Saying No to Fake and Processed Food. Why I Only Shop at the Ends of the Store.

Saying No to Fake and Processed Food. Why I Only Shop at the Ends of the Store.

Being a former art director, I was involved in all kinds of advertisements and designs over the years. I also worked on several brands and spent a lot of time on food shoots.

I’ll never forget the day we were shooting a TV commercial and the food stylists were delivered the appetizers and main courses for a chain restaurant and it was all boil in the bag. Pretty gross, and even worse is food cooked in plastic, but I won’t go there.

In the last few months, we’ve been eating more of a traditional diet with nutrient-dense grass-fed meats, pastured butter and eggs and organic fruits and vegetables. When we eat grains, they are sprouted and soaked. I’ve been using the Nourishing Traditions cookbook by Sally Fallon as a guide. I was in Stop & Shop and wondered why I was even there at all. I went from the fruit and vegetable aisle across the whole store to the milk.

All the pretty colored boxes and bags with cartoon characters are nice to look at, and the kids love them, but they are devoid of nutrients and filled with tons of sugar and additives. When you look at the list of ingredients, there aren’t that many natural ingredients, yet we ignore this for convenience. I am completely guilty of this working full-time and not taking the time to pay attention or do better. We’ve been led down a road that is hard to come back from, it’s so much easier to pop something in the microwave and ignore what’s actually inside.

I’ve been learning about Weston A. Price and the implications of physical degeneration on children when abandoning traditional diets and Dr. Pottenger and his evidence when feeding cats processed food vs. raw. It’s all scary stuff that has implications on how healthy our kids and their kids will be when they're older. When you look at the way our grandparents and great grandparents used to eat, it all makes a lot of sense. Generations ago, they didn’t have as many processed foods and weren’t using chemicals to preserve and process foods. Bread was different then. Things tasted better. They didn’t have the heart disease we have now and they ate way more fat. Traditional diets are very different from the low-fat, no-fat convenience food mantra we’ve been taught. When you look at the differences in nutrient dense, raw foods vs. low fat, processed and cooked foods, it’s pretty scary. Your heart actually prefers fat as energy to run with total fat being around 30%. It's all in moderation. So, it seems ridiculous now that  I was actually terrified for a while that I was hurting my family by changing their diet.

I read, Omnivore’s Dilemma, for my class and it made me mad. It explains why some meat tastes bad. Steak from our grocery store, just didn’t taste good. So we've said goodbye to the food giants and the grocery stores selling and promoting all that crap, especially meat from CAFOs. We're not feeding it to my family anymore. We try to buy grass-fed meat, eggs and raw cheese from a local farm. Try Hemlock Hills farm if you’re in Westchester or source more on Eat Wild or Real Milk. 

I’m not buying them fruit snacks, cereals or bottles of soap with characters anymore and they don’t seem to notice. You know what I do notice, my kids haven’t been sick. This was a bad winter and is the first year I haven’t taken someone to the doctor with an ear infection or worse. No one came down with a virus. Their dry skin got better. We've weeded out all the soaps, shampoos and creams filled with chemicals. My kids use coconut oil and shea butter on dry skin and the older one who eats more butter and nuts, doesn’t have eczema any more. My son even asked for the peppermint soap that’s in our bathroom for his bathroom. I look forward to them feeling even better and hopefully being healthier as they get older.