evaluating our eating

article from the NYT Magazine entitled: "Unhappy Meals." it is a very, very, very long article but it really got me to thinking & evaluating the way my family eats. there were a slew of principles that i will list here that challenged me a great deal. the main point he makes is this: "eat food. not too much. mostly plants." then he proceeds in a couple thousand words to unpack that. he also goes through some of the history of finding nutrients in food and the science of nutrition. it basically thinks it is pretty bogus because what you need in terms of vitamins & minerals are in "real" foods, not created foods..... so eat an apple.

here are the main things that i am evaluating (he had 9 rules of thumb; i'm not listing them all):

1. eat food - not foodlike items (such as non-dairy creamer and cereal bars - your great-grandmother would have no idea what that was)

2. avoid food products that have ingredients that you can't pronounce or an unfamiliar or that contain high-fructose corn syrup (he says that stuff is bad...do you think it includes twizzlers)

3. pay more, eat less. most americans spend 10% of their income on food; in 1947 we spent 24%. we are more concerned with quantity & reduced price than with quality.
SIDENOTE: we just did our budget and we definitely went for the cheap dinner meal plan. we are going back to the drawing board to rethink what the priority is.

4. eat mostly plants.... that means leaves.

5. cook. food should not be cheap and easy.... it means moving away from food being fuel and back to it being about communion. "the culture of the kitchen contains more wisdom about diet than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism."

so there you have it. things that i am thinking about for my family.