy and we need to make lifestyle changes in order to maintain our health? Are we visionaries? Are we cutting edge? Have we discovered the missing link that could save us from more health problems? Or are we the fringe? Are we the crazies? Are we the Miss Haveshams' still clutching our old failed dreams even as the world passes us by?

Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we could all learn to live in balance. Do you think anyone will ever get that to catch on?

This post is shared with Simple Lives Thursdays

Have You Heard About Denmark's New Fat Tax?

Thank you to Fooducate which is where I first heard about this story. It was originally reported by the BBC over the weekend. Apparently, the country of Denmark has passed the world's first 'Fat Tax'. Starting soon all foods with a saturated fat content of greater than 2.3% will carry a tax of aproximately 8 cents per ounce.

Oh, this is wrong on so many levels. I was rather angry when I first heard about the tax because it doesn't make alot of sense to me. The tax is only on products containing SATURATED fat. The types of products to be taxed will be items like butter, coconut oil, lard, some meats, cheese and full fat milk and the products that contain them like ice cream and pizza. It means that candy, chips or french fries fried in soybean oil, cakes and cookies made with canola oil or deconstructed fat free milk products will remain untaxed.

The items to be taxed are largely unprocessed items that my healthy weight family eats every week. Meanwhile the products that we avoid to maintain our health, like chips and cookies will remain untaxed!! While I am sure that some processed products will be taxed, it will be quite easy for food companies to reformulate those products and circumvent the tax. Manufacturers of butter would be unable to reformulate, of course. The tax means that a pound of butter will cost about $1.28 more! Raising the price of unprocessed food seems counterintuitive. Don't we want people to start making their own food rather than letting some unknown company do the cooking for us? Food is expensive enough already, levying a tax on so many unprepared foods makes little sense to me.

Perhaps it surprises you that I am against this tax? Actually I am all for taxing unhealthy foods. I fully support the once proposed NYC soda tax. I supported the once proposed ban of sugary beverages from being part of the SNAP benefit plan. I just disagree with the item being taxed here. If you want to address obesity, tax sugar. Our bodies need fat, even saturated fat. But our bodies don't need sugar at all!! Obesity is undoubtedly a complex problem. It is not one that a single bad ingredient or food caused. The causes of obesity are cultural as well as food related. But it makes no sense to me to blame the foods that we have been eating throughout history.

I don't anticipate additional countries following suit. I will be curious if the law even lives. Sometimes bad international press can turn the tide against such laws. This could be a difficult additional expense for the average Danish family. Suddenly your meat, milk, butter and cheese have an added tax. It could end up being $5-10 a week on otherwise unprocessed healthy foods. Over the course of a year that could mean an extra $250-$500!!!

It is clear to me that many people in positions of authority do not understand nutrition. Many folks do not understand the partnership between healthy fats and satiety. Meanwhile, how many hundreds of calories could you ingest of saturated-fat-free potato chips before you burst? I think the Danes got it all wrong. If the government should have any say over our diets, it ought to be them standing strong against sugar and banning non-food chemicals from the food supply. This tax is completely off base.

Do you agree with government taxes on food items? Why or why not?

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays and Fight Back Fridays

Our First Week of School & School Food

Last week began a new adventure for all of us. After four years with a full time babysitter, Thing 1 started full time big boy Catholic School and Thing 2 started full time daycare. The reasons for the change were largely financial. Thing 1 needs to now be in a full day school, which can be pricey. And Thing 2 needs to start some kind of school environment to learn basic socialization and even 10 hours of preschool, as many of you well know, can cost you $15-20 per hour. Add on a full time nanny and you have a recipe for bankruptcy. So we decided that instead of the shorter programs that we'd go full on into full day programs and let our longtime well loved babysitter go. It has been a difficult and emotional change for everyone. But even after three days I think we all agree that we made the right decision.

