A look inside a whole foods pantry

One of the frequent questions we get about eating real food is “what do you eat exactly?” Unfortunately so many people have come to rely on both processed foods and highly refined ingredients that most don’t know what they would eat without them (you may be one of these people!). I will be the first to tell you that the initial transition isn’t easy, but once you get used to eating this way you soon discover that there so many options that actually taste a lot better than all of that processed stuff anyway.

I have been blogging about recipes and what to eat for months, but in this post I want to take a step back and tackle the topic of what a typical real food pantry might look like. Pictured you will see a snapshot of my personal pantry. I still have a couple of items in there that we no longer eat (like white rice and white flour) that I just haven’t gotten around to giving away yet. But speaking of getting rid of stuff, I can assure you that sticking to real food (and especially getting children to adopt real food) will not work nearly as well if the processed snacks and cereals are still hanging around and available.

So anyway, without further ado, below is a list of what you can see pictured in my pantry. I am sure there are many ways to organize and stock a whole foods pantry…this just happens to be the way we do it:

Starting from the bottom here is a description of each shelf:

• On the floor there are bottled waters (for when we are away from home…we also have reusable bottles, but we don’t always remember to use them!), all natural juice pouches (similar to a Capri Sun for me to bring for my girls to birthday parties and playdates).
• Next up there are canned goods on the left including plain tomato sauce (no salt added), diced tomatoes, applesauce, extra jelly, and canned beans to use as a backup in case I forget to soak beans overnight for something. Next to that are three baskets, which are designated as first the seed basket (sunflower and pumpkin seeds), the nut basket (cashews, pecans, peanuts, etc.), and the dried fruit basket (raisins, freeze dried fruit, dried dates, etc.) This is often where my kids go for a snack.
• On the left-hand side of the next shelf there are cereals including homemade granola, boxed shredded wheat, and rolled oats as well as a container of Lara Bars. Next to that is a basket of potatoes, onions, and garlic. On the right we keep whole-wheat bread (from Great Harvest), Triscuit crackers, and whole-wheat Matzo crackers.
• Next up is just where we store coffee makers and the toaster. To the right of that is some unpopped popcorn and boxed whole-wheat pasta.
• The shelf that is second from the top has some of my old baking ingredients (like white flour, sugar, and colored sprinkles – I keep my whole-wheat flour in the freezer since it would go rancid otherwise). That shelf is also where we keep the honey, yeast packets and vanilla extract.
• On the doors (starting at the top left) we keep coffees, teas, dried beans, unsweetened cocoas and all natural peanut butter. On the other side we keep grains including brown rice, wild rice, more whole-wheat pasta as well as other baking ingredients such as baking soda/powder, salts, etc. That door is also where I still have some white rice that we haven’t been using.