What! No Processed Food Either? – Juggling Real Food and Real Life

My family’s Real Food journey continues with some tough changes.  The kids were starting to notice that we weren’t still going to fast food establishments and that Mom was cooking all the time.  It wasn’t that they didn’t like my cooking……..it was more about missing the clown and the king.  Those darn toys had a hold on them that was going to be tough to shake.  I presented them with additional information about how horrible the fast food was for them and offered to make their favorites at home with Real Food.  Hamburgers are Real Food if you make them yourself and you know what is in them.  I can make baked chicken nuggets from scratch.  I researched and found additional smoothie recipes so they could still have their frozen treats.  They calmed down for a little while.

 

 

The next hurdle turned out to be tougher than overcoming the fast food way of eating that we had grown used to.  The next hurdle was giving up processed food.  To most of us, including my kids, processed food is just food.  There couldn’t be anything harmful about food you buy at a grocery store, right?  This is America and there are rules against harmful things in our food, right?  My Summer research was hugely eye-opening.  Once again, the guilt set in.  How could I not have known about some of these ingredients?  Why did I purchase foods just because I had a coupon?  Why did I only worry about calories?
Some of the things that I found out turned my stomach more than watching that TV show where they ate all of those disgusting bugs.  I watched YouTube videos where Michael Pollan who wrote “In Defense of Food“ discusses that the entire grocery store is an illusion meant to fool us.  There are pictures of beautiful grass filled farms with adorable red barns and we think this is where our food comes from.  A good bulk of our food actually comes from science and isn’t related to the farm at all.

My first step to gain acceptance of our new no processed food way of eating was to teach the kids to read labels at the same time that I was learning to do the same thing.  I knew this would mean that I would have to take longer at the grocery store and I really didn’t have time for that.  Still……….my kids were worth it, right?  Fruits and vegetables are the easiest and didn’t require label reading so I began to buy lots of those.  I started preparing simple meals, while I read new labels each time I shopped.  The kids started asking me, “Is this healthy?” as we walked through the store.  They may not like it, but they were starting to understand what we were doing.

OK………..so if you have been following this blog, you know that I never claimed that we were eating healthy from the start.  However, there were times where I tried to do a little better than other times or so I thought…………Here are a couple of labels.  Popcorn and nuts snack………really what could be wrong with that?

Maltodextrin is an oligosaccharide that is used as a food additive. It is produced from starch by partial hydrolysis and is usually found as a white hygroscopic spraydried powder.[1] Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose, and might be either moderately sweet or almost flavorless. It is commonly used for the production of sodas and candy. It can also be found as an ingredient in a variety of other processed foods.

Primarily used in sodas and candy?  How healthy can that be?  I also see more sugar on the list.  Again with the sugar.  Our taste buds are so out of whack these days.  Many of us find we need more and more sugar and more and more salt to feel satisfied.  That is how the food industry wants us to feel, so we keep coming back for more.

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