Day five McDonald's challenge

So I decided to open the McDonald's meal first just to make sure I was smelling accurately. Still no foul smell no mold it looks pretty much the same as the day we bought it. Now the fries do seem to be starting to loose a little crispness but this could also be attributed to being in a plastic bag.
The bag with the food I made did not even get opened tonight because when I picked it up I could already smell it!!! You can see through the bag mold is growing at a rapid rate and the potatoes are rotting. The bread doesn't have as much but it does appear to be starting in a couple of spots.
At this point I don't think you could pay me to eat at McDonald's! I really would like to know what they are doing to this stuff in order for this to happen it's quite disturbing.
What I'm really wondering now is who do we trust? If you don't trust McDonald's do you trust Wendy's, Arby's, Chick-fil-a? At this point I just don't know. I think I'll be skipping the drive through anywhere for quite some time though.

Day number four of McDonald's vs homemade

This is the first day there has been a real difference and boy is there one. Immediately upon opening the homemade bag I was greeted with the stench of rotting food!!! It was really gross(I'm glad I'm not pregnant or the experiment would have ended there!) My homemade potatoes now have mold and lots of it and they are also so soggy they are falling apart when I touch them. The meat is starting to change color some and the bun is now soggy also the cheese looks quite disgusting.

The McDonald's fries still smell like fries, are still crispy and no mold anywhere to be found at all. No mold or change in the burger. The patty(as I now hesitate to call it meat) looks as if if may be a dat darker but the cheese product looks exactly the same.

These pictures are still the same meals purchased and made on Saturday and I really would like to throw mine away but the McDonald's meal still looks the same.
I did not think I would see this big of a difference this quickly and really almost didn't believe all the stories I've heard but this is a huge difference very quickly and I'm not about to stop.

Eventually I may have to throw mine away if it gets too far gone just because I don't want that much mold etc. in the house but rest assured I will keep you all updated on this!!!

After all this is what we are putting in not only our bodies but our children's!

McDonald's vs homemade day three

Ok so this is day number three of the experiment. The greasy smell is going away on both of them and starting to just not really smell at all. As you can tell by the pictures though the homemade burger is obviously old the fries are very soggy and the cheese looks nasty. The meat and bun don't look that bad not that I would eat it or anything but nothing major going on.

The McDonald's burger looks exactly the same even the cheese and the fries are still just as crispy as they were yesterday! The bun and meat have shown no difference at all.

McDonald's not so happy meal experiment

So this is what I have been doing this weekend. I've seen lots of stories, pictures, videos etc about these really old McDonald's happy meals that do not smell, do not have mold and the fries basically look new. So what I have decided to do is test this out. I cooked a cheeseburger and fries at home nothing fancy just meat and cheese on a bun with some cut up potatoes fried in oil. Then I sent my DH out to get a happy meal. I took pictures of them both and when they were cooled off put them both in a plastic bag on top of the refrigerator. On day two(yesterday) I took them smelled them took another picture tested for crispness of fries and put them back. The smell is about the same for both on the first day. However I can already tell a difference in the crispness of the fries. My homemade fries were already getting soggy while the McDonald's fries were only slightly less crisp which was probably more from being in a plastic bag. Tonight I will check them again and then I think I will leave the bags open and see what happens.
My plan is to continue to check them everyday and report back the difference if any. So will you be eating anymore not so happy meals if it turns out they don't go bad?
I will post pictures soon but this thing is giving me trouble=)

Update...obviously got the pictures to load the top one in the bags is day two yesterday and the other three are day one Saturday!

weekend challenge

So I'm sure I don't have to tell you how bad those sodas are for you, you already know. So the challenge this weekend is to ditch them for at least a week and see how much better you feel!!

The big switch out

So here's the thing we all like certain foods and there is no reason to completely take them away. It's all about how it's made and what it's made with and of course moderation. I love love love chick-fil-a I could eat there every day seriously but I realize that would not be so great for me so I have vowed to eat there much less(and out at all much less.) Well the big test came today when I knew they were having family night which means they would be having this awesome balloon artist face painting and a drawing to win some veggie tales movies. What's a girl to do in this situation. I made homemade baked coconut chicken nuggets with a orange reduction sauce for dipping and baked sweet potato fries. This is what we ate for dinner and the kids loved it and ate every single last bite of those potatoes. Then since everyone ate so well we went out to Chick-fil-a for balloons and a little ice cream. We ordered kids size cups and I shared with the baby. I think this was a very good compromise and although we did have ice cream it wasn't much and I didn't let them get any chocolate syrup or anything like that on it and I know they got some good nutritious food in them. Also ice cream is not something they get every night! All in all we had a successful nurition day I would say =)
Anyone else with some good compromise or switches they have made?

What is real food anyway?

The easiest way to explain real food is to tell you what is NOT real food

artificial colors

artificial flavors

artificial sweeteners(diet coke is not good for you so if you are drinking that with your super delux burger in hopes of some offset put them both down and run away as fast as you can)

preservatives

things you can not pronounce or do not know what it is

High fructose corn syrup may be "natural" but don't let that fool you it is overprocessed and anything that may have been good to begin with is long gone...fructose is digested by your body differently(bad different) than glucose(regular table sugar) if you need a sweetener stick with a natural unprocessed sugar and use a lot less of it. I like florida crystals...yes it cost more than processed granulated sugar but as you slowly reduce your amount of sugar in your recipes you will use much less of it
I'm sure there is more but if you will just use single ingredient foods and make things yourself(it's really not hard I promise) then you will be safe
YOU CAN DO THIS!!!!

where it all began

First of all I would like to give some back ground as to why I am so passionate about eating real food. Hopefully by the end of this I will have some of you join me in this journey to getting out the word about what we are doing to ourselves. If you are easily offended only keep reading if you are ready for a change. If you are not wait and come back when you are.

I have always loved salads and fruit along with some veggies but never gave much thought to what else I might be eating. Even with the ridiculous amount of heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, high pretty much everything in my own family and the onslaught of obesity around me it never occurred to me to think about what I was putting in my own body. Then one day it hit me like a ton of bricks when I got the call that my thirty nine year old father had died of a heart attack. I had no warning and then a week later I found out I was pregnant with my first child. I didn't know what was healthy for me much less how to teach my new baby what was healthy. So started my personal mission to find out what foods really are healthy and why. I am not a doctor or a certified nutritionist nor can I tell you what to eat to prevent what and how much etc. I am a mother who cares deeply about my children(now three of them) and wants to take care of what God has given me(my body.)

I have had it on my heart for two years now to teach other families about how to eat real food and read labels. Unfortunately circumstances have not proved useful in doing so. Lately I've been feeling the tug again and felt it very strongly this morning.

I was having a conversation with a new friends about how I feed my children and the difficulty with my youngest allergy to soy and how now I can hardly give any snack crackers at all because I will not allow anything artificial in my kids food and now no soy. When she asked me where I shopped then to be able to feed them this way I realized that so many people just don't know how easy it really is to feed their family real food.

Fast forward to this afternoon when a friend had a post on face book about Jamie Oliver's new show Food Revolution. This for me was completely conformation that this is what I need to be doing.

I hope to help friends and family to learn how to read labels, stick with as many one ingredient foods as possible and cook in a way that is fun, easy, and the kids will eat.