Gut Health 101 Ep.5: A Practical Guide to Sourcing Real Food for Your Family with Becky Hartman

Welcome back once again to Made for Health. I'm super excited to be here once again with Becky. And today we'll be talking about food sourcing. How do you actually do this at home? We've talked about real food, how powerful it is, and today we're going to give you some ins and outs, like how you source what our journey was. And at the very end of it, we're actually going to provide a sourcing guide we've actually put together that will actually give you resources for where you can buy food pretty much anywhere in the United States. You can source real butter, real eggs, real real whatever, and that'll be resourced at the end of this as well. So really excited to get into, like, some of the pragmatic how to things as far as using food as medicine and putting into your life. So on that note, we're going to get started talking about some things with our family. If this information is helpful, please, like, share and subscribe. That's how we get this kind of information out there. And with that, we will start going into it. So first of all, we have our own kind of story with how we actually got in. This was actually reading a book. And then you kind of literally had to, I don't want to say coerce me, but kind of sort of coerced because you had to convince me. I mean, even though I was a doctor, there was a lot of finagling and things disappearing and things showing up. And so why don't you kind of work that's part of our story is, you know, getting me on board with it. I mean, I tell people it took about two years to figure out how to source our food, but that's when I consciously kind of realized what was going on. So why don't you kind of start with some of the backdrop, like how. How that whole process even started for a family.

So I read. I don't remember why a friend of mine had read it, and she was like, I read this book and now I have to process through how it's going to. She said, I know it's going to change things, but I have to process through how radical the changes will be or something like that. And I was like, well, that's an interesting book review. And so I read it too. And the book was Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. And it was kind of a memoir of a year that her family spent eating 100% local. So each family member had one food they could get, not local. So I think one of them chose, like, Coffee. I don't remember exactly what everybody chose, but obviously they were in southwestern Virginia, so you can't grow coffee there. So they couldn't get that local. But they didn't want to not have coffee for a year. So. So each family member got like one, you know, item like that, but then otherwise they either grew or bartered all of their food for a year. And she just documented the process and also just talked about some of the things that surprised them about animals and, you know, the way that we raised chickens. And at least in the United States, it was very interesting. And it just sort of changed my thinking completely about food. And I didn't necessarily come away being like, we have to get 100 of everything we ever eat local as much as, like, wow, I think food is a lot more important than we have been considering it. And, you know, how are we going to make changes?

So it wasn't a medical book, it wasn't a health book. It was more like a, like you said, memoir. More memoir. Memoir. There we go. That the family did, and that kind of struck you because they're doing things with intention. They're living their lives with intention. All of a sudden, the family also grew closer together. They had this really amazing family experience, which today we don't realize how big of an experience it is, like getting food and growing food and the whole thing. And that's kind of what captivated you. But it wasn't really, I want my kids to grow optimal brains. I want my family, family be ultimate healthy. It was more of like a fascination with that journey and that experience. You wanted to kind of have a unique.

I think it just changed the way she thought about food so much. She's. She's a very well established author, very well known, and typically doesn't. Her books aren't all memoirs, but this was one experience that she had with her family. It was just very interesting, I think, because of the journey that she went on. She talked a lot about, you know, where their food had been coming from and things like that. And it makes you think, you know, how do I think about these same things? And so, no, it was not medical. It was really just a story that was very engaging and made you think. And.

Yeah, and that's a different journey from the real food journey. We talk about a lot with, you know, eating real food unprocessed. So where did. Where did that journey, the uniqueness of this experience and living living life intentionally, even with how food's procured and how your family consumes it or procures it together. At what point in time was it. Did it transition to, wow, like, this is actually. We're eating real food, and actually our goal for health is real food. Like, was there some inflection point or was it just kind of like gradually kind of evolving to that over. Over time?