Thing 1 started in school last Wednesday. We like his teacher. He comes home every day saying that he has made new friends, but he doesn't know the children's names. Thing 1 is slow to warm up. The very first day when the teacher called them to come to circle time all the children made a circle and Thing 1 sat on the outside. That's him. Even at 10 months old he was moving in the opposite direction of the crowd. He just takes his time to get into the middle of things. But he tells us that he likes his school and for that I am grateful.

Thing 2 has been less happy about the turn of events. This poor second child has always gotten hand-me-down everything, including hand-me-down attention from parents and caregivers. So just when he stood to have lavishly long days of one on one solo care we decide to stick him in a chaotic school environment with a dozen other children and half as many caregivers. Let's just say he wasn't thrilled. Day one was a true nightmare where he cried all day, did not nap and did not eat. I blame myself (as per usual) for not preparing him more. I am not sure I even told him about his new daytime routine until the day before, and even that was spotty communication. I spent the entire summer preparing Thing 1 for his new school. I trust that in a couple weeks he will fall into line. Even on day two he ate and took a nap with the other children-a HUGE improvement from our puffy red-eyed first day!

School food was something I also hemmed and hawed about. Both the daycare and the school told me that both breakfast and lunch was included in the tuition costs. Great...except that I know a little too much about school food. It was hard enough to have a daily babysitter plying my kid with treats. At least, of all the junky snacks I know my kids were getting, our baby sitter cooked meals from scratch for the kids and even brought home-prepared food in to share with them. School food is an altogether different thing! All summer I weighed our options, do we opt in? Or do I pack a lunch for them?

A week or so before school started I noted in the parent's handbook that the school lunch program followed the Catholic Diocese's Nutrition Program, whatever that means. I figured it was basic My Pyramid, (sorry.....) My Plate, kind of stuff. But I was stressed about all my new food responsibilities, so I was willing to let him eat at school. Several schools have good food programs!

So two weeks ago I called the school and asked, what was the menu like? Could parents access upcoming items? I was told that children needed a note from their child's pediatrician in order to opt out of the program. And that the note needed to cite allergies or some other medical reason. In response to my questions about the menu I received a voicemail from the principal saying that the offering was pretty standard, "It includes a protein and vegetable and a starch and typical meals are like pizza, chicken nuggets or cheeseburgers." That was pretty much all I needed to hear to know that I was opting out.

For Thing 2 I took a different approach. He doesn't eat. And now he isn't even eating hot dogs (bun only now-a-days) So I am down to fresh fruits, milk and juice, anything in the wheat family and turkey sausage. Oh and if he could he would eat as many French fries, potato chips or other junky foods that he could get his hands on. I am pretty sure I have a future food hoarder on my hands. I decided that given his pickiness that he could benefit from a room full of kids all eating the same thing. It might to help him to branch out. And it isn't like I know what he wants to eat anyway. Much of my packed lunches would likely go to waste anyway.

Thing 1 has been doing okay with the packed lunches. But a curious pattern has begun to emerge. The first day of school he ate just about everything from both his breakfast and his lunch. But he told me that in addition to the oatmeal that I packed him that he had the juice and pancakes that the school served. For lunch he just ate his home food. Okay...And then last Friday he ate the school's offering for lunch, 'square cheese' sandwiches with chips (CHIPS???) and a plum. On top of their lunch he ate about half of the lunch I provided. For breakfast he just ate what I provided. He seems to be double dipping when he is hungry, which I am surprisingly okay about. I want him to make his own decisions. It is clear that he doesn't want to fess up about what he has been eating. After a couple of years of me on my health kick he knows that I am the food gestapo of the house. And that makes me a little sad. I keep telling him that mommy won't be mad if he eats the school food, but would he please just tell me what he ate? It usually takes that promise to get him to come clean. The dialogue now becomes about how and WHY to make good food choices. I don't want to swoop in and force him to eat carrots and hummus. I want him to come to that conclusion on his own. That's how he becomes a functioning healthy adult.

