Blog I Love: 100 Days of Real Food

Who they are:

100 Day of Real Food‘s tag line – 1 Family, 2 Kids and 0 Processed Foods pretty much sums it up. A couple of years ago, Lisa – the mom behind the blog – read Michael Pollen’s In Defense of Food and had a major food epiphany and decided to change how her family ate for 100 days. They are still at it and she writes about how they keep their food real.

Why I love 100 Days of Real Food and what I learn from it:

I have been really interested in whole food and organics for the better part of a decade. I honestly can’t remember why I decided to start eating whole foods, maybe it was starting to really learn to cook and realizing how fulfilling it is to feed myself.  Also reading books like This Organic Life: Confessions of A Suburban Homesteader changed how I thought about where my food came from. After reading this book, I signed up for a CSA and began eating foods in season and grown close to home. And I started feeling better.

When I was studying to become a teacher, we got to work in school gardens with some of our students. It was pretty eye-opening how little students knew about where their food came from. That experience helped me to want to help others eat better.

One of the ways I teach students about food is sharing what I eat. This may sound weird, but I show my students my meals. I eat breakfast at school and show them my steel cut oats with cooked apples or yogurt with honey and real blueberries.  Sometimes we sit together at lunch time. They are so interested in what I’m eating. They usually say they’ve never heard of it or comment that it looks weird, but smells good. We talk about the importance of eating the rainbow. Not like eating every color Skittles (actual conversation), but to eat different colored fruits and vegetables. On my birthday, I bring treats: strawberries and vanilla wafers with whipped cream. Well, I don’t use the dairy anymore, but they love it.

I love food and now that I’m in change of feeding another human, I am even more concerned with the quality of said food. Plus with all my allergies, I’ve got to be pretty diligent about reading labels and keeping allergens out of my system.

I absolutely love reading about other people’s adventures in navigating the real food world.
Posts I find inspiring:

Real Food Tips: 7 Healthy Holiday Parties (for kids!) – as a teacher, I am thankful for posts like this one full of ideas on how not to sugar up the kiddos at school. I’ve already tried a couple of these ideas with great success (recycled trash crafts and board games with the teacher playing day) and I look forward to my return to the classroom to try more.

Real Food Tips: 10 Ways To Switch Up Your Kid’s Lunch – Kid’s lunch? What about MY lunch? Really, in all seriousness, use these ideas to make your own lunch better.

Real Food Tips: 10 Reasons To Cut Out Processed Foods – please know I still eat completely and utter like crap some of the time. On purpose. But 90% of the time, we are hitting up the whole foods.

Real Food Tips: 12 Ways to Keep It Cheap – Eating whole food can be expensive. Lisa has specific tips to help defray the cost. At this point my life, I’d rather spend money on quality food than medicine in the future. I’m that guy now.

Welcome to 100 Days of Real Food – where it all started and a 10-Day Pledge.

Lunch photos on Facebook – I very much want Lisa to make my lunch.

If you haven’t already, go check out 100 Days of Real Food and then tell me what you think.

What blogs do you love?