Can I start with a mind-blowing fact?

More than 60% of the food you see at your local supermarket is simply NOT food.

It’s junk.

If it’s processed, refined, canned and manufactured – It’s not real food. It’s loaded with toxic chemicals, high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, hydrogenated and heavily processed until it hardly resembles the food it used to be.

And your body can’t handle it. It slows you down. It makes you chronically tired. It makes you chronically ill. It “punishes” you with weight-gain. Diabetes. Heart disease. Mental disorders. Cancer.

And I really hate thinking about what it does to our children.

How to Start the Real Food Diet (Without Dieting!)

Starting a real food diet requires us to go back to our roots. To eat only real food. Whole foods. Naturally occurring foods. Not food marketed to you as being so.

Actually, one of the best indicators of junk is “food bragging”. If the package “brags” – “low-fat!” or “High in vitamins!”, it’s probably loaded in chemicals.

Real food has no bragging on it. It rarely even has packaging. Veggies, fruit, grass-fed meat, good healthy fats, grains etc. These are foods high in vitamins and minerals. Foods that will become your best doctors.

Avoiding the Unhealthiest “Health Foods”

Many foods considered as “health foods” are the exact opposite of what they claim to be.

That’s why many Americans don’t understand why eating these “healthy foods” are not making them feel any better.

Here are 6 of the nastiest “healthy foods” to start avoiding today:

1. Commercially prepared fruit juices – Highly processed, no nutritional value, artificial ingredients

2. Agave syrup and nectar – Depending of the processing levels, contains 55-90 percent high fructose corn syrup.

3. Sports drinks and energy bars – Most of them are loaded with high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors.

4. Fake butter and vegetable oils (corn, soy, canola, and safflower oil) – Highly processed, no nutritional value. Soybean oil is one of the worst, causing dysfunction in your body to a cellular level (processed foods are loaded with it).

5. Cereals – Forever marketed as health food, but actually most are contaminated with toxic pesticides and contain GMO corn.

6. “Low-fat” foods – Believe it or not, your body can not function without saturated fats. When food is turned into “low-fat” it becomes tasteless, so manufacturers load them up with sugar, sodium and massive amounts of chemicals to get a better taste. Yuck.

Next, start avoiding the “refined family”. Refined sugar, refined white flour, refined salt.

To put it simply – Is it something that can grow or be raised on the earth? Good.

A manufacturing plant? Not good.

5 Fantastic Resources For Real Food Beginners

For most of us, starting a real food diet can be a bit overwhelming. No white flour? No white sugar? No vegetable oil? So what am I supposed to use for cooking??

And no cereals? What will my kids have for breakfast? I don’t have time to make a real food breakfast every day!

And what if I can’t cook?

I know how you feel. But take a deep breath. It’s way easier than you think. There are simple ways to turn any recipe you love into a real food recipe. And you can start a real food diet without any cooking skills.

Baby steps my friend, one small step at a time.

Here’s all you need to get you started – Stress free:

1. Real Food Substitutions

Start easy with learning the healthy alternatives for the (excuse my language) crap in your kitchen. Danelle Dailey Wolford from Weed ’em and Reep has made this great and easy to understand infographic:

You can also check out Dannell’s new infographic, which shows you how you can make the best from the stuff you already have in your kitchen HERE.

2. How to Ditch Processed Food

One of the best real-foodie beginners’ guides I’ve ever seen is “Processed Free” by Robin Konie from Thank Your Body.

This e-book is a great place to start your journey towards real food – Stress free. Robin will show you how to save time and money while nourishing your family to optimum health.

You can see a preview for ‘Processed Free” – HERE.

(This one is an especially good resource for you if you (think you) can’t cook!)

3. Real Food Survival Guide For Busy Moms

If you are a very busy mom (like most of us) and want to know how to make real food FAST – The Real Food Survival Guide for Busy Moms is all you’ll ever need.

You’ll learn how to save a lot of time on shopping and preparing, and even how to stick to real food when you are traveling or eating out (important!).

You can get the guide or a sample PDF of the Real Food Survival Guide – HERE.

4. Real Food Snacks for Kids

If you have kids, you need snacks, right? But from now on you’ll want to give them only real food healthy snacks.

You think they’ll refuse them? Think again. Here’s a list of 50 real food snacks your kids will love (especially after you get rid of all the junk in your kitchen).

5. The Laid Back Guide to Real Food

Emily Benefit fantastic guide – Real Food for Real Life –  Is a little different. She is kind of a “grey area” real foodie and believes (as do I..) that stressing about bad foods and real food “rules” is much worse than occasionally breaking some.

Her guide is all about how to start real food without going completely crazy. Some people may think that she is far too calm about on all the real food rules, but I think her guide is probably one the most sane and practical guides out there.

You can see the guide or get a sample of Real Food for Real Life (which has 30 recipes in it too) HERE.

That’s it my aspiring real foodie friends, all you have to do now it take the first step to a real food lifestyle.

Your body will thank you, your family will thank you and I almost guarantee you won’t look back.

6. Cooking Detective

Cooking Detective (CD) aims to be a leader in cooking, recipe and food blogging by creating essential and interesting content for foodies.

This includes informative articles, useful tips, how-to guides, expert interviews, round-ups, and product reviews dedicated to cooking, cooking courses, products, healthy recipes, nutrition tips, entertaining menus, real food diet,  fitness guides and anything and everything else related to food culture.

To your health & happiness,

Meital