I aimed for color. Clearly, green was a dominate theme, but I have clementines, blueberries, and a sweet yellow pepper from last week. (Fresh scallops are in the plastic bag).
What can I say -- I definitely enjoy eating different colors. For me, it makes the dining experiences more sensory and therefore more enjoyable. I didn't always try to eat a variety of colors, and it's definitely been a work in progress -- and one that I need to be very conscious of on a daily basis.
While I'd be lying if I said I never get tempted by junk food (I will save this for another posting), my taste for food have definitely adapted over the past six months. I've discovered that foods I used to eat with delight (TGI Fridays mozzarella sticks and glazed stick donuts, anyone?), I find a lot of fast foods to either too sugary, too salty, or too bland. One thing I've started to learn is that I prefer my own cooking to most other foods I put in my body.
Best advice I can give for tasting the rainbow:
ALWAYS shop the periphery of the grocery store. I start in produce and spend the bulk of my time there. Next, I peruse the nuts and gourmet cheeses, and head to the meats. I wrap around to the eggs, milk, and yogurt. This was so vital for me when I first checked out a more primal/clean lifestyle, simply because I craved what I thought I was depriving my body of -- and if I went into the aisles, Oreos inevitably came home. It was a tough battle.
TRY new produce. Aim to bring home a produce you've never tried at least twice a month. The new foods I've tried lately? Kale, brussel sprouts, turnips, and parsnips, all of which I discovered I actually liked.
BUY what you can carry out yourself. I bring reusable bags and always leave the cart in the grocery store. The clerks think I'm crazy for carrying out my groceries myself without a cart, but I find it so satisfying. It helps control how much I buy, and I also feel strong for carrying my bags myself to my car! While there can definitely be exceptions to this rule, I've enjoyed it so far.
On my quest to better understand what it means to "eat clean" and to help me better explore why I feel compelled to eat unprocessed foods and "be healthy," I enlisted in some help:
Michael Pollan's "Food Rules" and "In Defense of Food." "Food Rules" is a guide to eating clean, set up with a new rule on each page. Pollan argues that eating is now been far too complicated in Western society, and that with our Western Diet of salt, sugar, and highly processed foods, we suffer from terrible diet-linked diseases, like heart disease and diabetes. He offers food solutions with 64 rules for selecting and eating food. While I figured out to shop the periphery of the grocery store somewhat accidentally this summer, "shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle," is Rule #12. More to come!
I'm not going to lie -- appearance has a lot to do with my diet and exercise choices. But the more I delve into this lifestyle, I realize that a large part of why I'm doing it is because I don't want to be placed on medication for diabetes or hypertension. I want to be mobile and energetic as possible as I age. In college, I was put on Prevacid due to acid reflux, which was necessary because of what I was eating. Changing my diet means I don't need it. And why would I choose to eat foods that are making me so sick that I need to be medicated? I refuse to do it.
What exciting new produce have you tried lately?
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