Did you miss the 28-day Real Food Challenge? You can always view the challenge’s archives, or why not sign-up as we give it a second go?
Twenty-eight days later, and here we are – at the end of the 28-day Real Food Challenge. Throughout the challenge briefly examined the fundamental aspects of improving that which nourishes our bodies by ditching the packages of processed food and learning to prepare natural foods to maximize nutrient density. We’ve learn, in short, how to eat Real Food.
Over the last week, we focused heavily on meat, fish and fowl: learning to source these vital foods well by purchasing grass-fed, pasture-raised or wild-caught foods; moreover, you may have accepted my challenge to prepare a nourishing, mineral-rich broth or even to incorporate nutrient-dense organ meats into your family’s meals. Tonight, in our home, we’re serving chicken livers fried in pasture-raised lard, gravy prepared from mineral-rich stock, a huge green salad with a naturally fermented, probiotic dressing and fresh vegetables served with plenty of butter.
The Daily Challenges
- Ditch processed, packaged, refined foods.
- Choose wholesome, natural foods.
- Improve your grains.
- Start your sourdough.
- Sprout your grains.
- Mill your own sprouted flour or make wet-milled sprouted grain bread.
- Relax and evaluate.
- Fats for moderate and high heat.
- Fight against GMOs.
- Fats to eat raw.
- Bake your sourdough.
- Find real milk.
- Get your (good) bacteria.
- Relax, evaluate and eat some dark chocolate.
- What’s a SCOBY?
- Get cultured (veggies, that is).
- Make yogurt at home.
- Make cheese at home.
- Prepare nuts and seeds properly.
- Maximize the value of beans and legumes.
- Vegetables and salads and another reason to eat your fats.
- Why you should eat red meat.
- Eat your bacon, eggs and lard too.
- Homemade broth and stock.
- Not-so-awful Offal.
- Fish and seafood.
- Grow your foodshed.
- Beyond the challenge.
See the archives here.
What’s next for you on your real food journey?
Today, it’s time to relax and reevaluate not just our final week on the challenge, but the challenge as a whole. Where did you thrive? Where did you struggle? What will you take with you as the challenge winds to its end and you’re left with a decision to either revert back to prepackaged, processed foods or to expand further by introducing more nutrient-dense foods to your family’s plate? If you’re like many participants and see the challenge as a beginning, rather than an end, please getting involved here at Nourished Kitchen or subscribing to the RSS email updates which are sent Monday through Friday and feature wholesome, nourishing recipes, activism alerts, tutorials and information about how real food and sustainable agriculture can help you. Moreover, beginning this March you can cook along with me through easy-to-follow video tutorials featuring from-scratch cooking.
Prizes:
Don’t forget about the prizes! If you’ve successfully finished the challenge, please check-in by comments or through the widget below. We’ll be drawing for the Cultures for Health Prize and Nourished Kitchen Recipe Cards on Thursday!
- 2 Participants will receive a 1-year Subscription to Nourished Kitchen’s Recipe Cards by Mail checkout the current giveaway..
- 1 Participant will receive a Real Food Ingredient Guide by Kelly the Kitchen Kop (WON by Danielle V.)
- 1 Participant will receive a culture kit containing water kefir grains, dairy kefir grains and a kombucha mother courtesy of Cultures for Health (see their listing on the resources page)
Share how Week #4 Went for You:
If you blog, share a link (or two or three) outlining how you handled this week’s challenges. What proved difficult, what proved easy? What did you learn, what did you already know? And, of course, what are you eating on your real food journey? If you don’t blog, just share your experiences in the comments here:
Thanks, Jenny,
I learned a lot and am off to a good start with making sourdough, water kefir, and kombucha. My grains are sprouting nicely. I’m gearing up to make sauerkraut and yogurt. Couldn’t have done it without you! Many thanks! Now, time to start seeds for the garden! The snow WILL melt one day!
