Principles of Healthy Diets.
This is really fascinating stuff. I’ve been thinking more and more lately about my diet (and Trevor’s and Sadie’s), and while I think we are generally doing really well, I think there’s still room for improvement. I’ve become increasingly bothered by my cravings for sugary foods (I’m not even sure if “cravings” is a strong enough word), and I wonder if some of it might have to do with my overall nutrition. Another thing that has recently occurred to me is that, while I felt like I fed myself decently during my pregnancy with Sadie, I’d like to be in an even better place nutritionally whenever I become pregnant again.
So, I think I’m going to make this a challenge for myself. As the primary meal-preparer in the house, this will obviously affect our entire family. Maybe I’ll tackle one of the guidelines a week (of those we don’t already follow). I think the biggest challenges will be that I really do rely on the online meal planner I use (though I think the recipes are mostly adaptable to this kind of eating, I may just have to get creative), this will likely cost more money than we’re already spending on groceries, and I know I’ll have to cut out a lot of the “convenience” snacks we’ve been using for Sadie (while the graham cracker sticks and bunny crackers are natural/organic/etc., they’re still way processed and contain white flour and sugar) and replace them with snacks I’ll have to make myself.
I’m a Monday-starter for projects, so I think I’ll get going next week. The first guideline (“Eat whole, unprocessed foods.” ) is a bit too general. So I’ll start with number two, “Eat beef, lamb, game, organ meats, poultry and eggs from pasture-fed animals.” Obviously we eat the eggs our chickens lay, so that’s a gimme. But we don’t eat game pasture-fed meat every week. In fact, sometimes we’ll go quite a while without cooking meat at all. But we might eat meat while dining out–and we can pretty much guarantee that’s not healthy meat.
So the change for week #1 is to prepare and eat our chickens’ eggs at least three times a week (we go in and out of this pattern anyway), to prepare and eat at least two meals with game or pasture-fed animal meats, to entirely quit eating meat from unknown sources (of course, I’m not going to MAKE Trevor do this one, but hopefully he’ll consider it), and to quit feeding Sadie the lunchmeat I’ve been feeding her (it is free of additives and preservatives, but it’s a far cry from what I should be feeding her).
Potential roadblocks for this first challenge–getting sick of eggs; the cost of adding pastured meats to our grocery list (this is usually more of a treat); the temptation provided by things like Purple Cow’s chicken salad sandwich or my Aunt Margie’s pot roast; my inability to prepare our dinner while caring for Sadie–I almost always have to fix her a quick dinner (mostly steamed veggies, cheese, fruit, etc.) and then do the more labor-intensive cooking after she’s asleep; and the common problem of not having any meat left over from our previous night’s meal to give to Sadie, which led me to the lunch meat in the first place.
Otherwise, this should be plenty of fun. We enjoy eating meat. We like good meat.
