Last year I decided to participate in October #Unprocessed, a month-long challenge to eat only foods that have no processed ingredients. It was an eye-opening experience, so I've decided to do it again. I hadn't realized how much unhealthy food had slowly begun to creep into our diet. I do my best to cook from scratch and minimize the number of times I eat out, but I'm just as starved for time as the next person. The lure of the deli rotisserie chicken or quick sandwich from Subway is hard to ignore sometimes (and don't even get me started on those golden arches, we have a love/hate relationship now that I have a little man running around the house.)
Andrew Wilder—who started the challenge in 2009—has what he calls the kitchen test, to help make the determination of what is an unprocessed food. The lines between processed and unprocessed aren't always clear, so I spent a good part of October 2014 educating myself about what was really in the food I was eating.
What is the Kitchen Test?
"Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with whole-food ingredients."
This is the benchmark we'll be using once again to determine what foods will stay in our pantry and what we need to replace with a different brand or start making from scratch. Since the challenge starts today I'll be sorting through every item of food in the house in order to see what processed foods I've allowed back in over the past year. I feel like I've done pretty well sticking to the goals I outlined last year. I'll let you know in the first of our weekly updates how well I really did.
How to take part in October #Unprocessed
If you're interested in joining me in October #Unprocessed head over to Eating Rules and take the pledge.