Food for Life

Over the last few years the diet in our household has changed considerably. We have worked to incorporate more and more fresh fruits and vegetables into the menu, looked for nutrient dense foods that are also highly digestible, and continue to eliminate preservatives and other additives from our daily food choices. As with everything, our motivation is to honor God. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and we should offer them daily as living sacrifices to Him. What we eat and how we treat our bodies is just another form of worship.

In this journey toward better health I have found that a garden makes this easier, more convenient, and more affordable. Just this week I picked some of the first greens from our garden this year.

I made this beautiful and yummy salad:


And added a handful of beet greens and lettuce leaves to my traditional Sunday morning smoothie:
Can you even see all that hiding in there?

Within hours of being pulled from the earth these vegetables were nourishing our bodies. Here is one of many informative articles that I found on the benefits of eating food straight from the ground. My sister studied in Spain for a few months and found that people there visited the market at least once a day, buying and eating very freshly picked produce. That doesn't fit our urbanized society, but the nutrition benefits in fresh picked, prepared and eaten food is incomparable. Eating food close to the source is a challenge I enjoy seeking out.

Even if you don't have room for a garden it is easy to plant a row of lettuce and everyday pick some leaves for a fresh salad. I also like that when I grow it on my own I know that no chemicals have touched its leaves. Even 25 percent of organic produce has some chemicals used on it (as compared to 75 percent of conventional), so the only way I know what I am getting is to grow it at home.

Aside from what we grow, I work to keep the house stocked with lots of healthy choices. The kids love chopped fruit that they make their own skewer for a snack. We even work in a math lesson here with patterning. Cantaloupe, grape, watermelon, cherry . . .



Nutrition for us, and most, is a journey and a continual pathway of decisions and small changes to eat better today than we did yesterday. To live is Christ, and this is a small way that our family can stay healthy to have as many years as possible to serve Him before we get to the 'die is gain' part.

Comments

Unknown said…
Beautiful salad!! We are still in the 50's and very wet so I am lucky to have a green house to grow my lettuce now!

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