For some people, the switch from the Standard American Diet to a more natural, holistic diet creates a night-and-day difference in their health. After years of suffering, chronic health problems clear up, medications are tapered off of or discontinued permanently, and a new lease on life develops.
Sound familiar? If so, your quest for better health may have just turned you into a natural health foodie.
Here are some tell-tale signs:
1. You Read Food Labels
When you care about what goes into your body, you read food labels. You want to be sure that what you’re eating is free of synthetic chemicals, dyes, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives so each food you eat packs the most nutritional punch. Perhaps a food allergy or intolerance started your investigative journey into food labels or maybe an article on the subject caught your eye.
Whatever the case may be, you can spot a gluten, trans fat, or MSG in 2.5 seconds flat.
2. Shopping and Cooking Take Time (And Money)
When you’re a natural health foodie, you know how time-consuming it can be to shop local farms, grocery stores, and discount outlets to find foods that are both nourishing and as inexpensive as possible. Yes, you spend the bulk of your money on food and you’re proud of it. It means you can be sure you’re feeding yourself and your whole family the best of the best.
So what if you have to spend 4 hours every Sunday batch-cooking for the week? It’s worth it!
3. You Drink a Glass of Green Regularly
Organic vegetable juicing is something to enjoy and tell all your friends about. You can’t believe how healthy and invigorated you have felt since doing this. At first, the idea of drinking kale juice seemed downright gross. Now that you’ve found the perfect complimentary ingredients to mix it with, it tastes like a treat.
4. The Sight and Smell of Fast Food is Distasteful
If you’re a true natural health foodie, you don’t eat fast food. It’s not because you think you’re better than everyone else, (you’ve seen the looks), it’s because your body has completely detoxified from the stuff and the sight and smell of it is distasteful to you. There’s no craving at all because it simply doesn’t appeal to you anymore.
5. You Have to Stop Yourself from Preaching
OK, admit it. You have a friend of family member who has a child with behavior problems. What does he or she do to calm the child down during a meltdown? Offer the youngster a soda or candy! You practically have to clamp your hand over your mouth to avoid telling them that the food the little one is being offered may be worsening the problems big-time.
6. Sometimes You Don’t Stop Yourself from Preaching
As a natural health foodie, you can’t shout from the rooftops how unhealthy the Standard American Diet is. That being said, when you can’t preach out loud, you write. Natural health foodies the world over are taking to their blogs and doing their own thorough research to bring the science behind their dietary changes to light.
7. Organic Dark Chocolate is Your Go-To Dessert
When everyone else is reaching for a boxed snack cake or a glazed cinnamon bun, you’ve got a cup of tea in one hand and some organic dark chocolate in the other. “That’s not dessert. That’s food.” I’ve heard it too. I just take another heavenly, nourishing bite and swallow my would-be retort.
Some people think that healthy eaters are lofty or trying to be above everyone else. This isn’t the case. For many of us, discovering how our diet affected our health was a life-changing experience. We’re just excited to share it with you. But if you don’t want to hear it, we’ll understand.
