What does unrefined mean?
The Dietitian's Husband Unrefined was founded on the basis of making my own family healthy. It is a lifestyle plan that has evolved from years of being married, raising children and practicing as a Registered Dietitian in the community. Through the years my family has tried different lifestyles such as vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian, raw, flexitarian and various other weight loss plans or exclusion diets. Ultimately, I don't believe in excluding any food groups or promoting a single food that will cure all or promote weight loss. Healthy living is about having a balance in life and in the kitchen. Learning about where food comes from and how it effects our bodies is the most important piece of education that I could provide to my family as well as my community. I hope that you follow our journey as we live in reality but without refined foods.
Lets get started on our journey and dive into what the meaning of unrefined is and how it will be interpreted in Dietitian's Husband Unrefined. The dictionary defines unrefined and processed as below:
Unrefined [uhn-ri-fahynd] means: Not processed or refined.
Processed ˈ[präˌses,ˈpräsəs,ˈprō-] means: Having been altered from their natural state for safety reasons and for convenience. The methods that may be used for processing foods include: canning, freezing, refrigeration, dehydration and managing hazardous bugs that infiltrate a product.
The idea of processed food is usually thought of as bad but in reality we need to process some foods in order for it to make it from farm to table. Here is where the gray fuzzy line is drawn between unrefined and processed. We do need to process food to kill bacteria and provide a product that is formidable to eat but we do not need to add chemicals, colors, excessive salt and sugar and strip a food of its normal nutritive value only to add it back in.
Therefore, we need to establish a list of five rules for foods that should be considered unrefined and these foods should be excluded in the Dietitian's Husband Unrefined NOT TO EAT list.
1. If the food can only be made in a factory by a machine or was invented by a food scientist.
2. After reading the label you find that there are more than 5 ingredients on the label and most of the ingredients contain unpronounceable chemical and color names.
3. The food item has been on the shelf for many years and has still yet to expire per its expiration date. 4. If it is a recipe that can not be made in your kitchen. 5. If it comes from a place that has a drive thru or takes less than 5 minutes to make at a restaurant.
Over the next few weeks I will continue to define the foods that should be included in a way that teaches our audience about what our food really contains. We will include recipes and feedback from other Dietitians in the community and photos of the unrefined lifestyle. We will work on the male of the house and explore the relationship between his health and the rest of the families influence by the changes that are made.
