20 Aug Real Food: Let Me Tell You My Experience With Real Food

Real Food

Last week, in one of my frequent visits to the Library, I came across Michael Pollan’s book ‘Food Rules‘. He gives 64 simple rules to eating right. I new most of them as I have been following them for years, without knowing that there was a book out there about it.

This made me realise how conscious I’m about what I eat. I strongly believe that you’re what you eat. I’ve experienced over the years that if you eat real food, you will be well; and, if you’re well, you will be happy.

Let me tell you my experience as a new mum and real food.

If you have read my previous posts and/or have checked my story (in ABOUT), you will know that I went back to my roots when I had to feed solids to my baby daughter. She grew up loving food (she still does) and being a very healthy baby. We used to be complemented in the street for her glowing skin.

Then it came that time when she started eating ‘other food‘. My husband and I noticed that sometimes her behaviour was abnormal to her kind and relaxed self. After a few episodes, we started to investigate if these behaviours were related to the food that she was eating. It turned out that whenever she ate certain packaged food, mainly sweets, her behaviour was difficult. These episodes were awful for her, for us and for everybody that was around. We needed to solve it!

Looking for answers, I enrolled myself in a talk where they explained the relationship between food and children behaviour. To my surprise, I wasn’t the only mum with the same problem. We were given a very long list of preservatives that were legal and could be found in most manufactured foods. I still get dizzy remembering all those numbers and letters. We we’re told that different people reacted differently to those ‘ingredients‘. I had two choices, keep feeding my daughter ‘other food‘ until I found out what preservatives were incompatible with her, or avoid them completely and start making my own real food from scratch. You know which one I went for, right?

As Michael Pollan writes in his book: ‘don’t eat anything that has been cooked in a place where everybody wears a surgical mask‘.

From then on, I started baking my own sweets on a regular basis. I don’t only know what ingredients I use, I also know exactly what my loved ones are eating. It’s hard, yes, I’m not going to deny that sometimes I don’t feel like it. But I got used to it and now I almost bake every weekend.  In the occasions I cannot bake (or cannot be B, you know what I mean) I go for fruit, smoothies, wraps, toasts and even good simple pancakes.

My daughter has got used to see me reading every label and now when she is interested in eating something that is packaged, she reads the label herself. When there’s an ingredient that she doesn’t recognise as ‘real‘, she puts it back on the shelf. Recently we discovered that she doesn’t react well to chocolate cookies with cream (I don’t need to tell you the brand). I heard her one day saying: “thank you I won’t have the chocolate cookies with cream, I don’t react well to the preservatives used to cook them“. I couldn’t be prouder!

Quoting Mr. Polland again: “avoid products that contain ingredients that an elementary school child cannot pronounce” (translated from Spanish).

Fair enough my daughter has grown up with a foodie, but you can do it as well. This does’t apply only to children, it applies to everybody.

I wonder if the behaviour issues and growing allergies that our society is suffering are related to ‘other food‘ and what goes in it …

Have you experienced or are experiencing a similar situation? what have you done?

I would love to hear your stories! Please leave your comments and / or questions bellow.

Eat well and be happy!