Day 1

A blog. I’m blogging.  I could talk about food and nutrition all day long, but my friends and family need a break from all that chatter. So a blog, it is.

For this, my first foray into the blogosphere, I will start with the RD-tells-all peek inside my fridge to answer that oft-asked question: What does a dietitian feed her family? 

Well, this week I’m grocery shopping little by little, as opposed to my usual practice of doing one big shop over the weekend. So as you can see, my fridge is a tad bare for a family of four.

We do have plenty of fruits and vegetables in the house – organic berries (it’s summertime after all), locally grown arugula, carrots, grape tomatoes (or as my 2 year old calls them, potatoes),red bell pepper strips.  (On my counter there’s a bunch of bananas and a cantaloupe, too.)  There’s fresh salsa and hummus for dipping, organic applesauce (into which I slip the kids’ probiotics and, on rainy days, their vitamin D drops). We have organic nonfat milk, organic eggs, Applegate Farms organic deli turkey slices, and organic yogurt for the kids. For me and the husband: soy milk for coffee, La Yogurts for lunches, light beers and homemade seltzer. And finally, a pack of “natural” chicken breasts (unfortunately, there were no more organic ones at the store). In the door there’s peanut butter, jelly, maple syrup, pickled peppers, an assortment of Asian cooking sauces, Fox’s u-bet chocolate syrup, ketchup (Heinz brand, made with sugar instead of corn syrup), and butter (the real, good stuff).  Tomorrow, I’ll add a package of pork steaks from the freezer; a few ears of corn, scallions, and goat cheese for a side salad, and baby zucchini.

(Of course, my family eats other foods than just the ones in the fridge – we have goldfish crackers and Annie’s fruit snacks and Veggie Booty in the pantry at the moment, along with all the basic staples: pasta, brown rice, onions and garlic, olive oil, vinegars, spices, sweet potatoes, cans of beans, tuna, mac-n-cheese packages, and assorted breakfast cereals.)

What you won’t find in my fridge: juice boxes (I find them to be unnecessary), blue foods (other than blueberries), takeout containers (usually), soda, conventionally produced beef.

So that’s my first blog post.   In the future I’ll be writing about things that strike me in the world of food and nutrition – things I’ve read, learned, practiced, struggled with.

But for today, I actually found it kind of enlightening to examine this snapshot of my family’s foods.  I hope this encourages you to take a look at your staples.  Are your go-to foods mostly whole, natural, and healthy?  Or processed and junky?

Look inward. (Inside your fridge, that is.)