Processed Food Free CLUB! part 1

heniko

Thanks for answering my question. I will look into buying the book as it is sparking my interest. I must admit I am bread and pasta addict - and I want to rid myself of this addiction or craving -- whatever you want to call it. Before starting my diet I was eating mostly carbs white and whole grains. But after starting my diet and focusing on eating more proteins I not only feel fuller, have craving less but my skin/hair is looking better. I have more energy and my mood is better too!

What would you advise for person a beginner to this type of eating ... how to start off? I don't think I could go it cold turkey since I fear I could get crazy and binge! Also I am married with 3 children ... wanting them to also eat healthy ... hoping like me ... slowly introduce this ... thanks alot!

fteale

Cheese and the very occasional (like once a week) piece of dark chocolate are the only processed foods I have too. I make pretty much everything myself (though I do occasionally buy quorn for the children).

ppassine1

I am not a doctor so I can only tell you what it says in the book. I too was a bread and pasta junkie. They say that the chemicals in those foods actually attach to the same receptors in your brain as heroine and other opiates. Crazy stuff! So it isa VERY hard addiction to kick! If you dont want to do cold turkey, try one meal a day like breakfast go completely grain/dairy free...eggs do not count as dairy so they are ok....even BACON!!! I LOVE BACON!!!! bacon is ok in moderation. Dietary fat actually helps you burn body fat! Crazy stuff but its true true true! I love talking about this stuff can you tell? Anyways, try one meal a day for a week...then two meals a day the next, then 3! I mean you can try to spread it over a month each meal but the sooner ya switch the sooner you feel better! I had a binge time when my ex left me, but thats all over now. I am 90% or better Paleo right now... The whole graini thing is kinda like this, the government controls the Food and Nutrition reccommendations pretty much....They also subsidize farmers.......see the connection yet? OMG you gota get the book! LOL Ive read it twice! GOOD LUCK GIRL!!!!! Tear it up

OOOOOOO and start lifting some weights...the zumba is good cardio but the real calorie burn comes from your muscles! I think like less than 10% of calories burned is from excercise. Muscle burns fat 24/7! You dont have to be all hulked out either....If you wana lose weight effectively you have to build muscle! GO LIFT SOME WEIGHTS GIRL!!!!! Ok Im done for now!

Paul

Thanks for answering my question. I will look into buying the book as it is sparking my interest. I must admit I am bread and pasta addict - and I want to rid myself of this addiction or craving -- whatever you want to call it. Before starting my diet I was eating mostly carbs white and whole grains. But after starting my diet and focusing on eating more proteins I not only feel fuller, have craving less but my skin/hair is looking better. I have more energy and my mood is better too!

What would you advise for person a beginner to this type of eating ... how to start off? I don't think I could go it cold turkey since I fear I could get crazy and binge! Also I am married with 3 children ... wanting them to also eat healthy ... hoping like me ... slowly introduce this ... thanks alot!

steph5565

I eat PFF, with the only exceptions being store-bought greek yogurt, condiments, and pasta (I would love to make myself but I work 60-80 hour weeks and just can't find the time). I make a concerted effort to buy local (easy in Washington), and I make my own chicken broth, etc to avoid all the nasty things they put in the processed junk.

I'm so glad I found this group! So often I read posts by individuals "eating healthy" and their recommendations are repulsive to me, they are basically just manufactured products that have been pumped with preservatives, removed of their nutrients, and sprinkled with vitamin mixtures in order to substantiate all of their health claims (the most basic of which is that it's even "food"). Laughing Cow is not cheese, deli meat is not healthy, and store-bought bread has an ingredient list 27 products long. I'm glad I've found a group of people who would also rather eat a Macbook than a Big Mac!

scarletleavy

Welcome scarlet! I cleaned & boiled soy beans this week(huge pain) and was wondering how to make tofu! I'll have to google the info, I'd love to know about it!

I was looking up smoothie recipes with tofu and found some basic instructions to make tofu. Here's the link: http://www.mydiversekitchen.com/2010/07/tropical-tofu-smoothie-with-some-home.html

I'm really excited to have homemade tempeh. I really love to eat it, but it's quite hard for me to get here. In order to get most of the foods I like to eat I have to go to at least 3 different supermarkets, including taking a train 35 minutes into the city to the Asian supermarket. I live outside of Munich, Germany, so quite literally in farm country. I know spring is coming, because every morning I wake up to the smell of fresh manure outside my window.