For me, it was not that gradual, really. I mean, we didn't change everything all at once. I remember eating, wanting to eat all of the meat that we had in our freezer first before I got too deep into things, because I knew once I learned a certain amount, I probably wouldn't want to eat it anymore. And we'd spent, you know, our finances on that and needed to not just waste it. So I actually was very intentional about eating through what we had in the freezer. As far as, you know, real food type things. We weren't clearing out the junk. That was more of a stop buying things process. You know, we. When our kids were very little, we had the goldfish crackers and, you know, the typical toddler preschooler snacks, and a lot of that was just not buying those things anymore. But with, you know, real food that maybe wasn't the highest quality real food. We tried to eat those things before we. And then we just started replacing them with more. I began learning about local farms. I began kind of on a similar vein, like, what can I find locally? Like, what's available out there? Where? Who else can I learn from? And I just started consuming more and more books that were talking about real food and one another one that I read. I think shortly thereafter. Animal Vegetable Miracle was Real Food, what to Eat and why by Nina Plank, who was a farmer's market. She, I think, ran one of the largest farmer's market. So shortly thereafter, reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I read Real Food, what to Eat and why by Nina Plank. And she just kind of talked through. She talked a lot about farmers markets, and she kind of went ingredient by ingredient, like milk, you know, what should your milk look like? And what's the truth about milk? And how can you find better milk? Or she just kind of went ingredient through ingredient that way. And it was very. Just helpful to kind of be like, okay, you know, let's think about this differently. I will say when we started this journey so, so many years ago, our kids were really little. They're. They're 18, 17 and 14 now, and they were very little at the time. And we. The things that are available now were a lot more difficult to get. But I remember reading probably from Joel Salatin that he said, you know, you vote with your food dollars. And all the podcasts I was listening to, they were just starting to be a big thing at the time. Would say you don't have to like, don't overthink it, but where you spend your money tells people where they should be invested. So if you're. You can look at Walmart now, you can find organic products at Walmart that are pretty decent quality. That was definitely not the case in the mid early aughts and. But people started wanting it and so Walmart's gonna stock it because people will buy it and they can charge more for it. And so that was a big shift. It's been a big shift. Culturally, I think we've been moving more and more towards better food options, even though we still eat a lot of processed food. But a lot of those things, I had to order a lot of things online. I had to really figure out where, what we could get locally and what needed to happen other places and then learn what I could make myself. A lot of the treats that we like no longer would be eating became things that if we wanted them, we had to make them at home. And that makes you not eat them as much.

And so. And just on a side note, we do have a lot of book resources on our website. What Real food, what didn't. Why we've got several Joel Salton's books, a whole bunch of other resources on there. Just, we have some of Daniel Walker, I think one of her cookbooks is on there. So, like we have some good resources from a pragmatic standpoint.

They're. It's a book list, correct? Yeah, yeah.

So people looking for a place, a reliable source for books that have been curated. Someone's already. I've read all the books on the list and have little summaries. That's just, that's a good starting point. We also, at the end of this, we'll be giving a resource for like our food sourcing thing that you actually put together for one of our groups. And then we'll be making that available here as well. So, so what were some of the first changes? Because it's always like, you know, baby steps. So what were the first changes you, you made, the first three changes you made? And what was your, what was your, your spouse or your husband's response to some of those things and how did you navigate that?

So one thing I'm grateful for, a couple things I'm grateful for, one is that I did learn very quickly to make small changes and just add up the small Changes. It wasn't like, again, you know, I mentioned eating through all of the meat in our freezer first. So it wasn't like, you know, oh, my goodness, we have to get rid of every single scrap of food we have in our entire house and start from scratch because we're poisoning ourselves or something like that. It was. It was a gradual process. It had to be affordable for us. We couldn't just, you know, you can't restock your entire pantry. And thankfully we had ingredients like we were people who cooked, so we had ingredients. It wasn't like everything had to go or we had to learn how to cook, you know, completely from the start. Those were things that I thankfully had a skill set already for. But I think the. The first biggest change, as I mentioned already, is just that we stopped buying some of the, like, snacks, you know, really like kind of filler junky foods that are just easy to kind of toss at your kids. And one of the biggest changes that I noticed, the biggest difference in myself very quickly was when I learned about the oils we were using. I switched over to, at the time, avocado oil wasn't really available or a thing, but we switched to coconut oil that we would buy from a source. Again, that's not a local to Virginia food. But we were like, this is a quality ingredient. So we switched to a company that produced things in a traditional fashion in Thailand. And then you could get the coconut oil, and we, we used that. Now it's a lot easier to get coconut oil. You can go to the grocery store and find coconut oil probably almost at any grocery store. It was a little trickier back when we started this. So we made that change. We stopped using any vegetable oil, probably started using more butter. I was never like a margarine type person, so that wasn't really a big shift that we had to do, but just reframing how we thought about oils. And for me, I. I had had a lot of really ADHD type symptoms. I'm somebody who fits snugly into that category. It's how my brain works. I'm very distractible. And, you know, it's kind of a superpower, honestly. Like, I don't look at it as a negative thing, but for me, it was a massive shift when I started eating nourishing oil. And it was clearly feeding my brain in a way that I had not been for years because I was doing what I thought was healthy and switching to, like, the vegetable oils and, you know, these things that were really damaging. And we now know much More about how damaging they were. But at this time, it was really just more honestly switching things out and. And seeing how it went. And that informed a lot of the decisions that we also made. So a second thing that we switched pretty early on, like I mentioned, was meat. And I remember getting chicken for the first time from Poly Face Farm, which is a couple hours from us in Virginia, and eating it was a heritage breed chicken. And I ate it, and I was like, this is this. I didn't know chicken was supposed to taste like this. Like, it was such a revelation because it was very. It was a lot more nuanced and flavorful. And I was kind of a little bit boggled because we. It wasn't that we didn't eat chicken. We just were usually getting, like, chicken breast boneless, skinless, you know, in the styrofoam packet and cooking that up, however, and I season my food. Like, I know how to make food taste good. But this was a new experience just with the actual taste of the chicken meat. So that I think sort of also began to inform, like, okay, where else can we find this? And then another thing that I. That we started doing was making our own bread. And, you know, not everybody can eat bread. That's like a whole separate conversation. But I learned a lot about commercial yeast versus sourdough. I don't think initially I actually started with sourdough. I started just making our own bread and even that. Making bread with whole grain flour that was freshly milled. It has a whole different flavor profile than bread that you buy at the store. Even if you. Even if you eat whole wheat bread, it does not taste the same. Um, so that was a big shift as well. And then gradually, over time, we switched, you know, into the sourdough. We were way before the 2020 pandemic sourdough craze. Um, we were doing it well before that, but I did learn how to do a lot of different cultures. We. We made kombucha. We made. And this is slippery. Slippery slope. I think bread was probably the gateway. And then it was like, can I make yogurt? Can I make kombucha? And a lot of the. Yeah, kefir. We got into kefir. We started to meet other people who make things that, you know, they would. Oh, I have, you know, a scoby for kombucha. And you'd, like, get that from a friend. And it just kind of got to be fun, you know, trying all the different things and figuring out what's worth the time, effort, and Again, at the time you pretty much had to make things and now you can buy a lot more. I also learned back in the day before kombucha blew up like crazy, you used to be able to make your own like culture from the store bought brands that weren't pasteurized or anything like that. Now that's typically not something that can happen because of the rules now that surround kombucha because it got popular and.

