An Introduction

Hi. I am excited to be posting every Thursday. My name is Anna and I live in Salt Lake with my husband and four children. I stay home with my kids and am completely absorbed in my mom life. You know, carpooling, laundry, running kids from school to lessons, picking up endless piles of legos and Polly Pocket shoes, etc. Of course as a mom dinner rolls around every night, ready or not. I have long been concerned about what exactly should I be serving my kids for meals. I think I first started thinking about eating well after a stint as a nanny in New York in the middle of my college career. I'd taken a year off to save money and this was during the height of the "fat free" fad years. My friends and I ate Snack Wells, and gallons of fat free ice cream and gained a ton of weight. We just couldn't figure it out. As a grand finale to that year I traveled around Europe, eating my way through. Needless to say, when I got back to BYU, and started eating like a normal person (balanced meals, and not low fat) the weight melted off. This experience made me wary of food fads in general, and started me on a quest for more healthy food choices. When I first got married my parents did the Atkins diet and something about it seemed so wrong to me. I opened up my D&C and read section 89 and discovered why, exactly, the Atkins fad rubbed me the wrong way. Then on Oprah shortly after that I saw Dr. Andrew Weil. I went out and bought his book Eating Well For Optimum Health. I was amazed at how much of what he advocated mirrored the common sense advice of the word of wisdom: eat more veggies and fruits and nuts and whole grains. So I cut out partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, and highly refined foods. I upped the amount of vegetables, or tried anyway, and occasionally cooked with beans. But still I wasn't aware of why I should eat less meat. So fast forward to a couple of years ago. I picked up Michael Pollan's book Omivore's Dilemma, a book I highly recommend. I would even go so far as to say it should be required eating for anyone that wants to change to a plant based diet. The scales fell from my eyes. I followed that up with a reread of the Word of Wisdom and then read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Wow. That was when we made the switch. I got to hear Michael Pollan give a lecture on his book In Defense of Food where he advocates that "eat food, not much, mostly plants". There was no turning back. Every thing fell into place. Through all of this I have been amazed how science, culture, and nutrition are catching up to the simple advice of the Word of Wisdom. I have a huge testimony of the Word of Wisdom. Especially verse 19:

And shall ^afind ^bwisdom and great ^ctreasures of ^dknowledge, even hidden treasures;

As I was figuring out how to feed my family for optimal health, the Lord dropped all kinds of knowledge right in my lap, and it has changed the way we eat, look at the world, and how we feel. A great blessing, to be sure! I can't wait to share some of what I have learned with you. Thanks Likely, for the opportunity.