Well, this was a challenging and very informative 28-Day Challenge! I enjoyed reading and pondering the posts very much. Our large family is compliant with most of the challenges. However, sprouting, cheese and sourdough are on my “to learn” list. I guess I’d say I fall into the “this is just the beginning” of this challenge since you presented some things that I’ve heard of but never tackled before.
In our area (GA), there are many CSA’s and affordable local sources of meat, grain, and fresh produce. By word of mouth and WAPF contacts, good sources of food can be found. Co-ops (even just a group of friends) really help make purchasing affordable. The desire to help each other to live more healthful lives drives us. The real challenge for us is affordability.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and concern for health with us! Your efforts have so much value!
It’s been an awesome month! I’ve been somewhat compliant with WAPF for the past few years, but I took this challenge to really help me get out of my comfort zone and pursue some of the nourishing foods I had yet to really delve into: namely, making my own sourdough, yogurt, and probiotic foods/beverages. This year I’m really zeroing in some ongoing fertility problems that I hope will be bettered by my renewed and increased vigor/consumption of even more nourishing foods. Thank you so much for taking us through this last month!
I loved this challenge, it was what I really needed to get started down this road. I was successful with some things, can’t wait to try some others, like the sourdough bread. I hope to try that this week. I posted my trial with your chicken liver pate and my round up today. THANK YOU JENNY!!!
Well, I threw out most of my refined or processed foods such as white sugar, just to find a few sneak back in to the kitchen. Time to clean out the cupboards again! I started the sourdough late and will be baking with it this week. I have yet to sprout grains for my flour because I don’t have the needed equipment, but want to get in in the next month or so. Because my husband is vegetarian, we are having a hard time with certain aspects of the challenge, like using lard for cooking. As far as GMOs are concerned, I stay away from hybrid foods and look for (though not always labeled) non-GMO foods. We have a source for raw milk, though with my husband’s work schedule we have not been able to make the 2 hour drive. Making homemade butter (in a blender, which makes for no work)is a joy and I think it tastes great. A kombucha scoby came in the mail Friday, and I was given milk kefir grains this morning. I need to get another kombucha scoby as a back up, since I will be doing my kombucha with red tea, for religious reasons and I heard sometimes the scobys will “die.” The next things I want to try are water kefir and homemade yogurt. Yogurt is one of my favorite foods, so I really look forward to this. I tried making fermented bitter melon, but it didn’t seem to be fermenting, just getting soft. My sauerkraut is doing well. We took a fermenting class at the beginning of the month, which showed me the book, Wild Fermentation. On Friday, I will be purchasing it and starting a batch of pickles. Right now, my treat is organic, fair trade dark chocolate with lavender. It was purchased right before Valentines Day and made a nice addition. I soaked my beans, and made ham and bean soup. Unfortunately, it was regular ham, as I am still sourcing good quality pork. There was no notice in taste compared to non-soaked (cider vinegar) beans, but I was glad knowing the nutrients where more available. Tomorrow is liver and onions, which I enjoy, made with good quality beef liver. We were blessed to have 15 or so livers and one heart given to us. The suggestions to eat the heart like a steak has inspired me, and I think I may make beef stroganoff with it. Fish is a challenge because of the local supermarkets do not carry quality assured fish. Salmon is a favorite and I hope to be able to find some that is not questionable. As far as growing our local foodshed, and giving back, we have some obstacles in doing so but are working on creative solutions to these problems. Overall, I really enjoyed the challenge and look forward to revisiting it to help me implement what I missed. There is still a long way to go, but we are making a lot of progress. Thank you so much!
Not the end, the beginning. Biggest challenge to me was trying to absorb all of the information! But I can and will go back and review. Processed foods have been banished from my diet never to return. I absolutely couldn’t imagine going back to them. Makes me sick to think about it.
When buying any meat, please take the extra step of ensuring that the animal was humanely raised and slaughtered. Pasture-raised is not a guarantee of humane treatment. Ask. If the seller does not go out of their way to reassure you, find one that will.
Thank you for this amazing program!
