Definitions vary. Basically, you're doing good if you're eating foods your grandmother or great-grandmother would recognize.
Example: wheel of cheese vs. Cheez Whiz. Wheel of cheese would be considered a "whole food" because it's recognizable, contains ingredients that we could conceivably use ourselves and thus make the food ourselves, and doesn't contain chemical additives (depends on the cheese you buy, but you get the point).
Another example: homemade ice cream vs. low-fat no-sugar-added ice cream from the grocery store. Homemade ice cream is the product of milk and sugar and whatever flavor/additions you put in, fruit or whatever. Low-fat no-sugar-added ice cream from the store is a chemistry set, really. Barely food at all. Therefore, homemade ice cream is considered more of a "whole" food. That is not to say that a diet of homemade ice cream is a good choice! But if you're going to have ice cream, a better choice in terms of your body knowing what to do with it is an ice cream made as simply and "purely" as possible.
Plants are good to eat! Salads, veggies, fruits, whole oats...things that grew that way, or very close to that way (I'm really seriously not suggesting you eat, say, banana peels It's okay to peel your food! Although potato skins contain most of a potato's nutrients...). Meats that were raised the way the animal would live if it was wild. Dairy products that haven't had a whole slew of chemicals added to them. Good rule of thumb: if it contains an ingredient you cannot pronounce and could not identify if it slapped you upside the head, it's not a food. Why would you want to eat something that's not food?
BTW, your cake sounds yummy--I wish I could eat wheat, I'd raid your house!
You said all that MUCH better than I did! I tried but just made myself sound really unhealthy. Right, IF you're going to have ice cream, make it home made. It's why I prefer butter over margarine and sugar over sweeteners. But I'm not saying I'm going to make my diet of ice cream, sugar and butter. I'm just coming up with bad examples.
I like the idea of whole foods - knowing what I'm eating, recognizing the ingredients. We try to eat whole foods most of the time - although I do like some of the options talked about here. I don't think an occasional lean cuisine is a bad thing as long as it's occasional.
I guess it's like the movie/book "Supersize Me". McDonald's didn't used to be a horrible thing for us when the only time you ate it was once a month when you made the two hour drive to Grandma's house or once each sports season when you played the team closest to the big city. The problems started when we became such a mobile society and McDonald's (and all the others) figured out if they moved to each and everyone of our small towns or neighborhoods we would eat it ALL THE TIME! That became a big problem! If all you eat is McDonalds, you're not going to be too healthy. The same with the chemicals in all the processed foods. An occasional chicken tv dinner never hurt anyone. Living off of processed food takes it toll.
these mean lots of lean proteins, lots of lean dairy, TONS of organic fruits and veggies, WHOLE GRAIN for any cereal/bread type products and REAL fats like butter, olive oil, grapeseed oil etc.
It means I cook EVERYTHING from scratch. I don't eat ANYTHING that's been bleached white (bread,flour,rice etc) and I don't eat the junk. No chips, candy etc. I don't drink pop, juice etc.
That's what whole foods means to me... brown rice instead of rice a roni, pasta and homemade meat sauce instead of Hamburger helper.
this morning I sat down to an incredibly delicious breakfast of homemade bread and natural peanut butter, and I was wondering how it was that I used to eat donuts in a convenience store for breakfast?!?!
Who knew that healthy and delicious was also easy to prepare and impossible not to enjoy.
this morning I sat down to an incredibly delicious breakfast of homemade bread and natural peanut butter, and I was wondering how it was that I used to eat donuts in a convenience store for breakfast?!?!
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I think the description of whole foods has been given better than I can, but I would like to add that I use the hunger meter with it. Whole foods are filling and don't have chemicals that alter our hunger hormones so that when we eat them they fill us up. Add in the plate proportions rules - for me 50% fruits/veggies, 25% complex grains/fiber, 25% lean protein. Finally, the hunger scale. Get in the habit of checking in with yourself constantly. On a scale of 1 - 10 with 1 being so famished you'd eat the stuffing from the couch and 10 being so full you think you're going to explode, keep yourself between a 3 and a 7. That means don't let yourself get to a place where you aren't going to make good decisions and also while you're eating remember it takes 20 minutes for your brain to register that you're full. Slow down and check in frequently so you don't go past satisfied. If you do that on whole foods, keeping the simple carbs and non-lean protein to a rarity, you should be fine. I keep a rough estimate of my calories as well - trying not to go over 1500. I like www.calorieking.com for looking up calories and nutritional content of whole foods. Finally, a book to reccommend would be the Eat Clean Diet by Tosca Reno.
Good luck and enjoy all the yummy foods out there that make you feel good!