But he is FOUR. It is hard for him to make good food choices. And there is something else besides simple menu offering that I NEVER thought about, peer pressure. The very first day I packed Thing 1 breakfast I made a smoothie and a bowl of oatmeal with raisins. He ate everything. But just before bed he told me out of the blue that the kids at school said his smoothies looked gross. He said they told him not to drink it. (Okay okay, I snuck some kale in there, so sue me-it's not like he could taste it!!!!) So I swallowed hard and asked what he thought of the smoothie. He said it was good and that he drank the whole thing. So I said okay, what do those kids know anyway? I went on to say that it was a good thing that they thought it was gross because then he wouldn't have to share any of it. I said to him 'If you had been holding a bag of cookies, they each would have asked you for one.' That made sense to him.

I know this is going to be hard. This is the first time that he has been exposed to peer pressure. This is the first time he has had to eat meals outside of his house every day. He is going to begin to see how other people live. It is an opportunity for me to explain why I make the decisions that I do. My greatest hope is that he comes home and tells me the food I pack for him is so much more delicious than the processed food he could get at school. My greatest fear is that he will come home and tell me that the kids are making fun of him because he is eating too healthy. Food shouldn't be an opportunity to alienate people. But then again, adults at my own office have been known to make a little fun of me because of my choice of grub. I see him trying to sort out all this information to find out where he belongs and where he wants to belong. As much as I want to intervene, the decision is his to make.

As I mentioned, Thing 2 did not eat his first day of school, except for some pear I had sent with him. The second day he did better. I imagine it will get slightly better each day. Until then I am going to make him breakfast in the morning before we leave. I can fry up some green eggs, soaked pancakes or a bowl of oatmeal. Anything to get some good nutrition into him before he goes to daycare and refuses to eat. Then he will get dinner in the evening. Anything in-between 7am and 6pm is gravy.

The transition has been tough. My flow has been completely turned upside down. But each day I am learning more tricks, and in another month I am sure I will have established a routine. Stay tuned for some tips about how to get out the door on time with everybody packed with food they like!

What tips and tricks do you have for packing lunches?

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays and Fight Back Fridays

It's On: This Is Survival of the Fittest

When I was in the seventh grade, my social studies teacher Mr Shipman taught us that there were 5 billion people aproximately living on earth. Mr. Shipman himself is, for some reason in my brain, integral in my memory of the earth's population. I heard that figure several more times throughout high school but by my college years the news reports were all reporting that earth human population had topped 6 billion. And today we are fast approaching 7 billion.

Writers love to write about 'sustainability', 'doing more with less' and 'supporting growing populations' but what they aren't saying in so many words is: 'Good God, soon there aren't going to be enough resources (read food and water) for all the people on earth!!' Perhaps it wouldn't be wise for them to foster fear among a large section of the population. We can't possibly know how critical our food and water and natural resource situation will get in the next 20 years as a result of population expansion. I believe that if we needed to adapt to shortages of certain items, most people could (provided that the shortages don't encompass. EVERYTHING). Life has continued to find a way to adapt and survive for millenia. I actually have full faith that when oil runs out or becomes endangered enough to become prohibitively expensive that electric car technology will suddenly be pulled out of the dusty back drawer and someone will make ka-gillions!! But until we are forced to wean off gas, we probably won't. $4 a gallon hurts, but it isn't currently making MOST people rethink driving or their job or their living situation, certain subsets of the population excluded.

Food is different though, while some countries have always dealt with simply having enough food for their expanding populations, the US struggles with having TOO MUCH food. You'd think this was a GOOD problem to have. The US currently produces, on a yearly average, about 3900 calories of food for each person in the country per day. The USDA recommends that the average adult consume about 2000 calories per day. Much of the uneaten food is exported and some is wasted, like unsold grocery store food, spoiled foods and restaurant leftovers. But when the extra calories are owned by major corporations they have historically found ways to sell them off and convince you to consume them. From the same source as before, it is estimated that Americans consumed about 2700 caloires per person per day in 2007 for example. That is 28% higher than 1970. And we weigh on average about 30% more too. This tells me that when there is a surplus of food, humans typically rise to the challenge and eat the surplus, even if we don't biologically need it. This also tells me that MARKETING WORKS. Most of the country has succumbed to the message to eat more all while believing that they are impervious to most marketing schemes.

