Health and nutrition is very important to me. I've always been interested in herbs, not only for taste in cooking, but also for homeopathic reasons. I've been very interested in foods and their health benefits.
With the births of my daughters, food nutrition became more and more important to me. One day when my toddler asked for fruit as a snack, my teenage niece commented at how my daughter likes nutritious foods. This filled my heart with such pride and happiness! I started thinking hard about how I could not only teach my two youngsters about food nutrition, but teach them to like and prefer nutritious foods. Considering that I was raised on very tasty "down home" southern-style cooking, at which I'm pretty darn good at, it's a bit of an adjustment for us to convert our life styles.
I began this conversion by trying to cut out as many saturated fats and partially hydrogenated oils (margarine and Crisco are good examples of these) as possible. I have also begun adding snacks to our daily routine of fresh fruit or vegetables. I then began substituting some meat analogues in things like spaghetti, chili, sloppy joe's, humburger helper, tacos, etc. Then, I thought about how much my husband loooooves pizza and wondered how I could make this item more nutritious for him without losing the feel and flavor. I bought the Morning Star sausage and some Yves mock pepperoni's and made a homemade crust. He loves it and requests it regularly. As of August 29, 2000, we gave up meat altogether and I've given up all dairy, as well. My husband and girls have just about kicked the dairy habit as well!
There's a lot of supportive information on why these products are not healthy, and I have supplied some links below.
www.madcowboy.com This site is by the notorious Howard Lyman (of Oprah Winfrey fame). He is an ex-cattle rancher who is now a strict vegetarian and he explains why.
Herbalism
