Eating whole foods

Our “Change the world Wednesday” challenge this week takes us into the kitchen for a spot of food preparation.

Reduce Footprints has been thinking about starting a garden and enjoying fresh herbs and vegetables. She’s into whole foods; knowing that they are good for us and the environment. So this week we’ve been challenged to prepare a meal using whole foods.

According to Reduce Footprints, if it’s processed, labelled “Low fat” or “enriched” or includes ingredients you can’t pronounce then it’s not whole.

Instead of cheating I thought it would be fun to think back over yesterday and write down everything I ate. That way I can see if anything unsavoury is going into my body. It gives me a much better chance to look at where I could improve things.

So here goes; this is what I ate yesterday:

Breakfast

Breakfast is split into two for me. When I get up I have a pint of hot water and an apple. I do a couple of hours work, then eat with Little Miss Green when she gets up. I had porrage made with 1/3 soya milk and 2/3 water, natural yogurt, a kiwi and some tinned apricots.

Snack

A raw apple mid morning

Lunch

Half a small tin of salmon, half an avocado with vegetables – broccoli, carrots, beetroot and sprouted alfalfa. A couple of ryvita.

Snack

Mid afternoon I had some more tinned apricots and natural yogurt

Dinner

1/3 brown and 2/3 white basmati with vegetables – same vegetables as lunch time.

Before bed

Another bowl of porrage made with soy milk and water with natural yogurt

Throughout the day I had around 2 litres of water to drink.

All in all that’s not too bad. I could swap the tinned fruit for fresh. I’m happy with the soya milk; it’s organic, forest friendly and not enriched. I am trying to increase my intake of brown rice, but I’m doing that gradually. I guess fresh salmon would be better than tinned, but I don’t eat much in one go or have it often, so tins are handy for me to have in the home. Ryvita contain rye flour, water and salt. It’s technically a processed food I suppose, but not as bad as bread full of rubbish. I’ve recently bought some sprouted wheat bread to try, but not got around to it yet.

Interestingly, it’s the tinned apricots, salmon, white rice and ryvita which are the non organic parts of my diet too.

What about you – could you eat whole foods for one meal, a day or a week? Or do you do that already?