100 Days of Real Food

[Dana]

No Goldfish. No Froot Loops. No store-bought ketchup or Chick-fil-A runs. Those are some of the new rules that one North Carolina family has instituted as it goes cold turkey on a whole foods diet for 100 days.

And despite the increased food bill and the major overhaul of their cooking habits, the Leake family seems pretty pleased with the results.

"It's pay now, or pay later in health care costs," Jason Leake told the Charlotte Observer.

Lisa Leake, a mother of two, was inspired to make the drastic change after reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. She told the Observer she was horrified to learn what she was feeding her children.

So out went the refined sugars, refined grains, deep-fried foods and fast foods. Ideally everything has five ingredients or fewer.

Lisa launched her own blog, 100 Days of Real Food, to chronicle the family's ups and downs with the new diet (sample posts: "Day 9: The Donut Incident" and "Day 60: P.F. Chang's and the Gum Controversy").

The site also offers "10 Reasons to Cut Out Processed Food," and "Real Food Defined (AKA 'The Rules')." Lisa's reason numero uno:

Processed foods are an illusion, often appearing to be healthy (with claims like low fat, low carb, vitamin fortified, no trans fat, contains omega-3s, etc.) when these foods are in fact the very thing making a lot of Americans unhealthy, sick, and fat.

And the Leakes also encourage readers to pledge to try switching their own families over to a whole foods diet for 10 days to give it a try.

While the family has seen plenty of health benefits as a result of their switch, according to the Observer, they will loosen the rules a bit when the 100 days are over. Jason, for example, is craving deep-dish pizza.

http://www.takepart.com/news/2010/07...-familys-story


Have you seen this?

Could you do it? How about for only 10 days?

[Becky]

I can't get the links to load on my phone right now...I'll have to come back to those. We eat out entirely too much. I want to read her rules and at least consider them and how I could use them in our house.

[2PeasMelissa]

what a great idea! I think it would be difficult to start, for sure.... the 10-day challenge sounds feasible, though.

[Cathi]

I won't lie...it would be hard. But with proper planning I think I could do it. For 10 days. 100 would be hard. If you do 100 you might as well do it forever.

I read a few posts of the blog. She was SO leery of every sauce at PF Changs, but didn't blink an eye at that pizza sauce at the museum restaurant. I can almost 100% guarantee you that the sauce on the pizza had sugar or even corn syrup in it. So how careful was she, and how careful do you have to be doing this kind of thing? Very. It would be super hard! But I think even if you couldn't do it perfectly, it's an amazing way to get more fruits and vegetables in to your diet, which is the best diet anyway.

[Poodle]

I agree with Cathi, and I also think it's very cavalier of her to say she's going to just go there and expect to feed her kids whole food... with no real backup plan. kids need to eat on schedule - her snacks were okay but she assumed too much and is asking too much of very little kids.

overall, I think great intentions in following her plan would do us all good! I haven't read the entire thing, but from what I've seen, it's 90% great eating and 10% hypocrisy