'eat your veggies ...'

“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine

or the slowest form of poison.”

This idea of eating well and making healthy food choices is nothing new in our household, however there are a few thoughts about food that I wanted to reenforce!

First...
Stay away from anything artificial;
artificial colors, flavors, preservatives & sweeteners.
Avoid processed foods;
bleached flour, trans fats & additives.
Steer clear of...
hormones and/or antibiotics

Sadly these rules are not so easy to follow in our society/culture. Even if the packaging claims to be healthy, that might not be the case. The best thing to do is to read the labels and check the ingredients, and/or stick with unprocessed food, real food, that doesn't need a label!!!

The food you eat is what fuels your body and what you eat or don't eat will influence all aspects of your life, from your day to day activities to the quality and duration of your lifetime!!
Your choice of diet will affect you in a myriad of ways; certain foods can make you calm or jumpy, focused or distracted, smarter or not, energized or tired, and the list can go on and on.
And as much as I could write for pages and pages about nutrition and healthy choices, I am going to list a few things here that I believe are very important and which I want to emphasize:

1. stay away from all foods labeled 'diet', 'fat-free' and 'sugar-free'!!
these labels mean that something that natural has been taken out AND something manmade has been added to compensate for what was removed!!! And these additives are foreign to our bodies and can cause more problems and issues when the body attempts to digest it.
It is now known that the additives that are added to make foods fat-free are not digestible and can deadly effects on the body. I want to stress the importance from staying away from sugar substitutes, especially for you two. When you were both little if you had anything 'sugar-free' you would get stomach aches!! and the really scary thing is sometimes it does even say 'sugar-free' but if you look at the ingredients, there is no sugar, but there would be one of these: aspartame, sucralose, neotame or saccharin.

2. eat and use REAL food
(this is along the same lines as rule #1) Eat REAL food and cook with REAL food!!!
Use real sugar (you don't need to eat loads of sugar but I believe real sugar is better than a sugar substitute) Eat real butter, real ice cream. Or if you are going to choose a substitute make sure it is a natural substitute,
that it comes from a natural plant!! and NOT a chemical plant!!!

3. try to eat whole foods, not processed foods
the more 'processed' a food is the more of its natural goodness is lost. The best thing to do is eat 'whole foods':

foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible, before being consumed

Remember that whatever process that your food has endured, such as bleaching flour so it is white, that food is going to bring that process into your body.
It is the same with coffee filters!! Buy unbleached coffee filters, there is no difference except that the bleached filters most likely will add bleach to your coffee!!!

4. what you put in your body is what your body uses ...
so if you put junk your body, your body only has junk to help it do all the amazing things that your body does!!! and it is truly amazing when you think of it ... breathing, moving, thinking, feeling ...

5. don't always trust expiration dates
I know you aren't going to take my word on this so I am quote some experts:

“Let common sense — and your senses —be your guide. If something smells rotten, curdles or turns a suspicious color, toss it in the trash.”

In general, perishable foods such as meat, poultry, eggs and dairy get dates. But those dates aren’t always about spoilage. Some dates simply inform retailers when products are at their best for freshness, taste and texture.

“Here’s a superbly-kept secret: All those dates on food products — sell by, use by, best before — almost none of those dates indicate the safety of food, and generally speaking, they’re not regulated in the way many people believe,” a 2013 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic writes.The report found that up to 90 percent of consumers have thrown out food based on expiration dates, assuming the food is unsafe to eat. This sort of mentality only leads to food waste."

"According to the Cleveland Clinic, milk is usually safe to drink two to three days after its “use by” date, assuming it doesn’t smell spoiled. Butter and eggs will usually last several weeks after you purchase them, but keep them in the back of the fridge to improve preservation as it’s colder there. If you’re ever concerned about a food’s longevity, freeze it — this will keep the food safe and preserved for months."

& as they say in Holland,