The 10-Day Whole Food Challenge

[cc_amy]

My sister Meghan told me about this blog, and that she was planning to take the 10-day challenge.  Being the awesome big sister that I am, I told her I'd do it too for moral support.  Today was day one.  So far so good!

This definition of "whole foods" is different that the one I've see used before; most whole foods devotees that I know include a ban on animal products, but this woman encourages the use of organic, locally-raised meat, dairy and poultry.  Which is fine with me!  Her list of things that are allowed looks pretty easy to stick to - fruits, veggies, whole grains, dairy, meat, seafood, nuts, seeds, popcorn, natural sweeteners (defined here as honey, maple syrup and fruit juice concentrates), and - most importantly - COFFEE, tea and BEER.  No problem - I can do this in my sleep!

Then I got to the list of what is not allowed:

• "No refined grains such as white flour and white rice."  No problem here, I switched to mostly whole grains a while back, so I've already got this covered.
• "No refined sweeteners such as sugar, any form of corn syrup, cane juice, or the artificial stuff like Splenda".  OK - this is more of a challenge.  Her selection of honey and maple syrup as "acceptable" sweeteners seems a little arbitrary to me, but it's her challenge, so she gets to make the rules.  And the really hard part here is not so much just not eating sweets (obviously all the yummy stuff like cookies, candy, cake, etc is out for the next 10 days), but the sad fact that sugar, in some form, is added to just about all packaged food.  I couldn't find tomato sauce that didn't have added sugar, and I couldn't find a single loaf of bread that didn't violate either this rule or the next one, so I baked myself a delicious loaf of rosemary olive oil beer bread today.
• "Nothing out of a box, can, bag, bottle or package that has more than 5 ingredients listed on the label."  OK - this is really hard.  So the first thing I did in preparation for this challenge was to clarify this rule.  And by "clarify", I mean "made up my own interpretation to make it easier on me".  But I think I make a good case.  I decided that "water" will not count toward the 5 ingredients.  I mean - it's water!  We're allowed to have as much of that as we want, right?  If something had a total of 6 ingredients and one is water, I say it still counts.  Also, any food that lists the spices included individually.  For example, if one package lists "rosemary, parsley, sage and tarragon" in the ingredients, why should that count as 4 ingredients when if they had just said "spices" it would have counted as one?  Really - I think these are very reasonable modifications.
• "No deep fried foods".  Well, yeah.  OK.
• "No fast foods."  She has "fast food" in quotes, but I'm assuming she just means typical fast food - McDonalds, KFC, etc.  Kind of a moot point since almost everything on the typical fast food menu has added sugar.

So I went shopping on Friday and other than not finding bread or pasta sauce (both of which I can make myself), it wasn't too bad.  Fruits, veggies, whole wheat pasta, corn tortillas (that I had to look everywhere for but finally found) with fewer than 5 ingredients, some beans, rice, honey, unsweetened yogurt and - this was the biggest change for me - real milk.  Like, from a cow.  I switched to almond milk a while back, but almond milk is processed and has more than 5 ingredients, so it's out for the next 10 days.  I don't usually drink milk straight anyway, but I use it in smoothies, oatmeal, etc.  But I took a sip of this real milk to remind myself what it tastes like - it's sweet!  Way sweeter than I remember.  I made a smoothie with it today - I think I actually prefer the texture and flavor of almond milk now, but the real milk wasn't bad.  I'll survive on it.

Today turned out to be pretty easy, actually.  I went out to lunch with my aunt and thought I might have trouble, but I ended up getting a veggie omelette with no toast.  And bacon.  (Hey - it fits the rules!)  When I got home I baked some beer bread (because I am way too lazy to make bread with yeast) and cooked up a big pot of black beans and rice with veggies to bring for lunch this week.  It's been easy so far, but I expect symptoms of sugar withdrawal will set in by Wednesday at the latest. I think the fact that I can have beer will make it easier.