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UPDATE #2 I'm just going to let this sit here and amaze everyone...
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| This is the SOURCE LINK |
**UPDATE**
First, I have to say that I am not the only one feeling revolutionary over here! LOL. I just discovered a site called Food Revolution. As it happens, it is not my cup of tea since it seems to be profit-driven. However, it's nice to know there are other Hueys out there...
Not too many days after writing this post the first time, I came across a couple of videos that I want to share. I'd seen one a while back and had forgotten. Both of these videos help strengthen my resolve to eat better.
I can only show trailer cuts for this one.
You can see more on the YouTube channel here. The full video can be found at conspryre.TV.
Watching that one makes me wonder if I didn't develop my sarcoidosis because of the foods I was eating. I also wonder if changing my diet will help my condition. I am slowly working toward better/cleaner eating habits so I can't wait to see!
This is the one I'd seen a while back. I watch the creators' channel all the time.
That one also made me mad. The creators have content over at Conspyre also and I saw this video. Had to add to my list of rant-worthy things...
So if I was on a path before - to eat better, even if doing so means eating less because of budget constraints - I am even more determined. I have been feeling too sick, too fat, too unhealthy for too long. As Fannie Lou Hamer put it: I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
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I posted not long ago that "We Need a Food Revolution". The truth is, every man is his own revolutionary. I believe I need to be more careful about what I eat and drink and put on my hair and skin. I believe that my health has been much more impacted by past decisions than I realized.
Sometimes, when I think about this weird autoimmune disease I struggle with, I wonder if it came from things I was eating and drinking. I wonder if years of eating processed foods and drinking beverages with substitute sugars, artificial flavorings, and food coloring just caught up with me. Maybe. Probably.
I am pretty sure that if my lifelong dietary habits were not the cause of the sarcoidosis, it certainly didn't help. Maybe if I'd had a better diet all along, my body could handle the sarcoidosis better.
At any rate, I decided that it's never too late to start doing better. So I started a few months back. My biggest frustration for me has been researching ingredients. The sarcoidosis stilts my brain power sometimes so researching anything is a huge challenge.
I started with the most common things I tend to consume: meat, eggs, bread, coffee, and juice.
Meat:
I am almost ready to give up on all meat. Everything has antibiotics, or are GMO, or are... maybe not even meat at all...
I decided to stick mainly with seafood and eggs for protein. That doesn't mean I gave up bacon or pork sausage, but I do limit those things and I do try to be more careful about sourcing. This is why I am so glad that I found Good Chop (which, my health insurance offers a discount for).
Good Chop is where I can get meat and seafood that is safer and healthier. I don't have to worry about the ingredients. This is what I love about the meat and seafood:
- wild-caught or US-farm-raised seafood
- US-born/bred meat
- no additives, hormones, antibiotics
- grass-fed beef
- pork that is "fed a 100% vegetarian diet (aside from milk protein)"
- chicken that is fed a vegetarian diet
- seafood that is "MSC- or ASC-certified"
Bread is my lifelong love. When I was younger, I could live on a bag of Wonderbread and peanut butter. That's when I had a working metabolism! In recent years, I started baking my own bread to control the ingredients. That was great until I started having slight issues. Suddenly, I would bloat if I ate more than a slice of bread. I'd bloat and put on 10 pounds (or so it seemed!). So, I was ready to dang near give it up. But then...
... I randomly heard about bread made with French flour. What I heard was that Americans found it to be less problematic for their diet. Apparently, it didn't cause the uncomfortable bloating. Better yet, it didn't cause as much weight gain. WHAT?
Of course, I needed to see if this was true. I scoured the internet for more information. Then I tried to find some of this flour to use in my own baking. At some point, I will do a post about French flour and its use. For now, just know that there is truth (for me) in the rumors about the bloating and weight gain.
(When I do the post about my trial runs baking with French flour, I'll go into more detail. For now, let me just say that I do prefer the taste and texture of the bread I baked using the flour.)
