Rehab for the Junk Food Junkie

I’m the Jekyll and Hyde of the kitchen. On one hand, I stock my refrigerator with vegetables from our garden and organic milk. On the other, nothing beats a sweet, sweet escape from life like Twix bars mushed up in ice cream. Or a Krispy Kreme glazed donut with a palate-cleansing mocha McFrappe.

After years of suffering from headaches, I finally visited a chiropractor who suggested my migraines might be caused by my little addiction to sugar and carbs. His suggestion: reduce the gluten, sugar and artificial products from my diet.

Somewhere, Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar wept.

In my mind, it seemed too difficult. How can you reduce your reliance on packaged, prepared food when you work full-time, raise two kids and live in small-town Illinois?

Then a couple of weeks ago, I came across a great post on STLtoday.com about Sandi Bruegger, a stay-at-home mom from Edwardsville who gained nationwide attention for her prize-winning Chocolate Covered POM Cupcakes & Almond Cream with Chocolate Ganache. But even more impressive than her mad cupcake skills is how she manages to cook all-natural meals while homeschooling, raising five kids and living in small-town Illinois, which she chronicles on her blog, Sweet Nothings in the Kitchen.

She’s just what I needed for inspiration — not a doctor, not a chef, but a real mom making it work. So I asked Bruegger to share her secrets on how she does it.

You started an all-natural lifestyle after noticing your daughter displayed behavioral problems after eating junk food. How do you feel processed foods can affect one’s life?

It’s no wonder ADHD runs rampant when kids are eating gummy snacks loaded in artificial colors, sucking down fruit drinks made with high-fructose corn syrup and have little to no fiber or complex carbohydrates in their diets.

When moms come to me and are exhausted from a child who is shrieking, throwing themselves on the floor, totally and completely out of control for no reason, I always suggest looking at what they’ve eaten recently. Keeping a food and behavior diary for two weeks is an extremely eye-opening thing.

When I think of a gluten-free, artificial color-free lifestyle, I immediately think of sacrificing the foods I love. What would you say to contradict this?

Focus on the positive, what you can have. Many companies make reasonable alternatives to the conventional products many of us grew up on. And those that aren’t made safe for us, we can learn to make. I’ve had a lot of flops and failures, but we have a lot of things we make regularly.

Ok, how in the world do you cook from scratch while homeschooling five kids?

Actually, it’s the homeschooling that allows me time to do these things. I cannot imagine being a work-out-of-home mom, and I bow to the single mothers of society. There are many days that math is a baking lesson, complete with adding fractions, and science is testing how baking soda reacts in a quick bread. My children all inherited my love of cooking and join me around the kitchen island to prepare meals.

What do your daily meals usually look like?

Generally for breakfast the kids have cereal, oatmeal (note: oats are often cross-contaminated with wheat gluten, so if you have celiac, you will need to use gluten-free oats like those made by Bob’s Red Mill), cream of rice, or yogurt with fruit.

My oldest makes lunch most days and the rule is that is must contain protein and produce. Beyond that, she has free reign of whatever she’d like to make. You might find hard-boiled eggs and baby carrots on their plate one day, turkey rolled up around a slice of cheese with strawberries on the side the next. Occasionally, we’ll make fruit and yogurt parfaits or nachos with black beans and lots of free salsa.

We eat a lot of international foods as well. When you get past the idea of a meal being a “meat plus three” as they say in the South, it opens a world of opportunities. Curries, stir fry (with gluten-free soy sauce like La Choy or Wheat Free Tamari), Pad Thai and many Mexican dishes are naturally gluten-free.

I’ll admit it. Every time I think of giving up my beloved gummy worms and soda, I listen to Boyz II Men and sob. Are there any natural options for me?

In most countries throughout the world, artificial food coloring is banned. They use vegetable colorants when something is more appealing with added color. While we can find these products here in the U.S., they’re a little harder to come by. Jelly Belly came out with a line of jelly beans that are all natural, India Tree has a line of sprinkles that are made vibrant with vegetable and fruit extracts, and Wonka’s gummies and a new line of fruit gels are all color-free. We have to search conventional stores, but there are some available.

And the more we use our spending dollars to tell companies that we don’t want this junk in our kids’ diets, the more they will listen. LAY’S recently announced they were reformulating their chips to remove artificial color and MSG from many flavors, and PepsiCo has released Pepsi Throwback and Sierra Mist sweetened with actual cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup. Companies do listen, and our purchases do impact their decisions.

And how did I do my first week of all-natural eating? While I failed miserably on the weekend, I managed to eat healthy the rest of the week. Best of all, I remained headache free for days. Maybe it was the reduction in sugar; maybe it was just mind over matter. I don’t care — a morning without a migraine was worth it.

And not once did I have to serenade Little Debbie with “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.”

By Nicole Plegge, Lifestyle Blogger for SmartParenting