Thank you for this challenge. I have enjoyed introducing my mom to things you brought up and sticking to eating what we have had already learned (by reading NT around 3 years ago) is truly nourishing. We do already and have this month: soaked or sprouted our grains, made sourdough, kefir, yogurt, cheese, lacto-fermented fruits and veggies. We eat the best, most naturally raised meat we can afford (sometimes wild venison, sometimes grass fed beef or lamb, and sometimes in-the-middle Gerbers chicken). We love butter and coconut oil and use it liberally. Sugar has been a no-no for us with a big candida problem, but we have really been healing well, so have started to reintroduce sugar in the form of sucanat. I think we need to back off our use of that and as many carbohydrates though so I can lose weight I have gained from a suspected thyroid problem in the last year. My inlaws were here this last weekend, and loved our “yeasted buttermilk bread” with a homemade ranch seasoning mix and pepper jack cheese inside, and the potatoes with nitrate/nitrite free bacon and cheese and homemade sour cream, but they weren’t crazy about the lacto-fermented things.
I hope to help them transition to a better diet too. They did take home “Eat Fat, Lose Fat”. 
Well, I didn’t get my offal eaten yet, but the beef heart in my freezer will be dished up soon, and I did make a nice pot of chicken stock (feet included) this week…thanks for getting me back into the groove with nourishing food- I’d gotten lazy the past few months, so this was a nice recharge!
Thank you so much for this wonderful challenge. Some things you talked about we had done for a long time, although sometimes only occasionally. Some things we had completely put off trying. And some things were totally new information. Wonderful.
I missed the last few days of eating due to a stomach bug. Lousy way to “finish”–so I’ll still be following the challenges for a few days.
Thanks so much for hosting this challenge!
I’ve been working towards a WAPF way of life for 8 months or so now and had slipped a little back into my old ways of doing things. Having daily reminders and others to talk to through a whole month really helped keep me on track.
Some of my successes: I’ve re-discovered exactly how important it is for me to eat a large, high-quality breakfast. If hard times come again and I’m forced to eat cheap, low-quality ingredients, the ONE meal I’ll make sure to eat properly is breakfast. It’s THAT important to me.
I’ve cut out refined sugars and flours. I’m still finnicking with sourdough recipes, but we had spaghetti last night (at the husband’s request) and when I tried some of his noodles to make sure they were done I didn’t have any desire for more. It was wonderful to not crave processed carbs.
I have sucessfully sourced grass-finished meat (eatwild.com is AWESOME), and organic, non-homogenized milk (can’t get raw in Iowa quite yet). A great thing with my husband, we bought a gallon of the ‘good stuff’ and we needed to finish up a gallon of the not-so-good stuff first, but I kept catching my husband sneaking drinks out of the organic, non-homogenized bottle instead! He might still demand sugar, but at least he knows good dairy when he tastes it!
Going forward I’m going to make good use out of fermented veggies (got a big garden planned once the snow melts), big protien-filled breakfasts. I’ve made yogurt 3-4 times already this month, by the quart, and I haven’t yet given up on sourdough. I love bread and if I want it, I’m going to make sourdough.
I’ve got a bead on a good liver, and that jalapeño popper recipe stashed away. The husband contends that the texture of liver makes him violently ill, so I’m hoping that hiding it in things will mitigate his gag reflex.
I hope you keep this link active for a good, long time, Jenny. I plan to minimize “drift” by reviewing it at least once a year. I find it can be difficult to stay the course (or remember why I embarked on it) when my purpose gets dulled. Thanks so much for your hard work!
Jenny, Thanks so much for this challenge and all you have put into it and this site. I have learned so much. I have wrestled with the intellectual aspects of my food sources. I have charted a different course for my family. And I will definitely continue on this path of questioning, wrestling, learning, and sharing that you have started me down. I’ll also check back in regularly!
THANKS so much for conducting this challenge, Jenny! The past month has been a lot of work, but awesome at the same time, although constantly thinking of food – not sure if that is a good or bad thing!
I am making my own sourdough, buttermilk, and yogurt, soaking my grains, beans, legumes and nuts, as well as making my own stock, and oh, shopping exclusively at local farmer’s markets at the end of this 28 day real foods challenge… phew! Lotsa planning, but the good news is DD hasn’t given too much trouble, although DH has! LOL!