Robin1117

Thanks for answering my question. I will look into buying the book as it is sparking my interest. I must admit I am bread and pasta addict - and I want to rid myself of this addiction or craving -- whatever you want to call it. Before starting my diet I was eating mostly carbs white and whole grains. But after starting my diet and focusing on eating more proteins I not only feel fuller, have craving less but my skin/hair is looking better. I have more energy and my mood is better too!

What would you advise for person a beginner to this type of eating ... how to start off? I don't think I could go it cold turkey since I fear I could get crazy and binge! Also I am married with 3 children ... wanting them to also eat healthy ... hoping like me ... slowly introduce this ... thanks alot!

Hi!
I love breads but actually hadn't eaten bread or pasta much since the late 90s when there was all this talk about low-carb. I didn't go full-on crazy eating unhealthy, like Atkins, but I stopped eating rice, pasta, breads, etc as a daily part of the diet and it actually wasn't so bad. I tend to substitute baby spinach or other greens for pasta in a lot of dinners. And am not much of a sandwich person either so bread wasn't hard to kick (unless I was out of dinner and in front a a warm baguette) Funny since starting MFP, I have added them back in gradually because I realized in moderation, whole grains are good.

Anyway, to get started trying to eat healthier and less processed, I don't think it's realistic to make everything but I would use Michael Pollan's advice--when you have to purchase something, make sure it has few ingredients and all ones you can recognize. Actually, you might want to read his "Food Rules", it's a little book. Not rocket-science but a good little handbook on eating well and being a good food consumer. I try not to purchase anything I can make easily--for example, pancake mix or cake mix, why? All the ingredients are in the house already. Anything w/HFCS....don't buy it and purge the house of it. Frozen prepared foods--do not buy--pull out a cookbook or google a few recipes and learn to make something new. The amount of ingredients and sodium in these foods are outrageous. Try to buy local when you can--we do beef and lamb seasonally but are still looking for a good local source for chicken. I think taking it a few steps at a time is realistic and once you master a few things, you can go on to other ones. Some things you just may want to keep buying prepared--for example, convenience foods to grab and go, like crackers and granola bars. With kids, you kind of need a few of these around. I have learned to make some crackers, like lavash crackers and Parmesan crisps and they are awesome and I know I can do it, but honestly I'd rather spend my time elsewhere so I make sure to purchase healthy high quality ones with just a few all natural ingredients. But I make homemade bread and granola myself. I love local cheeses and greek yogurt--I think the cheesemakers and yogurt producers do a good job so I just continue to be a consumer of those products---I may consider learning how to make it in the future, probably not to replace, but just to learn and see if I can do it. . Anyway, just my 2 cents.....

great discussion! so glad to have this thread!

heniko

Thanks Paul very useful and practical info!
I have tried to do the low carb cold turkey but it was really impossible for me and I cracked after day or two LOL! But practical your advice to start one meal and day at time! Unfortunately had carbs for breakfast ... I had my egg whites scrambled with spinach and mushrooms for lunch. I had an internal conversation with myself LOL and chose not to have any bread ... felt fine without the bread ... so I will start by applying your advice thank you again ... and feel free to share as much as you want LOL! I am listening!

heniko

Great advice Robin ... since seeing Micheal Pollan on Oprah of all places, I bought on of his books ... learned alot, actually which sparked my interest in eating cleaner real unprocessed foods.

Me too! Loving this thread!

CherylYMerritt

Laughing Cow is not cheese, deli meat is not healthy, and store-bought bread has an ingredient list 27 products long. I'm glad I've found a group of people who would also rather eat a Macbook than a Big Mac!

Yes! I can't believe how many people recommend this stuff!
This is a great thread, thanks to all for info and the participation!

Dawntodusk

I think I am a candidate for this club. I buy some processed foods, like Greek yogurt, tomato paste, multi-grain locally made bread and the occasional pasta sauce (organic, locally made), corn tortillas (my husband is Mexican) but otherwise, I am processed free. I make everything else from scratch. We only buy organic, and we try to buy local. Our eggs come from a local farm, as does all the meat we buy (which isn't much). No HFCS. And no sugar either! My teenage daughter has a rougher time at it, so I buy her cereal and the occasional organic snack. We have NO JUNK FOOD at all and I am generally appalled at what I see most people eating and when I look into the shopping carts when I'm at the regular supermarket (which is not very often). No wonder we have health and obesity problems!

Dawntodusk

I eat PFF, with the only exceptions being store-bought greek yogurt, condiments, and pasta (I would love to make myself but I work 60-80 hour weeks and just can't find the time).

Spaghetti squash is an excellent pasta substitute - and very yummy. I prefer it now to any pasta.

