My eyes are opened. Where do I start?

[amandaleigh37]

We watched Food Inc. tonight.

Now let me just say, that Dh and I used to eat CRAP. When we became parents 3 years ago, it was a big wake up call and we stopped the fast food, processed junk. We wanted our kids to be healthy, so we made changes. And it's been great.

But I know there are more changes we need to make. I'm ashamed to admit that I have been very uninformed and naive about a lot of this stuff. Seeing this film really opened my eyes.

Money is a big issue, but our car will be paid off soon and I *will* find a way to add to our grocery budget so we can buy organic/local foods as much as possible. But I am posting here because I am feeling overwhelmed thinking about all of this - and I thought this would be a good place to ask for advice.

How do I tell WHICH foods are most important to change? We get WIC, and use a lot of the milk and eggs. I can probably find somewhere local to get eggs, which would be great and worth it - since my son eats a lot of them. What about milk? (We don't eat meat, so that's not an issue.) How do you find sources for these things locally, and decide which are the most important?

This will have to be baby steps. I'm trying to think of the foods we (especially my 3yo) eat the most of. Things like tortillas, bread, I can make myself. But what about flour? Is it worth it to buy organic flour? He eats a ton of fruit too... Cheese, etc. My head is just spinning. I know the info is out there but is there a good source that could help me? I wish we could afford to change everything now - but we can't. I thought we were doing pretty good in slowly eliminating processed foods - real oats instead of oatmeal packets, etc., we had our first garden last year and lots of homemade sauce, veggies, etc., I've been reading labels and trying to avoid HFCS but that is not enough. I want to do better for my family and myself, I just don't know where to start and I feel like all this info is so overwhelming!



Thanks in advance if you have any advice for me..

[sophiesgrandma]

Always buy organic:
cherries
grapes
peaches
nectarines
pears
lettuce
strawberries
bell peppers
celery
potatoes
spinach
Others will add more.

[Magelet]

It sounds like you are trying to take on too much at once. It's hard to make any changes if you try to make all the changes you want at once.

I would say in order of importance:
Removing all processed foods from your diet. This may take a lot of time if you eat a lot of processed foods, but you will quickly become good at reading labels, (if its more than a couple ingredients, for instance bread should be flour, water, yeast, salt, and maybe oil or honey or sugar, its no good), shopping only the outside of the store (all the processed stuff is in the middle with a few exceptions like flour and olive oil)

Getting good fats instead of bad- real butter, extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, animal fats, instead of margarine, vegetable oils, shortening

grass-fed dairy, eggs and cheese are so incredibly nutritious. if you can find a source you can afford, you should definitely go for it. check farmer's markets (even if they don't have milk or eggs they might know someone who does), local farmer's, a local Weston A price foundation, neighbors who might keep chickens and have extra eggs, maybe 4h? though I think they usually raise more meat animals,

if you are on a tight budget and want to buy organic produce, focus on buying organic of the worst contaminated (I beleive that is the list sophie's grandma gave you). it is the produce that has been tested to have the most pesticides and other crap. often the farmer's market is a good affordable place to get veggies, but sometimes it costs a lot more. walk through the whole market checking prices before you buy, and see if you can get a bulk discount for buying a large box of stuff.

hey mama, stop and take a breath. You ARE doing great eliminating processed food. Avoiding corn syrup, growing a garden, making your own pasta sauce, these things are huge! real oats instead of instant? you are making a really big difference to your family in just those things! are there more things you can do? of course, there always is room for growth for all of us, but really, you are making the changes, at a slow rate, which is the only sustainable rate. give yourself some credit for the changes you've made, as well as looking to what changes to make in the future.

[goldenwillow]

Try this

Good work on your efforts. A great resource regarding buying organic or not is the following:

http://www.ewg.org/bodyburden/consumerproducts

Good luck to you!

[amandaleigh37]

Thanks for the replies! I appreciate it

Getting good fats instead of bad- real butter, extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, animal fats, instead of margarine, vegetable oils, shortening

Can you tell me more about the coconut vs. vegetable oil? We do real butter already, but do use veg. oil a lot for baking.

Thanks for the list of produce, sophiesgrandma, and I"m off to check that link now Xantho. Caroline, I appreciate your kind encouragement!

[LauraLoo]

A great follow up to "Food, Inc." is the book, "Real Food: What to Eat and Why." It's an easy read and will give you some very good insight as to WHY some choices are better than others; It'll help keep your head from spinning! Likely you can find this at your library:

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-What...4343425&sr=8-1

It can be overwhelming at first to make some major changes, so I agree with the pp's -- eliminating processed food, trying to go organic when possible are great first steps. As time goes on, you'll be able to make other decisions that work well for your family. You don't need to make ALL changes at once to make a significant impact.

