In the last post I told you about the food challenges at my house. However, we also do very well in some areas. For example…
Organic and minimally processed – we buy most food in organic form and avoid junk like high fructose corn syrup and other additives in foods as much as possible. We also buy foods closer to real form than not – i.e. whole organic oats vs. oats with added sugar and spices.
Dave and the kids
Label reading – we’re big time label readers at my house. We read labels before we buy and compare labels to see which food is the healthier choice if there is a choice.
Bulk buying – bulk purchases save on packaging and we buy a fair amount of stuff in bulk, using reusable bags and containers. ALTHOUGH when we get busy we’re worse about this (see prepacked issue above)
Whole grains – we never eat white bread at our house. We always choose whole grain, whole wheat breads, rice, crackers and other grain-based items. The one exception is tortillas – we eat white flour tortillas because we haven’t found a whole grain tortilla we all like.
We don’t eat much meat – we do eat fish and poultry, but rarely and we’ve discussed going total vegetarian again. I was a vegetarian for 15 years, Cedar for 7 and Dave for about 15 too I believe. As it is we eat many meatless meals which is both greener and healthier than meat meals.
Fruits & veggies – at bare minimum everyone in my house should be eating 2 full cups of veggies per day and 2.5 cups of fruit, although personally I think that’s slim and also requirements are different for everyone. Dave, Cedar and me all get above and beyond our daily produce servings. We eat fruits or veggies with every single meal to an excess. Cedar is a produce freak and will even order veggies or fruits as side dishes if we go out to eat with no urging from the adults. I seriously doubt Dave’s girls are meeting their vegetable and fruit requirements on a daily basis, but we’re working on it when they’re here so overall our produce intake is a success.
Cedar gets a healthy lunch – Cedar’s school is small and there’s no school lunch program in place, but that’s fine with us. His school voted to ban high fructose corn syrup and his packed-by-me and him lunches usually include two veggies, fruits, a whole grain sandwich, muffin or roll, some whole grain crackers and water.
We drink tap water - we never buy bottled water for the house.
Eating together - we almost always eat at the table as a family vs. in front of the TV or apart. This has more positive impacts on your family’s eating habits then you might think.
Soda-free – for years I didn’t drink soda. When I met Dave he did drink soda and I started drinking soda again – but it’s not all his fault. It’s not like I don’t have freedom of choice. Soda is REALLY bad for you. Basically, we decided to quit drinking soda at home a few months ago. I will buy organic root beer to make root beer ice pops, but overall we’ve been good about keeping the house soda free for a while now.
Our biggest success – is likely Dave’s kids, especially his oldest daughter. As noted above we’re dealing with breaking some really bad food habits. They’re not used to eating healthy foods. However, Dave’s older daughter has been fairly receptive to healthier food. Not at first – trust me it’s taken a lot of time. However, we serve huge amounts of vegetables and fruits at most meals so she’s getting used to it. Now she’ll eat most, if not all of the vegetables and fruit on her plate.
If I make a snack of whole grain crackers and fruit for my son, I make enough for all three of them and Dave’s kids eat the snack too now. Also, the girls are not automatically asking for chips, soda and fast food anymore.
The girls eat school lunches but since they’re not here for school it’s hard to control that – but I’ve heard horror stories about them from the girls and Dave’s youngest daughter tells me, “I want to choose something that looks healthy, but the school doesn’t serve anything that is…” That’s depressing BUT on a good note it shows she’s thinking about what she’s eating which rocks. Overall, Dave’s kids are slowly coming around which has been an interesting process because I’m used to Cedar who does like vegetables. I’ve had zero experience with kids who never eat vegetables. To see them come around is really cool – It shows that it’s never too late to teach kids to eat better.
You tell me – what are some of the food successes at your house?
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You don’t have the control over another household like you would your own. My son complained about school lunches and it sounded like he was throwing it away. I cut off the school lunch money, and made him pick out the things he would eat from the store. Then he had to make his own lunches. That’s what worked for us last year.