Dawntodusk

Just curious what folks do for condiments? We don't buy ketchup or mustard. For salad dressing we use olive oil and balsamic vinegar. We hardly ever use mayo, but when we do I make it myself. No barbecue sauce or any other sauce for that matter. The exception is for home-made Chinese food we buy oyster sauce and hoisin sauce, and for Thai food we buy fish sauce. Oh, and we buy soy sauce. (I'm part Asian, so we do a lot of Asian cooking.) We make our own salsa (my Mexican husband taught me - yummy yum.)

CherylYMerritt

What a great idea!

Ideally I would love to be 95-100% processed food free, but living with people who are diametrically opposed can make that a little bit difficult. I don't know what percent I'm currently at, but I think it's pretty high. I feel really lucky to live in an area with great access to fresh, local and organic foods. I'm mostly a vegetarian, but when I do eat meat it's only from our local organic butcher who keeps all of his own animals. I don't drink cow's milk, but if I did it would come from the cows that live on the farm down the street.

I love to cook and am beginning to start baking. In the future I hope to make all of my own jams, peanut butters, almond milks, breads, etc. I'm really excited to start all of this. My boyfriend's mother makes her own tofu and tempeh and I can't wait to learn that from her.

Peanut butter is a cinch to make! lightly toast in the oven and puree in the food processor to your desired consistency! You'll never buy it again!

what kind of peanuts??? salted, unsalted, skins off? I love this idea, my husband loves his PB

heniko

I use tomato paste too store bought no salt added ... so I guess that's processed too LOL ... condiments I use locally made Dijon mustard. I make my own BBQ sauce, mayo (using milk) also Lebanese garlic aioli called Thoum. I use mostly flavoured oils and vinegars thou.

I bought bulk raw peanuts. Roast them in the oven. Once slightly brown and you smell them - they are done! Process in the robo until fine ... add TBS or so of oil then it should be PB! cheap natural and delish!

Robin1117

Good morning! Condiments...kind of tough. We do oil and balsamic for dressing, and if I'm feeling creative--maybe olive oil and lemon with some herbs. For BBQ sauce, I make my own with organic ketchup (because in organic there are only a few ingredients and all ones I'm ok with), honey, balsamic, espresso, garlic and soy sauce. It's super YUM. If interested I can post the recipe. But we don't have it too often--once a month or so? We don't use mayo too often and also use locally made mustards but have been tempted to make my own---it doesn't look too difficult.

Has anyone made their own mustard? Would love to hear how and recipes.

Dawntodusk--love the idea of spagetti squash as a pasta substitute!

About nut butters in general--I can't make any because I have a son w/a peanut allergy and we had to strip our house of all nuts. But, in my past of loving them I saved an article from Cooking Light from like 10 years ago and I can't believe I just found it online...I wonder if they printed it again??? Take a look, basically anything can be made a butter in just a few minutes......
http://www.cookinglight.com/food/recipe-finder/nut-butter-primer-00400000040041/

heniko

Friend of mine tried this recipe: http://simplegoodandtasty.com/2009/08/09/homemade-mustard-recipe

funnygirl0940

What a great idea!

Ideally I would love to be 95-100% processed food free, but living with people who are diametrically opposed can make that a little bit difficult. I don't know what percent I'm currently at, but I think it's pretty high. I feel really lucky to live in an area with great access to fresh, local and organic foods. I'm mostly a vegetarian, but when I do eat meat it's only from our local organic butcher who keeps all of his own animals. I don't drink cow's milk, but if I did it would come from the cows that live on the farm down the street.

I love to cook and am beginning to start baking. In the future I hope to make all of my own jams, peanut butters, almond milks, breads, etc. I'm really excited to start all of this. My boyfriend's mother makes her own tofu and tempeh and I can't wait to learn that from her.

Peanut butter is a cinch to make! lightly toast in the oven and puree in the food processor to your desired consistency! You'll never buy it again!

what kind of peanuts??? salted, unsalted, skins off? I love this idea, my husband loves his PB

unsalted, blanched peanuts

I still need to make a good batch of ketchup, bbq sauce & mustard. We just don't hardly ever use them so I keep putting it off. I have some ketchup & bbq sauce that i made from a raw food site...the ketchup tastes like cardboard and the bbq sauce would probably be fine but it called for liquid smoke, which I don't have and wondered how good it was for us? I've tasted homemade mustard so know that it can all be done.