Now they, well, GTs, I feel like they still, like if it sits in the fridge long enough, I feel like.

A, I think they maybe still do, but I know some brands pasture, you have to kind of read the labels. But anyway, kombucha is way too expensive to be buying from the store. It's better to make it home anyway.

Well, that's an interesting side note, because commercial organic yogurt you get in the store, they take the milk, they pasteurize it, then they put cultures in it, they ferment it, then they heat it and pasteurize it again. Because if they didn't do that, it would continue to ferment in the fridge. And so literally the organ, even you get yogurt in the store that's organic and a tune, all that kind of stuff. It's been heated or pasteurized twice the first time to kill the bacteria. Then they put culture in it, fermented, then they heat it again. And so it's, you know, it's better than nothing, but it's even just something as simple as taking, you know, milk at home and making your own yogurt. You're still getting actual live cultures, live enzymes. And part of this process is learning like all these nuances. I remember listening to Joel Salatin talk about he, they have kids come to his farm, poly, poly face. And one of these bus trips, some kids hopped off and they're getting out and they're like, where's the salsa tree? And his thing was like, kids, there ain't no salsa tree. And just like part of the education blank was salsa. It's from tomatoes and the cilantro and lemon. And then actually usually learn this, it just becomes more, more second nature to you. And another side note, we have a family member who had had a breast cancer diagnosis. And there's people, people deal with this differently and they actually had a lot of them. One of the things you do is remove soy from your diet because soy is carcinogenic for breast cancer in the United States. And just the experience of going and looking in their, their pantry and realizing everything had soy in it. And all of a sudden, like for some individuals, they have to like throw it all out. And for us, we had a more gradual process. But some people do need to, like, if you get a celiac diagnosis, you get an autoimmune diagnosis. Hashimoto's, whatever. Sometimes some people do need to just toss it all because they have a medical diagnosis requires significant upfront intervention.

So, so to. So to back up to my comment about that, we did do things gradually that, that did not mean, like there were ingredients we just got rid of and there were things that we. I mean, snacks and things you're usually buying on a regular enough basis that you just stop buying that and you buy the next thing. But as far as things like soy, we did get rid of a lot. We did definitely do a pantry purge at one point. But again, thankfully we weren't like, it wasn't just a bunch of processed food in our pantry. We had actual ingredients for things. And. And so not all of that had to go.

