Q: When attempting to change to a healthier diet, many think, "I cannot do this." How do you talk someone through the first steps of changing their diet?
A: First of all, there has to be a conviction, a mindset that says it is important. I recommend beginning with prayer. God understands all of our individual situations, what we can cope with and what we need to work on. Through prayer, He can answer our needs. We have had people come across our book Healthy Living and tell us, "I was praying for a way to do this and I found your book." That always encourages me. Healthy Eating deals with the why and the how-to. We deal with the main challenges we have seen women have.
The second thing is to start with simple things. You don't have to start with expensive equipment, and you don't have to start with yeast breads. We suggest making whole grain quick bread recipes in the blender. Almost any woman has a blender, and they can make muffins, pancakes, waffles and cornbread. It is so easy to do! Another key is changing the ingredient quality in your own recipes with really simple things such as buying leafy green lettuce instead of iceburg lettuce. If your family is into pasta, then go to the health food store and get some kamut pasta instead of white flour pasta. If you are big chicken eaters, start with a few chicken recipes or if you like Mexican food, just change the quality of ingredients in your recipes.
Then, especially for homeschoolers, if you can involve your children, the children get excited, and it becomes a learning project. If you teach your children, they can contribute to the workload, which makes it less overwhelming.
My final point is to have proper expectations. This is a subject that requires time and focus. It can be a good project for a family to do in the summer when homeschooling lightens up.
Q: Some common questions are: How much money will we spend? Where do we find resources? Will I like the taste of these foods? Let's start with cost. Is it true that healthy eating costs a lot of money?
A: We put the approximate cost of the recipes in our books. Those prices become outdated faster than you would think, but even though they are dated, they are comparative. You can compare and see what is less expensive. In Main Dishes we have a chart of 46 low-budget menus. Grains and beans are always the least expensive things. I tell women, "When you initially start, it might go up a little bit because you are trying to make adjustments. But, when you start to shift the balance of the foods so that you are using less dairy and less meats, and more of your lower cost foods such as grains and beans, then that helps to balance the cost." It turns out that you can spend a lot of money or you can spend a little money, depending on how you balance out your choices.
