Saturday, March 13, 2010

Long time, no blog!

Hey, it's been busy at this end!

Am I the only one whose been watching this whole debate about the healthcare reform and has merely come to the conclusion that their all disingenuous miscreants? Read some of my earlier posts about healthcare... I'm not going to repeat myself.

If you've read my blog with any frequency in the past, you know that I have a long standing issue with the rampant use of High Fructose Corn Syrup (hence referred to as HFCS) in practically everything we eat. My wife whose healthy skepticism regarding some of my more passion rants about things finally hit the tipping point when she noticed that there was HFCS in the yogurt she was buying. Needless to say, there's a lot more Stonyfield organic yogurt in the house, and I couldn't be happier.

I'll move away from HFCS for a moment and rant about something else that I find in products all the time that drives me crazy... preservatives. I understand that you want to extend shelf-life, I hear ya. However, when I pick up something from the freezer section and I find both HFCS and preservatives, obviously you've lost my sale, but it begs another question... if it's got preservatives in it, why's it in the freezer?? Mind you, I'm not talking about Italian ice, I'm talking about something like frozen waffles. I make home made waffles all the time and the ones we don't eat end up getting put into the chest freezer for eating at a later date and they're just fine.

I promise to parrot Michael Poulin as little as possible, but I've gotten to the point where if I can not readily identify all the ingredients, I don't buy it.

This approach to buying food has altered our diets in some interesting ways. For one thing, the junk food has truly left the house. If we're going to have a package of cookies in the house as a treat, and keeping with the rule laid out above, it forces us to buy higher quality products. It also means that our consumption of fruits and vegetables has significantly increased.

As we've cut the HFCS and preservatives out of the house, something odd has happened to our portions... they've shrunk. As far as I can tell my gastronomy hasn't suddenly become spectacularly efficient. What I think has happened is that my bodies sense of being "full" isn't being suppressed anymore.

In a rather non subjective test, I have noticed that I have no problem completely emptying a regular (HFCS) can of soda. However I can only seem to get partly through one made with real sugar. Obviously, not a double blind experiment, but it would be interesting to do such a test and see what the results are!

For us the real results have been that our waists have significantly shrunk. Granted, our grocery bill has gone up, but I'm honestly okay with it. I think of it this way: "I'm investing in my health." I'm blessed to have to healthy children and I'd like to get them off to a great start in life by giving them some healthy eating habits. My oldest daughter abhors soda, and I'm a-okay with it. For full disclosure it should be noted that we're both at the gym three times a week... so in a nutshell... eating healthy and getting your ass to the gym helps you lose weight... I know crazy talk!

Something else that I really want to get going on this year is a much expanded garden! Last year I had to have MAJOR construction in my back yard (basically all my retaining walls needed to be rebuilt) and it caused all my grass to go goodbye... This I see as a great opportunity to put a huge garden! I know that once my garden gets growing it'll have the added benefit of giving me both fresher veggies and reducing my grocery bill.

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