Keeping it Real! Finding the Food, you love!
How do you make better food choices? How can you incorporate real food choices into your every day food plan? How do I start? Where do I look? What are my choices? How can I find them? How do I “feed the need” all year long?
So many questions to be answered, so much time to give!
Now that our “CSA’s” (Community supported agriculture) are in full force in your local communities, let’s get the search for real food underway!
Finding real food isn’t that difficult. Have you joined a CSA yet? These wonderful local farms in your communities need your help and support! You can sign up every year to have a share of the best local crops of vegetables and fruits anywhere!
A weekly abundance of real food can be yours, if you join them at the beginning of every year! Usually available (once the crops start up) from June to October every year. Sharing in a weekly crop of fresh fruits and veggies is a fantastic way to start and introduce real food into yours and your families every day meal plans!
Got Veggies and Fruit? Your local farm stands pop up every summer thru fall to bring to you an abundance of real food choices! Good pickins are right at your fingertips with your local farm stands. Fresh vegetables and fruits usually picked that day for purchase. (No week-old produce here!) Stop by on your way home from work every day and pick up that night’s dinner! Easy-Peasy real food for your dinner table!
Take the “Super Market Challenge”! With so many stores popping in their own health food sections, we have so much more better options for our food choices!
Organic? You got it! Gluten-free? You got it! Health section? You got it! Veggies? You got it! Fruits? You got it! Fat-free, dairy-free? You got it!
You just got to know where to look! Peruse the Outer parameters of your local store to find the real food choices! Inner isles are packed full of processed foods! – Start your shopping on the outside of the store first! Fill up your shopping cart with the good stuff!
Health Food Stores are also popping up everywhere! It can be expensive to eat healthy, but there should be no $dollar value on your good health! Spend your $dollars on real healthy food and you don’t waste your $dollars at the Doctor’s! Spend your $dollars on real food and don’t waste your $dollars on prescription drugs! There are so many different foods that can cure and aid your discomforts of your health! So many foods, so many choices! (A future blog post to come for foods that can heal and that you should incorporate into your everyday lives!)
Organic foods are offered on just about every food stores shelves now. Look for this section if organic is your choice for vegetables and fruits.
Looking for better fat choices in your real food search? Know what to look for!
Use the Nutrition Facts Panel and Packaging Claims to Make Good Choices:
For canned or packaged foods, it is important to read the labels to determine what kind of fats those products contain. Use these tips to make good choices:
Check nutrition labels for low saturated fat and no trans-fat.
Watch out for ingredients such as partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats) and palm or coconut oils (high in saturated fat).
Some nutrition labels will display the good fats information, but it is not a federal requirement to list on the label, so you may have to do the math yourself. To determine the good fats on a nutrition label, subtract the bad fats from the total fat. Total fat – Bad fat = Good fats.
Use the ingredients list to identify the primary fat sources. Choose products containing good fats such as canola oil, sunflower oil and high oleic oils.
Do not be deceived by “low-fat” or “fat-free” claims, since these products can be high in added sugar.
Look for packaging claims outside the nutrition label that indicate good fats have replaced bad fats, such as “contains X grams of omega-3 fatty acids.”
Pick: Canola, olive, sunflower, safflower, peanut or corn oil.
Skip: Tropical oils, such as palm, palm kernel and coconut, these are high in saturated fats.
This is just a start of getting to know your real food! Making real food choices is a step in the right direction for following your health happiness journey. No matter what your journey entails – to lose weight, to cure an ailment, to be more active, to eat healthier or to just feel better in living your every day lives, your journey starts here.
Finding your “real food” just got “real” didn’t it??? Find yours today!
