Saturday, May 14, 2011

Challenge #5
We’ve eased our way into the first few challenges by limiting our beverages to just coffee, tea, water or milk – having a minimum of 2 fruits and vegetables at every meal– limiting our servings of meat to 7 per week – and consuming a minimum of 64 oz of water each day! Whether you’ve participated in all four challenges or just one, I say Nice Job! Hopefully along the way you have learned something you didn’t know before and once again made yourself think about the food you eat.
So that leads me to Challenge #5 – May 15 – May 21--- No low fat, lite, reduced fat, or non fat foods. And just to be clear, this challenge is for all reduced fat products, including milk.
If you are anything like me, you probably think that these ‘labels’ are the good guys. I used to be the first one to buy the low fat milk, lite sour cream, the fat free yogurt, or lite ice cream. But in reality, many of these low fat or lite foods boost the sugar amounts to make up for the loss of flavor. A good way to think about it is if they are taking the fat out, they have to be adding something else to replace it. Let’s say you have a food that claims to be 99% fat free. Sounds good right? Let’s imagine this hypothetical food had 50 calories and 3 grams of fat. There are 9 calories per gram of fat so that means that 27 out of 50 calories comes from fat! So your ‘low fat’ food ends up being more than 50% fat! Yikes! So much for low fat food. Yet another way for the food industry to trick the consumer into buying a food that isn’t good for you. You’re better off eating the real thing in smaller amounts than the lite products filled with sugar and salt. The New York Times bestselling author, Mark Bittman, agrees in his book Food Matters. He says, “The low-fat craze caused millions of Americans actually to gain weight because they were reaching for the ‘low-fat’ but high calorie carbs.” If you can’t stand to go back to whole milk, try almond milk for a week. When I switched to almond milk I had a hard time wrapping my thoughts around milk made from almonds but once I actually tried it, I was pleasantly surprised. Now I use it all the time just like I would regular milk.
I’d love to hear from those who are taking this challenge so please feel free to leave comments on my blog or go to Facebook under Real Food Journey and click the “Like” button and add a comment there. I’m trying to get more traffic on Facebook so I can do more with the page. Please share with whomever you think may enjoy it. Good luck to all!
*Thought for the day*
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?- - Vincent van Gogh

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