Thanks so much for this challenge.
It was a good refresher for me to revisit things I’ve already learned, and an encouragement to be more purposeful in implementing the things I haven’t been doing regularly into our diet.
Blessings,
Catherine
It’s a process for me, not a project. Over the last 3 or 4 years I have been working toward converting our family to organic. I think we are about 90% there now. This challenge helped me clean out the pantry of the remaining non-organics. I have been making an effort to be more consistent about soaking grains and nuts, grinding my own flour cup by cup in an old coffee mill, and learning to think ahead instead of opening the fridge and looking for inspiration. We rarely eat out now and that was an effort to achieve. Our cheeks are rosier, which I think must mean we are better nourished. I really, really want to try water kefir but have not found grains yet. I am a little nervous about kombucha…so I will hold off on that for now. This was a great project and made me feel very supported in my efforts as though I am not the only one in the world cooking like this.
Jenny,
I loved your challenge, especially your posts with links to recipes.
I am very interested in the sustainable seafood topic, and I want to know where you buy your seafood. All I can find around me (small town in the upper midwest) from the Seafood watch guide is Wild Alaskan Salmon. So we eat that alot, both frozen and canned. Do you have a source you order seafood from, or do you find good choices in stores locally. We are 90 miles from a Whole Foods and a Trader Joes, so that is an option, for things I can freeze. And, do you know of any good options on canned tuna, or do I need to buy tuna fresh to get the omega 3′s?
Thanks for your ideas!
Lisa
Thanks so much for your hard work on this Jenny, this challenge was exactly the kick in the pants that I needed to get back on the TF bandwagon! My commitment to the fermented lifestyle is back, my bean prep has been adjusted, my love for simple, nourishing food has returned…my entire family is all the healthier for it (including the new little life I’m currently brewing up!
My biggest challenge is now making all of these changes fit into the tiny food budget we have…but I know that, with some effort, I’ll be able to make it work. Thanks again, I’ve enjoyed every day of this challenge and am looking forward to learning even more! 
This last week was probably the easiest because we already have great sources for pastured chicken and eggs, pork, and grass-fed beef. I haven’t ventured into organ meats yet, but I did purchase some liver, so it’s next on the list. Thank you for the challenge this past month! It’s been very informative. I’ve also noticed that I haven’t had any headaches since I started avoiding processed foods and refined sugar. Amazing!
Thank you for all that you do Jenny, and congratulations on being featured on CNN Health!
An inconvenient challenge: Eat ‘real food’ for a month
Although the personal health factor is enough to convince one to start this challenge, a few other factors can probably be considered quite important.
-encouraging purchasing local produce reduces the burning of fossil fuels
-encouraging farmers to raise a variety of plants and animals allows for sustainable diversity instead of monoculture
-utilizing the natural ecosystem on a farm: animals eat plants they were meant to eat and then fertilize those as well as other crops
-promoting more appropriate treatment of animals so that they are not living in crowded feed lots or cramped cages
-discouraging abuse of those working in industrial meat plants
-avoiding GMO’s decreases excessive use of pesticides and antibiotics and keeps animals bodies functioning naturally
Just curious- what did ya’ll do with the processed food you removed from your cupboards and refrigerators?
Jenny,
Wow – an article on cnn.com. Way to get the word out about nourishing foods! I wasted some time reading the comments. Unfortunately, so many people get hateful when they disagree about something.
It’s so great when folks raise awareness about eating real foods, though it is sad that it may make them targets of some vitriolic attacks.
I just wanted to say thank you for doing this.
Malena
This was a great challenge. I think I did pretty well and will continue on past the 28 days. Interest and motivation are not problems for me at all when it comes to traditional food. My issues are finding the time to prepare these healthy foods with a full time job (I don’t know how those of you with children do it!), and the reluctant husband. If I can find a way to combat these two things, I’ll be in great shape!
