What is healthful & moral eating?

  For purposes of this blog, moral eating has more to do with how the food is grown and the policies and politics of food manufacturers.  Full disclosure, I am vegan though my husband and son are not.  I'd like to think the "healthful" part was self explanatory.  There are so many people out there that already talk about eating on the cheap, and I've learned some things from them.  One of the things I've learned is the automatic correlation between cheap and unhealthy.  It makes me sad to think that people have relegated themselves quite often to foods that are not even good choices for our bodies, let alone our environment.  Given that I am vegan, you will not see much meat or dairy on here.  My compromise for my husband and son is that I will cook meat once a week and they can have vegetarian meals the rest of the week provided he grates the cheese or whatnot that needs to be prepared.

  Some of you may see the $500 a month goal for a family of 3 plus a baby on the way as a big one, but the reality is that there is a huge grocery struggle in my house.  DH and I often butt heads on what goes in the cart, which is why I always try to do my shopping without him.  I also want to point out that for a first world county, the United States spends far less on food than other countries; we are also near the top for food waste.  Comparing the two sets of statistics, you can easily draw a correlation between the cost of food and the value of food.  It appears to be much easier to waste cheap food that you can easily replace.  I'm horribly guilty of this.  So with these ideas, the reality of what I deal with, and the goal of feeding my family as healthfully as possible - I set my food budget.

  Healthy means a lot of different things to different people.  We all grew up learning the food pyramid, some of us have seen the new food pyramid as well.  A few of you may have even read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollen.  What I'm guessing many of you have not seen is Dr. Fuhrman's food pyramid.  This is one that settle well with me.  

Doesn't that just look more reasonable?  I'm not going to say I agree wholeheartedly with everything Dr. Fuhrman says, sometimes he makes me roll my eyes.  However, he is a great resource overall and I am more likely to agree with what I've learned from him than what I learned in school.  So yes, I will do my best to show you what I've gathered an learned.  Think of me as that friend that has to know what's going on and does lots of research to get the answer.  You get to benefit from all that work in one place.  I'll share books, articles, and resources.  I'll make it clear when it's my opinion based on the information presented or when the information is very clear cut.  I'll make excuses, I'll make mistakes, I'll be human.

  I have read one of Dr. Fuhrman's books and picked up a cookbook of his.  I enjoy reading articles by him or based on his studies.  Fasting and Eating for Health, and the cookbook Eat to Live are good resources.  Fasting and Eating for Health absolutely had me thinking he was a quack at times, I'm not going to lie.  On a whole, it has a lot of great information.  It got me to try fasting, with a bit more research into it, and I was pleasantly surprised when my period regulated.  Up until that point I'd spent my entire pubescent life fighting to regulate my period and hormones.  Fasting for two days regulated my period for just about an entire year.  I fasted again when irregularity came back up, and once again it regulated.  I'd had no idea the impact of food on my cycle!  It was one of the better discoveries I've made in my journey and it was due entirely to reading this book.  I was told at about 16 that my body was "an inhospitable environment" and I would be lucky to have children, but I'd have a better chance the younger I was.  No, she was not promoting teenage pregnancy.  We had our first child in 2005 and while we wanted a second, it wasn't happening.  We didn't go in for fertility, there was a bit of a language barrier as we were living in Germany and I'd had friends who'd had awful experiences.  I didn't want to go through that myself.  About three months after my second fast I was concerned the fasting didn't work this time.  Maybe I hadn't done it for long enough?  Two months later we all decided I should take a pregnancy test, and there it was.  

  The food that goes in your mouth, how much and what, has direct influence on your health and well being. Make the most of it!