Convenience in Food, Weight Loss and Our Lives

So this is the tangent I went on while writing my previous post. This started while talking about my visit to the butchers yesterday while doing my groceries.

 

Something I have learned from this is that butchers are actually cheaper than the supermarket and the meat is much better. Now, you might be like B and already knew this, but I had always had it in my head that the butchers were expensive and Woolies was cheaper.  In fact yesterday I bought sausages, mince, marinated steaks, beef stir-fry strips and chicken fillets (which I asked them to dice up for me! WIN!) and it cost me about $30!! At Woolies that would have cost me about $45 or more! The butchers are in our shopping mall, so there is really no reason not to go there!

 

Also, I was under the impression that the meat at the butchers would be full of fat and there wouldn't be any of the reduced fat stuff there.... wrong again! I even had a chat with the lady there about it as I really felt like I was entering a new world! haha!! The beef strips I bought yesterday I would say are 99.9% beef - hardly any fat in sight!  The sausages and mince I got were also the reduced fat form.

 

For me, and I am sure like many others, I have grown up in the world of convenience. Where we go to one shop, get everything and leave.  I think a lot about my Nana and how she would have had to go into so many specialty stores to get her foods; the butchers, the bakers (candlestick makers?!), the green grocers, etc.  And we all know that veggies at the grocers are generally better and much more fresh, even just going to Bakers Delight and getting a loaf of bread is better than the stuff at the supermarket... In fact, I even make our own bread and pizza dough in our bread maker... can't beat it! (Just wish I could cut it nicely... any tips out there?)

 

Does this world of convenience impact on our weight loss? I think so.  I think we are so used to convenience that we expect our weight loss to be the same. The other side of this is that we have compromised quality with convenience. I only know this because I started growing our own food, and if I knew that veggies were supposed to taste like THAT, then I probably would have eaten more.

 

Now, don't get me wrong, I still struggle with it all. Sometimes I am tired and I don't want to cook, or just want to heat something up, and sometimes I just really can't be assed eating my fruit and veggies (shocking, I know, but it's the truth). But I always look forward to having tacos with fresh lettuce, carrot and tomatoes from our garden. I also live with a guy who isn't so keen on eating veggies and a little girl who is better than both of us combined at eating hers.

 

For me, I find that I am learning so much more about quality of food, and what it is MEANT to taste like.  The first time I had our home-grown lettuce, I couldn't believe the taste!! I never knew lettuce was supposed to taste sweet. I hope that this knowledge will help me become a better dietician, that I can help people to see that if healthy food can taste so yummy, that it can really impact on what we eat and cook.

 

 

Environmental Impact

Today on Facebook there was an interesting conversations going on when a company I like and follow (Cushie Tushies) posted the picture below

 

 

Ever since I was young (primary school age), I have had an interest in environmentalism.  In fact, my family used to make fun of me for being a "hippy" or a "greenie"... luckily I am far to stubborn to listen to the teasing and have always remained a bit of a "hippy". 

 

The thing is, over the years, I have kind of dropped off on the whole environmentalism thing, but there are a few fundamental aspects that I still follow.

 

In my mind, I am always looking for ways to reduce my impact... like using the Nude Food Movers so that I don't need to use plastic sandwich bags, or having a separate bin next to the rubbish for recycling and then teaching Miss 4 to know what goes into which bin.  There is also the worm farm, which means that I can put my food scraps and coffee grounds in there which will act as a compost and can then go into my veggie garden which reduces the amount of carbon emissions associated with not buying food locally.

 

Additionally, there is also the aspect of buying packaged foods, not only can these be worse for us nutritionally, but there are usually individual packets, which then mean more waste.

 

One of the really scary things I noticed was that each disposable nappy takes about 450 years to decompose!!  I find this so scary as I can't imagine the amount of disposables that could possibly be in landfill right now!!

 

This is one of the reasons why I love the idea of fabric nappies...  I have had friends use them in the past and they have told me about them, and then I met the founder of Cushie Tushies through the 12WBT and I have been following her page ever since... I had decided that when I had a baby that I would use these nappies, but after seeing this picture, it has really solidified it for me.

 

Right now, I feel like the biggest preacher, but the point of all of this was actually noticing how much I do to actively make a difference... I know that I am not perfect, and that there is a lot more that I can do, but it's nice to know that I am doing a little bit each day to help.