30 Days Without Processed Foods

Here’s a good challenge to join before we head into the heavy over eating season with all the end-of-year holidays. Andrew Wilder is hosting the challenge with his “October Unprocessed 2011” project, which is an experiment in ridding your food intake of all processed foods for the month of October. Even though we are 10 days into the month, you can still join in and follow along with Andrew.

Andrew explains what he means by “unprocessed” with his kitchen test, meaning any food that can be prepared by someone of reasonable skill level with whole-food ingredients that are easily accessible would qualify. Foods with a laundry list for a label with words you cannot pronounce and have no idea what they mean would not qualify.

As an aside, we were at the farmers market last week checking out some lovely homemade jams, relishes and chutneys when the craftsperson told us a young women was just by looking at her wares when she noticed the raspberry jam label listed only 3 ingredients (raspberries, sugar, pectin). The young woman said “only 3 ingredients?... this can’t possibly taste very good.” It is shocking to think that our youth do not understand that an ingredients list with few items listed is the best tasting food she will find – providing they are natures ingredients of course. There will probably be some feedback on the sugar ingredient, but the point remains – fewer ingredients is better.

Back to Andrew’s challenge – do you think you could go for 30 days without eating any processed foods? It can be a real challenge in this multi-tasking harried world we live in today. In October 2010, 415 people took the pledge with Andrew and he shared over 40 guest posts, and even made the news.

Will you join Andrew and take the pledge? He has quite a lengthy list of pledges going over on his site at Food Rules. Check it out and take the pledge today. We’ve done it several times over, and do it on a regular basis. It really makes a huge difference in how you feel when you leave out all the fake foods. Fresh, whole, organic and non-GMO foods is the way to go!

We would be delighted to hear about your experiences here too when you have completed the challenge. Please share.