A New Year's Challenge: Eat Whole Foods

Many people make New Year's resolutions. Here is a wonderful one for your family's health: Make a goal to get rid of all packaged foods from your diet, and eat only whole, unprocessed foods. With gastrointestinal diseases on the rise along with diabetes and obesity, this really is a wonderful gift to give your family. It is not easy. Many people have become so use to living with these boxed convenient foods that they cannot imagine how they can survive without them. New recipes will need to be searched out, maybe new places to buy groceries and those unused pots and pans will need to dusted off and put back into use. But the rewards are a healthier family, and that is priceless

This can seem like a daunting task at first, so start slow. Begin with one mealtime a week. Breakfast is the easiest. Get rid of the boxed cereals, instant oatmeal, packaged frozen waffles and pancakes, Poptarts, prepackaged muffins...you get the idea. Think: eggs, homemade breads, waffles and muffins, real oatmeal (not the quick cooked kind), cream of rice, even bowls of rice with nuts and seeds or dried fruit. Think real fruit, not fruit juice. Think yogurt with various toppings. Think smoothies with yogurt added for protein. Stay away from protein powders and other powders, remember, whole foods. 

Spend some time making up waffles for a dinner served with nitrate free bacon or preservative free sausage. Make extra and freeze for breakfasts. I do this once a week at least: have breakfast for dinner and then purposely make extra for freezing. This can be done for French toast and pancakes as well. Other great items to make ahead and freeze would be homemade muffins-not boxed or pre-mixed-and homemade raisin bread. 

That brings me to a great appliance to own: a bread machine. These can bought real cheap at thrift stores. I know many of you make your bread by hand, but I have found that cooking all my meals from scratch is very time consuming, and if I can find ways to cut corners I will. Bread machines can provide many wonderful additions to the breakfast table. When it comes to breads, I know many want whole grains, but it is a wonderful start just to make it fresh and in that way the preservatives are left out. Preservatives are the number one killer of our gut health, so if your bread has to mostly white organic flour, so be it! Make it fresh. The bread machine will be your best friend, even if you only use the bread cycle. 

Another useful tool that can help with breakfast and other meals is a rice cooker. Buy whole grain rices in bulk and cook them up quickly for cereals, lunches and to go with meats for supper. There are some great wild rice blends out there now including a black rice. These unprocessed rices are far superior in taste and nutrition.

So take this week and plan some wonderful breakfasts free of preservatives, boxes...plan only real unprocessed foods. The internet is a good place to hunt around for recipes. Start with this small step and next week, plan on tackling lunches.