Are You Making Healthy Food Choices for Your Family?
Why you should worry what you feed your family
Making healthy food choices for the family? Why bother? We're all slowly dying anyway.
Consider this, we are what we eat - literally.
If we are what we eat, should we not be concerned about what we eat? Apparently not. Because it seems that what we can't see doesn't concern us. We only look at the surface value of food. As long as it looks and tastes good and keep our stomachs full it is good food.
But unfortunately it isn't! This is as much a healthy food idea as a hot dog is a vegetable.
But isn't all food good food?
We define healthy food as food that feeds you and your family.
What is the opposite of food that feeds the family?
Food that kills?
Unfortunately yes. Food can kill. Numerous additives work as slow poisons clogging up the body. This makes it more difficult to absorb the really beneficial nutrients. In the end a fat kid can be starving to death because the bad stuff is stored in the body and the good stuff cannot be absorbed or isn't even eaten in the first place. Bowls of crisps and a cans of soda is not healthy food for toddlers, teenagers, or anyone else.
"Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction."
John Cage
On the one hand there is an over abundance of cheap, fast and convenient food and on the other a lack of nutrition, support and health concerns for what we put in our mouths. Unfortunately the old adage is even more true today than ever before: "You are what you eat." And we are filled with flavorants and colorants.
How can we help you?
Our website is here for the sole purpose of educating average family people on how to make healthy food choices. To learn how to eat right and how to feed yourself and your children with food that make your life worth living. To be healthy enough to enjoy your family life. And to give you as many healthy food ideas as we can.
Is what you eat making you less than what you should be?
Every cell in your body is constructed from food you ate. What little you did not eat ourselves you inherited from your mother, from the food she took from your conception till you were weaned. If your mother was a bad eater, smoked or used alcohol in excess you are an unfortunate victim of one of the disadvantages of breastfeeding. If you are a mother you should know what foods to avoid while breastfeeding.
Numerous studies have proven nutrition affect not only physical health but also emotional and intellectual health. A deficiency in certain nutrients will diminish intellectual capacity, causing a lack of concentration. Certain additives cause mood swings and even a drug like 'high', especially in children. Other nutrients have a positive effect such as Omega 3, also called the 'happy oil'.
Ask any teacher what the kids are like after break time when they had a soft drink, a bag of crisps and a chocolate bar for a snack. They are bouncing of the walls. And an hour later their blood sugar drops and they are so lethargic you have to scrape them of the floor and pour them into buckets. Do you know where sugar comes from? If you do, and you know how your body uses sugar you would make better choices. You would know the signs of low blood sugar and what to do about it. You would choose food that sustain your blood sugar, and teach your kids to do the same.
Here are some ideas for getting alternatives for additive rich food.
At work you might sustain yourself through caffeine and sugar. Running from coffee and donut to cola and energy bar back to coffee just to make the day. Except for coffee, do you know how many foods containing caffeine there are? And what about the harmful effects of caffeine? And to make it worse you may not have had a good sleep last night.
Do you know that what you eat has an enormous effect on how you sleep. The right food not only regulate your body systems but are there to repair and sustain your body right down to your cellular structure. Combine low level stimulants with bad sleep and a questionable diet and a bit of normal stress and you have a recipe for disaster.
But really, why should you make healthy food choices?
We believe that making conscious choices for your health is a recipe for a happy family.
It is one thing to know that whole foods are good for you, but what are whole foods? It is easier to choose healthy whole foods if you have seen some examples of whole foods.
Being healthy begins with making a personal choice about the quality of life you want to live, the example you want to set for your children and the legacy you want to leave as a family.
Why is nutrition important?
A healthy, balanced diet provides enough essential nutrients to your body. These nutrients rebuild your body, give you energy, and keep you walking and thinking and feeling right. A proper balance of nutrients sustain and build, repair and reconstruct your bones, muscles, tendons, nervous and circulation systems; every component and process in your body.
If you follow a westernised diet you have to fix your nutrition. Good nutrition can lower your risk of infection and prevent the development of chronic diseases. And of course healthy eating has an effect on your weight and though not a planned diet may lead to significant weight loss.
Talking about diet plans
Chereen Harding, a friend of ours wrote us a couple of articles about her diet plans.
The article she wrote about her experiences with the GI Lean diet is the page on our site currently found most often by search engines. We can't figure out why, maybe you can.
By the way, how safe, effective and healthy is the raw vegetable diet that is all the rage at the moment? If you know some raw food history you might learn that it is nothing new.
You are not alone in choosing for your family
Go from tired and beat to healthy and vibrant - start eating to live again! Know the importance of nutrition and build some physical wealth. Enjoy your life and be healthy, and know that your family is doing the same. Choose to have a healthy family.