I have a big question. Has anyone ever tried to get all their nutrition from food w/out supplements? That's my goal!

funnygirl0940

I think I am a candidate for this club. I buy some processed foods, like Greek yogurt, tomato paste, multi-grain locally made bread and the occasional pasta sauce (organic, locally made), corn tortillas (my husband is Mexican) but otherwise, I am processed free. I make everything else from scratch. We only buy organic, and we try to buy local. Our eggs come from a local farm, as does all the meat we buy (which isn't much). No HFCS. And no sugar either! My teenage daughter has a rougher time at it, so I buy her cereal and the occasional organic snack. We have NO JUNK FOOD at all and I am generally appalled at what I see most people eating and when I look into the shopping carts when I'm at the regular supermarket (which is not very often). No wonder we have health and obesity problems!

I live in Mexico and know all about the diet. There's a lot of obesity and diabetes here. Too many tortillas and fried foods in lard but that's the faster way of eating. There's plenty of dishes that can be made healthy. We eat Mediterranean so everyone that comes over gets something healthy, tasty and good for you! ;o) But that's only been in the past 2 years.

heniko

We don't supplements. try to get all our vits/min from REAL food! Nature designed food that way LOL so we get all we need! God didn't make pills, man did!

Funnygirl we eat Mediterranean too ... but then again we live in the Meditterranean it is one of the easiest yet healthiest ways to eat!

Robin1117

good morning. I don't do supplements at all either--do not believe in them. super-healthy so far...so hopefully it'll stay that way!

Just thought of funnygirl when I read this yesterday, and based on your discussion thought I'll post (link and text below) .....from the NY times dated today about how Mediterranean people are actually trying to eat like Westerners. Who would have thought????

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03YouRHere-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=what medetteranian diet&st=cse


Does the Mediterranean Diet Even Exist?

Every Saturday, a fleet of cars and trucks pulls into a windswept parking lot just off the Mediterranean. Under flapping white awnings, women slit open eggplants the size of a large man’s thumb and stuff them with a mix of chopped garlic, red peppers and walnuts. This is Souk el Tayeb, the farmers’ market that has helped make Beirut a hot destination for globe-trotting foodies. But if you want to see how the new generation of Lebanese really wants to eat, you have to go somewhere else. You have to go to Roadster Diner.

Roadster is a chain of 1950s-Americana restaurants. Its original motto, “There goes my heart,” evokes both Elvis and his artery-clogging diet. The Roadster in my Beirut neighborhood had a life-size statue of a grinning black man with huge white teeth singing into a microphone. Unlike the strenuously authentic Lebanese restaurants beloved by tourists and visiting food writers, Roadster’s nine retail franchises across Lebanon are always packed with locals.

In Europe and the United States, the so-called Mediterranean diet — rich in olive oil, whole grains, fish, fruits and vegetables and wine — is a multibillion-dollar global brand, encompassing everything from hummus to package trips to Italy, where “enogastronomic tourism” rakes in as much as five billion euros a year. Studies at Harvard and elsewhere correlate the Mediterranean diet with lower rates of heart disease, diabetes and depression. In America, health gurus like Mehmet Oz exhort followers to “eat like a Greek.” But according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Mediterranean people have some of the worst diets in Europe, and the Greeks are the fattest: about 75 percent of the Greek population is overweight. So if the Mediterranean diet is not what people in the Mediterranean eat, then what is it?

Before there was a Mediterranean diet, there was WWII and the food shortages that went along with it. When the fighting was over, Haqvin Mamrol, a researcher in Sweden, showed that mortality from coronary disease declined in Northern European countries during the war. This was, he believed, the result of wartime restrictions on milk, butter, eggs and meat. At about the same time, a Minnesota scientist named Ancel Keys, who had been studying the effects of starvation on a group of volunteer subjects, moved on to study the diets of Midwestern businessmen. He found that these well-fed Americans were more prone to heart disease than were men in war-deprived Northern Europe. Keys postulated that saturated fats led to high levels of cholesterol and from there to cardiovascular disease. To prove it, he initiated a long-term study in seven countries, including Italy and Greece. He concluded that we should cut down drastically on saturated fat and turn to vegetable oils instead. Keys and his wife wrote two best sellers that changed the way Americans ate.

The Mediterranean diet was always a composite. Spaniards love pork; Egyptians, as a rule, do not. In some regions, people made pesto with lard, not olive oil. “There is no such thing called the Mediterranean diet; there are Mediterranean diets,” says Rami Zurayk, an agriculture professor at the American University in Beirut. “They share some commonalities — there is a lot of fruits and vegetables, there is a lot of fresh produce in them, they are eaten in small dishes, there is less meat in them. These are common characteristics, but there are many different Mediterranean diets.”

