How I Came to Really Love Real Food: My Food Story (Part One)

It can be helpful sometimes to step back from life and gather your thoughts on various subjects. As you may have noticed, there have been big changes in our family over the last few years in the way we view food, diet, and health. Now I want to write about my "food story", with the hope it might be helpful for someone else thinking of beginning a similar journey.

Thinking back over the years before I became interested in nutrition and health issues in general, I never really considered the impact the foods I ate and the medicines I took had on my physical well-being. I just did what seemed "normal" to me, without much thinking whether or not "normal" was what was best. It is easier to do things that way, so naturally, that was my default mode. Now that I am still only approximately ten years past the "default mode", I certainly do not claim to be an expert on all things dietary. I am learning new things all the time and hope to remain a learner my entire life.

The first time I recall being confronted with a major dietary change came shortly after I got married. My husband was interested in the pies I enjoyed making, but he was not interested in the Crisco I used to make them. Could I make them without the Crisco. Maybe with butter in the crust? I figured any pie crust made with something other than Crisco was doomed to failure. But in an effort to humor him, I gave it a try. To my great surprise, it turned out great! The crust tasted like some kind of fancy French pastry. Go figure. Apparently, cooking with transfats (which is what Crisco is made of) was not necessary to enjoying good food. I still didn't know much about why transfats are dangerous, and I honestly didn't much care. All I knew was my husband wanted to avoid them, and it wasn't all that difficult to do that, so I gladly made the necessary changes. Real butter only, and read the labels on packaged foods - anything with hydrogenated oil of any sort got put back on the shelf. No problem.

Next time I will talk about our second big change - the biggest change of all: going sugar-free.