My Basic Foundation

Okay..I am going to back up a few steps and just state my main foundation for the way our family eats. Pure and Simple - eating real food.

**Vegetables that grow from the ground

**spices made from herbs

**fruit and nuts that grow on trees and vines.

**good natural oils that come from pressing fruits and seeds

**meat, seafood, dairy, eggs, items that come from animals

Now I am not saying everyone has to eat all of these things! I have much respect for those that don't eat all types of food available!!!

But going back hundreds..well thousands of years ago the food that was available.....was only what the good lord provided. And still to this day real food and water provides you with all the right things to keep you healthy. It keeps you energized, it keeps you well.

Feed your body and your immune system good food and it will work for you. It will fight all the germs you pick up and it will provide you the energy to make it through everyday with a kick in your step. We did not wait 2000 years for the makers of diet coke, red bull, nyquil and sudafed to make us feel good and get better :)

SOOOOOO.....with this whole idea in mind build your diet around all these real foods and all the different ways you can mix and match them to create food. Let me give you a few examples of how food has evolved here in America...the way I see it!!

Okay someone took a potato and sliced it up and cooked it in some nice oil with some salt and so was born the potato chip - yummy, very natural and good. I eat them, my kids eat them. Chips, with potatoes, oil and salt. Lays makes them and so does every other chip maker!! just don't eat half a bag!

But, slowly the industry started adding flavors to them, which you can easily do by adding herbs..still very natural and good, BUT now we are in a full blown add a bunch crap to a potato, can not find any good flavored chips anymore!! And on top of that - americans decided to formulate the Dorito, which isn't even made from a potato at all, it's just a bunch of combined processed food to form something our body doesn't even recognize or use! sure they taste good, but they aren't real...you get me? Find the real potato chips, look at the ingredients!!

Condiments are wonderful examples too - because so many of them began as they should - mix a few real food items and voila - you have something different, something tasty!! all is well! For instance Mayonnaise, an item I use all the time - real food mixed. once upon a time someone took some oil, water, eggs, lemon juice and vinegar and mixed it all up and had a yummy combo - it's called mayo!!! Nowadays it's hard to find mayo on the shelf that doesn't have a LOAD OF CRAP in it......and then there is the horrid knock off that followed - Miracle whip....King of Crap! nothing real in there at all! And somewhere down the road mayo got a bad wrap for being fattening!! Well wipe all that fat grams, sugar grams, everything grams on the back of the label out of your head. It all doesn't matter in the grand scheme of - is it real or isn't it???? Your body uses the real food for good things in your body. you feed it additives, corn syrup, cellulose this and polysorbate that with 0 grams of fat and you will be FAT!!!!!! okay I buy this brand - Best Foods, although on the east side of the Mississippi where I live, it is called Hellman's. I buy the regular mayo - Feel free to look around and compare ingredients, it's a nice lesson. The light and all the other variations are just extra crap added. you really can't "lighten" oil, water, eggs, lemons or vinegar...so the point is missed, don't fall for the marketing...not even the nice Olive oil or canola label...it's got crap too!!!! I know the Hellman's original does have sugar in the ingredients...but my own rule of thumb..since I am not perfect....there is only 7 ingredients, so everything used to make it - is real, they added sugar, it's at the bottom of the list, I am okay with that small amount.

Okay, this is getting long and I have so much left to say...but I do want to go to one of my comments from a few days ago about what noodles do I buy? given that I center our meals around real food, we rarely eat Pasta. It has nothing to do with carbs or anything crazy like that. It is just the simple fact that noodles for me are not quite real. At some point in time some Awesome Italian man or woman baked up a nice noodle made from some really nice wheat or whatever and I bet it was fabulous......but modern day america......the noodle isn't a real food item that helps my body. You never see pasta listed anywhere with a list of nice vitamins and anti-oxidents. And Wheat is one of the things I don't know that much about, so I do plan on doing quite a bit of research this year, so I know for myself what the benefits of wheat are. With that said, we still eat a pasta item usually once a month. Most of the time it's spaghetti. So I do buy a 100% whole wheat spaghetti noodle. But when I make my dish, I buy a can of tomato sauce that is just tomatoes and spices ------ no sugar, or corn syrup added, I add in all my own spices, olive oil, everything known to man like garlic and oregano, basil, you name it, then I add a bunch of vegi's - mushrooms, bell pepper, onion, and ground beef. Then I feel like the meal has some benefit by adding all the vegi's and meat. you could do the same with a jarred sauce...just pick the one with the best ingredients, I know they all have sugar as an ingredient..just avoid the corn syrup and all the crap!! Baby steps, remember!!!

Okay Happy Eating and I'll see you next week!!!!