Category Archives: processed food

New Segment: What We Ate

I’ve had several people ask me what I eat in a normal day, especially if I try not to use processed foods very much.  It’s been a very long transition, so most of this stuff seems pretty easy to me now.  When I think back to when I first started I was a completely lost, so I hope this helps give some ideas to someone out there…I think I’ll make this a new segment, and I’ll try to take pics of everything in the future.

This is not a perfect day, but pretty good.

Breakfast:  Bagels and cream cheese (we don’t normally have bagels but they were leftover from company in town), fruit salad made up of fresh pineapple, oranges, and apples

Snack: Raisins

Lunch: Ham Sandwiches (leftover from a honey baked ham we had recently), sweet potatoes sprinkled with brown sugar and butter, cottage cheese

Snack:  Dried Fruit Mix (the kind with no added sugar or preservatives…just fruit)

Dinner:  Sweet and Sour Chicken over Rice (Original Recipe from my MIL)

 

Ingredients:

  • 2 Meaty Thighs
  • 3/4 Cup Water
  • 1 Cup Ketchup
  • 1 Large Onion, chopped
  • 1 Can Chunk Pineapple
  • 1/2 Cup Vinegar
  • 3/4 Cup Sugar ( I use less of this and pour in pineapple juice to sweeten it up)
  • 1 tsp. Salt
  • 2 Tbs Corn Starch (sometimes does not need)
  • 1/4 Cup Water
  • 1 Green Pepper, chopped

Directions:

Boil and debone the chicken.  Fry meat with the onion and green pepper in small amount of oil until vegetable is tender.  Add 3/4 cup water, ketchup, sugar, salt, pineapple juice (drained from the can of chunk pineapple).  Simmer.  Thicken sauce with the cornstarch, diluted in 1/4 cup water.  Stir until thickened.  Serve over warm, cooked rice.

My hubby took one bite of this and said, “mmmmm…tastes just like Sybil’s.”  His mom is an amazing cook.  The boys liked it too and it’s a pretty easy yummy dinner.  We also ate a salad and some sort of side vegetable…probably peas.

There you have it – a typical day in our house.  We normally eat meat about once a week, so I guess this was the day!

Nature Knows Better

This has been floating around on the internet the past couple of days.  Thanks to my good friend Lauren for sending it to me.  I absolutely love it.

Top Right: Margarine

Left:  Reduced-Fat Margarine

Bottom Right:  Natural Butter

This is my whole viewpoint on what we should be eating: REAL food from REAL food sources.  Man-made stuff is junk.  Eat what grows naturally.  What is butter made out of? Milk.  What is margarine made out of?  Completely man-made and processed poison.  I’ve got to hand it to the ants on this one.  They won’t always be right (like when they are crowding around a pile of leaky garbage or a slobbery wad of skittles), but this time they nailed it.  Something to think about.

New Change

Remember how I only allow myself to make one major change every 2 months (you can also look at the “Where do I Begin?” section at the top to get ideas of what changes to make)?  Well, March is upon us so it’s time for the next one.  January was the start of making my own bread, and it’s been great.  I make 3 loaves about every 10 days, and pop them in the freezer until I need them.  Anyway, my next major change is going to be absolutely no food coloring.  I don’t use it often, because we try not to have many processed foods in the house, but sometimes I use it to make green pancakes for St. Patrick’s Day, or for decorating cakes or something.

I was reading some stuff on Wikipedia (so it MUST be true, right) about the kinds of things permitted to be added to our food and it’s horrifying.  Many kinds of artificial colorings are banned in other countries, but not in the states.  Check out the first one listed: Brilliant Blue.

“As a blue color, Brilliant Blue FCF is often found in ice cream, canned processed peas, packet soups, bottled food colorings, icings, ice pops,blue raspberry flavored products, dairy products, sweets[2] and drinks. It is also used in soaps, shampoos, mouthwash[3] and other hygiene and cosmetics applications. In soil science, Brilliant Blue is applied in tracing studies to visualize infiltration and water distribution in the soil.

