How to Persuade Your Family to Give Up Those Processed and Ultra-Processed Foods
Unless we have all been hiding our heads in the sand, we really do know that we should be changing to a healthier diet both for ourselves and our children.
But how do you wean your family off processed and ultra-processed foods?
It is not easy - it takes time and perseverance but it can be done.
The first thing to do is to work out what you can use as a healthy substitute for each your family's favorite processed food dishes. And then there are individual things like sugar, cookies, sodas and more. They all have to go!
But don't do it all at once – there is no point in going completely “cold turkey”
You can reckon on it taking up to a year to achieve your goal. But as you eliminate processed foods, you will also find it gets easier and you will also be eliminating sugars and artificial flavors and colorings at the same time.- Part of the weaning process is to encourage your family to really enjoy what is on their place. Try to sit down at the table as a family for the meal with no rushing off to do something else before everyone has finished. Make sure there is a large jug of pure water with some slices of fresh fruit in, such as lemon or orange, to encourage a taste for drinking water too.
- Learn to enjoy the genuine flavor of real food. With processed foods: fats and sugars and salts are all added to help mask the metallic taste of those chemical additives. You have to agree that that is a very good reason to wean you off!
- Learn to read labels wisely. Yes I know it is a chore but you will get quicker at it and you will learn a lot on behalf of your family. The safest and easiest of all is buy food with no labels! Fresh fruit and vegetables for example.
- It will not happen overnight but you have to give your palate and that of your family time to change so that you gradually lose your taste for those very sweet or very salty foods.
- Breakfast is a good meal to start changing the family's habits. Eggs make an excellent choice – they are right back in fashion again and now considered to be a superfood. Free range of course and so many different ways to serve them. You can even whip a raw egg up in a smoothie for an easy energy meal. It could be a bowl of home made muesli with raw oats, dried fruit, fresh fruit like blueberries, raw nuts and a mixture of seeds with yogurt or milk and some raw honey and cinnamon. Endless combinations are possible. The important thing is to avoid sugary, colorful commercial breakfast cereals.
- As a change from fresh fruits, dried fruits can provide a quick dessert or snack, and they keep for a long time, too. But too much dried fruit and the sugar levels can rise.
- Another snack is crunchy raw nuts such as walnuts, almonds and cashews. All raw nuts have good things to offer you.
- Once you have the breakfasts sorted, then work on the next meal to go unprocessed such as suppertime.
- Remember to go for high quality foods with the least amount of processed ingredients. The perimeter aisles of the supermarket usually have the fresh produce or get to know your local farmers market. Something to remember when shopping, and if in doubt whether to buy something, is to ask yourself if your great grandmother would recognize it. If she would not, then the chances are (unless it is some exotic fruit from distant shores) that you should put it back on the shelf!
Tips to wean your family off processed and ultra-processed foods
And when you are checking out foods to buy:
1. Food should be grown without pesticides nor chemical fertilizers.
2. Food should not be genetically modified (that is non GMO).
3. Food should not contain any added growth hormones, antibiotics or other drugs.
4. Food should not contain anything artificial nor preservatives.
5. Food should be fresh looking with no wilting leaves or squashy, bruised fruit.
6. Food should not come from a factory farm and in the case of animals and poultry, they should have free range to the outdoors and be fed their natural native diets.
7. Food should be grown with sustainable, natural and organic methods.
If you prepare your meals by following these 7 tips, you will be making major and delicious strides for your family’s health. So take outs and restaurants are off the map for the time being – it is home cooking all the way!
Sources
Eating highly processed foods linked to weight gain. (2019).
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/eating-highly-processed-foods-linked-weight-gain
Freeman, C. R., et al. (2018). Impact of sugar on the body, brain, and behavior.
https://www.bioscience.org/2018/v23/af/4704/fulltext.htm
Hall, K. D., et al. (2019). Ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain: An inpatient randomized controlled trial of ad libitum food intake.
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(19)30248-7?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1550413119302487%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Islam, M. A., et al. (2019). Trans fatty acids and lipid profile: A serious risk factor to cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes [Abstract].
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31336535/
Written by Jane Chitty
Jane writes for Healing Natural Oils, a producer and retailer of high-quality, all-natural treatments for a variety of conditions as well as a range of beauty products. Apart from writing about those various conditions, she also covers general health, environmental and other subjects of interest. She has lived in Kenya as well as Cape Town, South Africa and spent time in San Diego, USA. She now lives in Somerset, England with regular visits from her far-flung children and grandchildren. She is a keen gardener and enjoys growing fresh fruit and vegetables with her husband on their joint allotment. As a result, there is something available to use in the kitchen virtually all year round. Her regular posts can be found on our blog.