Clean Your Plate

Clean Your Plate!

For many of us, this mere comment brings us back to the childhood dinner table. Maybe you were the kid who shoved the peas under the placemat or furtively tossed a slice of steak to the family dog. Or maybe your experience was more like mine. "Do you think you really need to eat that?"

Food is more than calories, fat grams, fiber, vitamins, minerals. It's your mom's apple pie, grandma's kasha varnishkes, the lasagna your friend always brings to potlucks. It's a slice of pizza or bag of chestnuts eaten on a New York street. A salad and gossip shared with a friend or guacamole and chips and a margarita with rocks, salt enjoyed at an after work happy hour. It's a Thanksgiving table groaning with an 18-pound turkey and all the fixings. It's rolling out cookie dough and decorating Christmas cookies with your kids. It's a chef's famed recipe enjoyed at a candlelight dinner with a handsome first date or to celebrate an anniversary. It's french fries at the beach or macaroons eaten on the Champs Elysees.

Food is also nourishment. Finding the way of eating that brings you more energy and wellness. As Hippocrates said thousands of years ago, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food." When we fill our bodies and satiate our appetites with clean, unprocessed food, we experience increased energy and vitality. We look and feel better.

I'm glad you're joining me on this blog journey. Food, like life, is about balance. I'm not going to suggest some quick fix bikini diet where you're toting celery sticks in ziplocks to a holiday party because you "can't eat the food." I'm going to give you information on integrating clean foods into your life and to your family table. I'll bring you tips on how to encourage kids or even significant others to make healthier choices, one step at a time. I'll show you how to navigate the grocery or health food store, the farmers market and a restaurant menu or two.

Newstands, bookstores, the Internet are all filled with confusing and contradictory messages about what we should eat. Eat more eggs. Don't eat eggs. Ditch the carbs. Count your fat grams. Join a diet program. I recently saw an ad advocating a feeding tube diet.

I'll help navigate you through this minefield of information so you can make healthy choices. And, of course, I'm a girl so I know you also want to know about how to look good in a bikini or turn heads in that cocktail dress!

And because I believe we can change the world one plate at a time, I'll bring you the latest news in nutrition, the environment as it relates to nutrition and food, and other global issues with my take on them.

Clean Your Plate! is a community of people who want to learn to make healthier food and lifestyle choices. I welcome comments and interaction. I want to know your challenges and victories. We are here to support each other!

So, Clean Your Plate!

Beth