When we started eating Paleo 5 year ago, we didn’t really know a lot. As I’ve said, we found this food regime by accident. For the most part I was acting on Intuition. I was guided to look at the recipes, being nudged to try them and then finding the information I needed to be readily available. I was completely absorbed with knowing more about Paleo. In the meantime, understood that artificial chemicals are bad for the Physical Body and also the Environment. I believe that anything that disturbs the natural state of Man and planet Earth is NOT in accordance to the plan of God. This Belief is very strong in me and has become my foundation in eating well.

Cleaning up our pantry was a slow process. During the first year, I was focused on reading the ingredients on the packages of the food we were buying. I didn’t throw everything from the pantry right away because I was not aware of what to avoid yet. As I learned, I discarded, but there were times when what we thought was right, was not totally true.  I remember buying Bacon because Paleo approves of it, but then after a few months, I paid attention to the Bacon’s ingredients and found out that not all Bacon is healthy. Today, we hardly eat bacon because we seldom find a source that sells without added preservatives or one that is not very expensive, if the ingredients consist of real food. We continue to look for suppliers that would fit our needs. It is truly a process to eating clean food.

Nuts are a main  Paleo ingredient. When you go to Bulk Barn, you will see that there are maybe 2-3 kinds of Cashew nuts. Two of them with 3-5 ingredients added to them and one with no extra ingredient which should be the case. This goes with the other nuts. Why do manufacturers add other ingredients to the cashew? Is it because it improves the taste of the cashew or is it because they want people to get addicted to the flavour so that they can’t stop eating them. The more we eat the more we buy isn’t it? In the meantime, we Humans are getting fat and sick and broke as these chemical factories get rich. These added ingredients also preserve the nuts for longer shelf life so that businesses don’t have to discard them as quickly. Again it’s money driven at the expense of our health.

As for Fruits and Vegetables, one of the main things we did was to eliminate the food that is on the Dirty Dozen list. We immediately shifted to Organic. Today, if we don’t see them in the Organic aisle, we don’t buy them, no matter how much we need them. Then there is the Clean 15 List. This raises many questions like… Do you trust the source of the information? Would you take the chance of eating the food that is only 80% with no pesticide. How about the 20%, would you take the risk. What about GMO? That’s another list that you have to know about. Which ones are GMO? Clean produce does not mean it’s not Genetically Modified. I guess GMO, doesn’t need pesticides because they will thrive without it. Do I want to put this in my body? especially when you know that the manufacturer of GMO is associated with the makers of pesticides. Do I trust that it will not affect my natural state of being? So far I am just on fruits and vegetables. The meat is another group of food that presents the same concern. Do the animals feed on GMO products? Do they graze on land that has been fertilized or where crops were grown with pesticides?  Then we have the Seafood. There’s farmed and wild. If you choose the wild…what about the residues of plastic and other Modern man’s footprint contaminating our water. This is actually giving me a headache just to think about it and I’m sure many people would too and that’s probably why many choose not to bother. They gave up trying to figure which one is clean or not, at their own risk of being sick. Really, it’s not Empowering us when we have to fight this hard to maintain our health.

So how can we get back our power? I say, no matter what diet you choose to believe in, making an effort to be aware of what you are eating is going to create a great impact in your health and your mind. The chemicals don’t belong in our food nor our bodies. It is not how God created plants and animals that sustain us. Slowly, if we can make an effort to change one step at a time it will go a long way. Bob & I didn’t do it all at once. Today, with the help of our mini farm, we eat all the clean food we grow. We are also grateful for farms nearby that practice mindful raising of animals. We are doing our part to make our Eggs and Raw Honey available at an affordable cost so that more people can enjoy the goodness of real and clean food.