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Easy Clean Eating Diet Recommendations That Everyone Can Follow
Let me start this post by saying that we are all different, and we don’t all have to eat the exact same diet. HOWEVER, there are many things that I think we should avoid in our diet, and several general things that we should include. This post is just going to be a basic outline of this. If you want to know why I don’t advocate for a specific diet for everyone, check this post out here.
This is basically what I try to abide by. There are days where we go out to eat and cannot avoid all of the “bad” stuff, but I truly believe that things are shifting. More people want real food, and many restaurants are catching up to the demand now. The more that we vote with our dollars, the more these places will change!
At the end of the day, please remember just to DO YOUR BEST. None of us are perfect, especially not when crap food is everywhere.
What NOT to eat:
- Genetically Modified Foods
- Artificial sweeteners
- Food dyes
- High Fructose Corn syrup (and I’d stay away from Corn syrup too!)
- MSG
- Read why we should avoid the above mentioned here.
- Packaged foods labeled as “low-fat” (AKA filled with sugar!)
- Avoid as many boxed foods as you can
- Non-organic sugars
- Oils from soy, corn, safflower, sunflower, canola, and peanut
What to eat:
- Fresh fruit and veggies, mostly local if you can do this. (**See below for Clean Fifteen and Dirty Dozen)
- Grass-fed meats
- Organic chicken
- Free-range eggs
- Seafood from clean, reputable sources (if you’re a seafood eater!)
- Good fats like grass-fed butter, coconut oil, grass-fed dairy (cream cheese, milk, cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, heavy cream), ghee, avocado, fish, nuts, chocolate, meats, eggs, and olives.
- When it comes to grains, this is SO individual. My family tries to stick with organic whole grains as we do well with them. This includes organic wheat, Einkorn, basmati rice, organic oats, etc. I truly believe it comes down to the strength of our digestion as well as the quality of the food we eat that matters most.
- Real sweeteners like organic maple syrup, raw honey, blackstrap molasses, and we even use organic brown sugar for baking.
- Get in as many nutrient dense foods as you can. Herbal infusions, pumpkin seeds, bee pollen, bone broth, etc. Read more on there here.
**For Fresh Produce, this is a good list to remember. Dirty Dozen is best organically grown when you can find them, and the Clean Fifteen does not have to be organic:
Dirty Dozen:
- Apples
- Peaches
- Strawberries
- Nectarines
- Celery
- Spinach
- Grapes
- Cherry tomatoes
- Cucumbers
- Sweet bell peppers
- Potatoes
- Snap Peas (imported)
Clean Fifteen:
- Avocados
- Sweet Corn
- Pineapple
- Sweet potatoes
- Cabbage
- Frozen sweet peas
- Onions
- Asparagus
- Mangoes
- Papaya
- Kiwi
- Eggplant
- Grapefruit
- Cantaloupe
- Cauliflower