I want to eat healthy. I really do. It’s not like I go to the grocery each week thinking, “Gee, what can I buy that will add pounds to my waistline and double digits to my cholesterol?”
But there are lots of things that get in the way of providing the healthiest food for my family. First is the issue of time. Aaron works his 40 hours for the day job, then comes home to work his second job (writing for a movie website) most of the evening. I have nursing school, blogging, and caring for two needy little girls. Breakfasts are simple waffles or bagels, lunches most often consist of sandwiches, and dinners must be made quickly, with as few steps as possible. This requires a reliance on convenience foods.
Second is the issue of cost. Have you noticed how healthy food seems to cost more? Of course convenience foods are more expensive, but even fresh produce is costly. I hate having to choose between healthy or cheap foods, and when the choice needs to be made, I usually choose healthier foods for the girls, and junk for Aaron and I. And then I feel bad that I had to make that choice.
Those are excuses, though. I know we need to eat better. There are several convenience foods that are healthy, saving me time and calories all in one. And while I currently buy organic only for the girls (we buy two milks – organic for Cordy, regular for us), and they eat more fruits and veggies than Aaron and I do, it’s time for all of us to start eating better.
I’m trying to look at it this way: the costs of buying healthier foods may be high, but heart disease, obesity, high cholesterol, cancer, and all of the other health consequences that go along with those are even more expensive. And dying early is not something I’d like to consider, either.
How do I plan to start? I want to increase the amount of veggies we eat, using frozen to help with quick preparation. I love the little single-serve frozen veggie trays available nowadays, giving me an easy option at lunch when I’m rushing to fill sippy cups, bottles, and Disney plates.
Also, I want to make an effort to eat less meat when we can (I believe this was NoMeatPoWeek?). OK, this one will be hard, considering my husband is practically a carnivore. I’m already starting to show him that beef isn’t the only edible animal out there, and that chicken, turkey and pork can be tasty, too. I want to make organic choices where we can, too, especially when it comes to meat and milk.
The hardest part of all of this is weaning us off of the junk. We like our Doritos, our frozen pizzas, and our ice cream bars. And chocolate – oh, I don’t know if I can give that up. Moderation is good, right?
This is all part of a larger plan for me. I’m hitting the point where I’m sick of feeling fat (what? you didn’t know? oh, well, there’s a post coming on that topic in the next week!), and I think making some healthier choices when it comes to eating will be a good start in the process of living healthier. Although you may have to pry the chocolate out of my cold, dead hands.
This post was part of the Healthy Living Blog Blast being hosted by The Parent Bloggers Network and sponsored by Kroger. Want a chance to win a $50 Kroger gift card? You have until midnight Pacific time (that’s 3am here, local folks!) to write a post about how your family plans to live more healthfully in 2008.
I use all of the same excuses. In fact my husband just bought two versions of macroni and cheese last night when he went grocery shopping– Annie’s organic version for the kids and Kraft for himself. It is a little sad to me to think that we think that they deserve it and not us. I am thinking of eating less meat myself, but my husband doesn’t rally eat anything else either. I keep thinking baby steps is the way to go.
It’s a personal peeve of mine that people claim that eating healthy is more expensive than eating crap. It’s really and truly not, but eating both (healthy and crappy) is more. I think you need to commit to it and make sure that you don’t end up throwing out all of the produce you bought.
But that is my opinion…. I tend to have a lot of them.
I can’t agree more with you. We are really trying hard to weedle some veggies into the kids mouths every day, (and then work on ourselves as well when we remember.)
Their uncle is going to plant a garden with them this summer, so I am hoping, praying, and clicking my heels together that this inspires some healthy habits in all of us…..
I hear you. If I want to cook something nice & healthy I usually have to chop up the veggies the night before. Even then if I’m too late getting cooking it can be difficult to get a good meal prepared. For a long time I resisted buying simple veggie solutions, thinking I should prepare our own – but then I gave in and it turns out that if we HAVE fresh veggies, we will eat them. All of us. Now we keep a prepared (by the store) veggie tray in the fridge at all times. It’s a very good snack alternative and if I don’t get veggies made for lunch or dinner, we just bring out the veggie tray again!