I think part of it was the kids transitioning because kids need to eat. And so one of the things that I got into early on was, well, how can I give kids a breakfast thing that they can do on the flats? Pretty quick and easy. And I started getting into making granola because you can get organic sprouted oats that are glyphosate free. And then, then as we kind of got further into, realized that probably you should do like soaked nuts. But just creating a breakfast thing that I could create on the weekends that lasts for two weeks. Even the bread thing, creating mini biscuits for the bread so the kids have something to put stuff in. Like picking simple things like that that is routinely used is also an easy kind of gateway, particularly if you have young kids in the house because they're going to want to eat something similar to what. What was going on. Interesting story with our son. He went to a new school this past year and we was taking his, you know, homemade bread and you know, the beef from the cows he raised out there and took it to school. And the first day or second day he comes back, he's kind of upset. Cause the kids are making fun of him because he's like, oh, you're poor, you can't like buy. Cause they had the little things at school where they actually pre buy stuff and drop it off and he wasn't doing that. So. And they're like, oh, you're poor, you don't have anything. They start making fun of him. So he comes home and I'm like, and he starts telling me his sorry, sorry story. And I'm like, you realize that literally your. Your lunch pie cost way more, you know, than what theirs did because of this is how he went into it. And then he's kind of bright, oh, yeah, my food. My food's better than theirs. And it's funny how, like, him being differently initially was looked at, you know, from other kids kind of making fun of him, thinking he was poor. And I kind of reframed it. Like, no, we actually, I bought the cow. We raised the cow in our pasture. We processed it, put the stuff in the freezer, the bread I made, and. And just like, him realizing, oh, wow, this is actually higher level. But sometimes there's gonna be a process where if you eat differently, your kids will look a little different. You'll look a little different. There needs to be some kind of process to work through that. Could you. I don't really feel like, because we, until the last two years, homeschooled our kids. Even before the pandemic, we didn't have as many of those. It was more like going to parties and things at church, and we'd always have to, like, kind of bring stuff with us. Could you talk about some of that a little bit? Like, because that's, I think, where people get stuck or where people. Kind of one of the big stumbling blocks is we have kids and kids will do kids things. But it's like kids are growing brains, kids are growing organs, they're growing nervous systems. And you really need high quality stuff, healthy fats, protein going into the system so that when these kids, these, you know, we have, you know, adhd, some ADHD and some learning issues in our kids. And it's like they need high, high test, high quality fuel going into them to make those brains work the right way. Could you talk a little bit about that? Like, that process of getting them to eat a little different or doing stuff like when we go to places, what that looks like from a mom's perspective.

So I've actually been doing a deep dive on this because when as we're launching our online program, I have. I started thinking through, like, what would be a bonus type thing that, like, that can come alongside of what, you know, the program that people, you know, that either I wish I had or that people would kind of be clamoring for in. And I started to go down this path of, like, just really thinking through this piece of it. Like, how do you actually do this with a family? What does it look like at the different stages Cause we've done this since our kids were like, preschool age. And now they're 18, 17, and 14, as I mentioned. And it's. I actually was. As I was working through the process, I was like, you know what? I don't even want anybody to talk to me about this and like, changing diets and things until they have teenagers. Because, like, you. It's kind of like you have all the advice for parenting before you have kids. You know, you're like, I'm not gonna do it this way. I'm not gonna do this. And then you have kids and then you learn some humility. So I've really been thinking deeply about this and just walking through and it's kind of. It's kind of cool to see. It's like when you go through your goals at the end of a year and you, you know, kind of see, like, where did I grow this year? And like, what do you know, what do I. What am I thinking for the next year? This is like that type of process where I'm like, man, I've. I learned. I've learned a lot, like, and had some humility sprinkled in because, you know, you have certain ways that you want to do things, and then you need to also honor that. Your kids are their own people and they have their own minds about things. And how do you sort of shepherd them towards decisions that you hope they'll make, but also let them have some autonomy and they're going to have to make their own decisions at some point. So how do you walk through that? And so I've. I came up with like a whole. I think it's going to end up being a whole course, to be honest with you, that is just going to talk through all of the scenarios of, like, how do you talk to people about this? How do you. You don't want people to be intimidated. We've made massive changes, so it really is sort of intimidating to people when they're like, like, your kid doesn't eat any of the things that my kid eats, and they kind of maybe want to have you over, but they're not quite sure what to do. And I think the biggest thing of import to highlight is communication is. Is key and, you know, being open with people. You know, yeah, we've made certain decisions and, and that type of thing, but not wanting them to be, you know, totally daunted by things, the easiest thing to do is send food, like, have other options available. When the kids were younger and birthday parties were a big deal, we would just have to bring other things because there was like, like store bought cake. There's just literally nothing redeeming in there at all. And it's not. We have one child who's highly sensitive to dyes. We really don't want to be feeding them hydrogenated oils. You know, all of these things are literally working against everything else that we're doing. And while some families make the decision like it's okay, it's like a one off, we really felt that it was important to have a little bit more boundary around that and continue to like offer our kids nourishing food. Even if it's junk food. We would give them a more nourishing version of something. So we usually would, I would either make something or they'd get something that was kind of a treat but like had approved ingredients, we'll say. And they at those ages really didn't mind so much because they're not as concerned about standing out or being different. And the, whatever they had usually tasted better. So they, and it was such a treat for them to have junk anyway that they, they kind of, you know, went along with it. Um, and now they're older and kids don't have birthday parties. It's more like the school events and things where there's just a little bit of a disconnect between neurodivergent brains and the food that we put in the bodies of, of our loved ones. And that's been a little trickier. You know, as you mentioned, the coming home and being like, I have homemade food and everybody else got, you know, the cardboard pizza from the local place or whatever delivered and you know, just feeling different isn't the most fun. They, they get to pack their own lunches at this point. That's. I think they eat a lot of carbs, probably not a lot of protein, but. But it's still, you know, coming from the list of things that we know at least are nourishing their bodies. And then when it's like a special event, I will literally, literally bring things. So if the snow cone truck is there, I've got separate syrup that's made with just sugar and fruit juice and they can use that and pour that on their snow cone so they don't get totally left out. And they can run around, you know, with their friends eating the snow cone. But it's not the dye that's going to make them feel terrible or not be able to sleep that night or.

