It is delicious. It is creating a good feeling and then a good memory. It is addictive. It is purposefully created to make us crave more, so that we spend more of our hard earned dollars on it. What am I referring to? The S.A.D. Diet. The Standard American Diet is often referred to as the S.A.D. diet and it is very sad indeed. It is what we see families eating for meals in our fast paced society: processed foods, junk foods, fast food, and prepackaged convenience foods. To begin describing the S.A.D. diet, think about what we view on tv ads: folks smiling, eating out in chain restaurants four to five times a week, instant microwaveable dinners, deli dinners, rotisserie chicken, takeout meals, instant soups, salad bars, bottled dressings with 30 ingredients, etc.
Rarely do we see TV commercials for organic kale. Organic local produce farmers do not have a large budget for their unprocessed, unpackaged, single ingredient foods, where large, processed food companies do! If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know I am a big fan of the real food for healing movement.
So, how do we transition from the Standard American Diet to the most nutrient dense diet without going broke and without going crazy? The first key is learning how to read ingredient labels. If the labels have scientific names you really cannot pronounce there's a good chance there are chemical additives or preservatives in the product. That cannot be the most healthful for our bodies. If a label has more than five ingredients put it down. If you cannot pronounce the ingredients, put the package down. Stay to the perimeter of the grocery store. The center of the grocery store has processed foods. Even dollar stores and inexpensive grocery stores from every culture have foods that are nutrient dense and inexpensive. I take senior citizens to Dollar stores and to different Asian and Latino grocery stores in San Francisco to teach them how to eat on a very limited budget in a healthful way.
When you begin the journey to real food only and stop eating processed foods, you will suffer cravings the first few weeks. I suggest using water as your ally. The chemical preservatives and the additives in them are not found in nature, but our bodies crave them and the food companies have made them addictive by design. You won't feel deprived if you drink lots of water daily. That way you can identify if your hunger is true hunger or social and emotional hunger. Eat lots of vegetables with water in them like cucumbers and celery. Vegetables such as artichoke and spinach have a lot of fiber in them. Our intestines love fiber. The bacteria that live in our intestines, called probiotics, live off of the fiber that we cannot digest, but we feed them through fibrous food. The fibrous food we feed our probiotics are called prebiotics. Then we are joyful because the fiber enables us to have a regular elimination system. High fiber foods fill us up faster too, once again aiding us in realizing in whether we are truly hungry or socially and emotionally hungry.
If at a party, drink club soda with lime so you fill up before the processed junk food starts circulating!
My fourth book, Happy, Healthy YOU! will be released this August by Mango Publishing.
Blesings,
KJ Landis
Rarely do we see TV commercials for organic kale. Organic local produce farmers do not have a large budget for their unprocessed, unpackaged, single ingredient foods, where large, processed food companies do! If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know I am a big fan of the real food for healing movement.
So, how do we transition from the Standard American Diet to the most nutrient dense diet without going broke and without going crazy? The first key is learning how to read ingredient labels. If the labels have scientific names you really cannot pronounce there's a good chance there are chemical additives or preservatives in the product. That cannot be the most healthful for our bodies. If a label has more than five ingredients put it down. If you cannot pronounce the ingredients, put the package down. Stay to the perimeter of the grocery store. The center of the grocery store has processed foods. Even dollar stores and inexpensive grocery stores from every culture have foods that are nutrient dense and inexpensive. I take senior citizens to Dollar stores and to different Asian and Latino grocery stores in San Francisco to teach them how to eat on a very limited budget in a healthful way.
When you begin the journey to real food only and stop eating processed foods, you will suffer cravings the first few weeks. I suggest using water as your ally. The chemical preservatives and the additives in them are not found in nature, but our bodies crave them and the food companies have made them addictive by design. You won't feel deprived if you drink lots of water daily. That way you can identify if your hunger is true hunger or social and emotional hunger. Eat lots of vegetables with water in them like cucumbers and celery. Vegetables such as artichoke and spinach have a lot of fiber in them. Our intestines love fiber. The bacteria that live in our intestines, called probiotics, live off of the fiber that we cannot digest, but we feed them through fibrous food. The fibrous food we feed our probiotics are called prebiotics. Then we are joyful because the fiber enables us to have a regular elimination system. High fiber foods fill us up faster too, once again aiding us in realizing in whether we are truly hungry or socially and emotionally hungry.
If at a party, drink club soda with lime so you fill up before the processed junk food starts circulating!
My fourth book, Happy, Healthy YOU! will be released this August by Mango Publishing.
Blesings,
KJ Landis
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