Real Food Week 5 Wrap Up and Week 6 Challenge
Written by Ashley Kelmore, Posted in Random
Last week we were challenged with trying two new whole foods. Austin and I discovered that while there were foods I had not tried, and foods he had not tried, there wasn’t a lot of overlap. However, we were successful with kiwi berries, which are sold in half-pint containers in the same manner as raspberries, and navy beans. It’s possible I’ve had a dish with navy beans in them, but I don’t recall. Austin prepared this amazing vegetarian chili (oh Cooks Illustrated, you never let us down) using the beans, and we’ve got leftovers for days.
This week’s challenge might strike some of you as counter-intuitive, if the goal of this is to get healthier. This week? No lowfat, light, or non-fat food products. Say what?
The author’s goal is to point out that a lot of what is marketed as healthier because it is low fat or non fat often increase fillers, sugars and other non-whole-food ingredients. The point isn’t that every food we eat needs to be full of fat, it’s that if there is a regular version and a reduced fat or light version, we go with the regular version.
Now, I don’t straight up drink milk much at all anymore, and I think that would probably be the toughest change for me. I’ve been drinking non-fat milk since I can remember, and whole milk just sounds so … fatty. But it’s not just about products that try to reduce calories – the thinking is that many of these reduced-fat products also strip out the nutrients. Of course, this will require actual portion control, something that the low-fat food trend seems to have damaged a bit. Why, I can eat 20 of these fat-free thingies instead of 10 of the regular fat thingies. Hoorah! Instead, this week I’m going to try to actually enjoy the 10 thingies and hopefully reap the benefits of the additional nutrition and fewer weird filler ingredients.
