Guest Post: One Loopy Knitter

While I was reading all those scary articles last week, I was of course keeping up with my blog roll, and I was so surprised and thrilled to see this awesome post from Nancy of One Loopy Knitter talking about rules to eat by. I was reading it going, yes, I want to do that, and that, and that. It was like she wrote my blog post for me without even knowing it! So instead of reinventing the already well-written post, I asked Nancy if she'd like to guest post and I'm so thrilled she said yes because she is full of information on the subject!

Hi, I'm Nancy, the blogger behind One Loopy Knitter and A Little Etsy Love.  I was truly honored when Kristen asked me to guest blog today on a subject I am madly in love with and very passionate about: food.

In the last few decades, American culture has broken away from mom's home cooking and the use of real ingredients and whole foods and, guided by American Industry, has been forced into a box.  Well, quite a few of them actually.  Enter any grocery store and you will notice right away that the shelves are filled with them: boxes that is.  Real food is much harder to find amongst all of our marketed modern convenience "foods." The danger here is harder to see: what is actually in those boxes?  What mystery chemicals, corn byproducts, and other horrors are use to make this "food?" In the following post, I will reveal what I've come to believe in terms of food: what drives my purchasing, cooking, and eating choices.
 

My 5 rules to Eat by: 
Principles I've come to trust in, live by, and rarely break.

  1. Can't pronounce the ingredients?  Don't eat it.  Buy mostly whole foods that require no food labels because they are 1 single ingredient.  If there's no getting around it, stick to 5 or less ingredients that are also identifiable on the label.  Buy the "real" version of foods.  I.E. butter, rather than low fat promising products (margarine and the like).  Read the ingredient labels of both and you will notice a big difference here.

2. From scratch cooking: Make it if it can be made.  This allows me to control what goes into the food I eat.  It's also fresher and tastes better this way too.  We make all of our own bread and buns, jams, baked goods, ice cream, pizza dough, you name it!  This is the first year I plan to make and can enough pasta sauce to get us through the winter.  I've even made mayonnaise from time to time.  Sound like a lot of work?  Well, it is!  But I'd rather spend my time in the kitchen than filling prescriptions or waiting a the Dr's office to check up on a myriad of diseases.

3. Eat a Rainbow:  Sometimes I get stuck in a rut eating the same foods over and over again.  I believe that the more diverse species of plants you can put into your body the more health benefits you'll reap.  Plus, colorful foods contain nutrients.  That's just plain science. :)

4. Eat all meals and snacks save dinner vegetarian.  Additionally, 1 meal/ day should be vegan.  I believe in the power of plants.  So it's important for me to make sure that I'm making them the star of my day, and no way was better for me than to cut out all animal products whatever in an entire meal (usually lunch).

5. My Personal Meat Rules-  I love meat, I really do.  Sometimes biting into a steak is something I just drool over thinking about.  While I do still eat meat, and think there is value in humans eating it, I do not think we need it in as much quantity as Americans have come accustomed to.  And don't even get me started on industrial meat production.

That aside, here are my typical meat-eating habits:  I don't eat it at all (save smoked salmon or bacon on occasion) for breakfast or lunch.  Dinner- I eat vegetarian dinners about twice a week, we eat fish at least twice a week, so that leaves 3 dinners/ week where I'm eating poultry, pork, or beef.  I'd like to say I only eat farmer's market meat, but that's not always the case.  Room for improvement here.

Question: Do you have any rules that guide your eating habits?

You can catch up with Nancy on her blog, One Loopy Knitter, twitter, or facebook.