Friday, November 1, 2013

NaBloPoMoNoProFoNo #1: an intro post by Sarah

It's NaBloPoMo, huzzah!  For the unaware, NaBloPoMo is a challenge to blog every day in the month of November. 

Since my favorite topic is FOOD, Crystal is kindly letting me hijack her blog to talk about my OTHER challenge for November, which is to not eat any processed food.  In the spirit of giving monthly challenges alliterative and ridiculous acronyms, I'm calling it NoProFoNo, for No Processed Food November (although I enjoy that it could also stand for ...No Processed Food?  NO!). 

Not eating processed food in November was inspired by October Unprocessed, which is pretty much the exact same challenge, but in October (and sadly lacking in any alliteration).  I did the October Unprocessed challenge (mostly...there might have been a little cheating that I will discuss later), but with a focus on making it an actual real lifestyle change...which is why I'm extending it into November.  But this time, with blogging!

I found that people tend to react to the idea of giving up processed food for a month in one of two ways.

(1) They think it sounds really easy.  This is generally because they think I mean I'm giving up things like pizza rolls and frozen pot pies.  And although those things ARE processed, what's really surprising is the number of foods that shouldn't be processed, but are (spoiler alert: there is corn syrup in ALL THE THINGS).

(2) They think it sounds really hard.  Which it isn't: the key (I've learned) is just mindful grocery shopping.  And I live in the middle of nowhere, so if I can easily grocery shop for an unprocessed diet, so can anyone.  I'm not doing anything super-fancy (ie this is not a raw food diet, which would be unprocessed under the very strictest definition), I just want the food I eat to be ...actual food.

What IS the definition of unprocessed for NoProFoNo?  Conveniently, the creators of October Unprocessed wrote up a definition of unprocessed food that I really love.  It is:

"Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with whole-food ingredients. ...It doesn’t mean you actually have to make it yourself, it just means that for it to be considered “unprocessed” that you could, in theory, do so." 

They call their definition The Kitchen Test (read a label, ask if you could make it in your own kitchen) and it really simplifies grocery shopping.

And since every blog post needs a picture, here is an ingredient from my kitchen that I chucked in October because it totally didn't pass The Kitchen Test:
HORK! NOT FOOD!

Is anyone else up for NoProFoNo?  Or NaBloPoMo?  Or anything else awesome and zany during the month of November?

No comments:

Post a Comment