My Journey to Real Food

My journey to real food began exactly three and a half years ago, but my obsession with food in general started over a decade ago.  I was a naturally skinny child, even considered too skinny by my doctor.  I was active and enjoyed being outdoors and weight was the farthest thing from my mind.  But then, shortly after graduating high school, that all changed.  I put on a solid 20 pounds.  I had to work really hard to get it off, and I did that with the help of my mom and  Weight Watchers.  From then on, I was in a constant state of yo-yo.  My weight would go up, my weight would go down.  My diets waxed and waned and I tried every new diet that came out.  I would fluctuate from a size 2 to a size 12 in the blink of an eye.

But health?  Health was not on my mind.  Until my son was born.

He was sick and I was a first-time mom.  It was scary and I felt helpless.  Since I had already adopted a rather holistic view on birth, it wasn't that much of a stretch to start inching my way toward real food.  Reading so much information about how closely our food and our health are tied, I just couldn't get enough.  I read and read and read and then I read some more.

I attempted to change everything about our diet all at one time.  But I crashed and I crashed hard.  I was overwhelmed and the change in our grocery budget was a shock to the system.  We reverted back to our old ways and I was guilt-ridden about it.  Once you know, you can't unknow it.

Over the past 3.5 years, my desire to change our eating habits has increased exponentially, but I've done a lot of crashing and burning.  I've tried being a vegetarian, I've tried being vegan.  I saw an improvement in our health with both compared to what a lot of people refer to as SAD (standard American diet).  But I knew neither was really me.  

What makes sense to me is eating what our bodies were intended to eat in the way they were intended to eat it.   For some people, that may mean no meat or dairy. Obviously I can't take a time machine back in time, but the next best thing I can do is read about the history of food and try to eat the way we've been eating for thousands of years (the standard American diet is in its infancy by comparison).

For me, the Real Food movement makes sense because, well, it's real.  It's old and it's traditional.  Industrial food is new and it's largely synthetic.

Studies show it's easier to digest and the nutrients are more easily absorbed in traditional, real food.  It's not full of chemicals.  It wasn't doused in pesticides that are damaging our planet

Real food, to me, is:

• Meat from pastured animals that are raised humanely


• Full-fat milk, yogurt and butter


• Organic fruits & vegetables bought in season from local farmers (or grow my own, which is fun to boot!)


• Healthy fats

Yes, it is "weird" to some.  But I actually think the diet we eat today is weird.  It's new, it's often concocted in a lab and it's not proven to be healthy.  Why not just stick with what we've always eaten that is time-tested and grown in soil rather than a lab?

I loved this from Joel Salatin's book Folks, this ain't normal:

Ours is certainly not an old culture.  Yet in recent decades we've used more energy, destroyed more soil, created more pathogenicity (temporarily stopped some too, for sure), mutated more bacteria, and dumped more toxicity on the planet than all the cultures before us - combined.  I love the United States, but I am not blind to the wrongs.  I have no desire to live anywhere else, but that doesn't mean I think everything we're doing should be done or can be maintained.

On many levels, I am struck by the sheer abnormality of our situation.  In this book, I'd like us to think broadly and deeply about how to restore normalcy, to reincorporate those foundations that sustain cultures - by using what we know and what we have in ways that honor and respect those upon whose shoulders we stand.  By identifying and honoring historical normalcy, we present a loving legacy to those who have gone before.  I think we owe such a gift to them.  Let normalcy begin.

 Or Michael Pollan's take:

Don’t eat anything your great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. There are a great many food-like items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food.  Stay away from these.

Once I started reading, started educating myself and my interest became piqued, it was an easy sell that my family needs to eat differently than we have been.  Truth be told, as a child I have fond memories of driving to another town with my mom to a health food store where I got to help grind our own peanut butter, among other things.  We had a stint as vegetarians when I was a kid.  My mom was a "crunchy mama" long before it was the in thing to be, so it's not all that surprising that I ended up finding my way back to real food in my adulthood.

Where are you on your journey to real food?