Brilliant Blue FCF has previously been banned in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerlandamong others[citation needed] but has been certified as a safe food additive in the EU and is today legal in most of the countries. It has the capacity for inducing an allergic reaction in individuals with pre-existing moderate asthma.[4] In the United States production exceeds 1 million pounds annually, and daily consumption is around 16 mg per person.[citation needed] Extensive testing has led the National Institutes of Health to conclude that color additives do not cause hyperactivity.[5] ”

Does this concern anyone else?  And 1 million pounds annually?  Why is it allowed here and not in those other countries?  Yikes.  Pretty nutso.  Anyway, click on a few other colors and look under “Health and Safety.”  That’s enough to make me use spinach as a green dye, and beets for red, instead of food coloring for the next little while.  Here we go, March and April.  Coloring’s out!

Want to See a Tiny Camera go Through Your Digestive Tract?

The Mr. showed me this article in The Huffington Post a couple of weeks ago.  If you can get over the annoying commentator, it’s pretty interesting stuff.  It shows what happens when you eat Top Ramen, Gatorade, and Gummy Bears versus Homemade Noodles. If you are squeamish about bodily juices and stuff, don’t watch it. ;)

Bottom line:  Food coloring basically has no federal regulations, and processed food is digested completely differently in your body than whole foods.

Book Summary – The China Study, Part 1 Continued

Chapter 4:  Lessons from China

  • In the early 1970′s a survey was conducted in the entire country of China, which revealed that cancer was geographically localized.  In some areas, cancer rates were 100 times the rates of the lower areas (in the U.S. we see at most 2 to 3 times, so 100 times is enormous).
  • Why?  This was the beginning of “The China Study.”
  • In the USA, 15-16% of total calories comes from protein (80% of that protein is animal protein), and in rural China, only 9-10% total calories come from protein (only 10% of that is from animal sources).
  • The Chinese are consuming an average of 2641 calories, with 14.5% fat, and Americans are consuming 1989 calories with 38% fat.   The Chinese eat higher calories, less fat, less protein, less animal protein, more fiber, and more iron.
  • Diseases of Affluence (Nutritional Extravagance): Cancer, Diabetes, Coronary Heart Disease
  • Diseases of Poverty (Nutritional Inadequacy and Poor Sanitation):Pneumonia, Ulcers, Digestive Diseases, Tuberculosis, Parasitic Diseases, Rheumatic Heart Disease.  Notice no cancer!
  • One of the strongest predictors of Western Diseases (diseases of affluence) is blood cholesterol.
  • Lower blood cholesterol levels are linked to lower rates of heart disease, cancer, and other western diseases.
  • Many prominent heart doctors have never seen a heart disease fatality among their patients with a blood cholesterol level below 150.
  • Nutrients from plant-based foods are associated with decreasing levels of blood cholesterol.
  • There is a lot of confusion among scientists regarding questions with dietary fat – how much, what kind, Omega-6 or 3, what kinds of oils are okay, etc.  When details are studied in isolation, results can be misleading.  We need to look at how networks of chemicals behave instead.
  • Only 2-3% of all cancers are attributed to genes.  The rest are strongly influenced by diet.
  • There is an interesting relationship with dietary fat and breast cancer.  Higher fat can influence early menstruation, high cholesterol, late menopause, and higher exposure to female hormones.  This can extend the reproductive life from beginning to end by 9-10 years.  This extra decade of exposure to hormones can greatly influence a woman’s risk of breast cancer.
  • A large survey in China revealed that the average age of a woman’s first period was 15-19 years old.  In America, the average age is 11.
  • The more colorful your produce, the higher antioxidant levels, which shield you from free-radicals (cancer-causing agents).
  • Again, the benefits do not lie in an individual nutrient or mineral, but in the whole food.
  • Don’t reach for a vitamin.  Eat it in a fruit or vegetable instead.
  • The Atkins diet reaks havoc on your system.  Don’t do it.
  • The low-carb diet craze is unfortunate.  Carbs are our friends.  Just make sure they are from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.    Many people think they are eating a healthy vegetarian diet by eating lots of pastas, highly processed crackers and chips, white flour, etc.  This is the reason carbs have gotten a bad rap.  That is the stuff that puts on weight and doesn’t add nutritional value.
  • Chinese are more physically active than Americans.  Their calorie intake is 30% higher, yet their body weight is 20% lower.
  • They are eating the right foods (plant-based protein, fruits, vegetables, whole grains) and riding their bikes!

