Our Diet

I was pretty surprised over the Christmas break at all the controversy about the healthiness of our diet. I think I was surprised because I can't seem to figure out how eating a diet that mainly consists of plants could be considered unhealthy at all. Not to mention the fact that the diet that we currently eat is actually taking hold in the media and medical world as a much healthier one. The FDA even revamped their out-of-date food pyramid

with a healthier and easier to understand food plate. 

However Harvard's School of Public Health decided that the government didn't get it quite right so they revamped the FDA food plate to make it even better and changing its name to Healthy Eating Plate.

Read the full article about it here.

I think our current diet is pretty much in line with Harvard's food plate. They even have a limit on dairy suggesting to only have 1-2 servings per day.

I know that everyone thinks that milk is the food of the gods or something, but its actually fairly controversial in the health world. I'm not going to go into it to much here, obviously I have my own opinions about it. I don't think its poison by any means, but I think you can get everything that milk has to offer from other sources. For example we typically drink almond milk, which actually has more calcium in it than cows milk, the same amount of vitamin D, vitamin E (not found in cows milk), less sugar, no cholesterol, no saturated fat (which are both found in cows milk) and less calories; when compared with 1% dairy milk. Yes it is more expensive than cows milk, but to be quite frank I have no problem spending more money on something that I believe to be healthier. Just like I wouldn't buy white bread or wheat bread with little to no fiber in it, just because it was cheaper.

With this all being said, I'm not trying to convert people to eat the way we do, just explain a little bit about what I know about nutrition and why we've decided to eat a more plant based diet. On a previous post I said that we mostly eat vegan and while our diet is a mostly vegan diet, we're not exactly vegan. We eat a plant-based diet and get most of our protein and calcium from vegetables, nuts and legumes--instead of from meat or dairy. I was pretty shocked to hear people say that the way we eat "is really unhealthy" or "extreme" because it seems like a pretty healthy way to eat to me. Plus its delicious!

To be honest I haven't missed meat or milk at all. Every now and then we'll buy a Kashi Roasted Vegetable frozen pizza (which are seriously the best pizzas I've ever had, you should try one if you haven't--and they're pretty darn healthy as far as a frozen pizza goes too) and have a little cheese. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Plus if we do get the hankering for some cookies or something less than healthy we make it--dairy and refined free and all, and it tastes fantastic and I don't feel bad about eating it either.

Anyway, I hope this clears up a few misconceptions about our "crazy diet", its really not that extreme after all. And to tell you the truth I have never felt better.