For her morning snack, five-year-old Sydney Leake chooses a tomato picked from the garden and takes a big bite. Her little sister, Sienna, 3, sometimes asks for fresh cheese in her cereal.
Neither girl begs for Goldfish or Froot Loops. They know they can't have what for many kids are childhood staples. The Leake family is on a whole-foods diet for 100 days.
That's 100 days with no store-bought lollipops, chicken nuggets, anything with white flour. Everything has five ingredients or less; nothing is refined. When dad Jason is on the road for work, he can't order most items on restaurant menus and sometimes will just eat raw vegetables or sushi with brown rice. Stay-at-home mom Lisa cooks just about everything, including cookies and cakes that contain no sugar (too refined) for birthday parties the girls attend.
"We're just trying to eat real food," said Lisa, 33. Today is Day 61.
It's been a huge lifestyle change for the Leakes' grocery list and everything else.
By her own admission, the family is taking an extreme stance and plans to relax some of their rules once the 100 days is up. Her grocery bill has jumped, and she says that two-income families might not have time for all that cooking.
But her family can't help noticing: Everyone feels a little better these days.
Disgusted by the 'junk'
Just six months ago, the Matthews family ate white bread, took the kids to Chick-fil-A and rewarded the girls with candy. Lisa grew up eating Doritos and Kraft mac and cheese.
The 100-day diet has meant a huge attitude adjustment. Lisa spends hours in her kitchen whipping up dishes, reading food labels and doing Internet research. Jason and Lisa have become more sensitive to the environmental effects of Americanized food, opting for locally grown produce and grass-fed meats. The whole family has to be a team, working together in the garden and supporting each other when temptation strikes.
The Leakes admit the whole-foods lifestyle isn't easy, but it's one that more people are moving toward as the organic food market has grown, education has increased, and the economy has forced more people to eat at home, said Suzanne Havala Hobbs, a UNC-Chapel Hill associate professor who specializes in food, nutrition and health policy.
"It's just now becoming more mainstreamed," Hobbs said. "We've hit a critical mass that enough people are buying these products in volume. Products that used to be in health food stores are (now) in the big grocery chains."
The Leakes got on board after reading "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan, who assails the American diet for its processed foods. Horrified by the "junk" she was feeding her family, Lisa said she couldn't sleep at night. With an all-or-nothing personality, she plunged into the whole-foods movement.
"At first I was worried about what we would eat," Lisa said. "I went to all the grocery stores. I had to relearn how to shop and cook."
A budding blogger, Lisa launched The Food Illusion and sounded off about processed foods. She eliminated much of the processed food her family ate from the diets. In hopes of making a bigger impact on the public, the Leakes decided to go 100 days without processed foods and blog about it at www.100daysofrealfood.com. On the site, they challenge others to try it out for 10 days.
What's in, what's out
Their rules sound relatively simple: You can eat fruits, vegetables, whole wheat and grains, seafood, dried fruits and nuts and locally grown meat. You can't eat refined sugars, fast food, deep-fried foods, refined grains. Ideally, nothing has more than five ingredients.
The Leakes don't skimp on anything. Because store-bought condiments are a no-no, Lisa makes their ketchup, which she admits isn't really good. For breakfast they might have homemade granola and plain yogurt. For dinner, it might be local grass-fed beef and vegetables plucked from their seven raised-bed gardens. There's a lot of cooking and freezing.
Lisa still shops at Harris Teeter and Target, but gets more of her groceries from the Matthews farmers market and Earth Fare. Her grocery bill has grown by $350 a month, sometimes more. "It is more expensive," she admits, "but you have to make a commitment and cut elsewhere."
Jason adds, "It's pay now or pay later in health-care costs."
Much of that is because of the high cost of locally grown meat, which the Leakes have made a point of buying. Hobbs says meat should be a side dish in small portions, rather than the centerpiece of meal. And it's usually cheaper to cook your own food than buy processed prepared meals and snacks, she said.
Eating at home has become the easy part. Outings are more challenging. On a recent trip to visit her parents in Cape Cod, Mass., Lisa packed their own bread and snacks. At Sydney's dance recital, she had to turn down a lollipop backstage.
A bit harder is the inevitable eye rolls and jokes from others. In restaurants, the Leakes pepper the wait staff (and inevitably the chef) with questions about all the ingredients and where the meat came from.
"We are a pain," Lisa said.
This month, the Leakes hit the 50-day mark, and the results have been dramatic. While the family was already healthy, Jason said he has lost 10 pounds and two inches off his waist. Sienna's constipation is gone, as is her chronic wheezing. Lisa needs less sleep - seven or eight hours vs. nine.
And the entire family feels fuller faster, which cuts down on its portion sizes.
When the family's 100 days are up, Leake says they won't stick to such an extreme menu (Jason is craving a deep-dish pizza), but she predicts the family won't have a taste for much of the processed stuff anymore. Eventually, she'd like to cobble a book on how to eat a nonprocessed diet.
For now, the family is staying strong, eating well.
"Maybe (people) think we'll quit," Lisa said, "but they don't know us."
