Growing up under her guidance… it wasn’t just that we had to swallow a handful of vitamins each and every day… or that we never had “sugar” cereals in our house either (“Life” was the sweetest cereal we were allowed to have and it was on a treat basis).

It wasn’t because she made our own yoghurt from scratch… or because we weren’t allowed to drink with our meals and if we did, it was water and lots of it!

It wasn’t just the conversations around the table about the evils of combining steak and potatoes or of eating after 7pm and especially in the discovery of the truly evils of Aspartame.

It wasn’t the nutritional books (Sugar Blues, Eat Right For Your Type, and more) that lay around the house or the fact that we didn’t go to a “regular” MD but a Naturalpathic Doctor…. and that we were never immunized or received a single flu shot.

K, it was all those and more!!

But I don’t think she ever got into the whole eating organic thing. The only label reading I remember her doing was to find where the sugar fell in the list of ingredients. These things I’m learning about now as an adult and a mother of 4. I’ve taken all the pearls of wisdom my mom dished out and am expanding on it. I wonder though if foods have changed that much since I was a kid…

I started seeing a Chiropractor back in September that is helping the rest of my family (read, hubby) see what we need to do to live healthy lives. Now he’s reading, “Body by God” and it’s changing his view on food. That’s a good thing!

Through this Chiropractor I’ve been reading up more about organic foods and reading labels and I am shocked that I didn’t know that there were sooooo many chemicals in our food, not just sprayed on top of but included inside!!! I was devastated to learn that my favourite salad dressing has Propylene glycol in it. The same stuff used to lubricate gears – a coolant – a “less toxic” antifreeze! Thankfully I found out that Renee’s is pretty much all natural, although it has more a few more calories, it’s more real!

Did you ever wonder why your 0% fat sour cream had double the ingredients as a tub of full fat tub sour cream??! Start reading your labels. I’m sure you’ll be shocked. I would rather be eating more calories than more chemicals!!

Before I go too far in a rant on healthy living – reading labels and how against I am regarding immunizations and such – I’m going to link a blog I found the other day, “Nutrition for Kitchen”. In this particular article the author (a Registered Dietitian) wrote on Organic foods and how to choose which ones to purchase and which ones you can skip over in that ridiculously expensive aisle. The post is called, “Food for thought, Organics and the Dirty Dozen.”

I’ll leave you with this question for tonight, how can we live a healthy life when we’re putting so many toxins into our bodies?!