We have all been brainwashed into buying alot of foods that are not good for us. It is a big part of the reason that we are overweight and a have so much diabetes here in the US. Industrial foods need to be replaced by fresh, local, home-made, and organic.
I think others have said it in that there is no one right way to eat a Whole Foods diet. I started simply following the guidelines of the South Beach Diet which just meant a lot a lot of more natural type foods.
I was just discussing this yesterday with my husband but if I pick up a product and it has more than a few ingredients in it, I don't want to bother reading it, I just put it back. I eat lots of veggies, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, etc. I do eat some packaged products occasionally but it isn't every day and make sure the ingredients are recognizable and isn't a long list.
And everyone really does have their ideas of whole foods but for me, I don't consider dairy to be a whole food due to many factors such as the fact that most milk comes from hormone induced, stressed cows and then the milk is pasteurized which kills off enzymes and then it really when I thought about it, it seems like an unusual item for humans to eat. Also since it is linked to type 1 diabetes in kids and prostrate cancer in men, it does seem like it isn't entirely harmonious with our bodies.
Then again, even if you are eating whole foodish, it doesn't mean every item you eat has to be considered a whole food, I think it is just that it is your main focus.
Ok, what is whole foods then? I thought it was unprocessed, boxed stuff. I can make a cake without a box. So are whole foods items that already are? (awkward sentence) Something you can eat all by itself as in one item? I was thinking of "from scratch" being whole food as in containing items my grandmother would understand.
Oh, I should have been more clear. I was actually referring to eating my old way--plain old box cake and a non-whole foods meal and comparing it to my whole foods lifestyle now.
I do not consider white flour whole food. I do not use it in my cooking at all now--at all. It is definitely an ingredient my grandmother would recognize though. So, in my book any cake with white flour is not whole foods.
Whole foods is a term that is still being defined for the vast majority--much like anything that goes mainstream.
I am not a complete purist by any means but my thoughts lie with Nelie and CF.
Last edited by Thighs Be Gone; 01-10-2010 at 12:58 PM.
I didn't come across whole foods because I was some kind of, for lack of a better term - health nut, not at the time anyway.
I came about it in a kinda backwards fashion. I wanted to lose weight. I needed to lose weight. I devised a plan. I was very methodical. I stopped and figured out which foods WOULDN'T work for me. I knew there were certain foods that I overate. They brought on a can't shovel it in my mouth fast enough feeling. I had a hard time stopping to eat them once I started. I decided to not START eating those. That eliminated a whole lot of foods - rice, white flour (for me any grains, even whole, pretty much do that, but to a lesser degree), anything with added sugars, chemically altered foods, fat laden foods - especially when combined with sugar. I also knew I couldn't/didn't want to be hungry. I wanted my sugar levels to remain on an even keel. I wanted energy and not that horrible carb stupor that I lived with for so long. I wanted my foods to pack a nutritional punch, since I would be sticking to a calorie allotment. I knew I needed to get the most from my calories, the biggest bang for my buck so to speak I also knew I needed to eat a lot of food - volume.
So what could I possibly eat that won't send me into a feeding frenzy, will allow me to eat loads of it, will satisfy me and keep me full and will stave off cravings for the *wrong* foods? What foods will taste good while I eat then and also BE good for me, long after I'm done chewing. Whole foods - wholesome foods. It fits the bill just perfectly.
For me, a calorie is not just a calorie. Where my calories come from - and DON'T come from is very, very important.
Last edited by rockinrobin; 01-10-2010 at 01:13 PM.
I agree that I feel much fuller and just physically better now that I'm on a diet of primarily whole foods.
Long gone are the days of processed frozen foods (I found that Lean Cuisines, etc. really don't taste good to me), "diet" anything, and fat free cheese. If I can't pronounce it, I don't want it in my body.
We switched over to a vegetarian lifestyle a couple weeks ago, and the joy I'm getting from discovering new recipes and trying vegetables and ingredients I never would have dreamed of tasting is immense. I like that I can taste the earthiness in fresh vegetables and fruits, and the kind of energy I get from nuts and beans.
Although there's constant debate over what exactly constitutes something that is "organic", we still try to buy organic milk and cheeses and free range eggs.
It's taken me a long time to come around to eating this way, and I'm glad I finally have. It takes forever for me to food shop now, but it's well worth the tradeoff.
But if you're going to have ice cream, a better choice in terms of your body knowing what to do with it is an ice cream made as simply and "purely" as possible. 
Salads, veggies, fruits, whole oats...things that grew that way, or very close to that way (I'm really seriously not suggesting you eat, say, banana peels 