“Although you may have to pry the chocolate out of my cold, dead hands” – I hear you loud and clear.
There’s always dark chocolate — it’s one of those foods like red wine that’s supposedly got all these great antioxidants and is good for you! What luck!
My favorite daily dark is Choxie (from target) — they have bars from Costa Rica that are to die for and a sampler with five different kinds of single-origin dark chocolate. Damn it’s good.
Plus, I find that dark chocolate is so rich that I’m satisfied with less. With milk somehow I find myself eating way too much. : )
I don’t think anyone should have to give up chocolate. Ever.
good luck with the healthy food choices – my hubby owns a produce retail and we have all the fresh friuts and veggies we can eat … but we still don’t eat them. I try to eat the fruits but there is only so much you can do with veggies without butter and all that FAT stuff!
Good luck wish you lived close – you could shop with us each week!
The price all depends. Some things I find are more expensive, others not. I have to avoid artificial colors at all costs to avoid migraines, so I am very familiar with reading labels.
As for veggies…have you seen the latest in frozen veggie tech? The steamable bags. These are great! Just a few minutes in the micro and you have nice healthy veggies. 🙂 Great for those times when you don’t have a lot of time.
Honestly, throwing some broccoli in a little boiling water for a few minutes is pretty easy. (and cheap) Or bake a sweet pototo, or cut one up and roast with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. Easy and healthy. Try to get in the habit of NOT buying junk food. It takes awhile, but soon enough you are used to not having chips, cookies and crap around. Trader Joe’s has healthier snacks you can keep around to tide you over. Hummus is a healthy dip that my kids actually love and you can spread it on tortillas too and make a wrap with some other veggies. I will admit that occasionally my husband will go to the store on the weekend and he always comes home with chips since I don’t buy them, and I really love it when he does that. But it’s a special treat, not an everyday thing. I really make an effort to keep unhealthy things out of the house, that way I am not tempted. However, I do ALWAYS have chicken nuggets and fries on hand for when I’m too tired to deal. Add a little broccoli and applesauce to their plates and it doesn’t feel so bad.
Honestly, I think that the only thing that takes longer when wanting to eat healthy, is the grocery shopping. It means looking at labels, looking at prices and stopping yourself from grabbing all the garbage. (talking yourself out of a bag of chips can take a while.)
A lot of organic food costs just a little bit more, if not the same price, and if something is a lot more, get it half of the time. I always go organic with milk, meat and certain produce, but there are other things that don’t need to be. There is a great list on ewg.org of foods that are best to go organic, and others that you may as well go non-organic.
As for cooking time, two words for you – slow cooker. A 20 minute investment in the evening means no cooking time when you come home for dinner – awesome!
Also (because this isn’t long enough), one more thought about junk food – you can’t eat it if you don’t buy it.
you’re in nursing school and trying to raise two little kids! do the best you can, throw them some fruits and veggies sometimes, and take it easy on yourself!!!!
you can always revamp things when you have time to think again! 🙂
Word of advice (hopefully not assvice) from someone who’s doing this right now.
Start with one thing at a time…I’ve been eliminating anything with high fructose corn syrup in it from our family’s diet. That stuff is in everydamnthing. So I’m eliminating a group of foods with that stuff in it every week or so and buying replacements: bread, cereal, ice cream so far.
Eat one more serving of fruit every other day until you get up to your desired level. Buy healthier snacks a few at a time…don’t take away everything or the family starts to feel deprived. I’ve found that by going slowly, we’ve made huge progress and the kids have barely complained about it.
Good luck!
We’ve been making little changes in our diet that are making a big difference. We are eating only whole wheat or whole grain (including brown rice, whole wheat pasta, etc.) and lean meats (even beef, as long as it is extra lean). We are doing low fat dairy and other things. So we’re not completely cutting out yummy foods, but it’s making us have a lot more energy. It’s hard to make the switch, but totally worth it! Good luck!
THis is a really, really interesting post. I am thinking a lot about these issues right now. I just finishing *The Wieght Loss Diaries*, which left me thinking about these things.
It is more expensive or more time-consuming to eat healthy, but it strikes me as the best place to spend time and money.
