What are you eating?

It's about time we stop wondering why we're sick, overweight, tired, can't get pregnant, and many other health issues and start knowing what exactly is in our food!  What are you eating?  Do some research and you may be surprised to find what's put into the food you buy- it was enough to make me stop going to certain fast food places, and stop buying certain products.  And we have seen a difference at our house.

A year or more ago I did a post about some scary ingredients that I had learned were used by common fast food places. (see- what's happened to society?) Cellulose being one of these ingredients which is a plant based additive mostly coming from trees- so in essence wood that is used as a filler for many foods labeled as low or reduced fat.  Since that post we have stopped going to the main fast food culprits, and avoided certain foods containing those ingredients.

Let me tell you this- at my house we make food from scratch (or close to), I make my own freezer meals by making extra then freezing them in oven safe containers.  The only processed type of food we buy is cold cereal for the kids.  It's actually been over 1 1/2 years since we've bought mac & cheese.  I found that many of the things we used to buy like mac & cheese we could make ourselves and it tasted just as good if not better.  (rice a roni is a perfect example)

The results?  Well the most noticeable one for us is when from November 2012- January 2013 (and even a little bit into March- but not as bad) the city we live in had multiple outbreaks of sicknesses.  I counted 5 different types going around:
1: headaches & fever
        lasted about 4 days
2: vomit & diarrhea to the point of no clean towels in the house (but no other symptoms)
        lasted for about 3-4 days
3: strep throat
        lasted about 4-5 days
4: flu- like symptoms (aches, vomit, and fever)
        lasted about a week
5: horrible cough that lingers for about a month- some got croup or whooping cough
        lasted a month or sometimes longer

When I say these were going around- they were going around BAD.  There was not one family that I knew that didn't escape getting at least one of these. And in some cases families had multiple ones and each member of the family was affected.
Our family did not get ANY of them!  To this day- the closest any of my kids, husband or I came to any of these sicknesses was when at random probably 3 times my husband and I got a headache that lasted for a hour or two.  Since we rarely take medicines Advil worked fine at taking the edge off while we took a nap and got rid of the headache.  It wasn't until January some time when I realized how lucky we were that we hadn't gotten any of these severe sicknesses going around.  My kids go to public school and I'm sure were exposed to it there, and we were going to public places to shop etc. so what makes our family so different that we wouldn't have caught any of them?

When I pondered on this I realized how we had made a strong effort to avoid processed foods, rarely eat fast foods, and instead make healthy homemade foods.  Now I don't know for sure if that's what saved our family, but at the very least I suspect that doing those things helped our body's immune systems be much stronger then they would have been if we ate more processed and fast foods.  Just some "food for thought"- try it and see how it works for your family!

I saw this video on facebook this morning and wanted to share it- it's some pretty interesting (and a little scary) information.  Make sure you are informed and know what's in the food you eat!

Now I'm even more excited to move and have a garden where we can grow some of our own food!