Although I made a meal plan and went grocery shopping before we began this challenge a week and a half ago, I feel like I had my first *real* unprocessed grocery trip this past weekend. During the week, I did a lot more research on this whole real food/unprocessed thing (shocking, I know), and I discovered that many things that I assumed were fine, really weren't: dairy products, oils, canned beans.
This week's grocery trip took the same amount of time and we spent about the same amount of money, but we bought less food and were so much more thoughtful about what we put in the cart.
In the dairy section, I read the labels of every mini-yogurt container for the kiddos, finally choosing Stonyfield baby (the little girl likes vanilla best) and a Chobani for the little guy (he likes strawberry). I checked out all of the cream cheeses, realizing that I couldn't buy any. I made sure that our cheddar only included milk and cheese culture (and annato for coloring, which stresses some people out, but it's a spice that I have in my cupboard and use so I have no problem with cheeses that use it). Hubby's usual half-and-half has some added stuff, but I found an organic brand with nothing but milk and cream; same thing with sour cream.
Unfortunately, there were no unrefined oils in the baking aisle, but I did find cold pressed EVOO. After my discovery that the canned beans have added crap, I bypassed them and picked up a couple of bags of dried.
The meats I chose (ground chicken, ground turkey, and boneless chicken breast) were minimally processed and had no added preservatives, the best I could do at the grocery store.
We spent the most amount of time in the produce aisles, and it's nice to put all of those fruits and veggies in the cart without reading ingredient labels; we bought organic where we could.
There wasn't a thing in the cart that didn't meet the kitchen test, and it was nice to feel good about the conveyer belt full of healthy food for my family. I'm looking forward to an improved weather forecast so we can go to the Farmer's Market and see what they have to offer.
Can't wait for Farmers Market weather. This all makes so much sense. Can you recommend any good information resources, esp. basic ones?
ReplyDeleteWow. You're doing such a great job! And the more you do it, the more you'll learn so you won't be reading each label. You'll be able to teach classes on going unprocessed :-)
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