Want to know how to take action and get GMO’s labeled?
Support this effort by learning more at http://labelgmos.org.
Do you want to know if you are eating a GMO product? Leave me a comment. Have a question, leave it below and I’ll find the answer.
Know what you are eating so you can make better choices.
Do you know what is in the food you are eating? Do you wonder if the food was made with genetically modified organisms? Watch the video to find out.
Go to http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22309.cfm to tell super markets you want products with GMOs labeled.
Go to https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/require-all-genetically-modi… to tell the Federal Gov’t you want labeling.
Go to https://secure2.convio.net/cspi/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1123 to tell your state legislators that you them want to fix the food system.
To GMO or not to GMO
Every time you learn a new skill you are likely to come across words that are unfamiliar. A wise friend of mine once told my daughters that if they wanted to conquer reading comprehension quickly they should stop every time they come across a word they don’t know and look it up in a dictionary.
I thought I’d share one of the terms that had me confused when I started this journey.
What are gmo’s? What crops growing today are gmo crops? And how does it affect me and my food choices?
How do you feel about eating gmo products? Are you concerned? Would you like to know if you are eating a gmo product?
One of my personal goals for my 90 Day Challenge was to see if my taste-buds and my family’s taste buds would change from eating a healthier diet and how quickly we would all notice a difference.
I got my answer pretty quickly. Last week (week 4 of our challenge) while at my mother’s house, my daughters asked their grandma to make them a packaged pasta dish (think Rice-A -Roni but with pasta.)
I should give a bit of back story here.
Following the same advice I gave my daughter about choices when she is visiting friends, I didn’t feel it was right to impose my healthy food choices on my mom although we are at her house every day. As a result her pantry is much the same as it was before we started this challenge and is only gradually changing under our influence.
Now imagine my girls sitting down to what they expect to be a big treat; a snack they have enjoyed before and expect to enjoy again; a snack that is on the forbidden list at home because of several questionable ingredients.
After each of them took just one bite neither wanted to finish. Both left their entire bowls of a snack that they would have devoured just a few weeks earlier.
I asked each of them why they couldn’t finish and both replied that the food just didn’t taste good, that it didn’t taste like ‘real Parmesan’, it tasted fake.
Mind you, my teenage daughter said this with reticence as she would loathe admitting that I’m right about something she fought so hard to keep from changing.
Needless to say it was a sweet victory for me. In four short weeks their taste buds were bombarded by fresh fruit, fresh veggies, foods with fiber and all sorts of wholesome food and the results were obvious. The change had begun!
What if any foods do you eat that you would likely identify as ‘fake’? Have you spent time developing your palate for fresh, healthy foods? What keeps you from eliminating ‘fake’ foods from your diet?
About three days into our 90 day challenge my youngest daughter informed me that she wanted me to call all her friend’s mothers and give them the list of things she can and cannot eat. My youngest is a bit of a rule follower (when she is on board with an idea) so I took this as a good sign.
However, I didn’t want her to become a difficult guest when invited over to play with friends. I told her that when she was visiting friends, she would have to make the best choice of the food that was offered. She would not say, I can’t eat that…or tell her host that the food she was offered was ‘fake’ or ‘bad’ or ‘full of natural flavorings.’
This confused my 10 year old. She has difficulty seeing the gray areas and tends to be an all or nothing kind of kid (not uncommon in this age bracket.) I continued by explaining to her that while it was important to me that we remove as much of the ‘fake’ food as possible, it was equally important to strengthen relationships. And if she criticized the food choices others make she would not have many friends left.
I wanted her to find the balance between the two. I wanted her to understand that while black and white is dramatic, it is often the gray area that affects the most change. The extremes of any position are often discarded while the middle is where most will find common ground.
I know this is a bit much for a 10 year old to understand but I think she got it. Now whether she fully grasped the lesson I was trying to teach or she just saw it as a way to get to eat goldfish, only time will tell.
How do you respond to extreme positions? Are you motivated by extremes or put off by them?
It is interesting the things that challenged me as I cleaned out my pantry and began to stock it with things that I need to cook mostly from scratch.
My first challenge was bending the rules just a bit if I was faced with putting something in the ‘out the door’ pile that I really loved and contained only one bad ingredient. This was particularly hard if the item was unopened and pricey.
As disgusted as I am by all the things used for ‘natural flavorings‘ I found myself making assumptions about the manufacturer. If the manufacturer was a small local one and they listed ‘natural flavorings’ on the label I would guess at what they would be using and I even found myself trusting them a bit more. If the item was made by a large national manufacturer I would assume the ‘natural flavorings’ to be all the terrible things highlighted in the video I posted a few days ago.
