Process free your diet

When you first decide to go healthy, you think to yourself, “how can hard it be?” Then you start to read labels and discover that foods you thought were healthy, weren’t. Case in point…. gluten-free products. When you first start out on a gluten-free diet, the first thing you do is try to find substitutes for your old favorites such as muffins, brownies, cakes, breads, etc. While the manufacturers consider their products to be “safe” in that they do not contain those nasty glutens, you soon discover that many pre-packaged items are high in calories, are loaded with sugar, and require lots of eggs and/or butter to be added to the product in an effort to make it taste good! Totally frustrated, you now realize that most of the stuff available on grocery store shelves (and in restaurants for that matter) can hardly be called food. While these food products give us the calories we need to survive, they do not offer the nutrients we need to thrive. So what to do? Hope and inspiration came in the form of Andrew Olson…author of the One Ingredient Chef. His premise for eating healthy is simple ... so simple in fact that a first-grader can understand. Yet his approach to healthy eating his powerful enough to save lives... only eat foods that start out as one whole ingredient you can hold it in your hand. For example, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, apples, brown rice, spinach, etc. Sounds easy enough... eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Got it!  For packaged items, it's trickier for some as requires you to read the label. So if the package says, “ingredients: brown rice, go for it! If however a package lists 300 ingredients, most of which you cannot pronounce, then forget it. To help you stay on track, his site includes recipes, articles, and tips on how to make your diet process-free.He also offers a free One Ingredient Chef eBook that may be downloaded with resources, recipes, and menu plans for improving your health by cooking with only real ingredients.