Obesity has created a whole mess of conversation in our nation. We talk incessantly about changing laws and fining fast food restaurants for fraud and public endangerment. We argue about soda taxes and the rights of the overweight. We argue over the Farm Bill knowing that SOMONE will get hurt be it the farmers or public at large. Bloggers like me take to the internet to desperately hope to change our food culture and our children before we all fall victim. But when do we step back from the din of disagreement and say 'I am going to eat right because I HAVE to, not because it is easy.' Some of us have already begun to do so.

Call me a pessimist but I don't think things are going to change fast enough for my generation and possibly my kid's generation. Being so pessimistic doesn't make me write less or feel that what I talk about is futile. We are slowly changing our food culture. But in the mean time I openly admit that I am throwing down the gauntlet. Our obesity crisis is a classic case of survival of the fittest.

If I had a nickel for every person I had met who didn't care about the food that they eat, I would be a rich woman. I have had people tease me and say I was making too much out of our exposure to pesticide residues and chemical food additives. Or, "I have been eating that for YEARS and I am not sick!" Or my favorite "But the chemicals taste so good!"

Well, this pessimist is doing what it takes to feed my kids right, regardless of what anyone else says. I am currently teaching my kids that uber processed sugars, GMOs, chemical additives and the whole host of non-foods that we currently eat as a nation are WRONG! I am not tip toeing around the average child nutritionist's fear of labeling some foods good or bad. I am simply teaching my kids that certain things are food and certain things are not. And in the end, this will make my family stronger and more fit to carry on the gene pool for our species. Call me competetive, but this is survival of the fittest.

We are facing over population. And the biological history book doesn't tell a great story for those species who become out of balance in the world. The earth always wins. Call me controversial. Call me a nut case. Call me drunk with my own opinion. But future fortune will favor those who are strong and healthy. And who knows what lays around the corner? So until then we will continue to eat real food and support local sustainable food systems. We will continue to look for ways to garden and make our own food. And we will continue to encourage people to join the real food movement because we need more like minded people. And it would be unfair to keep our real food secret to ourselves! But what do I say to the detractors? I say 'Bah, you can have your vegetable oil and your Cheetos and your factory farmed beef chunks!' And the next time someone teases me about what I eat or tells me that I am a nut job for believing that the Standard American Diet is such a problem, well, I might just keep my mouth shut. I am a formidable foe after all.

Tomorrow is my Blogger-versary!!

It fills me with much pride to say that Wednesday is my blogger-versary!! That is right. I have been clacking away at the computer for almost a year now. And since the whole point of this blog was to get off processed foods in a year, let’s ask the most important question of them all, are we off of processed foods?

The answer is yes, and no.

What a cop out, huh?

Let me try to explain. First I will give you a small recap. At this time last year I was a passionate CSA member whose heart thumped loudly when I came too close to a carrot. But behind my veggie fervor, many of our calories came from frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, potato chips, paninis, crackers and cookies, packaged cereals, ice cream….well you get the idea. For as much devotion to vegetables as I spouted, I fell into every food trap there was. I wasn’t paying attention to what I was eating and I was buying separate food for the kids thinking that was all they would eat, I didn’t want to deprive them…insert your best excuse here.

My desire to eliminate processed foods came from the rationale that if I made it myself, that I would make food 10 times more healthy and of better quality than the ‘chefs’ in the food industry were doing for me. Plus I could see to it that no icky chemical preservatives, dyes or other non-food ingredients were allowed to come to the party. Through cooking at home I could better nourish myself and my family. My mission was both nutritional and emotional. I was looking not only for a few good recipes, but really how do I regain control of my kitchen from the money-grabbing executives who had convinced me to fill my shelves with overly pasteurized sugar laden adulterated food!

