I found it a little shocking to look back at our sack lunch ideas from just a year and a half ago. I was pregnant at the time, and thought I was eating pretty healthy. Well, I’m happy to say that I don’t eat any of those (processed) foods things anymore! The only things from that list I still eat on a normal basis are salad, fruit and raisins. So, this post is long overdue.

One other thing hasn’t changed: we still pack our lunches for work every day except Friday, when we enjoy a meal out together. It’s how we balance our need for financial stability, healthy food choices, a mini date during the week (when Roo is at day care), and our love for restaurant meals.

Here’s a revised list of things we keep on hand to bring to work for lunches and snacks. I don’t like to spend a lot of time packing my lunch in the morning, so even though I don’t want to eat processed food, the grab-n-go prepackaged method still works best for me.

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In our most recent post about our journey to eating healthier, there were a few commenters wondering about the details of our diet, what we purchase at the grocery store, how much it costs, and what kind of meals we have been making lately. Today we’ll review all of those items. Just remember that it’s taken us 18 months to get from our first grocery post to this current one. It still makes me sick to look back. It took us quite awhile to get where we are, and if you are thinking about giving healthier eating a try, it just takes a bit of curiosity and willingness to try and learn about it. One step at a time!

Our Most Recent Grocery Trip

I remember when we first started to try and eat healthier that one phrase didn’t quite make sense to me, nor did I believe that we would ever really do it: “Shop the perimeter of the grocery store,” which means produce, meat, eggs and no processed food. Well, we pretty much do that today. The only aisles we go down are in the health market section, where most of the organic, healthier options live. (Isn’t it kind of strange that grocery stores even need a health section?)

Here is a breakdown of what I picked up last Sunday evening at Hy-Vee. Sorry, this was a solo trip to the store, so no Rooney in carts photos.

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Confession: We’ve become food documentary junkies. It’s probably a result of canceling cable, having Netflix streaming capabilities at our fingertips and a baby with an early bedtime. That and the fact that we can rarely decide on a movie to watch, so we default to food documentaries. Have you seen any of them? They are facinating — no, mind blowing!

Of course, they are one side of the story, but after watching Food, Inc.; Food Matters; Hungry for Change; Food Fight; Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead; and a handful of other food documentaries, I’m convinced there is something seriously wrong with America’s food system and that everything I thought I knew about food was wrong.

But there was a defining moment in our lives when the curtain was pulled back and truth started to reveal itself to us. Ironically, it came from a few blog comments on this post. A reader had inquired about how we spend our $100/week food money, and we thought it would be fun to shoot a video after a trip to the grocery store. Now, just looking at the food we bought at that time makes me sick to my stomach. And at the very same moment, we can rejoice in the fact that the only thing in that video that we still buy is bananas. We even did a follow-up post the next week on how nutritionally challenged we were and a few ways we were trying to be better. Although it was a step in the right direction, we still had a long way to go.

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