Frustrated

Blogs are a weird thing because you can kind of be an “alter-ego.”  You can post about the very best things and parts of life, and readers go on getting depressed that they don’t have the picture-perfect marriage, the most attractive and obedient children, the cutest house, the most exciting lifestyle, the best recipes, and the hardest body.  It’s like keeping up with the Joneses but worse and way more in your face.  I like to keep it real because I think it helps other people relate, and it makes everyone feel better.  So I have a confession:

I fed my kids Hot Pockets for dinner on Friday.  Say WHAAAAAAAT?  Yup.  We had a free coupon a while back so they were just sitting in the freezer “for emergencies.”  I guess I thought I’d never break them open.  Friday was a pretty good day, but by 5:00 I was completely out of steam and when I got a call from The Mr. saying he wouldn’t be home for a while, I just couldn’t muster up the energy to make a dinner from scratch (plus we literally had zero food in the house).  The little angel and devil popped up on my shoulders.  ”How about Hot Pockets?”  ”NOOOOOOO!  I can’t feed that to my babies!”  But guess what, sometimes we have to give ourselves a break.  Do I usually give my kids lots of nutritious yummy foods?  Yes.  Are they happy and healthy?  Yes.  Is one tiny hot pocket over the course of their childhood going to give them colon cancer?   No.  So I did it.  It was done in 60 seconds and devoured in the same amount of time.  And I smiled and I felt fine.   So there you have it.  Granola Mom isn’t perfect.  Give yourselves a break and just do the best you can!

So on to the next topic.  I am extremely frustrated and completely stressed out.  I heard somewhere that if you read 10 books on one subject you are considered an expert.  So what happens if you read twice as many nutrition books and you are more confused than before you read any thing at all?  I am so sick of not knowing who/what is right and feeling guilty despite my best efforts to provide good nutrition for my family.  In the past month alone I have read/watched/skimmed/listened to the following arguments, from very passionate researchers, who all provided convincing arguments:

1.  Animal protein is extremely bad for you and will cause cancer.

2.  High-quality animal protein is beneficial to optimal health.

3.  All dairy needs to be cut out of diet.  This will cure many diseases.  Don’t ever feed your baby or children cow’s milk.

4.  ”My father-in-law is a Pediatric Neurologist and he says all children should drink whole milk until the age of 12.”

5.  Whole grains are the best kind to eat, but not “modern and processed” whole grains.

6.  A book called “Wheat Belly” just came out that claims ALL grains are bad for you, and they are what is keeping Americans fat.

7.  Pasteurized milk is healthy.

8.  Pasteurizing milk kills important bacteria and enzymes that are needed for nutrients to be properly absorbed.  Drink raw milk instead.

9.  My pediatrician told me Tornado needs to drink 3 pediasures a day to be on the right weight curve, and if his weight is not where she wants it in a month she is re-testing him for allergies, Cystic Fibrosis (which he does not have), Celiacs, or other digestive disorders.

10. The very next day I took him to a dietician who told me that he was perfectly fine and healthy, especially for a baby who was breastfed and that 2 pounds gained in 2 months was “awesome.”  She sees hundreds of babies with the very same issue where the dr. is freaking out because they are not on “traditional curves” compared to formula fed babies.  It isn’t necessary to give him any pediasure.  Just real food and real fats.

11.  Give fluoride to your children.  It will prevent cavities

12.  Flouride is poison.

13.  The food guide pyramid is what you should eat.

14.  You will never know the truth about nutrition, because the government health programs are so corrupt that it will never be permitted to be printed.

So my friends, what is a mother to do?  Should I just stop listening to all these different sources with conflicting information (and the research to back it up) and just go with my intuition?  I literally stress out any time I think about giving my children anything to eat!  It’s insane.  Who do I listen to?   Do pediatricians really know anything about nutrition?   Real nutrition?  Or are they just taught what the general population is taught (Food Guide Pyramid and all that stuff) which so many activists are against?  Who can I trust?

I suppose that is why I am doing this blog.  Hopefully I can keep learning as I go, and read and study and get more knowledge, but for now, my philosophy is this:

I will feed my family whole foods that I cooked in my own home, as much as I can.  And all those questions…I will let them roll off my back until I gain enough knowledge to feel sure about them.  If I do make changes, I will make them very slowly so as not to get overwhelmed, and that’s as much as I am thinking about it.  The rest of my “worry” time I will spend having fun with the fam and giving myself a break for not being perfect.  Who’s with me?