Or make them rage and lose control.

Rage and lose control.

One thing of note, it, it's really because our, our two of our kids go to a school for kids with dyslexia and special needs. And a lot of those kids are really the neurodivergent ADD type. Dyslexic dyslexia and related learning differences. Mild spectrum kids. They are super, super sensitive to dyes and high fructose corn syrup. And it's still, it's frustrating. You know, the school they go to that's vending machines. And the vending machines have all the things we're trying to avoid them getting. And so it's like literally this is a school where this is your expertise and you're, you've got machines. We actually figured this out because.

Shooting yourself in the foot.

Yeah, well, because our son has a debit card. And I was looking at the thing one day and he had like 16, you know, $2 debits over like three days. And like I realized he's vending, machining it. And so, so you always have to be vigilant and usually. But when you really go to diet though, you can tell when your kids are on a really good diet and clean diet. They're sleeping better, they wake up better rested, they have more mood control, they have less mood ability, they can sit down and study for longer or they can like they, when they get upset, they don't have the big fluctuations. And so like for all, you know, for your girls, one things we've noticed is that when they're diet spot on, their cycles come, they go. Sometimes they come and go and you're like, did you ever recycle? Oh yeah. It was not a big deal. Right. They kind of no comes, they take care of everything. And then when they cheat, it's like.

When they, when they get back from camp over the summer and they had a week of whatever camp food was available. It's a vast difference.

Yeah. With our son, usually he gets sick, usually gets a little bronchitis. He used to have asthma and eczema really bad and usually gets a bronchitis and he's down for like three to four days.

Well, that's new. That's not a camp thing, that's a school thing.

Well, there was that. Then there's the camp things. We come back with the bronchitis. There's also that from Molden schools. But. And then the girls, the following month or cycle would be unusually heavy and painful. And it's like they've learned over time. Oh yeah, that's at 18, 17 and now 14, they actually, they get, they make decisions it's going to affect their. How they feel, either the hormone stuff or their. Their mood.

Yeah. In guiding teenagers, I will say, you know, you can't police every item that goes into their mouth. They're going to eat things that are not. They're most likely going to eat things that are not what you hope they'll choose. And they need to have some freedom and autonomy to do that. I think my goal at this point with the ages that our kids are, is to help them see the fallout from that, the consequence of that and, and actually connect it to, you know, the bad cycles or not being able to control your emotions or face breaking out, you know, and things that they are undesirable when you're a teenager. And when they can realize those things, then they are much more likely to make at least the best choice they have available to them, you know, because there are ways that you can do camp and not go completely crazy. You can kind of limit it a little bit. Especially one of the camps they go to. There are actually like, there are real foods available. You can limit the amount of sugar that you're taking in, or you can eat so much sugar that it's probably more than you eat the entire rest of the year in our family.

Yeah. So let's transition a little bit to labels. We actually, and I think either the course you're referring to, we have another resource where it actually walk people through reading labels in the store. Why don't you walk us through that briefly? Like that's something that it's a basic skill set to have to look at a label and read it. Yet I feel like most people don't. And even I feel like I'm fairly above average education. And there's time and time again while. Find something new. I'll. I've never bought before. I'll read the label, I'll bring it home and you'll look at in three seconds, be like, oh, my gosh, this has, you know, soy or sunflower oil or whatever. And I'm like, how did I miss that? Right?

So is Maltodextrin okay?

Maltodextrin. How about Keri Gian?

Yeah.

So. So why don't you walk us through like labels? Because that's a big. That's a basic skill. Everybody should have. Every kid should have.

