Anonymous wrote:9:52, I love you.

Shouldn’t you be encouraging everyone to take that extra step; surely we all can.

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 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, what's the threshold for processed food consumption? Less for sure but how little is enough?

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.

Anonymous wrote:I've been focusing less on organic vs non-organic and more on trying to get my kids to eat a better variety of foods and not get stuck on the processed stuff. I think organic is great but my real problem is getting the kids to eat things regardless of organic or not.

I'm having good success with my 5 yr old and not much yet with my just turned 3 yr old. I let them pick out whatever they want in the produce section even if I doubt they will like it. My 3 yr old loves to pick stuff out, promises to try it if we buy it but then puts his hand over his mouth when we get it home. My five year old will try it and has liked some things that surprise me like radishs thinly sliced.

My kids like to try things in stores too. At Trader Joe's they usually have something they are handing out and the whole foods prepared section will let you sample. I know DD would have thrown a fit if I served her Indian lentils and spinach at dinner but coming from the lady at Trader Joe's she tried it and really liked it. This is a kid that likes rice and corn but will not eat it if they are mized together. Go figure. DS would never eat sliced turkey until the guy at the deli gave him a sample slice.

Anonymous wrote:Chicken noodle soup is a good one to do from scratch. Yes, I buy the pasta and the organic chicken stock/broth but its very easy to make, freezes well and doesn't taste that off from the ones in the cans they were used to eating. I was surprised at how much salt is in the canned soup and the low sodium ones taste bland.