This is my big “Eat this, not that” list…
Fruit and Vegetables - Eat LOTS, particularly veggies! Most of your weekly shopping should be for vegetables, with a little for fruits and other ingredients. Try to start each meal with vegetables and have them be at least half of all the food you eat.
Look at the dirty dozen lists to see what needs to be organic - some basic ones include all the thin-skinned fruits, berries, potatoes, celery, tomatoes. Prefer organic generally, whenever you can get it, because of the superior mineral profile and better odds that the produce was taken good care of. Do not buy produce of any kind that's already been sealed in a bag, organic or not. This is the kind of product associated with the majority of food contamination issues, e. coli, etc. Don't forget frozen vegetables. They are almost as good as fresh nutritionally, and are a good fall back when you aren't feeling up to the big stir fry or your pantry is bare. I always keep some frozen veggies around.
Eggs – Organic only. Organic eggs have better vitamin A and fatty acids. Also, conventionally raised chickens are very badly treated. Eat plenty of eggs, they are great inexpensive protein and healthy fat. Eating cholesterol in eggs sends the signal to your body not to make more of it, which helps with heart health.
Nuts – Probably not so important to buy organic, because they have such hard shells (hard for pesticides to penetrate), and not much surface area. Also because we do not eat them in large volumes. Peanuts aren’t so good for your health as they contain aflatoxins and are an allergen. I try to limit peanuts. Nuts in small quantities are a great snack, as they contain lots of healthy fats, minerals and protein. I carry around little snack-size ziplock bags with 1 ounce of nuts in them, for portion control. If you’re looking for a substitute for wheat flour in baking, I highly recommend almond flour from Nuts.com and Elana’s Almond Flour cookbook.
Dairy- Organic only, full fat preferred, grassfed preferred. The animal fat in dairy concentrates toxins, so that’s one reason you only want to eat organic dairy. According to scientists, dairy is one of the foods we may not have evolved to digest well yet. Northern Europeans sometimes digest it better than other ancestries. If you react to dairy at all, remove it from your diet. Milk is usually the hardest kind of dairy to digest. Many people digest cheese, yogurt, etc. better than liquid milk. If you really can’t afford organic, get the kind made with no antibiotics and no growth hormones, and eat less of it. Try to eat real organic butter – it has great fatty acids and a bunch of other health benefits. Much better than the highly-processed butter substitutes many people are eating for “health”. Raw milk is more healthy than organic, but if you're not used to it, you may not digest it so well. You may also not be able to buy it in your state.
Meat – Buy only organic, no antibiotics, grassfed preferred. Try to use meat more like a condiment than a major part of your meals. Animal fat is where toxins are highest, so buy only organic, grassfed, or pastured, no hormones, no antibiotics, please! Do not buy meat (or anything else) labelled “natural”. "Natural" does not mean anything, and is used in sneaky ways on poor quality foods. My suggestion is to emphasize vegetables, eggs, organic dairy and nuts in your diet, and eat small amounts of really excellent meat. This is healthy, and saves money too. If you cook organic or grassfed meat properly, it can be healthy, as the saturated fat in meat is needed by your cell membranes and brain. Skipping the meat entirely is not a good idea, as you will miss out on critical vitamins such as B12 and lots of other nutrients that are most easily available in meat.
Please do not eat prepackaged lunchmeat. If you need sliced meat, go somewhere where you can get organic meat and they slice it for you at the meat counter.
Cooking Meat: Panfry only at low heat, do not "char", as this introduces carcinogens. Preferable cooking methods include steaming/poaching, sauteeing in water, medium-temperature stir fry in good oil or baking. Remember that homemade bone broths and organ meats are packed with minerals and other nutrients, and include them in your diet, also.Fish – Buy Pacific or Alaskan Salmon, wild, which has not been frozen. This is a delicacy, and does cost money. It is also available canned, which is a little more affordable. I eat this as my only fish, as it’s delicious, packed with good fatty acids, and great for brain and heart health. There are a few other white fishes such as sole, that are healthy, and make great weight loss food. If you’re thinking about eating any fish, check mercury levels first, and eat wild, not farmed. These days, I'm buying my canned Salmon from Vitalchoice.com. It's tons better than what's at the store, and not much more money.
Grains - Avoid wheat flour in particular. It's a simple carb, turns into sugar, and goes through your digestion way too fast. Yep, avoid bread, pastry, cookies, sandwiches, pizza crust. I know it's a big change of lifestyle. This is probably the biggest one for many people. Some of us can digest wheat, many of us (especially white europeans!) really cannot. Many of us find that our healthiest way of eating is actually wheat-free, gluten-free or grain-free. Figuring out your best diet will be part of your journey to optimal health. Other notes with regard to grain: Conventional corn and rice are major GMO's. So if you buy corn or rice products, make sure they're organic. Another danger with rice is arsenic. I trust Lundberg Brand, as they publish their arsenic numbers.
Oils - Your body needs some good fats. Fats help your brain and your cells, and they do not make you fat - although they do add calories and not many nutrients. So please add a little fat to your food. Oil is not a nutrient-dense food - just use enough to cook. Butter has more nutrients, but does add a lot of calories. Nuts and nut butters are a good source of healthy fat with fiber and nutrients.
