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Need help from moms who cook from scratch or less processed foods!
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Anonymous
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This is a great thread and I want to thank everyone for sharing their ideas and knowledge. We also try to stick to fresh veggies and fruits and avoid processed foods.
One veggie recommendation I'd like to make that I wouldn't touch as a kid (of course, my mom always used the canned version!) are beets. My daughter LOVES them. I just cut them up in small sticks and sautee them in a little butter or olive oil and they are amazingly sweet. And she loves the color too. She can eat 2-3 entire beets herself. Give them a try. |
Anonymous
I'm not this person, but I just started reading Marion Nestle's What to Eat. I have heard great things about the book, and I have been following Marion Nestle's work for years. She is a nutrition professor at NYU, and she was one of the first experts who begin to talk about how government policies and marketing dictate what and how much we eat. Here is her bio: http://whattoeatbook.com/about/bio/ and her site with her blog, etc: http://www.foodpolitics.com/ |
Anonymous
Apologies, but I'm not quite sure what I'm being asked... |
Anonymous
You are being asked to share either your thoughts or any resources you would recommend so that those of us who do not have a PhD in Chinese/Tibetan GM can learn some things. I recommended Nestle's work because I think she is a strong advocate. I will also recommend Michael Pollan's books. He is very informative as well. |
Anonymous
I'm interested in more information on the extrusion process and why that is bad? (However, I understand by just saying process there is the point.) But, I didn't know that cereal made with wheat and a few ingredients were any worse than one baking something in the kitchen. Never heard of extrusion. Thanks! |
Anonymous
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As a public health professional specializing in nutrition issues, it is sad that people are getting the message that you need a PhD in eastern medicine to figure out healthy eating. Not blaming anyone in particular and really not trying to sound snarky or put anyone down for trying to seek out information, just lamenting that in America where almost 70% of people are overweight or obese because of eating like crap, the healthy eating thread turns into discussing standards very few will meet. I bet we've lost a lot of moms who were maybe interested in trying to cook with "less processed" foods.
Just want to say there is a middle ground. Carry on though - perhaps next week I'll start my own thread! |
Anonymous
"...standards very few will meet."? A plant-based diet? Reduction of processed foods? I see it happen daily. |
Anonymous
Yes - those things are things very many of us do. True. I meant more getting rid of breakfast cereals, tortillas, and pasta, which was talked about in the thread, and using all pure grains. That will be tough for many. I would rather we have shared real tips like earlier in the thread, which I thought was awesome, then gotten off track about extrusion. |
Anonymous
Whoa! You, as a public health professional specializing in nutrition issues, just killed a thread on healthy eating because you don’t think my question about extrusion was helpful? And, you, a professional, tell us it’s sad that I, and the two other pp before me who were interested in hearing from the eastern medicine doc, would like to hear more from an expert. I understand what you mean about the message, but surely you realize that people fall on a continuum of nutrition education and practice, so why should this discussion be limited to only those at the very bottom. Shouldn’t you be encouraging everyone to take that extra step; surely we all can. It would have been more helpful for you to answer the question, or not, and then state some thoughtful, helpful advice. Which, I really would have liked to hear. I shared my own tips early in the discussion, and have been thinking about changing out my kid’s daily breakfast of cereal (of the Barbara’s variety) and fruit. So, when I heard about extrusion I was simply curious to know more about it, which may or may not, encourage me to do a couple of non-cereal days; not give up store-bought cereal, pasta, and tortillas entirely. I'm just naturally a curious person, and I like to talk about food. So, I’ll just google it. I look forward to your new and improved discussion next week. |
Anonymous
| Did anyone see the documentary Food Inc. the other night on WETA? I recommend it. Really fascinating. |
Anonymous
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To the poster at 7:00, fair point, but I work on policy issues and so am focused on improving communities through changing foods in schools, encouraging worksites to provide healthier foods and make time for people to exercise, increase community access to farmer's markets, etc.
