<p>I have been trying to cut highly processed food out of my family’s diet and wondered if others had tried the same thing. I’ve been cooking from scratch more and shopping at the farmer’s market for locally grown items. I don’t buy sodas, fruit snacks, cookies and most chips, and in general avoid any packaged item with high fructose corn syrup or lots of additives. I’m not forbidding these foods - if my kids choose to go to the store and spend their money on junk food, that’s up to them!</p>
<p>I’m hoping to improve my family’s health and developing a taste for simpler, more nutritious food. I just started this summer, so we’ll see how it goes!</p>
<p>Congrats to you for making this healthy change for you and your family! And, adopting an attitude of “if you don’t like it, go buy your own junk food” is probably a healthy, sane way to proceed.</p>
<p>I want to encourage you to embrace this step you are taking, don’t let others guilt you into “you SHOULD be doing this, what you are doing is not enough!” Everyone has to take change in their own timing, and I believe making smaller adjustments and learning new ways of cooking a little at a time can bring about happier, healthier families.</p>
<p>We had to make this change very suddenly when my son was sick and we discovered his allergy to corn. I don’t recommend that to anyone, it was a very frustrating adjustment for us.</p>
<p>Also, an attitude of 80/20 can be a good way to live. 80% of the time, we will make healthy choices, and 20% of the time (on vacation, as guests in other people’s homes, at a birthday party, etc.) we will eat what we are served without making a fuss. (Unless you do have an allergy, and then we just bring our own food.)</p>
<p>Good luck to you as you learn a new, healthier way to live.</p>
<p>Also, if you are finding it hard to maintain or see that your kids are still buying junk food, another options is to cut out processed foods, but in the rare occasions that you do have it, encourage healthier choices. For example, I don’t drink any Ckoe, Pepsi, etc. or pretty much ever eat anything with high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils. When I have cravings for soda, I just buy a simple soda that has only water and fruit juices (no artificial sweeteners or colors). Same goes for chips - simple ingredients like potatoes, salt, and pepper. There are lots of better processed foods in Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.</p>
<p>And yes, it’s much better to give them up altogether, but I believe it’s a step in the right direction to at least start eating better quality processed foods when you do eat them.</p>
<p>Jeannemar, Congratulations on doing the right thing processed food is like poison, it slowly kills you. so it is better to abandon processed food altogather, and you did exactly the right thing proud of you keep it up :)</p>
<p>One of my pet peeves is that my hospital cafeteria makes a big deal about “healthier” choices, yet the only kind of chips they carry are with “cheddar cheese”, “sour cream” etc. They do NOT carry plain potato chips, whose only ingredients are potatoes, salt, and veg oil. I don’t get it!</p>
<p>While I don’t completely avoid processed foods, I started to use far fewer a couple of years ago for health reasons related to sodium and sugar intake. I pick and choose carefully now. When I choose canned items such as tomatoes I choose the ones that are made without salt and sugar. We were never big on lots of processed foods, but I used some like jarred pasta sauce, canned beans or canned soups in the past. Over the last few years I’ve started cooking my own in a crock pot. I find it pretty easy to throw a bag of dry beans in the crock pot in the morning and let them cook through the day. I then package and freeze them in recipe size servings. Same thing with spaghetti sauce and soups. It’s also kind of nice having a meal in the freezer that I can pull out and know it’s pretty healthy.</p>
<p>I think the word ‘processed’ is a bit of a misnomer. The label is kind of inapplicable because technically you need to ‘process’ everything at some level to get it shipped to your grocery store and they all use pesticides. </p>
<p>Buying organic is largely a waste of money. The caloric and nutritional content is much more important. And calling processed food ‘poison’ is irrational and detracts from the discussion.</p>
<p>That said, I think there’s a lot to be gained from staying away from heavily preserved, fatty foods(most of the frozen food aisle) due to their caloric/nutritional value. The easiest way I’ve found to really positively affect my diet is the removal of a lot of the carbohydrates like whitebread and tortillas.</p>
<p>Good luck! It gets easier and easier. Using leftovers creatively helps helps quite a bit. I find I’m most likely to cave in to processed foods if I don’t have something on hand to cook. I highly recommend Tamara Adler’s “An Everlasting Meal” for inspiration.</p>
<p>Like what post #14, Rexximus says. Processing isn’t the issue, it is the type of food. Store bought hummus versus homemade meat… Don’t forget the fats (and the type of fat) as well as the simple carbohydrates when making choices.</p>
<p>As empty nesters we are using more convenience foods, although not likely the ones most think of. Canned beans (legumes) often make more sense than cooking dried ones for two- energy imprint of freezing leftovers, cooking time…</p>
<p>Frozen vegetable usually have more nutrients than fresh- no time from farm to store to your purchase to deteriorate. So many factors. A lot depends on where you start when you make changes.</p>
<p>My daughter shops at the farmers market every week ( she is going to miss it if she moves when she graduates- we have very good farmers markets here, but a different vibe in the city)
Shes been after me to watch Forks over Knives, but while I havent done that yet, as it seems a bit over the top, I skimmed the cookbook & it looked solid so I bought it.</p>
<p>I would disagree that buying organic doesnt matter, I have not been able to eat things like peaches, carrots or bananas for decades unless they are organic, because of chemical sensitivities. In our area, they are generally not anymore expensive than sprayed foods, but if you want to concentrate on avoiding the most toxic offenders- this is the list.
[Dirty</a> Dozen Foods with High Pesticide Residue - Best Organic Foods to Eat - The Daily Green](<a href=“New 2020 Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen Food Lists Released by EWG”>New 2020 Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen Food Lists Released by EWG)</p>
<p>your genetics are what matters, cooking from scratch and not eating french fries will have no impact. we all like to think we can control our destiny by doing the “right” thing.
other the natural disasters, acts of other humans and exposure to other things like contagious disease or radiation etc… your fate was sealed at conception. so relax a little on the food fears.</p>
<p>That’s not true. To be sure, genetics plays a role, but diet and fitness can be huge contributors to health. Specifically, diet plays a big role in insulin resistance, the common link in all off the metabolic syndrome problems (obesity, Type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and some cancers).</p>
processed food is like poison, it slowly kills you. so it is better to abandon processed food altogather, and you did exactly the right thing