I made a To-Do list of everything in the house that I wanted to examine. I said I would eliminate foods altogether, or attempt to regularly make them myself in my own kitchen or…learn to make peace with them as is. The worst offenders in the kitchen, the ones that had to be completely eliminated: American cheese, Nutella and ice cream, fishy crackers. These are not simple foods to make. They are complicated and require a lot of work to make them. And they contain a lot of yucky ingredients. Out they went. Though I have found a local ice cream that we like, but with it being so high in sugar, it only makes an appearance every 3-4 months instead of every week like the good ole’ days.

Next was another small group: hot dogs and crackers. Both these items I had originally thought I would just eliminate. But I have since found an excellent grass fed hot dog from Hawthorne Valley Farm, whom I have blogged about before. I have started buying them. But instead of having them twice a week, we have them once every other week or so. I feel good about these hot dogs and the people I am buying them from. Same goes with crackers. I didn’t buy crackers for months until I found Ak-Mak crackers. They taste good, they are organic and they are completely whole wheat. So, they are back in the game.

And then there is pasta. I have made pasta several times. It is easy. Well…relatively. I have the best of intentions but I don’t always get to it. I like my homemade version because it is far higher in protein than store bought. But I do keep a box of store bought around for those nights when my train runs late. Sometimes the best laid plans fail and you have to cook a 5 minute dinner.

There is one item that has stuck around in spite of itself, pretzels. The pretzels I buy are the Utz Organic variety. I believe they are 50% whole wheat and 50% regular white flour (oh for shame). But the kids really love them. And I buy one bag a month. I have no intention of making homemade pretzels (yet). And I am happy with them. I can put it into perspective. I am not trying to win any awards in food perfection, so the pretzels stay. We do not eat enough of them for me to consider them a problem food.

However when I wrote that post I never imagined all the things in my cabinet that were highly processed and potentially problematic that I ended up adding to that list: conventional mayonnaise, soybean and other vegetable oils, bouillon. This year has been about discovery for me. And finding alternatives to some of these foods, especially making my own broths at home, has been a deeply enriching experience.

The Full Story of My Vinigarette

When I was in high school, I thought salad dressing had to come from a bottle. I whole heartedly believed that aside from oil and vinegar (which seemed relatively easy to comprehend), a major company and an industrial kitchen were necessary for making salad dressing. Not that I knew what an industrial kitchen was… When I had my first job at a bakery with a full service kitchen I finally learned that vinaigrette was a humble mixture of vinegar, mustard and oil with maybe a couple of other flavorings, garlic, herbs, mayo if you are so inclined. That was an important moment for me. It was humble salad dressing that made me realize that everything (or nearly everything) that one could buy in the grocery store could be made at home. But when one doesn’t know HOW to make salad dressing, even something as EASY as salad dressing is just a big mystery. Like it has a big wall up blocking its history.

I was thinking about how easy this recipe looks from the outside. It seems so easy, but yet when you think about it, it is quite complex. I recently made a salad dressing from lemon juice, my preserved lemons, some garlic, my homemade mustard and olive oil. Just a few ingredients, but where everything came from is amazing to consider.

The preserved lemons I made myself. I know that weeks went into their preparation. The organic lemons came from California. The whey used to preserve them was strained from yogurt that came from Hawthorne Valley Farm in Columbia County, NY. The salt that aided in their preservation came from France according to the package of Baleine. The Cinnamon? That’s anyone’s guess. The preserved lemons sat on my counter for 10 days until being transferred to my fridge to sit for a month before I used them in this dressing.

The lemon juice is from my new favorite organic company Lakewood Juices. I have reached out to their Miami, FL based company but have not heard back from them in regards to where their fruit is grown. I assume Florida, but maybe it isn’t good to assume.