The healthy versions of these diets do have one other thing in common: they are what the Italians called “cucina povera,” the “food of the poor.” In Ancel Keys’s day, Mediterraneans ate lentils instead of meat because they had no choice. “A lot of it is to do with poverty, not geography,” says Sami Zubaida, a leading scholar on food and culture.

Diet is mostly about desire. The diet that Keys and his colleagues invented bore little resemblance to what Mediterraneans actually wanted to eat. “I’m not sure whether the prestige of such a diet would be high enough for many of the people in the Mediterranean to follow it,” says Josef Schmidhuber, a senior economist at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. “Because they aspire to a Western diet, which they conflate with prestige and wealth.”

Last year, Unesco added the Mediterranean diet to its list of the world’s great intangible cultural treasures in need of safeguarding. Today, more than half the populations of Italy, Portugal and Spain are overweight. In Eastern Mediterranean countries like Lebanon, obesity is growing — especially among the young, an increasing number of whom are happy to trade their eggplants for French fries and milkshakes at Roadster.

Annia Ciezadlo is the author of Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 3, 2011, on page MM21 of the Sunday Magazine.

Dawntodusk

I am staying at the Drury Inn for one night and just went down for breakfast. There was not a single thing that I could eat. I've stayed at the Hampton Inn before, and at least I can get a hard-boiled egg, and cottage cheese, but not the case here. I asked the nice kitchen ladies if they had plain yogurt (instead of the sugary stuff they had out, but no). So what was on the buffet? Waffles (I don't even want to know what is in the mix), fake scrambled eggs. biscuits and gravy (God only know what was in that), bread that I'm sure had more HFCS than flour in it, sausage patties (scary), sugary cereals. They also had bananas and oranges, but I had brought my own fruit anyway. Finally, I spied a package of instant grits. Hurray! I ate two packs with a bit of half-n-half. Anyone else have any similar experiences?

funnygirl0940

We don't supplements. try to get all our vits/min from REAL food! Nature designed food that way LOL so we get all we need! God didn't make pills, man did!

Funnygirl we eat Mediterranean too ... but then again we live in the Meditterranean it is one of the easiest yet healthiest ways to eat!

Now that is too cool that you live there!! Which country? I live in Mexico Ditto that God made our food good!!!! That's what I think! Would love to know more about what you eat to stay balanced. I have struggled most to get the iron, potassium and calcium. I know sardines help with calcium, which you have access to herring! I've increased my spinach to 2 cups cooked(steamed) to help with my iron. Still lack enough potassium some days & don't want to eat fish every day. Also, keeping my calories low while trying to lose. AND I don't see how not to get too much of some vitamins like A or minerals like copper which have the same effect as too little. Would love to have suggestions.

funnygirl0940

I know Robin, I keep hearing this story over and over again as fast food chains have moved in. It's disgusting! Back to basics people! Faster isn't always better.

Dawn, I hear your pain!!!! That's awful! So sorry!

jojoworks

There really is no really natural bread. I suppose whole grain breads are better than white bread, but it still is basically empty carbs and compared to the calories it costs you it is not very nutritional... Grains are your enemy. The agricultural reveloution brought about the decline of health in the world. It sucks because I love bread and pasta, but there are facts out there to show they are very very bad guys. Some believe even carcinagenic. Who knows, people think im crazy anyways LOL WOOHOO!!! :-D

Paul

I disagree, you can get very wholesome whole grain bread or make your own. Not all grains are evil. I eat almost exclusively French Meadow Bakery 100% organic sour dough rye bread. Ingredients: Organic Rye Flour, Spring Water, Sourdough Culture (organic Rye Flour, Spring Water), Salt.

The trouble is most people don't read their labels, most breads are horrendously processed with a 5 inch list of ingredients. I've found the best for you breads in the grocery store are in the freezer section. You have to go looking for them.

good luck and happy eating
JoJo

Robin1117

one of my friends posted this on facebook and I thought this group would get a kick out of it.....not sure if it's all fact, but another reason why we are going in the right direction with trying to eat as few processed foods as possible.....



http://www.restlesschipotle.com/2011/04/all-the-stuff-you-dont-want-to-eat-but-you-do-anyway/

peachy1620

Thank you for all of the wonderful ideas and recipes! So happy to have found a group that eats what I consider to be natural and healthy, unlike most other posts I read on here. New to this site but please let me know if you have an "open log" and I can read what you eat. Thanks!