Ask Lemmy

+1 to all you just said :)

We quit drinking soda (and I quit alcohol, too). Now it's, water, pressed fresh fruits (but not too much), tea and infusions. Maybe once a year I will have a drink of wine (I'm French, I have an excuse ;)

As for teas, my advice there would be to not cheap out on tea. quality teas, aka full leaves, are a thing of their own. Also I would encourage to get at least two tea posts (one for stronger teas and the other one for the lighter ones)

Drinking calories is so bad.

I only drink Coconut Unsweetened Silk and tap water outside of a zero cal soda now and then.

I still lightly sweeten my coffee most mornings, but that's about it.

Fresh veggies & fruits, a little quality meat (but not too much and not every day), no industrial bread (I live in Paris, we still have access to a few real artisanal bakeries where they make their own bread, but here too they're getting replaced by industrial ones, so we've planned on learning to make our own bread soon), no industrial sweets/treats and no soda.

My spouse and I also learned to cook, instead of going out to a restaurant multiple times a week like we used. Saves us money and it's a fine moment we spend together too ;)

As for the time it takes to cook fresh food: either we will make very simple meal, which takes minutes (plus we often have fun while cooking) or we will cook a meal that we will last us 2 or 3 days. So it's really not that much of an issue. And since eating better helps us feeling a lot less tired too, well... we think it's really worth it. The real effort is to be willing to change one's own habits, at least if I can relate to my own experience.

Edit: maybe I should make it clear that the key change, and the very first step anyone should do is to stop eating those ready-made, over-processed and over-packaged shit food that we've learned to consider normal food. Sorry I this sound rude, even more so in the USA I would imagine, but this what I think they're worth (with all their sugar and salt, and conservatives and colorants) and how good I think they're for our health: barely a few weeks after I quite eating that I started getting better. To me, it's the same shit as the cigarettes and if we don't self-destroy in a nuclear holocaust (or ins ome ecological major crisis) before that I have little doubt this industrial food will end being an even worse scandal than tobacco ever was.

Hi! Not the same person but I'm in the same process!

Firstly, take it in steps, don't quit all processed food at once. I actually started with eating more veggies, both in the food and as a side salad.

Then read on the products, not all processed foods are equal, and it depends on what more you have in the meal. On meat products I often look at the meat percentages, it can vary A LOT. A sausage with + 80% meat is a lot better than 30%...

You can also look for E-numbers, concentrates, and other additives. How good or bad these are are still being discussed but I'm leaning towards bad, especially if it's a lot.

For example a highly processed sausage with basmati rice and a decent amount of salad isn't the same as said sausage with just mac and cheese.

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Some meals are easier to prep than others but more often than not I've found meals, especially the meat, to need time. Time to cook properly!

• Fry meat in a pan, let it simmer in water for half an hour or so ( I rarely keep time ), make a sauce in the pan.

• Or put a chunk of meat on a oven safe plate and trow it into the oven on 150-175°C for 1.5-3h or more depending on size and tenderness.

• Or make a soup, just make sure it boils long enough for the meat! :)