Emily
I totally could have written this post myself. I too am trying to be healthier, eat better, but it is hard… the cost of organic and healthier food for one thing, and I wish hey coupons for organics like they do for everything else!!
I second the steamable frozen veggies, so good! Also, I buy meat (small sizes) and divide it and freeze it in 2-person portions as soon as I get home from the store. A typical meal at my house: dijon chicken (coat chicken in dijan mustard, shake in breadcrumbs and bake), green beans (steam bag in microwave or open can and cook in microwave) and a piece of whole grain bread. It takes about 20 minutes with about 3 minutes of prep.
I have an awesome recipe for easy mac and cheese that isn’t from a box, so is healthier in that manner. Don’t do the sauteed onions and it takes no longer than boxed mac and cheese. For some reason, I can’t get a link, but if you want to C&P: http://pumproom.blogspot.com/2008/01/good-eats-for-you-and-baby.html
Take a look at EatBetterAmerica.com, great site with some good recipes, even “healthified” ones of same-old standards.
Also, Weight Watchers Giant Fudge Bars in the ice cream aisle are a great chocolate fix.
What kind of message are you sending to your kids if they eat one way and you eat another? I’ve struggled with this myself and come to realize that such an approach will only last so long – as a matter of fact, our daughter wants to eat whatever we’re eating, no matter what, so it’s a great excuse for us to be healthier, since we know she’ll want to give it a whirl.
When I met my now-husband, he was a committed carnivore and I was a vegetarian. These days, we both eat some fish and lots of veggie items; he mostly only eats meat when we’re eating out or for lunches, when it’s DIY. We agreed early on that we wanted to eat the same meals, so we’ve really worked hard to find food that we BOTH like and find both flavorful and filling. There are some great meat substitutes out there. How about trying fake pepperoni on a homemade pizza? Or some Morningstar sausage crumbles in an egg wrap? Throw in some black beans, pico de gallo, and avocado and you have a really tasty meal that will even be great at dinnertime. Plus, it’s superfast. Breakfast fake meat was where we started with meat substitution (although of course nothing can substitute for bacon). Just try some things out – you’ll both probably be pleasantly surprised! Vegetarian eating is really easy and fast – no meat to thaw or cook. One of our favorite meals is a taco salad with fake ground beef. We heat up the beef with some spices, which takes maybe 5 minutes, then put it on lettuce, with corn, black beans, some cheese or sour cream, and some organic corn chips, topped with a splash of ranch dressing.
Yesterday, we boiled noodles, and made a quick peanut sauce, added fresh red pepper and snap peas, and had a great Thai-style dinner. Took 10 minutes.
I’ll get off my soapbox now but it’s both easy and cheap to eat vegetarian and healthy.
I’m working on just eating a little less poorly, not quite ready to work on eating well. I’m getting more veggies at least!
Good for you, thinking about long term results in health.
Everyone has some advice on pregnancy, parenting and nutrition. Here’s my 2 cents.
I used to beam at how well my children ate veggies, like I “did” something to cause this. They don’t now. It sickens me to watch all of expensive veggies tossed into the trash.
I love the snack packs of mandarin oranges and fruit. I try to get the stuff in juice or Splenda. We try to do fresh, but this is so easy. Sam’s has good prices on these.
Have you thought about the whole Jessica Seinfeld way? After my plight with the veggie strike, I have started pureeing veggies and dumping them into spaghetti sauce, brownies, anything. Sneaky nutrition.
I have to not have anything bad in my house, or I will eat it, so we have purged most of the naughty stuff out.
I also like the bags of fresh veggies that you can toss in the microwave and in 4 minutes, you have fresh veggies. We just also bought a rice cooker and we steam veggies in that all of the time. Of course, we have to smother those said veggies in cheese sauce to disguise them now.
I would HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend the books The Omnivore’s Dilemma (and maybe more importantly because it talks about the actual process of eating well) In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, both by Michael Pollan. These books break down the industrial food complex and nutritionism myths and fads in our country and help put the focus on food as a part of culture and identity, not just as fuel. It takes some effort to rethink the processed, on-the-go food culture the US has created, but in the end following a lifestyle which puts a focus on whole foods will create a lot of memorable experiences for you and your children as well as that healthier lifestyle….