I was born in Detroit and growing up we had parsley, a couple tomato plants, and a peach tree, which was way more garden than most of the neighborhood. My dad loved having a peach tree, and we provided peaches to all our neighbors and relatives. Besides that, we ate a lot of canned, frozen, and processed food because that was convenient and inexpensive meal planning. When I started this food site over ten years ago, we had three kids at home, and weren’t paying much attention to what was in our food, although I cooked most of our meals. I cut coupons for anything we bought from the Sunday Washington Post. When I saw something on sale, I’d stock up and try to fit it into that week’s meals. I was trained to take advantage of cheap food.

We bought most of our food from the center aisles of grocery stores, like soups, pasta and sauces, boxed mixes, and some prepared foods. I ate quite a bit of junk food like potato chips, pie, cake, and other snacks. Most mornings I got a donut at work in the morning. That changed as we moved to real food.

We normally do not eat fast food, which is not average. Over 1/3 (36.3%) of American children eat fast food daily. While this leads to the obesity problem in the United States, this number has gone down from 40% since I reported eight years ago, and I’m relieved to see that trend. We eat at fast food restaurants less than once a month. We also try to avoid french fries much unlike at least 25% of American children who eat french fries daily. In fact, if you consider french fries a vegetable, it’s the most consumed vegetable by young American children, and this number has been holding steady since I started watching it ten years ago. 

We still buy about 75% of our food at the local grocery stores because it’s convenient. About 20% of our food, we get from smaller food coop-type grocers like Common Market or farmer’s markets. The rest I grow in the yard: tomatoes, cucumbers, leeks, herbs, plus whatever else I happen to plant.

Sometimes we do not stick to real food, because we:

• Eat bad food in pressure situations, like when we are out of time and desperate, or possibly out of town/at a restaurant.
• Eat whatever is being served when visiting. I’m not going to be at someone’s house and comment in a negative way about what they’re serving, request something else, or insinuate that we don’t usually eat their food. We can pick something from what is being served and deal with it.
  
  
  

I also need to accept that our kids are adults, we taught them as best we could, and now we cannot control what they eat anymore. But a mom can always make a subtle suggestion, right?