 

Happy New Year! And Resolutions!

Hey everyone.  I hope you are all safe tonight and have a smashing time ringing in the New Year!  The Wild One caught a little stomach bug so we are keeping it pretty low-key this year.  Once the kids are snuggled in their beds The Mr. and I are cozying up with a movie and some homemade ice cream (recipe coming soon!).

I am starting up the No Processed Foods Challenge again this week…Probably about January 4th because it will take me that long to get my act together.  Feel free to join me!  Even if you only decide to do it for 3 days, or for a week.  You have four days to talk yourself into it.  You will feel a HUGE difference.  I have been noticing the side effects of “eating normally” again – most notably that I can’t run as fast or far without cramping or not being able to breathe. :)

Here are some of Granola Mom’s New Year’s Resolutions:

+ Take better pictures!  I am signed up for a photography class and am so excited about it!

+ Read one book a month minimum – Sounds pretty lame, but you’d be surprised at how hard it is for me to find the time/energy to do this!

+ Get more sleep – Going to try to be in bed by 10:30, which seems absolutely impossible as I am typing this.  When there is a will, there’s a way!

I have a couple more personal ones I am working on too, but that’s the gist of it.  Notice how there is nothing in there about my body, weight, or diet.  Feel free to jump on that bandwagon and find more emotionally healthy goals.

Here’s to Health and Happiness in the New Year from the Granola Fam!

Book Review: In Defense of Food Part 1

I’ve been reading this book for a while.  I’ve skimmed through it lots in years past, but decided I really needed to read it in detail this time around.  Man alive, sometimes it takes me MONTHS to get through a tiny book and it’s mostly because I have young babies and by the end of the night I see a book on the nightstand next to the ipad, and let’s be honest – sometimes you just really need to veg (I catch up on tv shows).  Hulu anyone?  Anyway, this last week I plowed through a big section of this book (and took NOTES and EVERYTHING!), and I need to sum it up for you: It’s awesome.  Read it.  It will change the way you look at food forever.

Here’s the first third: In Defense of Food -”Eat (Real) Food, not too much, mostly plants.”

Part 1:  The Age of Nutritionism

  • Pollan’s aim is to help us reclaim health and happiness as eaters.
  • Most of the nutritional advice we’ve received has made us less healthy and fatter.
  • We are orthorexics (people with an unhealthy obsession with eating).
  • He blames industrialization, advertising, and nutritionalism.

1 – From Food to Nutrients: 

  • We have stopped looking at foods as a whole, and instead focus on nutrients.  Ex. milk is not a food, but viewed as protein, calcium, fat, and water.

2 – Nutritionism Defined:

  • Viewing food as a collective whole made up of chemical parts, and putting emphasis on those parts.

3 – Nutritionism Comes to Market:

  • Margarine was the forerunner as the first manufactured fake food.
  • A series of laws passed.  First, a pink dye was placed in manufactured foods so the consumer was well aware that it was not natural.  After that didn’t do wonders for sales, labels then had to include the word “imitation” if something wasn’t real.  This obviously put a damper on consumers’ excitement to buy the products, so things evolved until as long as a product was engineered to have the same nutrient qualities (ex. had 20 g of carbohydrates), they didn’t have to use the word “imitation.”
  • Enter Hydrogenated oils.  Much cheaper, and in EVERYTHING.

4 – Food Science Golden Age:

  • Food manufacturers reign supreme!  At this point, anything is possible with food.
  • Foods that formerly had two or three ingredients now had additives to increase shelf life, or entice consumers (ex.  more fiber!).
  • Depending on dieting trends, food scientists alter foods to fit the demand.  (ex.  during the Atkins trend, bread and pasta became low-carb and high protein).
  • Whole foods remain for the most part unchangeable, but can be marketed according to trends to play it up (ex.  pomegranates are high in antioxidants).
  • Sugary Cereals  now say “Whole Grain Goodness,”  and people think it is healthy.