I'm not as big on dessert as I used to be. I do love the occasional Rhodes cinnamon roll (I am learning to make my own version using French flour), and I like some plain vanilla bean ice cream every now and then. Mostly, these days, I stick to Greek yogurt with honey. I can't wait to learn to make the cinnamon rolls though!
When I want ice cream and don't want to drag out the Ninja Creami, I will buy the Premium vanilla ice cream from Aldi. It has really good ingredients, is affordable, and tastes like sweet clouds of joy.
As for beverages, I do like water and sometimes, I jazz it up by drinking a cold Pellegrino water. When I want a soda - which happens about once or twice every couple of months, I will opt for a "Mexican Coke" (made with cane sugar) or one of the other sodas that use cane sugar and not high fructose corn syrup or some other "bad" sweetener. There is a brand I can find at my corner store called Spring Grove. The brand is from Minnesota (don't ya know?) and is pretty tasty. They are not as expensive as some cane sugar sodas.
The one thing I am still in pursuit of is a coffee creamer that is healthier than the sweet types I love... I will have to keep working on that!
In General:
When I shop now, my goal is to avoid GMOs, antibiotics, lab-grown products, and basically anything unnatural. This is a time when even vegetarians will have to watch where their plant-based foods come from.
When I look at ingredients in consumables, I am really trying to avoid fake sugar, "bad" sugars, colorings, and weird flavorings.
As for my personal budget, when I looked at what the GoodChop box cost me, I realized that because I only get one every 8 weeks (and can skip when I want or need to), I am not spending any more than I was at the grocery stores. Here's what one order looked like.
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| This is under $110 including S&H (with the discount) |
At any rate, I know that we can't change everything in life all at once, but we have to start somewhere. If you are interested, I suggest you research ingredients. Also, shop around when you do find products you like. Here are some tips from my personal experience:
- I got my T55 French flour from Amazon but I do plan to visit the supplier's store (they are a state over from me) to buy some in bulk since the flour there is sometimes up to 40% cheaper that way. See if you have a store near you. I have been using the Francine brand. The T45 flour is a bit cheaper (and I can add some wheat gluten to raise the protein levels). Someone told me that Italian flour is just as good, but I find it costs more than the French brands. BTW, I will explain the different numbers of flour when I do the post on French flour.
- Aldi's Simply Nature brand has non-GMO juice that is 100% juice not from concentrate. Best of all, they were affordable - under $5 for 34-ounce bottles. Walmart (and sometimes elsewhere but for a higher price) carries the Antioxidant Solutions brand juice that is as good as the Simply Nature brand. I got a quart of blueberry juice for about $5. Both brands have various flavors or flavor combos.
- For condiments, I use Simply Ketchup and recently found a sweet and sour sauce that I like. It has no HFCS, artificial flavors, or dyes. And it's affordable.
- Some sodas that don't use HFCS are Stewarts, Spring Grove, "Mexican" Coke, and Pepsi, this Malta beverage (?), Jarrito tends to have a lot of colorants but this one is a bit better, IBC Black Cherry Cola (if you like that) isn't awful-sounding, and Reed's ginger beer sounds amazing... BTW, Jones soda used to be all cane sugar but now they use "invert cane sugar" and I am avoiding that until I know more. I don't like that Jones shows "Cane Sugar" in big letters but the fine print shows invert sugar. and it also has a "modified food starch". Again, what???
- If you can't find a product to your liking, look for copycat recipes with healthier ingredients. That's what I did with aioli sauce when I was making pizza.
- Just read the ingredients. If you don't know what an ingredient is, look for a definition.
- Find a list of sneaky names for ingredients. Salt and sugar have all kinds of names for them.
- Watch for your personal health. What's "healthy" for one person might not be for another. For instance, there are many healthy things that I have to watch out for. One example is greens (collards and spinach for two). I can't have all the collards or spinach I want because I have CKD.
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| My SIL says it was "like manna" |