So I am not qualified to answer the question on extrusion. The thing is if I walked into a school and told them that they can't serve pasta or cereal or bread or other grains, I don't think I would get that far. Lots of blank stares. Success in that arena is getting fizzy drinks and sports drinks out of schools, getting them to use cheese instead of something called "cheese product," etc. I guess my point is nutrition doesn't have to be this elite, striving for perfection thing. If you google extrusion, which I did before I posted last time, you will find in essence studies showing that breakfast cereal will kill you. Seriously, that is what I find. Studies on rats showing they died in two weeks. That is where you lose people. I personally think OP's follow up was great - she was making some good changes that many people are interested in and likely doing, could do. The thread became something else and I guess I just wish someone would have started their own thread on those issues. I felt the original purpose of the thread was lost. That was my point. Further, what actually prompted me to post that last post was that the PhD didn't seem to grasp that people wanted actionable things they could do, and I also found that annoying. He/she came on and put a bunch of scary, negative stuff out there with no advice to sub out those foods. Then when a few people chimed in they would like some real info, we got this "Apologies" what? huh? what dont' you understand? crap. So if you are going to take the discussion down that road, you need to tell people what they can do. |
Anonymous
9:52, I love you.
I dunno, should we? I get that nutrition is a consuming interest for some people, and those who want to strive for perfection should know what to look for. But nutrition, fitness, social responsibility, and probably a host of other things aren't as fascinating to other people, and I think saying that we all need to push ourselves harder in any of those areas is to force our obsessions on other people. Those are all worthwhile obsessions, but with no, we don't all need to seek perfection. Sometimes perfectly fine is, you know, perfectly fine. |
Anonymous
| So, what's the threshold for processed food consumption? Less for sure but how little is enough? |
zumbamama
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You had mentioned that you could go much deeper on the subject, so I was curious to see what more you had to say on the subject. I just find this whole thread very interesting, as I would like to decrease the amount of processed food we consume. I've made gradual changes in our family's diet over the past few years, but I want to keep improving it. We started a veggie/berry garden and have stopped buying alot of frozen processed junk. Next I want to stop buying pasta, tortillas and hummus and start making them from scratch. I welcome any tips for better eating. The more I read about the food industry, the more sickened I am. I had no idea about the unfermented soy products being bad for you...so now I'm scared to eat that too. Along with dairy and countless other things I consume regularly. So this weekend I'm trying out different kinds of milks and looking for better cereals. Or maybe I should make my own cereal too! |
Anonymous
For me (health policy person here) it is if you look at the ingredients and they are very long, with things you can't recognize as food, that is a bad sign. A fun exercise: go get a kid's "Lunchable" and flip it over. The ingredients are so many they practically have to make the box bigger to accommodate. A better choice would be to buy some turkey deli meat, best if you can buy like Applewood Farms/organic at least, and put it between two pieces of whole wheat bread. Maybe add some greens and tomato, and mustard. Same idea, and you are still eating processed foods in a way, but much, much better than the Lunchable. Your ingredient list will be much shorter, and most of the ingredients you will recognize. A plant based diet is a great thing. But we a fair amount of eggs and yogurt, and we get the Whole Foods or local farmer's market "non industrial" chicken or wild caught salmon and eat about 1-2 a week. we get eggs from the my parent's farm, but a relative who is an organic farmer (not easy to become one by the way) says if you buy eggs from the grocery store, only buy Eggland's Best organic. The mainstream brands are pretty processed to preserve them. Zumba Mama, it's great that you will be making your own pasta and bread. I will not get to that point. I'd love to, but it's not realistic for me at this time in my life. I try to make my simple tomato sauce and choose pasta from a box, but that is a step above mac and cheese from a box. Another great example of "less processed" vs. very processed. And that is not to say you can't eat total crap from a box in moderation, just that the bulk of your diet IMO should be whole foods and the "less processed" foods. This is a start, hopefully. I strongly recommend the movie Food Inc. Books are fine but something about that movie, the visual is worth a thousand words. |