By 100 Days of Real Food, on May 6th, 2011 The time has come to cut out all refined sweeteners including sugar! And this particular challenge is actually what inspired me to start the mini-pledges in the first place. It all started when I was having lunch with my kindergartner one day at school. I was looking around at what the other kids brought for their lunch and between the white bread, the flavored yogurt, the crackers, and the jelly every single meal I surveyed contained some sort of refined sugar and in most cases – lots of it.
As I’ve said before, it is not necessarily the sugar itself (yes, white sugar is technically “natural” albeit highly refined), but it is the quantity in which our society consumes sugar that concerns me. What have things come to if we can’t even have a cracker or a bowl of cereal or a beverage unless it has been sweetened? Come on, sugar is in almost everything these days even when you least expect it. So it is time to put our foot down and live one week of our entire lives without any refined sugar. Can you do it? Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on April 29th, 2011 Next week’s “real food” mini-pledge is not about what we are eating, but about how much we are eating. Now some of you may think you already stop eating when you feel full, but unless you are French – think again. Based on research, Michael Pollan says instead of using our internal cues to know when to stop eating most of us “allow external, and usually visual, cues to determine how much we [should] eat.” Think back to your last meal…did you stop eating when your gut told you you’d had enough or when your plate was clean, the package was empty, or the T.V. show was over?
Mini-Pledge Week 8: May 2 – May 8 – Listen to your internal cues and stop eating when you feel full. Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on April 22nd, 2011 If you’ve been following along you knew this one was coming. I’ve been trying to ease everyone into the “real food” mini-pledges by holding off on the harder ones, but the time has come! Even though this next pledge might be a bit challenging for some I am really excited about the learning opportunities that it will bring. In my opinion whole grains are one of the most confusing and hard-to-find food products in the supermarket. From misleading buzz words like “multi-grain” and “wheat” to health-claims on the front of food packages that aren’t backed up by the ingredient list, it sure is treacherous out there.
So here is next week’s mini-pledge that officially starts on Monday:
Mini-Pledge Week 7: April 25 – May 1 – All grains consumed must be 100% whole-grain. Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on April 15th, 2011  photo credit: zeer.com Yes, you read that right. Next week’s mini-pledge is to avoid all low-fat, lite/light, and nonfat food products. And if my prediction is correct there are quite a few of you who need some explanation on why low-fat products are not considered to be “real food” or – yes, I am going to say it – ”healthy.” When I first learned that the whole low-fat campaign was pretty much a hoax I was absolutely shocked as well. For years I was right there on that bandwagon bingeing on everything from low-fat Snackwells cookies to fat-free flavored yogurt to low-fat ice cream. And as it turns out, according to Michael Pollan, “We’ve gotten fat on low-fat products.”
So here is next week’s pledge that officially starts on Monday:
Mini-Pledge Week 6: April 18 – April 24 – Do not eat any food products that are labeled as “low-fat,” “lite,” “light,” “reduced fat,” or “nonfat.” Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on April 8th, 2011 For the last few weeks I’ve asked you to skip the drive-thru, avoid crunchy chips, cut back on the burgers & steaks, and all together give up sugar in your coffee. So who’s up for a pledge where we simply add something to our diets instead of take something away? That’s what I thought.  As we all learned from the very first mini-pledge, when you add something good to your diet it might kick something out that shouldn’t be there in the first place. And, in my opinion, that is one of the easiest ways to reduce your intake of highly processed foods.
 Kale Chips So here is next week’s pledge that officially starts on Monday:
Mini-Pledge Week 5: April 11 – April 17 – Try a minimum of two new whole foods that you’ve never had before.
A whole food is something that has one ingredient and is not refined. Some examples that you’re hopefully familiar with are apples, potatoes, brown rice, whole-wheat flour and spinach. Some other whole foods that are a bit less common are as follows: Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on April 1st, 2011 The next mini-pledge is a two-fold challenge where we are asking people to avoid both fast food and deep-fried food for a week. I think this will be another one of those pledges that is hard for some and easier for others. First off, according to Wikipedia, fast food is defined as “food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a packaged form for take-out/take-away.” Hopefully I don’t need to go into too much detail about why it would be beneficial for you to avoid fast food meals, but let’s take a moment to discuss the reasoning behind deep-fried food. The problem with something being deep-fried is that the food absorbs a great deal of oil during the cooking process. So when you eat the end product you are consuming far more oil – an unhealthy fat in most cases – than is recommended.
So here is next week’s pledge that officially starts on Monday:
Mini-Pledge Week 4: April 4 – April 10 – No fast food (as detailed below) or any foods that have been deep-fried in oil.
Continue Reading »
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