Meals at our Home: Where We Are and How We Got Here Part One

We at the Hoosier house like to eat. And we like to eat good food! We have found that we like our food to be as simple, natural, and as healthy as possible; all while tasting fantastic! (And we like a good dessert too!)

I like to look at food as a way to keep us healthy: a preventative medicine of sorts. My goal is to provide balanced nutrition to our bodies in the healthiest way possible without sacrificing any fantastic flavor!

This hasn’t always been our goal – when we were first married we ate better than the average Joe but not nearly as healthy or balanced as we eat now. Here is a short overview of our journey to healthier eating:

Switching to Made From Scratch
I am sensitive to MSG in my foods and have a list of ingredients that I have found cause reactions in me; when I react I have horrible migraines – it’s a pain that I cannot begin to describe. When we discovered this link, we began cooking mostly from scratch. Almost all packaged and pre-made foods seem to have some MSG in them. We discovered that organic foods do not include MSG – you know the whole all natural thing, it doesn’t allow for adding extra ingredients to the foods; however the organic foods that we were able to find at the time were way out of our price range (we have since begun to find very affordable organic foods!).

As we started switching to homemade foods with fewer preservatives, I noticed two things: 1) I was no longer experiencing excruciating daily headaches and 2) I was feeling better all around. More energy was fantastic!

Drinking Water
I gave up soda as a daily beverage before Cole and I were married. We had been drinking a combination of kool-aid, water, juice, and milk. I was drinking very little water in favor of the sweeter options – and becoming dehydrated. I started drinking water (with a little bit of lemon juice for vitamin C and flavor). Water essentially does nothing to the budget and is so healthy! Since making this switch, I feel great and notice a drastic change in how I feel when I don’t drink water. It’s great!

I read that the way to calculate how much water you should try to drink is your weight in pounds divided in half. That number is the number of ounces a healthy person should be drinking. But I’ve also been told that if your urine is a very light color then you are drinking the correct amount of water. Using both methods I have found that I need to drink the same number of ounces of water.

Eating a Balanced Diet
I have continued to read about healthy food and ways to improve our diets and our health. I read about balanced diets and the requirements for ensuring that our diets include the necessary grains, produce, meat, and dairy. I made a simple chart with the needs for both Cole and I and we began checking off requirements as we ate them to help us monitor our eating and ensure that we were getting all of our nutrients. This process is becoming more and more automatic.

Making Changes to Healthier Options
Another thing that I have read about are healthier choices to improve our health. I work these changes in slowly so as not to be overwhelming and as we can include them without increasing our grocery budget. Things like purchasing milk with no added growth hormones at Costco. Or substituting coconut oil (a health improving oil) for butter and shortening. Or using whole grain flour and whole wheat pastas. Or adding organic options through bulk purchases at Costco.

How I Shop for Food and Groceries
I keep a price book and compare prices between the local grocery store, Aldi, and Costco and purchase the best buy. This does not always mean the option with the lowest price, but generally I find that I can purchase all of our healthy foods at very low prices. In general I purchase all of my meat and a lot of fresh produce in town as it goes on rock bottom sales at our grocery store. I purchase milk and other staples at Costco. Foods that I cannot purchase at Costco are purchased at Aldi.

Why I Love Costco
Because we make so much of our food from scratch, we can shop in bulk for ingredients and use them all before they go bad. Shopping in bulk does prove to be a financially responsible decision for us. We can get many of the foods we enjoy in a healthier and more natural form at Costco. At Costco I can purchase hormone free milk, free range eggs, and organic veggies at the same or only slightly higher price as I can purchase regular milk, eggs, and veggies for at Aldi. Cheese at Costco is significantly less expensive than at Aldi. Costco also carries unbleached whole grain flour for the same price as bleached white flour at Aldi.

We can purchase large amounts of healthy produce from Costco (also for about the same price as Aldi) and have never purchased any produce from Costco that was not absolutely incredible! We love the quality of food!

Where We Are Heading
There are dozens of other changes we are in the process of making or that I would like to someday make: Eating less/no high fructose corn syrup, food dyes, or food preservatives. Switching to using butter instead or margarine. Only grass fed beef and free range chicken. And many more. We may or may not ever be able to make all of these changes and stay within our preferred grocery budget.

I visited Whole Foods recently and found that they have excellent prices which are competitive with our local grocery store – except the foods at Whole Foods are organic. This could be an excellent place to find some of the foods that I have not been able to eat due to my MSG sensitivity. I would like to take some time to become familiar with this store and compare the healthy benefits and prices to those at other stores.

Many people worry about the foods that they eat and spend exorbitant amounts of money on what they believe to be the best foods out of fear. We choose to make the best choices that we know how to make and trust God to bless our efforts to keep our bodies healthy for his service!

If you have made it this far, congratulations! That was a long post to explain our shopping for and enjoyment of food! I know I enjoy reading about other people’s food choices and learning from them so I thought I would share our choices and our reasoning. I hope that you enjoyed this glimpse into our learning and growth in the area of healthy eating!