The mustard too seems like such a simple ingredient. But it requires painstaking work to get it to a useable condition. Mustard seeds are harvested and ground into a powder, packaged and sent to my beloved Fairway. I asked them where the seeds come from but haven’t heard back… I bought the seeds ground and mixed them with whole brown mustard seeds, steam distilled water (that came from Pawco Mt Pocono, PA), garlic from California, the same salt from France and more whey that came from that same batch of yogurt from Hawthorne Valley as the lemons. After fermenting and before I stored in the fridge I put in a little French White Wine for flavor (And don’t forget the wine was made up of grape juice and most likely SOMETHING else, but for the sake of this exercise I am counting wine as one ingredient).

The Olive Oil is labeled as being from Puglia in Italy. But that wasn’t good enough for me, so I reached out to Fairway markets for more information. Sadly, they have not written me back.

I also purchased the garlic from Fairway. I am assuming it is from California, but I am not sure. But in the case of garlic, I do know that most domestic garlic is from good ole CA. I added to the dressing a little more of the French sea salt and pepper of unknown origin. So that makes, including all the separate ingredients, and not counting any ingredient more than once (like the salt that was used in the mustard, preserved lemons and the final product) I count twelve ingredients altogether in this seemingly simple dressing recipe. And of the twelve ingredients, five are domestic: one is local to me (the whey); the lemons and garlic came from California, the lemon juice from Florida and the distilled water for the mustard from Pennsylvania. Three are definitely international: the salt and the white wine in the mustard are from France, the olive oil is from the south of Italy. And four are of unknown origin: the ground yellow mustard, the brown whole mustard seeds, the black pepper and the cinnamon sticks, though likely they are international too.

I am not bragging (really I am not) but I am trying to do most of the prep myself in my ingredients. There is something to be learned from preparing items from super scratch. I have knowledge of what went into my mustard and how it was made, which to me makes any recipe I use it in (or sandwich I use it on) appear more complex. If I had the opaque veil of “store bought” hanging over my mustard, I think I might think of it as one ingredient, rather than six separate ones. Maybe that is our biggest problem in motivating people to think about their food choices. To most people, mustard is mustard, one simple ingredient. Except that unequivocally, mustard is not mustard. Neither is it simple nor one ingredient. But the acknowledgement of complexity often comes from perspective. And when people envision ‘mustard’ as being only one ingredient they don’t read labels or ask questions. That is why I highly recommend making foods from super scratch. Know your farmers, make jokes with them at the markets, call them by their first names. Reach out to your supermarkets, tell them what you want as a consumer, ask them questions about a particular item, be an active shopper.

I am not opposed to non-local food. Things like pepper and spices have long since traveled great distances to get to the plates on which they were consumed. If the bulk of one’s calories are coming from local sources, like your meat, milk, cheeses, and most of your grains and veggies are local, I say don’t sweat some exotic grains like quinoa, or even some fruits and veggies from California. This is a modern world we live in. But knowing where the bulk of your calories come from, well, that I think is priceless. And always always remember, nothing is as simple as it seems.

Every one of these twelve ingredients started out as something in a field somewhere. The mustard grew on a mustard plant; the garlic grew underground, the lemons on a tree. They all took in nutrients from the soil, were rained upon and saw sunlight. They all grew at an actual address. Some person in the world(with a name and a story) harvested it, washed it, packaged it in a crate, shipped it, tied it with twine or bagged it or bottled it and put a label on it to sell. So when I see my salad dressing, I can’t exactly congratulate myself on how easy it was. So many items came from so far away in so many different ways to end up on my plate today.

Yet the moral of the story is that I am able to tell the real story of my vinaigrette at all. Had I picked up a bottle of Wishbone Zesty Italian for example (an old pre-blog favorite), I would surrender my knowledge at the register. Besides my objections to the actual ingredients, it would be impossible for me to find out where the soybeans were grown and how they were processed into soybean oil. It would be hard to know what kind of vinegar they had used. Hell, it’s be hard to even know what are all those red bits floating around in the dressing and can I assume that they are adding flavor, or it is the added ‘natural flavors’ and what factory production line did they come down?? No, the customer service department at that conglomerate food company won’t be able to tell you. They would rather lose your business than tell you the origin of the food you are eating, if they even could.