[Grace and Granola]

[aylaelise]

You mentioned you get WIC which is hard because you don't want to waste that food although it is not always the healthiest. We get WIC and I'm not sure how it differs from state to state but if you call all your local coops, we found one that accepts WIC and we get raw cheese, sprouted bread, whole organic grains in bulk, and fresh oraganic veggies, organic eggs. It is worth the search if a coop does this within a reasonable driving distance!!

Good luck and would love to hear how your progress is!
Sounds like you are doing great!!

[elanorh]

You've got good advice so far. Pick places to change, make those changes, then move on to another change. Slow and steady wins it!

If you've got a garden, you may want to look at the "absolutely avoids" list sophiesgrandma posted and try to incorporate as many of them as possible into your garden/landscape.

Two years ago, we planted 4 apple trees and a pie cherry tree. We are still several years from getting much harvest from them - but that's something I've STARTED. I can't get organic pie cherries at all here, and not much of a selection of organic (or locally grown) apples, either. Trees take a long time to establish, especially the farther north you live - bushes, take a little less time. I would like to get blueberries and raspberries established this summer. If you're comfortable preserving your harvest, then establishing as many of the fruit trees, bushes, etc. that you'd like to have is a good idea. The "Digging in the Dirt" forum here has good advice about gardening.

Dh and I started out by removing as many processed foods as possible from our diets. Dh is a junk food/processed food guy, but I at least have him converted to to mostly organic for his junk/processed stuff. Once we'd done that, we started buying organic milk. Then we started trying organic produce. Then I started buying organic flour for our bread/cakes/cookies.

At this point, we are CSA members (last year was its first year of existence); we have found a local grass-fed beef source. Dd1 is allergic to eggs, so we seldom have them and if we do, we buy organic. Most of the foods I bring into the house are organic; due to where we live, it's difficult to get everything either organic or locally grown (don't underestimate locally grown, either, it's pretty common for it to be essentially organic, but not 'certified,' get to know the producers) - so, for instance, my whole wheat pasta is not organic, because I can't get it organic here. We have a big garden but I'd like it a lot bigger.

A store clerk asked me a few weeks ago whether organic was really worth it (and then she looked like she wanted to swallow her tongue for asking me! ) -- I told her that yes, it is. On many foods (ie the dairy) you can really taste the difference - our organic oats are really good, for instance; and organic apples just taste more 'appley.' There are foods where you can't really tell -- for instance, flour -- but, I really believe that this is about more than just healthy nutritious foods. It's also about supporting farmers and ranchers who are doing the right thing for our planet; and it's about making sure that I'm doing what I can to make sure that we have safe, bountiful foods for my children and grandchildren to eat.

I'll add Michael Pollan's books to your "to-read" list - even his book about gardening (I believe it was his first ). But definitely Omnivore's Dilemma. And if you haven't seen The Corporation (movie) yet, add it to your list. It gets into industrial agriculture a little, but also Monsanto etc. too. I have a few friends who are pretty anti-health-food who've been compelled to change the milk they drink, at least, based on that movie.

[CeciMami]

You have gotten some really good info! I just wanted to reiterate: take. your. time. If you try to change too many things at once it'll be overwhelming and hard to stick to. The very first thing we did was phase out the processed food and the "bad fats" in our diets (anything with HFCS in it, anything with more than 5 ingredients listed on the box, and replaced margarine/vegetable oil with butter/coconut/olive oil). Honestly, it looks like you're off to a great start already...so keep on keepin' on!

[ju1ia]

I think the first milk step is to buy the one that says 'hormone/rBST free' on it. you can still get that pretty cheap while you figure out how much else you can afford!

[mamadelbosque]

I don't know where you are, but around here, my shopping choices are limited (unless I feel like driving 30-60 minutes to go grocery shopping, to whcih the answer is *umm.. no!*). So, I buy organic whats available and looks decent. This is key. I'm not going to go without apples or celery or carrots or onions or whatever because the organic ones available look like crap (or they simply *aren't* available)!

As for milk & eggs checkout eatwild.com or look for a WAPF group in your area. Some of those folks should have ideas on where to find raw/organic milk and local eggs. If your choice is local free range eggs or storebought organic, go with local. "organic" at this point only counts for so much. And, if your buying store-bought milk, just look for hormone free/rbst free/rbgh free milk. IMO the national brand "organic" dairy products (horizon for example) are only marginally better than typical milk, and I wouldn't pay more for it.

For everything else, just buy organic when you can. And try not to sweat it too much.

[beanma]

See if you have a local farmer's mkt. I think ours takes WIC. Sometimes local is organic w/o being certified and you can ask the farmer's about thier practices. Any meat you get there, if it's local, is almost certainly not feedlot finished.

[Mama Lo]

You should check out www.localharvest.org.
Great resource for finding local food