Yeah. So this one's a little harder to do an audio form, but we have that one. Yeah, well, it's. Yeah, it's part of our online program, but we, we do the easiest way to say it. Are to keep in mind, short ingredient lists are our best. When you can recognize the name of all the ingredients. If it's like, you know, eggs, like things that you, you know, like what they are. I. We personally very much avoid sugar alcohols. Th. Those are not. There's multitude of reasons for those. But there's a lot of junk foods now that are like, you know, only 4 grams of sugar or whatever. And it's candy, which first of all, Candy is junk 100% of the time. The one exception that I would, I personally believe to that is dark chocolate is you can find pretty good high quality dark chocolate. Hue is a great brand that has dark chocolate that's really delicious. Very simple ingredients. They use coconut, sugar. So it's a real natural thing. It is still junk, but it's, it's not. So like I personally can. Can eat a piece or two of that and I'm not like suddenly like, oh no, I ate like an entire chocolate bar like in one sitting. It's. But it's good. I mean, it's good quality stuff. They're. Yeah. Where was I going with this? Yeah, junk is, is. Is still junk. We again, you know, we allow it certain times of year. You know, holidays, our kids will usually eat a little bit more junk. If they're going to an event where other kids are going to be consuming certain things, we try to like not have them be totally left out. I've even gone to the movies with a group of kids and bought popcorn at the movie and said, I don't want you to put any popcorn in this bowl. I'm just paying for the popcorn so that you'll let me bring in my popcorn with all my yummy stuff that I put on the popcorn. And they will let you do that. It's total racket because you're paying probably $19 for, you know, a bowl of an empty bowl. But. But that was one way that like, you know, our kids got to have the movie experience and I didn't feel like we were compromising some level of nourishment.

Why don't you talk about the popcorn you make? Because it's really, really yummy popcorn.

Well, what's funny is we sometimes call it liver popcorn. There's a product called Pluck that is sort of like a. It's an organ meat seasoning. So it has, you know, seasonings in it, like some herbs and salt and pepper and peppers and animal like awful basically animal organs. And it's a great way to get awful.

Like ou f f a l Not.

F, F, A, L. Awful. Awful. Yeah.

Not awful.

Like, yes, O, F, F, a, L. Yeah, it is. It's pretty yummy. On popcorn, honestly, sometimes we do nutritional. We nutritional yeast is a little tricky because you have to get. You have to be careful with it. But. But we put a little nutritional yeast salt. We don't eat a ton of popcorn, but that's one of our sort of, like, junk foods that you cook it in.

Coconut oil.

We cook it. I actually usually make it with avocado oil because the coconut oil gets a little smoky and funny when you try to make popcorn with it. Yeah. But I forgot where we were going. Oh, labels. Back to labels. So, yeah, with labels, short ingredient lists, simple ingredients. That's probably, like, two of the biggest things. There are a lot of tricky things that sound okay, but you really also want to pay attention to, like, whether you're just consuming something that's a lot of filler or whether it's, like, truly a nourishing product. Popcorn is kind of a filler. Like, that's where we add the organ meat stuff. And, you know, you can kind of be like, what's that?

Which it does taste, really. It sounds so horrible, but tastes.

You can't taste. You can't taste anything. Livery.

Yeah. It's a slight powder. Yeah, it's really, really good.

You're just tasting the seasonings that go with it. It's not. It's not a problem. Our family likes it. You don't have to do that. It's fine. But that's one thing that we like and like legitimately. Our kids like it. Sometimes their friends come over. They like it too. I never trick anybody into eating anything like that. Like, I would never serve someone something that they might find weird and not let them know that that's what it is. But kids, a lot of times are willing to try stuff that you'd be surprised. We had a friend come over once, and they were like, what is this? Amazing? And it was like kombucha. They'd never had it. And, you know, that's always kind of fun when a kid, you know, because they're gonna tell you exactly what they think, and they will go right to your face and be like, this is weird.

Well, one of the things this happened, actually, with Khalil, I make these little toasted nuts, and so took. I usually do, like, almonds and walnuts, and I put some olive oil on them and get them soaked in olive oil. Then put garlic salt, some paprika, a little bit of rosemary, some Other spices on it and just toast it in the toaster oven and the kids will have that and just eat it by the handful. So he took it to school and gave some kids, and they're like, oh, my gosh, those are so amazing. And they just were so, like, amazed by, like, the flavor profile.

Yeah, I think they got in trouble because you're not supposed to share food at school. They had to nip that. Our kids didn't know.