So again, I urge you, be a skeptic. Ask questions. Eat local. Make friends. Food is love and food is life.

This post is part of Real Food Whole Health's Fresh Bites Fridays and Food Renegade's Fight Back Fridays

Are There Things I Just Shouldn't Eat? Take 2

Yesterday I discussed my food priorities. Today I discuss what I am going to do with stuff that doesn't fall on the list.In food, with my rules, there is 'white food', 'gray food' and 'black food'.

White food is easy-it is pure, local, organic and healthful. Done. Some of my food falls into this category.

Most of what I eat falls into the 'gray' category. But even there, some foods are more 'off white' while some are 'charcoal grey'. In the 'off white' category I would say that it is pure (read whole or minimally processed), local and healthful but not 100% organic. Or maybe it is pure, healthful and organic, but it comes from the West Coast. You see what I mean? I still feel great about food that meets three of the 4 rules.

'Charcoal gray' food is a food that meets maybe only one or two of the 4 rules. Maybe it is locally made cherry pie, local but conventional and not really healthful and maybe it even has white flour (!!!!!), more on that later. I try to limit these. A splurge to keep up the spirits is fine, but more than once or twice a month and it's a habit, not a splurge.

There are a couple of foods that have been like question marks, falling smack dab in the middle. They are white flour (I am not talking about enriched flour here, that's a whole different ballgame), refined sugar and juice. These things are technically processed foods. I consider any food that has been taken out of it's original whole food context to be processed. But these foods are pretty straightforward with one or two steps of processing. Adding synthetic vitamins, preservatives or non food chemicals is not what I am talking about. In their most basic state white flour, sugar and juice are not evil franken foods. But they don't offer a lot in the way of nutrition. So I am limiting those. But for the sake of saying 'what gets eliminated', I am trying to focus more on items that are more industrial in nature. I am not going to eliminate white flour, sugar and juice for the sake of this blog, but I will limit them for the sake of my family's health. (Especially refined sugar which is not good at all, I like to replace it where I can with natural sugars, but it is everywhere and I would like to enjoy my life, so I will not sweat a little sugar)

And then there is 'black' food. Food that meets none of the rules is automatically off the list. First off, if it meets none of the rules, then it must break the first rule that food be food! And the whole point of this blog is non-processed foods. So even though I never eat them, I will now officially commit to ditching Coke, Diet Coke, other sodas, Cheese puffs and other snack foods that include charming ingredients like powdered cheese, American cheese, traditional hot dogs, chemical additives like MSG and Splenda, high-fructose corn syrup, conventional frozen processed french fries, conventional tater tots (my first true love), chicken nuggets, power bars and protein powders, margarine and shortening.. And there have got to be others. Tell me what I missed! What else is a 'black' food to you?

Our diets are varied. And truth be told, while I am a card carrying Michael Pollan soldier, I am equally as much a soldier in James Beard's war against boring fare. The kitchen needs passion and color and excitement and fat. At least 4 people emailed me off the blog about my posting about salmon covered in cream last week. Now you know why I don't blog about my baby spinach salads, just about the raspberry dressing. Food is and should be sensory. I don't just want to reduce food to it's nutritional nuts and bolts. I don't want to eat something that is high in omega-3's because it is the right thing to do, I want to eat it because it is delicious and makes me happy! I also want my blog and my recipe's to feel accessible to other people, like encouragement to do the healthy right thing! I really want to eat healthy, delicious food. And I do believe that it can be both.

Defining the rules this week has helped me to plan out the 'second trimester' of my non-processed foods project. In order to challenge myself down the road I have got to be specific about my short term goals. I place a heavy importance on homemade items, but I know not everything can be made from scratch. Or maybe I just haven't figured out how just yet-wink, wink.

