We are evolving to eating naturally and greener

Evolving to eating naturally and greener

Feeding our family is a daunting task with all the conflicting information out there. Constant studies that say eating one thing today and the exact opposite thing tomorrow is for the best. The marketing trap tells you to eat naturally and greener to improve our overall health.

At the end of the day how do you determine what is real and what is a gimmick, how do you trust a product or food item to be the right choice?

This has been discussed with many people recently, we’ve found that everyone feels as confused as we do. We are living in a green world, the green in this picture is money, products are marketed and designed to make green, not to be green and/or healthy.

It has taken a lot of time for our family to evolve to our current eating trend, now we find that we are doing something that appeals to us and feel comfortable with.

Like everyone else we need to make food choices based on our family’s likes and dislikes, trying to set a good example along the way.

We do not skimp on our food items; we feel that our food quality is a very important factor in our day-to-day life.

• We’ve learned to not shop in the center aisles of the store and stick to the perimeter. The middle aisles contain all the foods that have the natural goodness chemically removed, which is then replaced with chemical enhancements to make it “new and improved” for you. Outer aisles contain more refrigerated whole foods, goods that need to be peeled, chopped or sliced; these foods are in their original form, or at least close to it.
• Lately we shop at the whole food markets to gather local grown produce. This is a win/win as we can keep our local farmer going. Aged vegetables, its age from harvest date, the lower its vitamin and mineral content; Buying local has an added plus as it reduces the carbon footprint. If you really want to find a connection to your food source go to your local farmers market and talk with the vendors.

Support Local: purchase locally grown produce from local farmers that use earth friendly farming practices. Click To Tweet

Why does all this matter?  Why waste money buying a food item that is void of its original nutrients.

It baffles me to hear someone say that they bought their fruit or veggies on the discount table: You might be saving a buck or two but you are only getting the shell of what was once a great thing.

• Store bought vegetable tend to be harvested before the plant fully ripens, this doesn’t allow the development of all the vitamins and mineral that they should have. As these fruits and vegetables travel across the country, they are exposed to heat and light which further degrades the nutritional value, produce loses the delicate vitamins like C and B vitamin called thiamine.  If you can’t buy local, the second best choice is frozen product as much of the nutrient is locked in during the freeze cycle as it is processed soon after it is harvested.

Our beef comes from a farmer friend that field raises his animals, why field raised?

• Field raised animals that eat a wide variety of grasses while slowly walking across the pasture. These animals have more nutrients and less stress hormones in their systems. Commercially raised beef and pork are fed grains from genetically modified sources; these grains aren’t part of their normal diet and not digested properly. Commercially raised animals are also warehoused in stock yards and have no room to move around as they naturally would. Because they wallow in a mire of feces and urine, they need antibiotics to keep them healthy enough to bring to market. All of this creates a very unhappy animal when sent to slaughter, the meats will have antibiotics plus all the stress hormones left in it for your consumption.

These are just a few of the things we are doing with our nutrition now, aging has giving us a bit more insight and made us more aware of the processes our nation’s food source goes through before reaching the table. Of course eating in this fashion is a bit more costly but over the course of a lifetime the investment in our health makes it worth the cost as illness is very expensive and debilitating.

What changes have you or your family made recently to improve the quality of the foods consumed?

If you only change one thing this week to make a positive change, what would it be?