5 – The Melting of the Lipid Hypothesis

  • Lipid Hypothesis:  Fat is responsible for chronic disease.  What has this claim done to America?  Nothing health-wise, and has made things worse.
  • pg.  41 “Hold on just a minute.  Are you really saying the whole low-fat deal was bogus?  But my supermarket is still packed with low-fat this and no-cholesterol that!  My doctor is still on me about my cholesterol and telling me to switch to low-fat everything.”  Basically, yes. (Makes me think of this song).
  • Nutrition Scientists at Harvard School of Public Health have been researching this for years.  In 2001 they reported:  “It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences.”  (??????!!!!!!)
  • Trans-fat is the exception.  That is poison.  Get it out of the house.

6 – Eat Right, Get Fatter

  • We did cut down on fat, but as a result at a larger amount of food in the form of low-fat carbs.
  • The message was “Eat more low-fat foods.”  Food companies had a hay day.

7 – Beyond the Pleasure Principle

  • It is getting increasingly harder to know what to eat.  When you try to, you have to stay up to date on science, know what all the ingredients mean, and learn to enjoy engineered foods.
  • It has taken the pleasure out of eating and added in worry, guilt, overindulgence, confusion, etc.
  • Eating healthy is not following our palate, but conventional scientific “rules” we should live by.

Chapters 8, 9, 10 

  • Give Nutritionists and Food Scientists a break – studying nutrition is way harder than it first appears.
  • Goes into detail about the different kinds of research methods, their praises and their flaws
  • Reveals some interesting data of the layperson’s view of “nutrition” or “health.”

***

So the first section is a bit more science based, but don’t discount it for that reason.  I am starting to get to some really juicy stuff in the next section.  Stay tuned for the rest of the summary next week.

Hope you have a great weekend.  Ours started off with a bang when we went to a smashing “Ugly Sweater Party.”

Yes, those are rhinestone snowflakes I glued on all by myself.  Crafty, eh?

Processed Foods Defined

I’ve been writing a good deal about this stuff since my 30-day challenge, and I’ve gotten some questions about what my definition of a processed food is.  It’s a complicated question, but here is the process I go through and my philosophy on it all:

1.  Eat food as close to its natural form as possible

The less steps from natural form to your house, the better.  Like if you buy whole wheat flour, it has gone through two steps when the wheat germ was removed and the wheat kernels were ground into flour.  Would I like to buy my own wheat kernels (or better yet grow it in the backyard) and harvest and grind it?  Yes, but it isn’t possible at the moment.  I have to take second best.  More thoughts on the matter:

  • Example:  Corn Chex – What is the natural form?  Corn.  It’s had to go through many many stages to get made into that waffled square, even though it is considered a “healthy” cereal.  Many things were added, many things taken away, many things altered.
  • Example:  Produce –  This is a seemingly easy one.  Obviously an apple’s original form is an apple.  But then think about this…Was it an apple picked from an orchard just a few miles from the store, or was it an apple genetically-engineered to grow larger/faster, sprayed with toxic chemicals, picked green, and ripened on a truck?  Kinda frustrating isn’t it?   This is why I love farmers markets and backyard gardens.
  • Dairy products:  This kind of falls in the same boat as produce.  What is the natural form of cheese?  milk.  Pretty good in my book.  But now I am starting to think about what KIND of cow it came from and what that cow ate, and how it was raised.
  • I don’t have a farm so i am forced to buy some packaged things.  Even buying something very close to its natural form, like peanut butter has to be processed and packaged at a plant.  Which brings me to my next point.  When you have to buy a processed food (meaning bought in a package of some sort) make sure that…

2.  The ingredients on the label are real foods.  No additives or preservatives or things you cannot pronounce.

  • Example:  Bread – Do you know the ingredients of homemade bread?  Flour, Yeast, Salt, Oil, and Honey or Sugar.  Compare that with Sara Lee’s 100% whole wheat bread.  Water, Stone Ground Whole Wheat Flour, Wheat Gluten, Cottonseed Fiber, Yeast, Brown Sugar, Salt, Vegetable Oil (Soybean Oil, and/or Cottonseed Oil), Yeast Nutrients (Monocalcium Phosphate, Calcium Sulfate, Ammonium Sulfate), Dough Conditioners (May Contain One or More of the Following Mono and Diglycerides, Ethoxylated Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Calcium Peroxide), Honey, Wheat Bran, Wheat Protein Isolate, Sulfiting Agents, Vinegar, Natural Flavor, Soy Lecithin, Guar Gum, Sucralose, Cornstarch, L-Cysteine, Sorbic Acid, and Calcium Propionate (Preservatives).  Wow.  This would be considered a “healthy” food by most people.  But what exactly are we consuming?  To be honest, I am not really sure…
  • I think you get the idea here.  Packaged, boxed items that are considered “food”  but that contain mostly manufactured ingredients.

