Sunday, May 20, 2007

Organic eating




Eating organic is one of my biggest goals this year. As I started researching natural living I discovered how many pesticides and chemicals are in the food we eat. Eating organic is not just for your body but the environment as well. Organic food is made without chemicals so there are no chemicals washing into the ground and rivers. Plus there are no chemicals entering your body.

I really thought we were eating healthy. We always ate fresh fruits and veggies and I made sure we had lots of protein and grains in our diet. I would always get comments at work about the good food I brought. Rarely did I eat a TV dinner or go out for fast food. I guess in the large scale of how many Americans eat I was eating healthy but in reality I was not doing all I could do eat well.

When you realize you are shaping someone’s eating habits for the rest of their life you began to really look carefully at what you are doing. I decided we would have no more junk food sitting around the house. Although Stephen was not too pleased I stopped buying cookies and sugary snacks. Once we ate what we had it was gone and I was not going to buy more. If I really wanted cookies then I would make them at least then I knew what was going in to them and I could control the ingredients.

With our new budget eating out many times a week has ended. We now eat out about 2-3 times a month and other then that I cook dinner. This does not mean that I am spending hours everyday cooking. When we do have a frozen pizza or boxed pasta I make sure I have bought something with natural and organic ingredients. I do spend a lot of time now looking at the ingredients on packages and if I can not pronounce or I do not know what an ingredient is I tend to think again before buying it.

I am far from perfect and sometimes it is hard to find organic products so not everything we eat is organic. I do my best and I am lucky to have HEB which has a lot of organic products. Some things are more important to buy organic then others. I put dairy products (especially milk and eggs), fruits and vegetables, and baking supplies at the top of my list. Yes it can be more expensive to buy organic but the benefits are well worth it.
You do not have to change everything at once. I was way overwhelmed in January and February until I decided to give myself a year to go natural now I love every step because I do not feel rushed or forced. So I am asking you to try something little switch one or two things to organic and go from there. If we spend our money on organic products companies will began to understand that we do not want the chemical products in our body.


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