Ingredients

I have an obsession, it is a new one to add to my long list of previous obsessions...reading labels. I mean I have been reading labels for about a year now to check for food dye, but that really isn't that much fun. My new label reading addiction started after I read "In defense of food" by Micheal Pollan. Let me clarify, I am not that much into reading and have developed ADD as an adult, or maybe that is just my excuse for impatience, anyway I read the book, the parts that I wanted to know about. I didn't really care about any of it except the last 1/3 of the book. His mantra in the book is "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants". I wanted to know what he meant by those 7 words so that the part I read. I recommend you read it, or if you are like me with a short attention span and just want to get to the point, skip to the last 3rd of the book. There was a lot of good stuff in there. The part that has stuck with me talked about eating food, not processed "food like" substances. Makes sense, then he said "If it is something that you can't pronounce or your great grandma wouldn't recognize as food, chances are it isn't food. Revelation...I know I have a simple mind.

Off the grocery store I went and I picked up a tub of sour cream. Darigold, whom I have always thought of as a good brand, well respected had around 12 ingredients in their tub of sour cream. That really is par for the course with most sour creams and yogurts. However I kept reading tubs and came across Daisy sour cream, I feel like the angels sang when I read the label, don't laugh, ya know what it said? "Grade A Cultered Cream" WooHoo! Food I found food! Not that sour cream is all that healthy for you but come on if you are going to have it wouldn't you rather have cream than chemicals? It is now like an Easter egg hunt for me. Find things my family likes to eat, all with ingredients I can pronoun and find the one with the fewest ingredients. Yougurt is another one, Greek God yogurt with a little agave and cinnamon in it is to die for. No, I am not supposed to have dairy, it makes my sinuses swell but I tried it, I am in love, and I won't eat it often but man it is worth it!

I have slowly cut nasty chemicals out of my family's diet one by one. Sucralose is my #1 most hated artificial sweetener and come hell or high water it is not coming in my house. Drastic I know but for one its aftertaste is the most nasty flavor. As if that wasn't enough to stop me sucralose starts out as sugar and they process it so much and add chlorine to it. Many "health foods" have sucralose in it. Many weight loss supplements have it too. Matter of fact here is what one weight loss place says about sucralose..."Sucralose is a sweetener made from table sugar (sucrose) by chlorinating it in three positions on the molecule." They even said it, it is chlorinated sugar...no thanks.

I have also targeted high fructose corn syrup. Many things wrong with it too. The ratio of sucrose and fructose has been altered so it is much harder for our bodies to digest and process. Not to mention a random study was done of 20 high fructose corn syrup manufacturers and 9 out of the 20 came back with detectable amounts of mercury in them. I guess it happens during one of the three ways they use to make it "high" fructose corn syrup instead of regular corn syrup. Which of course is natural. This I am finding is MUCH harder to cut out of our diet. The one die hard bad habit in our family is cereal...and yes I love it so do my kids and my husband. I just told my kids tonight that whatever cereal we have that has it in it they better enjoy because they won't get it anymore. I will let them have it once in a while on special occasions but really it has no nutritional value. It should be used as a treat and not a meal. So slowly but surely we plug away at being a healthier house. And really it all boils down to eat food. So that is the effort I am making, would my great grandma know that this is food? If she would, chances are it probably is.

I have to admit that the last week and a half I have been eating horrible. Dairy and gluten which my body does NOT like, too much sugar and too big of portions and I feel horrible. Granted it all tasted really good, but I am tired, chubby and moody. It is easy to eat bad so the way I feel tonight encourages me to do better for my family and teach them how to eat right, now at a young age.