Don't do that. Sorry. Don't do that. But the point was, is that these things that sound kind of like they're different, but because they're real food and they're actually playing off acids and bases. The reason why you have certain wines with certain meats, the reason why certain fats, like why ghee is used a lot in Indian cooking. So all of a sudden, respecting the uniqueness of different spices and putting those together opens up the flavor profile. And in a culture, a world where kids are used to, like, salt and sweet is kind of it, and the sweet is high fructose corn syrup and the salt is processed sodium chloride, like, you know, real like salt flakes. Kosher salt flakes have an absolutely different flavor profile when you're making brisket, for example. And so just once, you know, kids get exposed to these, they actually appreciate. Now there's still the addictive drive of sugars. High fructose corn syrup still has an addictive drive. A lot of processed foods are made in such a fashion to actually feed these addictive hunger drives that are innately in our brain systems. But even in that world, kids still have the ability to appreciate. Wow, this is unique and different and good.

Yeah. We rarely have an issue with anybody not liking the food that we eat at home. People appreciate a homemade meal even if they're 12 or 8 or whatever. We have not had much issue with that. So because we eat food that it's really yummy and we don't trick people into eating liver if they don't want to.

So labels, read them. Look for basic things. Look for things you recognize. Keep the list short. If you you're doing bread, it should be four ingredients. If you're getting, you know, a box of noodles, it should be like lentils or durum wheat or whatever. It shouldn't be like a big paragraph of stuff. Any other, like, high level label comments outside the whole course thing in our online course, like, you'd recommend for things to think about with reading labels.

Yeah, again, it's hard to do do justice over audio. Those were kind of like the easiest quick points to make. I tend to look out for filler type things in the video series that we did. One of the things was to show the difference between types of fish. Even, you know, so there's farm to salmon, which typically they try to make it look pink with dye that gets added into the salmon. And they do have to list that usually on the thing. So even the smoked. We used to. Our kids used to eat smoked salmon. And there's one that's just salmon and salt and there's another one that's a farmed salmon with dye. And I think it has still only like five ingredients. That's kind of an exception to the whole, like short ingredient list. Five ingredients is. Sounds like it's not a lot of ingredients. It's a lot. If you're just buying meat, there shouldn't be five ingredients in your meat. So yeah, it's very nuanced. There are a lot of health food snacks that are primarily just a whole lot of starch and not a lot of other redeeming things within. And so just, you know, being careful about stuff like that, making those things, you know, the rare treat rather than, you know, something that you're consuming on a regular basis. That's what. That's the decision we've made for our family anyway.

And so these are some great ideas to kind of wrap things up here a little bit. Like, what are the. What do you think has been the most rewarding thing as a mom, you know, doing this with your family? But we think the most rewarding part of this journey of transitioning to real food, sourcing food like homesteading, which we've actually done as a family. What do you think the most rewarding thing or the couple most rewarding things as a family or for you has been with this whole journey.

I have really enjoyed the fact that we haven't had constant battles over food with our family. I mean, if you want to go really far back, both of our daughters were recommended to get feeding tubes when they were very young. And we've talked a little bit about that with our oldest daughter on another episode. But. Or you have talked about it. They. That ended up being, you know, basically a crooked system situation. But still, you know, they were. They didn't have the easiest starts and they. They haven't had the healthiest. They didn't have the healthiest beginnings to their lives and they just love really good food and we have not battled over it. You know, do they always make the best choices? No, absolutely not. Especially not now as teenagers, but they. They still, you know, you can put any delicious meal before them, and they generally will eat what it is that you're providing. It isn't such a struggle. Now. There are situations where there are other things going on where that makes that a lot more difficult and. And tricky. And we're not speaking to those situations exactly right now because we started a lot of this when they were so young. They didn't really have a choice when they were younger. And then there were some occasions where they wouldn't eat something. And again, this is knowing your family. Like, we wouldn't have done this if it would have put one of our kids into an unhealthy situation. But for us, it was. Behavior would be the reason why somebody doesn't want to eat something. And so we would just say, okay, it's fine. You know, we don't want to do the clean your plate thing of the 80s that we grew up with. We just would give it to them again at breakfast, and usually it was cold and. Or we'd have to reheat it. It just wasn't as good. That happened a couple times, and it became pretty clear, like, it's much better just to eat it.

Having clear boundaries, clear rules and regulations, clear boundaries, clear expectations, just setting up things. You know, again, we adopted all of our kids. We got them two years old, one year old, eight months old, at different stages. And so we weren't getting them from the womb, so to speak. And so you get them with different histories, what they eat. And they all were able to transition to real food. Cleveland's probably the more difficult of them, but they've all. Well, if. I am actually sorry. But as far as the actual behavior stuff, so for families that are listening to this or following us, this feels difficult and overwhelming. Do you like. Oh, step one, two, three things you recommend starting with if. If this is seeming. For those of. This might seem just like too much, too big of a bite.

