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It seems that in my family, we make a lot of compromises in our quest for Real Food. Part of it is because of money, part is because of availability and part is because old habits die hard. We do have a few things that we try not to compromise on.
Salt- We use sea salt. We won’t go back to that little container with the umbrella on it. Sea salt does cost more but it is nutritionally superior and minimally processed. Regular salt is highly processed, stripped of naturally occurring sea minerals, drying agents are added to it to keep it from clumping, potassium iodide is added back in which makes it purple in color so to make it white (the way we think salt should be) it is bleached.
Fats- We no longer buy vegetable oils (why not buy vegetable oils?
Read here). We use olive oil, butter, coconut oil, palm oil, and animal fats that I save off of the tops of broths or from other cooking. We hope to add tallow and/or lard once we can find a source. In addition, we take
fermented cod liver oil/ butter oil.
Protein- Watching the movie Food, Inc (now available through Netflix for movie rental and instant play) is a huge eye opener on how commercially produced meats are processed. We want to contribute to that industry as little as possible. We are fortunate to have quite a bit of wild game (antelope, deer and elk) that my husband provided us or we were given by friends. We participate in a CSA for beef. We get 10 pounds a month and we make that last the entire month. We buy chickens from a friend and will soon be raising our own. Eggs come from our own five hens, from my chicken raising friend (when I see her) and we are just starting to get eggs from a local lady who raises chickens. Fish is challenging. Sometimes I can find wild salmon (without color added), or we’ll have shrimp or tuna steaks but the bulk of our fish is canned salmon and the occasional canned tuna or clams. We’ll be fishing again once the weather is better which will give us some beautiful trout and maybe walleye. If we could not afford our beef CSA we would buy and use grocery store beef, but we’d hold off as long as possible on grocery store chicken. The chicken part of Food, Inc was rather disturbing.
These three things are where we have been focusing. Other stuff is added in like soaking grains, buying organic whenever we can, thinking about GMO’s and BPA’s, and consuming probiotic items such as lacto-fermented fruits or veggies, yogurt, kefir, etc. Why are we focusing on these three things? One reason is when we first started getting serious about switching to Real Food I was having a hard time switching over to everything I thought we needed and it was making me a little nuts. I almost threw in the towel completely. Then I came across
this article by Food Renegade which helped me to put things in perspective. Improving our diet doesn’t have to be an all or nothing event.
Have you came up with items that you will not compromise on? What are those items and how did you decide to “Draw the Line” at those?
This post is a contribution to Fight Back Friday hosted each week by Food Renegade.
>Those are good ones. My no- compromise foods are also fats, meats, and processed garbage- like HFCS. I will soon be making the switch to raw milk. I've waited because of the cost and inconvenience, but the more I read, the more I realize this should be on my list of no-compromise foods also.
>the more "into" food, nutrition and cooking I become, the more things go on more wont compromise list! yikes, it does get expensive, bt my newest solution is to be very wary of buying anything in a box, i triple check ingredients, carb count ect. and really think about whether i need said item and whether it has real nutritional vale.
>Chanelle,
We really try to avoid HFCS too. But I couldn't put it on my list because on rare occasion I might enjoy a soda. oops.
We get 2 gallons of raw milk each week for drinking but still use whole store milk for other things, so I couldn't put that on my list either.
Emily,
I agree, boxes can be scary! We rarely buy boxes and if we do it is a splurge item (like the boxed cheesecake my husband requested for his birthday dinner last night) and the ingredients are sooo scary.
>I agree Food, Inc. was scary. It was preaching to the choir for us, but I was glad hubby watched it because he's read a lot fewer of these kinds of books than I have. It really makes me want to raise all our own food, but we don't have the space. I really hope we can get chickens this spring as planned.
We compromise a lot more lately, sadly. I will not eat food with HFCS. Sometimes I have bought that junk for my family (special occasions they like soda, although sometimes we buy sugar-sweetened soda like Virgil's root beer). We face some really tough budget decisions right now. We would really like to not buy any hormone beef, but sometimes we buy the cheap meat at the chain store. I wish I could buy all local grass-fed.
I don't use processed food (other than brown rice pasta) in meals. It's also hard to get your family on board for snacks.
>I love this post. We're moving on towards a more natural lifestyle – we JUST switched over to organic, pastured meats – we live in middle america so it's not too hard to find local. I still had them ship though!
Salt is a big one for me – I CAN'T eat regular salt – it's bitter and gross. Neither can I eat white sugar.
We eat more vegetables and some fruit or vegetable at every meal – that's not something I did before and found that it's the only way I get more vegetables.
Nice post
>Rebecca,
My husband has been wonderful about me wanting to change the way we were eating but I think that Food, Inc really made him aware of things. For weeks after "GMO" was his favorite phrase.
Captivatedlife,
Thanks! I have to plan our produce consumption and write it down or else I forget.