Real food is the food nature gives us as is, not cooked. Bread does not grow on trees and rice is not edible without processing (sprouting and cooking.) These are not “real” foods. I have been eating real foods for years. No food preparation, no jars or boxes, not even a stove. I invite you to take the next step to what is really real.
And no, not vegetarian either. Hunting and gathering the way nature gives it to us. We have been brainwashed to fear bacteria in raw animal products. Commercial “food” is not safe, but real food is more than safe and needs no processing (cooking, sprouting, fermenting) at home either.
Sorry people… but butter, grains, and dairy are not ‘real foods’ They are processed in order for us to eat them (unless you are making butter straight from the cow’s udder and churning it yourself, or eating grain stalks in a cereal field somewhere). Want to eat REAL FOOD? Go PALEO!
I like your idea and it is great. Eating real healthy food is the key to good health.
People complain about health care while eating like pigs.
Our health is in our hands.
USA is the most obese country in the world. Billions of dollars are spent annually on health care in this country to keep the unhealthy people alive with no quality of life.
It is a big racket and nexus of food companies, pharma companies and the special interests. We should not fall in to the trap.
Keep up the good work all.
I just heard about this and am glad you started this challenge. I’m a few weeks into my own personal 40 day real food challenge and I’m just now hearing about yours. Kudos!
I’ve been following a paelo/primal diet for about a year now and it’s incredible. It just makes sense. Nice work on spreading the good news.
Just found this from a link at Huffington Post. Too late for the challenge. But I did do their eating in challenge.
While I haven’t gone to the extreme of rendering my own fat and grinding my own flour (sorry but I’m single and work full time and just can’t afford the time.) I’ve been eating real food (as defined by Michael Pollan) for quite some time.
I decided to give up high fructose corn syrup last May. Then restrict my intake of corn. Then reduce my consumption of “white”; white rice, white flour, white sugar. I bake my own bread (I’ve done it the old fashioned way but I use a bread machine now) so I can slice it very thin. I freeze it and it lasts for several weeks. I make my own cocktail sauce and will be attempting my own ketchup and mayonnaise soon. I made sausage last week. I’ve done pasta, but not lately since I’m trying to cut back. I have bought raw milk but sometimes go the pasturized organic route when I can’t shop for milk often. Being single an entire half gallon spoils quickly before it can be used. I do make soup from scratch. I don’t churn my own butter. And I won’t make my own cheese.
I’d like to do more but until I retire in a few years, I’ll have to live with my compromises. As is, I feel I’m still eating a lot of real food. Certainly better than I have been the last few years.
Earlene -
It sounds like you did beautifully on the challenge. That’s interesting that you mentioned your cheeks are rosier. I’ve heard that indicates the presence of better B vitamin intake.
Blessings!
- Jenny
Lisa -
I’m so happy you enjoyed the challenge! The topic of sustainable seafood is, undoubtedly, a tricky one. We purchase our seafood from a local man who leaves town in the summer to fish in Alaska. We purchase wild salmon and spot shrimp from him. I can also find a few options at the local grocery store as well. I’d buy it at Whole Foods when I can, but it’s a 5 hour drive for us so we only make the trip once or twice a year when we have many things to do in the city.
Blessings -
Jenny
Heather -
That’s fantastic news that you’ve been headache-free since ditching the processed foods and sugar! YAY! Let me know how you prepare that liver.
- Jenny
Ren -
Thank you so much for your warm wishes about the article. I’m still in disbelief that it made it to CNN’s homepage. I hope that if the message about real and traditional foods doesn’t get through this time, at least the seed will have been planted.
Yours,
- Jenny
Hi Jenny.
I cook and eat “real food” for years.
It was necessity, lack of money, health reasons. Eventually it became a habit.
I’m old, I learned cooking when preparing chicken started with plucking its feathers.
Well, package of chicken legs is better.
Still, I enjoy making my own pierogies, cakes, jams and pickles.
But it takes time which working moms have not.
So, my hat is off to you.
The least you achieved is that your kids develop taste for good food rather than McDonalds.
Yours truly,
VeryOld