Yeah, this is a lot. I feel like, you know, I understand if people are like, sort of hate us at the end of this episode, but I am being honest. These are the things that we've done in our family. And yes, we have done things to a greater extreme than. Than some families. So first, let me say. And one more unpopular thing that has just been something that I've been processing lately, which is we have this idea that you can eat well 80% of the time and then 20% of the time, you know, it's kind of like all bets are off and I would challenge people, if you're listening to this, if you, especially if you already have health related concerns in your life, whether it's with you, with your children, really think about that because you're essentially saying, if only 20% of what I consume is somewhat toxic, that's fine as long as the rest is okay. And that probably would work fine. And some other cultures in the United States, what's considered okay for us to eat is very unfortunate. And I, I would just encourage people. It doesn't mean that you can't compromise or, or things like that. But you know, really consider what are you putting into your body and your kids bodies and just, I don't know. For me, the 80, 20 thing is sort of, I think, I, I don't like it. We'll just leave it at that. I don't like it. Now. That said, this is overwhelming and you do need to start somewhere. And when you're, if you're starting from Standard American diet, do not feel like you have to get from where you are right now to what we just talked about in this episode in any sort of short time frame whatsoever. In that case, you do need to do things gradually and you do need to feel like every little thing that you do is one more step in the right direction. It's like how I felt when we started, you know, like influencing things with our food dollars. You know, we were like taking our money and we're like, if we spend it here, hopefully there'll be more of this thing. If I buy certain things at the grocery store, maybe they'll be more likely to stock that thing. But also if I'm supporting, you know, local farms and things like that, like they're going to be able to continue providing this higher quality food for my family. And it's also just, you know, you're supporting your local economy, etc. But you can't, do not try to get there overnight. Start simple. Pick one thing and just give it a try. See how it goes with your, you know, your family. It's going to be tons harder. If you have, you know, preteens, teenagers, and you're starting from there, that's going to be just a lot more difficult. And don't beat yourself up if it's a lot more difficult because of course it's going to be. If you have younger kids, you can influence things a lot more. And I think if your children are healthy and they don't have any reason why they're like, they can't eat whatever it is that you're putting before them. My one exception to this that I forgot to mention earlier is I have. It's been rare, but a couple times I've made things that really were gross tasting. And I thought so too. And I do not ever make my kids eat that. I'll be like, you know what? This really is yucky. And like, none of us are going to eat it. But we don't like to throw out food. So, you know, you either have to rescue it or whatever. But I've never made them eat something that was, like, legitimately gross. They might have thought things were gross, but the. Yeah, small. Any small change that you can make, the easiest thing to do is just the next time that you buy something, you know, think about whether there's a healthier version of it that you can. That you can purchase. In the case of junk food, just try to transition that out and start buying, you know, what you can consume. My kids actually really like vegetables. If I'm like cooking dinner and, you know, I've roasted up some vegetables on a pan, it's almost guaranteed, like, my son will eat more of the vegetables while I'm in the middle of cooking the dinner than he'll eat once they're on his plate. And that's been consistent from when he was little and he still does it now as a teenager. So it really. You really can shift the culture of your family around food and. But you can do it really slowly. Don't feel like you have to do all of it now. And it is okay to gradually ease into these things that we're talking about. You feel like that answered the question.

Yeah, that's good. So just in summary we've talked about today are, you know, some of the processes in our family how we kind of start eating real food. We've given some people some practical ideas, things to think about and process while they're trying to work through it with their own family. The one that I'll mention, if you have a spouse that's totally against this, that's where it gets kind of hard. The spouses and the teens are kind of like. It's almost like you just have to accept the struggle will be real and it'll be hard, you know. And also one of the things as well we were going to give, there's actually, there'll be in the show notes, wherever this is placed, actually a resource for our food sourcing guide, which kind of walks through my six food principles. And just if someone wants a starting point, they can just go through those and start with principle one.

There's eight.

Eight, okay, eight.

We redid it. One of. One of us redid it.

One of us who's really good at AI and all that stuff redid it. So that's. That's not me. And it walks people through it. Then there's actually a food sourcing list where you can literally look at different food products click on and gives you resources where to get these anywhere in the country. So. So some really good resources there that'll be in the show notes. So hopefully this information was helpful to everybody out there. If so, please like share and follow us. Also ask questions. We will have a Q and a session on the whole GI section, which will include Gut health, Gutting brain, all those things we talked about over the last. This is episode four. So the last four episodes. So if you have any questions, wherever you're looking at this in social media, place them there. We'll gather them and follow up with a question and answer session to kind of wrap up the GUT series. And so this will become a great resource for all things gut, going from brain issues all the way down to food sourcing and even a resource guide. So on that note, thanks a lot for joining us again. Take care and we'll talk to you all soon.