Healthy foods forum???

[pyxichick]

Hey, I've been doing the same thing for the past few months. Now that I've been eating mostly organic and locally grown food, I find that I actually enjoy trips to the grocery store (co-op or farmers' market, now.)

I'm not sure if they have forums where you can connect with other people, but here are two websites inspired by two of my favorite books on this topic.

Jane Goodall's Harvest for Hope

John Robbins' Food Revolution

[smilingcat]

Hey, I've been doing the same thing for the past few months. Now that I've been eating mostly organic and locally grown food, I find that I actually enjoy trips to the grocery store (co-op or farmers' market, now.)

I'm not sure if they have forums where you can connect with other people, but here are two websites inspired by two of my favorite books on this topic.

Jane Goodall's Harvest for Hope

John Robbins' Food Revolution

Jane Goodall's "Harvest of Hope" is a really good read. A must!

Adding to DarcyinOregon, yes some of the artificial sweetners approved in USA is banned in EU, Australia, Japan... If you do a search on Aspirtain (sp) and look at some of the technical journals, it has been linked to whole bunch of reall bad things ADD for starters.

We refused to buy anything made in China, not because we are racist, but rather because they have such poor safety track. Toothpaste sweetened with ethylene-glycol(anti freeze), dog&cat food, monkfish turned out to be puffer fish full of tetrodoxin (works on nerves and you stop breathing), other fish contaminated with fungacide, industrial red dye used in eggs...

Unfortunately, the labels do not indicate where the ingredients came from. So you could be eating something made in USA and have wheat glutin from China.

Needless to say, my housemate and I rarely eat any pre-processed food. Only processed food is ice-cream, pasta made in Italy, artisan bread (cause I been bit lazy about baking our own whole wheat bread).

Smilingcat

[shootingstar]

We refused to buy anything made in China, not because we are racist, but rather because they have such poor safety track. Toothpaste sweetened with ethylene-glycol(anti freeze), dog&cat food, monkfish turned out to be puffer fish full of tetrodoxin (works on nerves and you stop breathing), other fish contaminated with fungacide, industrial red dye used in eggs...

Unfortunately, the labels do not indicate where the ingredients came from. So you could be eating something made in USA and have wheat glutin from China.

Needless to say, my housemate and I rarely eat any pre-processed food. Only processed food is ice-cream, pasta made in Italy, artisan bread (cause I been bit lazy about baking our own whole wheat bread).

Smilingcat

And it is still possible to have a predominantly Asian style or even many Chinese cuisine dishes that adopt whole foods approach with just a few ingredients and no/very little ingredients from China. My mother's cooking is a testament to that. So when I get lazy, I just fall on dishes that she made for us as a child.

To me, whole foods eating...is new spin on something very old and taken for granted. If you take some of the world's traditional major cuisines and just focus on the dishes that have very little fat (and some cuisines don't use any butter)/no fat, no processed ingredients that contain sugar, chemicals in itself (ie. ketchup), lean meat/no meat, herbs/spices and focus on TECHNIQUE, then life ..really is a breeze to understand whole foods eating and cooking.

At its most simplest level, is to take any cuisine not at the gourmet level, but start right at the level how the peasants prepared their food where there was /is little money to buy pre-packaged/chemically treated food, that is another way to approach.

I haven't bought Italian dried pasta in the past 12 months. I now find it lighter on my palate to choose Asian dried pasta or occasionally thin fresh vermecelli.

Bread is from the artisan bakery that uses no chemicals, no sugar nor butter. Just make sure you don't ask for it presliced, otherwise the bread will harden faster (because it doesn't have chemicals to keep it soft). We just slice off a piece the loaf whenever we need a slice.

I actually didn't realize I had been cooking whole foods style most of time, until I started to look more closely at other people's shopping carts at the checkout or down aisles of mind-boggling pre-processed foods in plastic bags, cans and jars. While convenience cooking is a great thing and fine for 3-4 dishes per month, it is pretty shocking what is on the grocery shelves that have an abundance of chemical additives for preservation.

The pre-processed foods that we do have at home are: soy sauce (salt-reduced. Am working on reducing my intake.), capers (used maybe every 2-3 months), mustard (lots of brands that are fantastic without sugar), chili paste, occasionally sauerkraut (it's hard to find without sugar), soy black-bean garlic chili paste (I try to use sparingly), balsamic vinegar (we have several different flavours). We have alot of dried spices and herbs. And seem to have on hand at any time, 2-3 types of fresh herbs.

[shootingstar]

There are so many different fresh veggies and fruits to try:

http://www.foodsubs.com/Greenckg.html#Chinese%20spinach

For Asian green veggies that you are unfamiliar, the simplest way to start off is to wash, cut and sautee in hot pan for a few min. in a bit of oil, a bit of water so pan doesn't burn and if you wish a small jot of soy for seasoning. And have the veggie on the side. Then later, you can hunt around for more "complex" recipes (which often are not..)

For some salads, try adding raw peeled and sliced daikon (or Chinese white radish). Doesn't taste as spicy as the raw red little radishes. Or even peeled and chopped fresh water chestnuts can be a great textural twist. (Canned water chestnuts taste watered down.)

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Well, there already is a whole forum on TE for "Nutrition,hydration,and Recipes"...and it has lots of good healthy recipes and healthy eating discussions on it-
Here is it, for those who don't know about it:
http://forums.teamestrogen.com/forumdisplay.php?f=64

(Eastmobiles- what's up with the web advertising page link?)

[redrhodie]

(Eastmobiles- what's up with the web advertising page link?)

Healthy Spam!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Healthy Spam!

Hey, Knot would love that!
You can have your Spam and eat it too!