Avoiding the negative chemicals found in processed foods often means buying goods closer to the source and making many things from scratch.  Health concerns and issues in our family drove us to look closer at what we were eating and it was in the processed foods that we found our problems.  Eliminating the dangerous chemicals has restored our health.  It has been an arduous road learning hundreds of alternate recipes and experimenting with various options.  Without fail the more we learn, the more chemicals we find that are just not good for you.

The concerns for eating healthy are:

• Where to find healthy sources of food (brand names are not necessarily a good indicator)
• The time it takes to make food from scratch
• The clean up resulting from the additional cooking
• Recipes that avoid the chemicals
• The cost of eating healthy

The cost of eating healthy is not more costly, but far less expensive.  When you make ingredients from scratch you can often take opportunities to by base ingredients in modest volume, volume that will be used in a variety of recipes.  Due to a shift in our buying strategies caused by eating healthier foods we are saving well over $6,000 annually and we rarely ate out.  Those that move away from eating out can save over $30,000 annually.

We are working hard to develop a series of affordable cookbooks that will not only provide recipes that are great, but a foundation in cooking that allows you to spawn hundreds of your own recipes.  We delve into the science and chemistry of cooking in a common sense approach that helps you envision other recipes in a healthy manner.  The recipes we are talking about are rich, vibrant and sometimes downright decadent.  The only thing they lack is the unnecessary and harmful chemicals.

Cooking at home from scratch does take time and does entail clean up.  Let’s be honest it takes more effort to do things right.  However, it is not as much time as you think.  When canning you make large quantities of items reducing the average setup and clean up time required.  It takes little more effort to can 24 pints of Bread and Butter pickles as it does to make one pint.  For two hours effort we saved almost $90 when compared to buying pickles from a store.  That equates to earning $45 per hour!  And we avoid dangerous chemicals to boot.

Have you ever calculated how much time it takes to go to the store, pick the items you want, stand in line, load them onto the checkout line and the bag them, load them into the car and then lug them into the house.  How about the cans and jars you have to rinse out to recycle?  You do recycle don’t you?  Even so you are shipping mountains of cans and jars to the recycle sites that still end up in dumps as un-recyclable goods.

One 25lb bag of dried beans is equivalent to 400 tin cans of beans.  The dried version cost $13 for 25lb and the canned equivalent costs $320.  There are 400 cans to buy, carry home, open, wash out and throw away.  These are 400 cans of potential chemicals your family does not need.  You don’t use 25lbs of beans in a week, month or year!  Not a problem split the savings with friends or neighbors.  Or store them they are dried and last for years.  Consider alternate recipes to increase the bean uptake.  Beans lower your cholesterol and blood sugar.  A Bay Leaf or a touch of savory in the beans and there is no after affect.

Beans are just one example of buying big.  We buy flour, the good stuff (unbleached) in 25lb units for the same price you pay for 2 4lbs bags of the cheap stuff.  We make a loaf of bread for less than 50 cents and don’t have to buy it, go to the store and pick it up, pay for it, bag it, load it in the car or carry it into the house.  We also don’t through away the plastic bag, there is none.  Where bread takes several hours to rise and 30 minutes in the oven it only takes about 10 to 15 minutes of your time and smells oh so good.

The next time you buy herbs and spices consider how much you are paying per ounce.  Chances are it is a lot and most of that cost is the cost of the bottle and shipping, distributors and storefront space; with only pennies allocated to the spice itself.  Many spices and herbs can be bought on-line for far less and will be much fresher.  And you can grow many in your yard.  With ease you can dry them for the off season.  Fresh is a whole different and better taste than dried.  We use over 40 different spices and herbs in our cooking which increases the complexity of taste and the interest in the food.  Sure, some foods are just great with few spices or none, but when you want to have variety and kick it up a notch spices are often the place to go.

Next time you buy preserves consider how many strawberries are in that jar.  Preserves are fruit, sugar and pectin period.  They don’t need preserving chemicals unless they need an extended shelf life and they don’t need food coloring or artificial ingredients.  Would you pay $3.50 for a cup of sugar and 4 strawberries?  That is about what you get in a pint of preserves.  Yes, to make them takes about an hour of occasional stirring over the stove, but you are making 10 pints or $35 dollars worth of preserves in that time with a cost for goods of about $5.  Canned they will last 10 months if you consume a pint a month.  We make more, at least two types of preserve, at the same time making our time at the stove more efficient.  We can watch one, two or three pots of perserves boil with minimal effort, now we have earned not $30, but $90 in the hour.

Locating healthy alternative food sources requires backing down the processed food chain to often eliminate as many processes and chemicals as possible.  The more processed the food the more likely it is incorporating a harmful chemical or a sub component of the food has an unwanted chemical.  Brand name products are not necessarily healthy.  Some brand name companies are very health conscious and others are more interested in big profits.  Read the labels and learn.  When reading labels:

•  if the list is long don’t waste your time, put it back IT HAS chemicals you do not need. 
• If it says artificial ingredients put it back. 
• Artificial food coloring and preservatives are things you don’t want. 
• If you can’t pronounce it you may not want it
• if you don’t know what it is why put it in your mouth… or your children’s mouth. 

Call manufactures and ask questions they are nicer than you think and pressure to make healthy products can force them to change their ways.  Some chemicals are required by FDA regulations, that does not mean the chemicals are good.  some chemicals are added to enhance looks or perceived taste which are bad for you.  Some chemicals are required by the FDA because of the shelf life or the volume processing.  Similar products made at home do not require these chemicals.

Buying Big is one way to save money and time making healthy food choices not only good for you, but for your budget as well.  By all means buy from producers that respect you and your family and produce healthy foods.  Organic, Lite, Diet and Natural are not words that affirm healthy foods.  Your health and that of your family is not the responsibility of the FDA or the government they are interested in economic value; which means sales not health.  Unhealthy people mean a greater revenue source for medicine and the medical industry.  Unhealthy food means more is produced for a lower price and greater profit.  Unhealthy food after all only impacts the buyer not the supplier, do you think they feed that junk to their families.

Buying big and bringing home the savings is an investment in your health and that of your family.  You can afford to make more goods from scratch.  It is not more work, just more creative options that reduce time and effort in other areas.  Vanilla pudding is Vanilla extract, egg, cornstarch, milk and sugar.  It takes more time to go to the store to get the pudding than it takes to make it.  Making it from scratch takes only more ingredients not much more time.  It does not require Carrageenan or MSG, both chemicals you do not want.