If you find yourself battling to make healthy food choices, not knowing what to eat and what to feed your children, not knowing what is good or bad, unable to choose amongst nutritional supplements, eating plans, healthy diets or what you should have for supper tonight (that will be healthy and enjoyed) - You are not alone!
More than ever before families are battling to feed themselves properly. But now it is not because they cannot find or produce the food they need, but because they do not know if they food they have is good for them or not.
Sadly we are an instant gratification society and taste beats out any long term health consideration. Unfortunately taste can so easily be manipulated through chemical additives in the end feeding cravings rather than starving bodies. Fast foods seem like a fast way downhill. They add to childhood obesity, diebetes, cancer and other degenerative diseases and the nutritional value is doubtful.
The good news is that a healthy diet is possible. You can get the nutrition you and your family need and still enjoy your food.
How do you match your eating program with your family's lifestyle?
Just having a healthy food list is not enough. It might help if you have healthy AND unhealthy food list but you also need to change things you do not just things you know. A good place to start is to set a family health goal.
We've discovered that most people suffer with their health not because they do not know any better, but because they do not know how and because they think they do not have the time to figure it out. They have no time, not for preparing healthy food but also no time to find it. The task seems insurmountable and therefore most people never manage to start. Are you also just too tired of trying to be healthy?
"A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools."
Spanish Proverb
And what is it with these raw food people anyway? You're life is pretty good as it is. You do not want to become one of them, or one of any other eating craze.
You don't have to. But know that raw food cleanse the body from harmful toxins.
Taking simple steps to better family health
Going from unconscious unhealthy eating to making conscious healthy food choices is easy. You make simple decisions and take doable steps one at a time. For example, going to the store with a healthy food shopping list gets you of to a good start. We walk you slowly through the steps we have made ourselves already and take you with us on the steps we are still making. For instance we are on the lookout for healthy food recipes to add to our growing list of favorite family recipes.
You attack your health problems by fixing your eating and soon you have the energy and clarity to make harder and harder decisions improving your health to the benefit of yourself and your family. This does not mean that you never have fun with food again. You just need to know how to identify healthy restaurant food. Finding healthy fast food is slightly more difficult. A fast food nutrition fact is that fast food usually ain't...nutritious.
Think about it... what would it mean to you if you're whole family were eating healthily and enjoying life more because of it? The good news is - you can.
Are you ready to take control of your family's health? Are you at the point in your life where you can say "No more! Enough is enough, I'm tired of eating muck...tired of poisoning myself...tired of being tired and tired of doing the same to my family."?
Practical eating principles
Here are twelve healthy food ideas in a nutshell; they guide our choices every day. Every article we write expand on these twelve eating principles.
- Whole and Raw Food - choose food that is not refined and processed
- Food Additives - say no to harmful colorants and flavorants
- Food Sources - buy close to the source and know where your food comes from
- Plastic packaging - avoid plastic that leaks chemical compounds into your food
- Cleanse food - bath your food to wash of pesticides
- Animal Protein - choose less because it is acid forming
- Varied Grains - enjoy variety and have less gluten rich wheat
- Soft Dairy - choose for less allergic reactions and digestive complications
- Fats and oils - Choose for essential fatty acids and against hydrogenated vegetable oil
- Sucrose and caffeine - avoid and replace with healthier alternatives
- Supplement - know how to fill your nutritional gaps
- Enjoy food - Indulge now and then and celebrate your health
What People Say
"I would just like to say "Congratulations" to you for a fantastic website. I have just skimmed through it and it looks great...Have printed some info for bedtime reading. I will defintely have this site as one of my favourites & will try to read new info as often as possible. Keep up the good work!"
Jothi Manickum, Pietermaritzburg
How do you make healthy food choices for your family?
Around every corner there is a food scare that makes it seem as if every food manufacturer is out to kill you rather than to feed you. Every new nutrition study just make the choices more confusing. Do you have to isolate yourself on a remote farm and produce your own vegetables in order to eat healthy food? Or are there more manageable ways to feed your family?
There are practical ways such as Mary-Ann Shearer's eating plan The Natural Way that has been a great influence on our lifestyle and the eating principles we follow.
Our unique approach to healthy eating will guide you, taking you from a living a life of combatting disease to a life of health and vitality, filled with energy and lust for life. A basic nutrition pyramid is not enough anymore.
We are not nutritionists, doctors or dietitians. We are normal family people, parents; and we care about the health of our family, our own health and the health of our children. We want see our kids eating healthy food. We want to be at their birthday and that our kids party food is healthy for themselves and their friends. And we want the same for you.
So, ready to change your family's health?
Gerhi and Petro Janse van Vuuren
P.S. Feel free to contact us to share your healthy or unhealthy eating experiences with us.
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