It's a start.

I recently made a bold decision. I decided to make a true effort to start shopping for better/healthier food options for my family. I will admit, in the past I've tended to purchase items based on 2 factors: price and taste. If it tasted good and was within my grocery budget (and my family would actually eat it), then I would buy it, over and over again. So, you could say that I've been in a rut for several years now, buying the brands that have proven themselves tried and true for my family. With 3 kids, there just wasn't a whole lot of time for me to go to the store and look around for new/better/healthier brands of products. Plus, I typically would not read labels because I just couldn't stand in an aisle in one spot for more than two seconds... total mayhem would ensue.


Back to the point. I have a few things I'd like to celebrate. I realize that in doing so, I will also be admitting how horrible my kids' diets have been up until this point*. But here I go anyway.


About 2 months ago, I made the switch from white bread to wheat bread. I was raised eating wheat bread, and I really love it. So, I honestly don't know why I served my kids white bread all this time. Regardless, I made the switch without any big fuss... just offered it to them one day, and my kids didn't even seem to notice. Seriously! Not one of them said anything about the bread changing color or texture or taste. I think they actually prefer the wheat bread. Crazy, right?!?!

I also decided to buy fresh or fresh frozen veggies (and not canned) whenever possible. I love fresh veggies and I eat them all the time. But my kids never really seemed to like them all that much, and I got tired of wasting money buying fresh veggies and then just throwing them away because my kids wouldn't eat them. For the few veggies they would eat, I would buy canned veggies because it was just easier somehow in my mind to open up a can of something. But I never really thought about the outrageous amounts of sodium in canned veggies. Not to mention the fact that canned veggies lose most of their nutritional value in the canning process. So here's what I decided to do. For the few veggies that my kids will actually eat, I started making the effort to buy those veggies either fresh or fresh frozen. Instead of throwing some canned corn in front of them (which has 310 mg of sodium per serving!), I am now putting fresh corn on the cob or fresh frozen kernel corn in front of them. And they love it! They will also eat frozen peas, as well as fresh broccoli, carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash. So I've got a pretty good variety going. And seriously, it is not that much harder to steam some broccoli than it is to cook something out of a can. By the way, I wonder why broccoli and squash don't come in cans. Everything else does...

Another switch I've made is with the juice I buy. My kids like juice. There, I said it... I'd been sending juice boxes in their lunches. But, two big changes I've made since school started up again this year are that I bought my kids reusable bottles for their lunch boxes. Most days I send them with water, milk or un-sweetened tea. But for those times that they really want juice, I found this...

It's half the calories of regular juice, 40% less sugar, no artificial sweeteners, and provides 100% of their daily vitamin C. Awesome!

Okay, and perhaps my biggest food change and source of excitement has come from this new product that my mom told me about last weekend. My kids like lunch meat. They do... I know lunch meat isn't all that great, but seriously, they like it. I mean, Isaac can down 4 slices of ham in 1 sitting, and he asks to have it pretty much every single day for lunch. So, I was thrilled when I found that my local grocery store actually sells this brand of lunch meat. Hormel Natural Choice. I found it right next to the other lunch meats. This brand has no preservatives, no artificial colors, no artificial flavors, no trans fats, no nitrites, no nitrates, no MSG, and they are gluten free. And they have a lot less sodium than the other brand (Oscar Mayer) that I've been buying all this time (260 mg of sodium LESS per serving, to be exact!). And Isaac couldn't even tell that I switched brands on him. He still gobbled up his 4 slices yesterday for lunch!

Anyway, I know that my kids' diets are still far from perfect. I mean, they still love their Little Debbies and Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies. But it's a start. And we all have to start somewhere.




* I would just like to say in my defense that my kids eat tons of fresh fruit on a daily basis. And I've been giving my kids organic dairy products for over 3 years now. I also only use real butter and not margarine. There, I feel better...