Healthy Lunch Ideas

I have always struggled with lunch. 

Having worked in retail for far too many years I would often resort to fast food.  Home cooked leftovers, or a sandwich, just never got me through the day.  I would later learn that it was in large part due to the processed foods/fast food we [I would] eat.  Until I changed the way I was eating.

But still today I struggle with lunch.  It's a bit of a challenge.  I have however, become very good at taking a bag of fruit to work every Monday, [and sometimes some veggies too] so that I can supplement my lunch choices, or if I get hungry between meals I have some healthy choices.  Whole fruits and veggies are a great snack.

Today on Pinterest I ran across this article on grown-up lunches, and decided to really give my home grown lunches another shot.  Here's the challenge right now: I don't have a kitchen.  The shower upstairs flooded the kitchen 2 weeks ago, and we are probably about 2 months away from having a kitchen back.  But we have done well with the barbeque, the toaster oven, and most of our eating-out choices have been good.    So sometime between now and when I get my kitchen back I will add some of these ideas into the menu mix. 

What do you have for lunch?

Thanks Food Babe!

I often wonder why the American public was so easily conned with convenient foods.  I mean, I understand convenient foods, but whose idea was it to make convenient food dangerous?  And the people who signed off on it... what were they thinking?

A Foodbabe.com reader found a frighteningly interesting label on some Kraft Mac-n-Cheese that was sold in England.  The NY Times also ran an article on this, including a comparison of the Kraft product sold in the U.S. versus the one made for the UK.  If you haven't heard of this before, it's worth checking out to just see the difference in ingredients.  You can also see her taste test of the two versions.  You can sign the petition while you are there too.

It all comes down to what we, as Americans will accept (or ignore).  Sadly.

I grew up overseas.  I spent two years in Brazil, and ten years in Holland.  My parents still live in Holland.  I remember moving to Europe at the age of 10, and missing mac-n-cheese, and some other delicious snack and convenient foods.  I remember that we couldn't find hot dogs anywhere.  I remember the advent of microwave meals, and how on one of our summer visits to the States everyone was talking about them.  But most of all I remember growing up on real food.

Whereever you are at on your food journey, check out the arictles on Foodbabe.com, she's a great source of information, and the article is worth a few minutes of your time.

Definitely NOT in MY food!

After years of healthy eating, it's heartbreaking to realize that America's version of healthy eating is exactly the opposite.  I too was one of those people who drank Tab in high school because someone somewhere told me it was the "healthy" choice.  I disliked the taste of so-called diet food and drink intensely, but somehow I stopped listening to my inner voice, and became that diet pop drinker, loyal to a fault.  I never liked feeling starved, and I never liked the taste of totally fake "cardboard" food so my stint with microwave diet meals lasted less than a week, thank goodness!

My job was in retail management, crazy hours, crazy schedule.  And lots of fast food!  All of my home cooked meals were mostly made from scratch.  But I ate the occasional shells and cheese.  And quite frankly even my home cooked meals were mostly lopsided.  And then there were the bottles, jars & mixes.  So convenient!  While my proteins were mostly fresh or frozen, and my cheese was always the real deal, there were always sauces, add ons, desserts.  Oh, desserts, how I loved those!!

I quit diet pop about 1995, that was my last foray into artificial sweeteners.  Instead I switched to full fledged HFCS, and then quit pop altogether, cold turkey, in 1998.  Then about 2005 I decided to really start reading labels.  I mean, REALLY READ the labels.  A funny thing happens when you do that: the labels start to make sense and you realize what you are really eating.  I cut out 99% of any high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) that was in anything.  Challenging for sure, but I was still eating sweets, and I was still eating fast food.  So while I was eliminating HFCS from everything I made I was really just ignoring it in the foods I bought out.

The next step after reading labels is really knowing what is on those labels.  And then delving into what so-called healthy ingredients really consist of.  Just like GMO's we have been led to believe that so many artificial foods are healthy, and when you start eliminating anything fake, processed, not-real from your body, well, your body fights back when you reintroduce it!  Your body knows what it needs, but we have stuffed ourselves so full of chemicals and sugar that our bodies can no longer tell the difference.  

There is so much more to my story, and my process of getting healthier but too much for one post!  

So what led me to this blog?  After years of trying to do the right thing, watching and reading, I am constantly amazed at what our populous considers the "right thing to do", and then I found this article this morning and I knew if I am just one more voice, enough cannot be said about the best reasons eat well.  For ourselves, for our children, for our future.  So here we are!  If this article doesn't spark any sort of concern in you, please just keep reading anything you can find on the topic!  And don't be surprised if I do another post about this article too!  I am that astonished at our blindness!  And a huge thanks to Kate Collins for introducing me to this article.

Have a happy ~ and yes, healthy ~ day!