Has anyone tried clean eating with their family?

I have 2 boys, a 3 yr old & an 18 month old, and am due with twins at the end of March. We eat as healthy, unprocessed, and organic as possible but I would like to do more. I am hoping to get into a routine with clean eating before chaos descends on my household. Any ideas or plans that you followed? I am not opposed to the occasional processed food, let's face it, I will have 4 kids. I just want it to be as minimal as possible. TIA!

Re: Has anyone tried clean eating with their family?

We do our best to eat clean...I shop at the farmers market for all fruits and veggies and we only eat what is local and in season. I make my own bread. We juice in the mornings. Some processed stuff slips in, but we try to keep it organic as much as possible.

Re: Has anyone tried clean eating with their family?

I do as much as I possibly can. We are vegetarian and eat all most all organically. My DS was diagnosed with food allergies (egg, peanut and tree nuts) at 8 months Old. Since then I've omitted almost all processed foods and make everything from scratch. I also have a 4 year old DD. Everything was great and my kids were eating so well until my DD started preK in September. EVERYTHING revolves around food in her class, they provide "healthy" snacks for the kids everyday and have parties and events that include food. The school is peanut free, but not organic or nutritious. I am the only one that sends their kid in with a snack and water from home. The teacher and the aide have hinted that they would prefer I didn't send it in and continually ask if it would be ok if she ate xyz from the class snacks. It has been very frustrating for me because as the parent I want to make the best food choices for my kids, but I feed like society is against me.. My DD is now coming home asking to eat the class snacks and she feels left out. I'm still committed to eating "cleanly" and educating my children about good food choices. It was a lot simpler when I had complete control over what they are exposed to. I love the 100 days of Real Food and the Food Babe wed sites/facebook pages. There are also lots of Facebook Groups dedicated to clean eating and a natural lifestyle.

ETA: Pinterest has great ideas, menu planing helps me a lot as well as making foods ahead and freezing them.

Message edited 10/4/2014 3:28:22 PM.

Re: Has anyone tried clean eating with their family?

There is a magazine called clean eating with recipes and articles and they usually do a 2 week meal plan which already lays out a shopping list and recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for 2 weeks. You might want to look into that if you don't like making all the decisions yourself but still want to follow clean eating. There are also local farms/co-ops that you can order produce from that you can buy and have seasonal veggies and fruits each month. Also stick to stores like whole foods where you can't accidentally grab some of the worse stuff for you because everything is at least better than you might find at a general store.

Has anyone tried clean eating with their family?

I can't say we eat clean but I try to avoid processed foods as much as I can. One thing I would suggest looking into would be a foodsaver. Like a PP said, cooking ahead and freezing may help a lot. There are so many things that you can double or triple without much extra work and then if you seal and freeze them they stay perfectly fresh for months. I've been stocking my freezer for the last few weeks anticipating a new baby in december and not having much time to cook for that first month or two at least. No clean up is pretty nice too!