Preserving your health is a primary self defense technique! As many found during the recent storm, the healthier you are the more quickly you can make decisions and act on them. If you don't do it for yourself, do it for your kids. They get many lifelong habits from you.
Food becomes predatory this time of year. It's after us! My family just barely made it through Halloween. We managed to hide most of the candy for next year. Thanksgiving was manageable, but Christmas is lurking ahead.
There's a learning curve. In the beginning it can be overwhelming to make dietary changes, but once you find a few go-to food choices that make you smile it gets easier.
What we think of as health food is changing, it seems fat is not so bad after all and that a mix of fat with your carbs is better for you that carbs alone. Fat slows the absorbtion of sugars so our bodies can get the vitamins out. And a little fat with sugary treats helps keep kids from getting that crazy sugar high! Your skin and brain also need good quality fats to function properly.
Food Defense Tactic 1: Stay away from non-fat foods in general. If they take one thing out, they put something funky in to take up the slack in flavor. If it's too good to be true, it probably is.
Food Defense Tactic 2: Most of our food-related health woes can be boiled down to eating more than we need. Smaller portions are healthier portions. Your own fist sized portion of protein is a good amount and carbs should be mostly in the form of fruits, veggies and smaller quantities of whole grains (organic if possible, grains are one of the most heavily sprayed crops, along with apples).
Food Defense Tactic 3: The fewer ingredients, the better. A few years ago, in spite of high cholesterol, my family went back to real, single ingredient, butter. Yum! We left the substitutes with long ingredient names on the shelf and are enjoying food more (it's also good to know that butter doesn't change into something evil when heated like other fats, including olive oil which we use raw on salads). Our collective cholesterol has even gone down slightly, probably due to other choices we've made - like eating many more veggies.
Food Defense Tactic 4: Watch for ingredients you can hardly pronounce. If they don't sound like food, they may be preservatives, also known as chemicals. The longer food lasts, the less nutritious it is.
Food Defense Tactic 5: We are what we eat. If what we eat is laden with stress hormones and void of vitamins, so are we and so are our children. If that's all you take away, I've done my job.
Do your self defense homework and take some time to revamp your eating habits. If you're really interested in eating well, read The Omnivore's Dilemma or at least the short and sweet Food Rules. They're actually fun to read and there's a kids version as well. Crossfit put out a great simple and comprehensive explanation of healthy eating: Crossfit Dietary Guidlines. Go forth and explore!
I am not an all or nothing gal. I do not prescribe 100% to anything, diet or otherwise. I do my own research and form my own ideas. It's your job to go as in depth or not as you like. That said, what I've provided here is the basis for you to learn more about the food you are eating and feeding your children. There are simple ways to eat better and eating better is very good self defense.
Granny Smith's Self Defense:
If your kids love chips (we know that most are overly processed and full of salt) you may find you can temper it by alternating with apple chips every now and again.
Apples are one of the easiest things to dry in a food dryer. The hardest part is slicing the apples evenly - not to thin, not to thick. Put them in a dryer ($25 to $65) and about 7 hrs later you have chips for days! Add cinnamon and other spices for extra flair.
Granny Smith Apples make the best chips so far. When you put them in your mouth they taste like cardboard but as you begin to chew the apple flavor comes through like candy! It took me a while to get my son to eat these. Once when he saw me eating them I pretended not to let him have any and he tried them. At first he made a face... then he got hooked.
The best part is that you get to snack too without feeling any guilt!