During this challenge, I’ve been trying to make from scratch a lot of things I would normally buy like bread or crackers.  We have all felt wonderful during these last several days.

I’ve made an executive decision, however.  The challenge will now be shortened due to the holidays.  I love the challenge, and I am going to do it again, several times (join in!), but there are just too many traditions that I want the kiddos to be able to participate in, i.e. gingerbread houses, hot chocolate, and candy canes.  It’s the holidays!!  No, we won’t go crazy, and we will continue to limit the processed foods, but a little indulgence this time of year is okay in my book.  You understand.  SO having said that, our last day will be this Friday.  It will have been a 2 week challenge (a very AWESOME two weeks).  Looking forward to the next one.

Low-Fat / Sugar-Free

I recently read a blog post (here) that brought up some things I have been thinking about lately, so I wanted to share.  I’ve been sitting here scouring over the many nutrition books I have in our bookcase trying to find studies and info on this topic, but I can’t!  I will just speak from memory (I hope you don’t mind)…take it for what it’s worth.

I used to be a certified personal trainer.  I only used it a bit, but it frustrated me that there are so many misconceptions in the “health industry” and people have things ingrained in their heads.  It is very difficult to get people to change the way they think, especially if it is the opposite of what they have always heard, and especially when “experts” and the media are constantly throwing them messages.  There’s been a huge “low-fat” craze in America for the past couple decades.  Nutritionists, Scientists, Professors, and even Doctors have been recommending a low-fat diet to boost our health and prevent disease.  The ironic thing is that since the low-fat craze started, we’ve actually gotten fatter and sicker.  I know other factors play a role too, but the low-fat thing has a lot to do with it, in my opinion.  Sugar has been a culprit too and the food industry has come up with all kinds of products to replace it (ie nutrasweet, which ended up in an extensive controversy).  I’ve been thinking a lot about this because for these products to hit the market, people have to mess with the molecular structure of a food.  It can’t be good.  We have been consuming fake food and thinking it’s healthy.  It irks me.  I always envision eating something that is not meant to be eaten, like cardboard.  Can your body digest it?  Yes, but that doesn’t mean that you should eat it, or that it’s good for you.  Although I am convinced that if they added enough things to a piece of cardboard they could get it to taste good.  Slap a few labels on there about it being filled with fiber or protein and we’d have a frenzy in the grocery store.  Tricky guys, those food manufacturers.

Anyway, going back to the low-fat fad, here’s the breakdown:

1.  We need fat.  Our brain is made up of 60% fat, and the neurons inside are wrapped in a sheath made up of mostly fat.  Some vitamins can only be absorbed if fat is present in your diet.  Cell walls in the body have fat that determines the permeability of the cell.  It’s a good thing.

2.  There are good fats and bad fats:  Trans fats are man-made and absolutely HORRIBLE for you.  Avoid them at all costs.  Saturated fats (mostly in animal products) aren’t the best either, but even some studies have not shown a link between saturated fat and diseases.  Eat natural fats mostly produced by plants and you’ll be set.  Nuts, avocados, fresh fish, olive oil, etc.

3.  I won’t go into detail about monounsaturated, polyunsaturated fats or omega-3s or omega-6s, but I will say this:  Fats are made up of a certain number of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms.  Low-fat or sugar-free products have messed with the molecular structure of things: breaking a double bond here, or adding on an atom there, etc.  It changes the shape of the molecules to where the body processes it completely differently.  It’s horrible on your system and horrible for you.

I have not purchased anything low-fat or low-sugar or sugar-free for years and years, and I have also not looked at the nutrition labels (aside from ingredients) for the same amount of time.  Eat real food.  It will not make you fat.  Fake food is the culprit, and the sooner we recognize it, the sooner we can start getting our health back.

Off my soapbox. :)

Day 4 of no processed foods went great.  More to report tomorrow.