stop eating processed food

I am trying to cook more from scratch and avoid processed foods. I find that my appetite is more satisfied with real food and with less of it. I do support farmer’s markets and try to freeze a lot of my purchases. What about eating out(which I am also trying to decrease); are there places that specialize in real foods?

and i have decided that its time for a change. until i am 20 years old i am going ot try my hardest to drop processed food from my diet. for breakfast – egg whites, hummus, and whole wheat organic bread is better than anything else. lunch – veggies and beans, dinner can be soup or something homemade…......
not sure, but i’m going to completely drop these from my diet:
-HFCS (sugar)
-all cereal
-sodas/sugar drinks
-white flour & fried food
-dried fruit (raisins/dates/prunes etc)

focus on
-beans (raw)
-veggies (raw)
-fruits (raw)

I feed terrible today. And it’s because I fell off the wagon and ate a lot of processed food over the last 2 weeks.

I’m going to do a fruit fast for the next 3 days.

1. Shop well. Make sure you buy fresh produce, poultry, fish, dairy, eggs, bread, pasta, rice, etc. at least two times a week. If you don’t have fresh food in the house, you’ll have to resort to fast processed stuff.

2. Cook. If you don’t know how, then learn. Processed food makes life very easy for those of us who can’t cook. Home-made food, however, is better and tastier. It also doesn’t take that much time to prepare as the processed food companies want us to believe. A good dinner from fresh, unprocessed ingredients can take anything between 10 minutes to 4 hours. It all depends on how complex you want it to be.

3. Learn to make staples at home. Jar your own pickles. Make a chocolate syrup(for pancakes, f’ex) from scratch. Bake bread. It’s easy, it’s fun, it’s fresh and tasty, and it’s free from all the nasty stuff that the food industry puts in our food.

stopping eating processed food is one of the best things I’ve ever done! I have a lot more energy and don’t go to food for emotional support very often anymore…and I haven’t gotten sick since I started doing this which has been about 4 months now!

For those of us in the process of giving up proccessed food. I’ve read (and enjoyed) them, so maybe you could too :)

1. Fast Food Nation – Eric Schlosser (the meat industry)

2. The Omnivore’s Dilamma – Michael Pollan (tracking down the corporate and industrial source of our food. More academic than “Fast Food Nation”, but very intersting and worth your time.)

This goal is proving more difficult than I had originally thought. So I gave up frozen fried chicken, mayo, industrial hummus and chocolate. Good for me, but today I noticed that the local bakeries add chemicals to my bread. Bread! Can’t I even buy simple bread anymore? Not that I can’t bake, but well, hmm, this is absolutely crazy. I expect to be able to buy at least the basic foods free of industrial garbage in them. Luckily the local dairies don’t use anything but salt to process their cheeses.

The only processed food that’s proving difficult to eliminate so far is the chocolate. I want to have some once a month only or less, and take it from there. We’ll see how I do next week.

Processed food constitutes about 10-40% of of my diet, depending on how one defines “processed food”. I eat lots of fruits and vegetables, bread, potatoes, rice, much dairy (some processed yogurts that have to go, but otherwise just milk and cheese), little eggs, very little fresh chicken, sometimes processed (fried) chicken breasts.

I usually don’t anything from a box. Eww. I either cook from absolutely scratch (basic, fresh, ingredients), or I make a sandwich with some cheese/eggs and vegetables. (The only exception being the damned processed chicken breasts).

Does chocolate count? I’m not sure I want to give up my occasional Lindt Pistachio treat (1-2 cubes a month).

Things I want to completely drop from my diet:
- non-fresh/processed spices
- Processed chicken breasts
- Sweetened yogurts
- Industrial hummus (learn to make hummus on my own?)
- Mayonaise

It’s not hard when you are REALLLY REALLY broke like we are. I realized that living a simple lifestyle is really the key to saving money, AND being healthy.
So it’s really the little things. We stick to eating good food that we love, and make it from scratch.
Like Rice & Beans, etc.
Pasta is always whole wheat. So is the bread. I make alot of our bread in the winter. Cakes are made from scratch. So is the pasta sauce.
Instead of wasting money on the instant, spend less making it from scratch, and you’ll see that you are being healthier, and saving money too!