We could talk all day about oils. Here's the short version: Coconut oil, butter and olive should be your daily cooking oils. Bacon grease and lard are good if they come from organic meats. None of the vegetable oils should be heated really hot, or they can get damaged and turn into "bad" oils, and of course butter burns easily. So cook on low heat, and use these oils. If you must cook at high heat, you can use lard or peanut oil.
On salads, skip the oils and make your own dressing from nutrient rich fats like peanut butter, tahini or cream and acids like balsamic or rice wine vinegar or lemon juice, along with plenty of flavor from organic soy sauce, salt, pepper, stevia, garlic, cayenne, etc.
Never use the following: shortening (crisco), margarine (even the "health" margarines), anything with trans fats in it (read the label).
FIRST CHOICE: coconut, butter, olive, avocado, macadamia, lard
AVOID ENTIRELY: shortening, all margarine, corn oil
SECOND CHOICE: avocado, macadamia, sesame, organic peanut oil (for high heat)
OK: organic canola, safflower, grapeseed
Soy - I'm not a fan of soy. Soy products contain estrogen-like substances that can make your body more estrogenic, which means more vulnerable to cancer. If you've been told to eat a lot of soy to avoid certain cancers, I'd suggest reading further. Soy is like health junk food. Not the kind of nutrient-dense food you want to put in your body. The only soy product in my kitchen is organic wheat-free tamari sauce. If you do eat soy, buy organic only, to avoid GMO's.
Sweeteners - You may have figured by now that sugar is pretty much out. We have sugar in our house because when I make pancakes, the girls like to eat them "swedish" style, with sugar sprinkled on them. That's just about the only time the sugar comes out. My sweetener of choice is stevia, in packets, without xylitol or splenda or any of that stuff with it. We also have agave, honey and grade B maple syrup, for other sweetening needs. Get in the habit of counting grams of sugar in your food, and work toward 0 added sugar, and just add a touch of sweetener when you really desire it. I add a little stevia to my plain yogurt with strawberries, and also to homemade salad dressings or stir fry sauces sometimes.
Sauces - I want to empower you to stop buying premade dressings and sauces, and make your own. These are notorious places where extra sugar and salt and junk calories hide out, and your sauces can taste so much better when you make them. It's super easy. To make a sauce taste good, add something salty, something sweet, something sour, and optionally, something bitter like mustard. Add some good oil to make it even better Common ingredients for my sauces include: tamari sauce, lemon juice, stevia, agave, maple syrup, garlic powder, dijon mustard, sesame oil, coconut milk, coconut oil, curry powder, tahini, ginger. I'll try to post some simple sauce recipes that I like sometime soon. I'm not amazing with spices yet, but if you are, you can add whatever strikes your fancy!
GMO's - GMO's are something to worry about, and lucky for us, still not too hard to avoid if you you know what to look for. The main sources of GMO's are corn, rice and soy. At the present time, "organic" does mean "non-GMO". So PLEASE buy organic of these three things, and you will not be consuming GMO's, the large majority of the time.
Processed Foods - It's important to minimize processed foods in our lives. The closer you buy your food to how it came off of a plant or an animal, the better. You will know what you're eating, and it will taste fresh and amazing! You'll also know that you won't crave it because some food company engineers manipulated your taste buds. Let's think about what constitutes a processed food. Here are some common types of processed foods you might not have noticed:
- Protein bars
- Protein shakes
- Frozen healthy dinners (I don't include frozen veggies in this).
- Yogurt
- Kefir
- Kombucha
- Iced tea (from the store)
- Cultured vegetables
- Ketchup
- Salad dressing
- Mayonnaise.
- Breakfast cereals
- Mixes - cake mix, pancake mix, etc.
EXAMPLE #1: Yogurt. Do you eat the kind with fruit in it? Why? It's awesome to buy plain yogurt, and put in your own fresh fruit and a sweetener if you wish it, and saves you eating old, processed fruit that's already over-sugared.
EXAMPLE #2: Protein bars (which should be a last resort, not a daily diet workaround). They can have a lot of fillers, preservatives and extra sugars in them, sit on shelves for months, and definitely aren't fresh food.
PROCESSED FOOD SUGGESTIONS:
- When you do buy processed foods, aim for short, simple ingredient lists that you understand, with good ingredients in plain English, not fillers, not excessive salt or sugar or MSG, "natural flavors" and other squirrelly ingredients like that.
- Snacks are a common type of food that people buy processed. Work on finding some snack foods that you can either make from scratch or buy simpler, more real-food brands of. Be conscious of your snack choices.
- If this sounds fun to you, make less-processed food experimentation a cooking project. In my own kitchen, I've been able to make my own mayonnaise, kefir, dried nuts, dehydrated veggie/nut snacks, corn tortillas... all things that previously I bought as processed foods, and now I prefer to make my own most of the time.
THINK ABOUT WHAT GOES IN YOUR BODY
EAT REAL FOOD!
EAT REAL FOOD!