It's Made Out of Food, But Is It Really Food?

On a recent quiet Wednesday morning. Some co-workers and I nibbled on some organic cheese flavored corn/ rice puffs as we discussed that we shouldn't be hungry for lunch at 11:15am. I shoveled my fair share of the puffs into my mouth with cheese dust covered fingers and sighed. 'It's too bad this isn't real food.' I quipped.

My colleagues were quick to correct me. 'These are organic, and look, there's no weird ingredients listed on the back!' I turned over the package to see what was listed.

They were right. No mono- or tetra- anything. No TBHQ or other acronyms. The ingredients listed among others, potato flour, rice flour, cheddar cheese powder, probably a whey of some kind given the presence of dairy, canola oil, and probably natural flavorings, but maybe not I can't remember. After reading the ingredients I didn't have a snappy comeback. I never have the snappy comeback, they always come to me when I am, say, typing blog entries on the train.
This packaged dusty cheesy invention was absolutely made from food. There were no smoke and mirrors. Still I stubbornly fought that this was not food. My colleagues went back to their desks.

The bag contained 4 servings of puffs each containing 130 calories, 5 grams of fat and no fiber. Those of you who have ever been a part of the heavily copyrighted diet I have mentioned before will quickly pull out your slide rules and notice, the bag contains 12 food units. When I have a big lunch of a sandwich, chips and a side salad, it usually adds up to 10-12 food units. It is a tremendous amount of food! I usually don't want to eat for a long while after a 12 food unit meal. So if that is the case, how could I easily put away that entire bag of puffs between meals and still belly up to the table the next time the dinner bell rang?

My poor cube mate is a gracious woman who handles all of my passionate monologues with grace. She never interrupts, and always smiles when I am done. She was the only one left in our cube to listen when the it finally came to me.

Yes, the puffs are made from food, but they are not food. Why not? It's because all these food based ingredients have been taken out of their original food context. When you eat a baked potato, you get the carbs yes, but you also get the fiber and vitamins of the potato. And if you eat the skin like I do (love it) you get lots more nutrition. The potato's carbs will raise your blood sugar levels, but the fiber makes it harder to digest, so your body has to work harder and longer to get those carbs. You don't feel the raise in your blood sugar because the carbohydrates are absorbed gradually and the effects are spread out over time. But when you take a potato and make potato flour or potato starch, you remove the fiber and some (or all-i am not a nutritionist, so I am not certain) of the vitamins and minerals. These puffs are nothing more than reconstituted flours covered in cheese powders. All that flour is easily and quickly absorbed by the body, your blood sugar spikes because it is processed all at once and then you crash when it is all done, leaving you hungry again. Part of why you can eat so many of them is because in the processing they remove all the food parts that help you feel full and help your body signal you to stop eating. This is not just the case with potato flour, white bread flour is no better. There is some bit of magic in that wheat germ. That magic keeps us full. Have you ever tried to eat 4 baked potatoes? That's tough, you'd be stuffed. But that is also 12 food units.

There will never be a cheese puff that is a whole food. And 'whole food' does not just refer to a pricey grocery store chain. It is a term that means a food that is left as it was given to us by God. Not deconstructed by us only to be put back together again. I want to scream this from the top of the George Washington Bridge: EAT FOOD! Make your kids eat food! Real food! Not just stuff that's made from food. You deserve better, your kids deserve better!!

Forward this post to people if you like it! Please! Share this with your friends on Facebook if you agree. We need to stop kidding ourselves about what we are eating. At the same time we need to be realistic and kind to ourselves. We live in the modern world, no one is going to live a completely cheese puff free existence. I ate them myself the other day and I will again, I have no doubt. But if you are mostly eating whole foods, whole grains, veggies, fruits, meats, yogurts, nuts, etc you will be well on your way to health and well being. This post represents the heart of why I have taken on this project. I have passion about my family's health and well being. And our food.