The Problem With Pins (and Faux Health Food)

One pin that I opened today looked very promising.  It advertised "34 crock pot meals to make ahead of time", for a very small price.  A lot of the ingredients were healthy (not packaged stuff).  The problem is, none of the recipes appealed to us.  We don't eat stew.  We don't eat sausage with noodles.  I make my spaghetti sauce with different ingredients (although hers is a good starter to add other ingredients to, for certain!).

It was a great concept, but it won't work for my family.  I'm sure too, that the one that I will compile won't work for other families.  That's just it, you have to find your own.

Her basic tips are great.  Find stuff on sale.  Coupon!  Price compare. My tip?  Do all of the above, but make your bases and mixes.  You can say a meal is healthy if it has the basic food groups in it, sure.  But if you're using additive-laden packaged stuff in the mix, it's not actually healthy.  It's faux healthy.  You're fooling yourself into thinking that you're eating properly.

Once upon a time, I was a young single mom-to-be, who was introduced to the WIC program.  Friends forewarned me "Oooooh, they are going to make you eat HEALTHY!", with great disdain in their voices.  I thought that healthy was probably a good thing, considering I was busy creating a human life, after all.

I was nervous, wondering if I ate healthy enough for their standards; automatically assuming that I didn't.  (I have an intense love for pizza, and the junky frozen kind was my go-to, and yes, it is JUNK.  Stop fooling yourself that it's not.)  When she asked me what I ate for lunch that day, I cringed and said "A baked potato with cheese and broccoli"  (I neglected to say that it was from a certain fast food chain, figuring that would only make her yell at me more)

She acted like I'd just won the lottery.  She thought it was great!  I then admitted where it had come from.  She didn't care, it was as if she was just elated that I didn't eat a whole box of snack cakes for lunch.

That's right, I ate fast food, and the nutritionist thought it was great.  It felt very wrong, somehow.  Like the time when I was watching the news, also as a mom-to-be, and the anchorman announced that school lunch programs were "now allowed to consider ketchup a vegetable".  Yes kids, that really happened.  I don't know if it's still on the books as allowable, but back then, it certainly was.

You may be saying to yourself right now:  "Pizza has the basic food groups!  Baked potatoes ARE good for you!"  You're right on both count--just not when they're loaded with artificial ingredients like packaged food and fast food.  You certainly can make your own from scratch, and make them healthy.

It's all about what is really in what you eat.  That's what we need to pay more attention to.  Portion control and ingredient control are the two basics in healthy eating.  Balance is also key; not too much of this or that--just enough of everything that's truly good for you.

You might also be thinking that because I had reservations about that WIC appointment, that I changed the way that I ate right then and there.  Wrong.  It's hard to change.  It's hard to overcome an addiction.  Additives are addictive (quite literally), and so is convenience.  I realize that sometimes convenience is necessary.

I won't say that I don't cave in to convenience.  What I will say, is that I have a plan to set up my fridge, freezer, and pantry in a way that convenience is also healthy. It has been said that it takes 30 days to begin a new habit.  30 days isn't too long to make a life change.  I pledge to become a habitually healthy eater, and change my overall health in the process.

I also realize that sometimes, it's hard to shell out the extra money that it costs you in the beginning.   It's true, it does cost more to start, but it won't always cost more--and you only get one body.  It's priceless.  Unhealthy food CAN kill you, and it can also just make you very sick, which costs even more than eating healthy does.  In the long run, eating healthy honestly is less expensive.  Sometimes it's just hard to see that when you're starting out.

For the record, that WIC appointment was 14 years ago, and I'm still just starting out.  Again.  After many starts, and restarts.  I'm not a perfect eater, by any stretch of the imagination.  I just hope to be a better eater someday, and that my children will be, too.

Pinning was the last beginning for me.  I have pinned all sorts of recipes, both healthy and not.  The reason that I still pin unhealthy things is that I am going to try to make them healthier.  They just sound soooo good!  I haven't been very good about testing them out.  That's why I started the blog, to kind of hold myself accountable.