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| A Good Book |
The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture keeps up with the foods eaten by Americans. You would think with all the recent talk of eating healthier that they would be finding us eating much better; sorry, but that is not the case. They recently listed the top nine food products, here they are:
- Whole Cow's Milk
- White Bread
- Refined Sugar
- 2 Percent Cow's Milk
- White Flour
- Soda, Primarily Colas (seriously people? come on!)
- Processed American Cheese
- White Rolls
- Ground Beef
So if you took all foods produced from Cows and Wheat off the market, the average American would starve to death; and, some research shows that soda is the Number One source of calories in the U.S. These facts reveal just how bad our diet really is, and explains why well over half of us are overweight. Let us start the trend, the revolution, that will begin to correct this unhealthy pattern in our country. Let's make our top nine foods:
- Vegetables (organic if possible)
- Fruits (organic if possible)
- Chicken (free-range if possible)
- Tree Nuts and Seeds
- Fish (not farm-raised)
- Berries (grow your own!)
- Almond/Coconut/Hemp Milk
- Eggs (free-range if possible)
- Stevia, Agave Nectar, Raw Honey
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| The Way to Eat |
You don't have to make all of these changes at once, but you do need to start today. You are what you eat; computer programmers have a saying, "Garbage in, garbage out." That saying also applies, I think, to the foods you put inside your body, and the bodies of your family. The boring, day-to-day choices you make about your diet add up to the body and the health you will enjoy.
Some tidbits to remember, potatoes and ketchup are not vegetables, peanut butter is not a meat, peanuts are not nuts, and for my Southern friends, deep-fried farm-raised catfish is not a fish...
Feel free to forward this post to a friend who might be making wrong choices.
You make a good point about not making all the changes at once. I became overwhelmed at the idea of heavily restrictive diets and rigid changes, so I finally started to change my thinking about two years ago.
ReplyDeleteFirst I simply started looking for the "healthier" version of most of the things I liked. (Less fat, less sugar/no sugar, whole grains, etc.)
Then I started adding more vegetables or fruit to one meal a day, then all meals. I had to realize that it as FINE to eat the fruits & veggies I liked, versus the "best" ones for me.
And, so on. But I only made one or two changes in a month, for the first entire year.
Because I did it slowly and only eat what I LIKE and tastes good to me (as I progress what takes good changes quite a bit), I never feel unsatisfied or like I'm sacrificing.
Today, I don't have many processed foods in the house, or white sugar, white bread, etc. Mostly as a byproduct of the slow changes adding up as I go along. I never said, "No more white sugar!" Instead I said, "I wonder if honey would work in this.."
I've only lost 26 pounds in two years. Which is really slow by the fad-diet "lose 10 pounds this week" trend. But if someone put last night's dinner in front of me two years ago, I would have gagged and went out to eat. So I'm proud to have changed my tastes to something healthier.
Anyway, I only share this story to help inspire others. I was happy to find your site with some good sane and sound advice.
-Sarah