I found it interesting how quickly my brain made exceptions based on factors (money, desirability, perceived quality) completely outside the rules of my challenge. The games my brain plays…and how quickly I get sucked in and literally have to stop myself from playing along.
I finally had to just stop and stick to my hard and fast rule that if it said ‘natural flavorings’ or ‘enzymes’ or anything else that didn’t create a picture in my head it was not going back in my pantry.
By the way, I still have a jar of some really nice preserves I bought in a small country store made locally that have an ingredient that is suspect…my intent is to call the store and find out exactly what it is before I give away these prized preserves. Game on!
It is getting fun, hope you stick around. What games do you play when faced with a challenging task? How do you end the game and stick to the task at hand?
Cleaning out the pantry was the first step to my 90 day challenge. I pulled everything out of the pantry, read the labels and if there were any ingredients I didn’t understand I put it in the ‘out the door’ pile.
So many products contain ‘natural flavorings‘ and after reading ‘Fast Food Nation‘ and learning even more about what the FDA qualifies as ‘natural flavorings’ I determined not to eat anything that contains this ambiguous ingredient.
Now that my pantry is cleaned out I am ready to get started. I’ve started cooking more already. The idea of knowing exactly what is in my food inspires me to spend more time preparing it. I’ve always loved cooking but I’ve often taken the easy way out under the guise of being too busy to cook from scratch.
The day I cleaned out the pantry, my daughter asked if we could cook something (since she thought there wasn’t anything left to eat)…I pulled out one of my favorite cook books (America’s Test Kitchen‘s Best Recipes) and we decided to make scones. In ten minutes the scones were in the oven and ten minutes later we were enjoying home made scones (7 ingredients). It cost less than $2 to make 8 scones and our first batch was better than some that cost over $2 each. We were on our way.
I’d love to hear about how do you feel about cooking. Is cooking a necessity or a passion or somewhere in between?
I’m a big fan of Jamie Oliver. I learned how to cook basic, easy, yummy dishes from him when he was The Naked Chef years ago. He has been an advocate for real food since his youth and now he has taken on the task of helping American’s discover real food.
Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution has completed its 2nd season on the air and it has already made a big impact on me and how my family eats.
In the 2nd season Jamie brought his team to Los Angeles…one of the largest school districts in the nation to bring awareness to the quality (or lack thereof) of the food being served to students across Los Angeles. In the episode below he is educating students about the ingredients in processed food, specifically an ice cream sundae. Go to time marker 10:23 to see the part of the episode I’m referring to…I promise it will be an eye opener.
At the end of this clever demonstration, Jamie basically says to the kids, “ If you don’t understand the crazy words, don’t buy it. Best advice I can give you.”
I thought about this statement for days. I’m an avid label reader but up till now really only looked out for ‘high fructose corn syrup’, ‘partially hydrogenated oils’ and the myriad of names for real and fake sugar. How hard would it be to eliminate everything that I didn’t recognize including ambiguous ingredients like ‘natural flavors’ and ‘enzymes’ (if you watch the clip, you’ll understand the ambiguity.)
I looked at a few things in my pantry and realized that most of the things there would have to go. It was at that moment I decided that when we returned from our summer vacation, we would start a 90 day challenge to eat only what we recognize. We would remove everything from our diet that contained ingredients we couldn’t pronounce or ones that didn’t pop a picture into our head, like ‘apple’ or ‘sugar’ or ‘chicken’.
It wasn’t going to be easy, for sure. Goldfish, those addictive little snack crackers, were one of the first things to go and three of the four people in this family were sure they were going to face withdrawals. My addiction ran along the lines of BBQ potato chips which I was sure were filled with all kinds of natural flavors.
My husband was on board and my kids knew from the look in my eye that it was futile to argue. We all agreed to do a practice run on our family vacation which would make the transition easier when we returned.
I hope you will stay tuned for more adventures of our 90 day challenge. In the meanwhile, leave me a comment…what do you look for when reading labels? And what food would be most difficult for you to give up?
**if you want to see the rest of that episode, click here.
{ I think all products should be labeled with all ingredients and all growing/ processing/ information. We have a right to know exactly what we are... } – Sep 12, 10:50 PM
{ I don't like genetically modified foods either. They taste flat and have no nutritional value and are even harmful to your body and difficult to... } – Sep 08, 7:49 PM
{ Thanks for such an enlightening post Darcie. I had no idea what GMO stood for. This is pretty scary for sure. I am definitely going... } – Sep 08, 1:04 AM { Thanks for such an enlightening post Darcie. I had no idea what GMO stood for. This is pretty scary for sure. I am definitely going... } – Sep 08, 1:04 AM
{ One day we will have a market nearby that carries the non-GMO foods and we'll be able to afford to each all organic. Unfortunately, we... } – Sep 06, 10:08 PM