I don't like that definition - plenty of come-in-a-box organic foods use real ingredients we've all heard of but are still processed though lightly.

I think it maybe they're going for more as, "skip the perservatives and stuff made in a lab," than skip processed foods in the truest sense. By definition, somethings are processed but that doesn't make them bad for you.

Plenty of come-in-a-box organic foods are total junk food, too.

It can be easy go through the 30 days... if you are willing to do a lot of cooking and preparation to make your meals interesting and keep you away from bad food. My favourite are therefore the easiest ones : creamy avocado dressing on salad, and some toasted whole bread slices with butter. Or just some steamed vegetables. And it is cheaper too.

I could do this, and almost already do. My husband could not. It is very challenging to be with a person who stubbornly stays on the opposite end of the food spectrum than you. It definitely stems from his childhood of hamburger helper and tuna casserole.

He eats very little for a 6' tall guy and is active all day at work, but he can't lose his spare tire. I keep trying to tell him it's the quality, not quantity of what he eats that's causing it but he doesn't except that. He says it's all about calorie count, which I disagree with. I cook from scratch often but it's difficult to do it on a daily basis. I can eat a salad or brown rice and veggies for dinner on lazy nights, but he will not, doesn't dig on vegetables. Instead he'll get fast food or eat something out of a blue box.

So how do you convince someone to try this 30 day thing??

I'd love to commit to the challenge, but there is no way I could or would want to live without sugar, baking in particular. If you tried me in January I might give up baking but not in the hight of fall sweets and halloween! Unhealthy or not it's just to important to me.

@alyssat: it doesn't say anywhere that you couldn't eat sugar if you commit to this plan. It talks about the excessive sugar present in processed foods.

@serendipitwaddle - Actually, I prefer the definition above ("if...you'd never use it in your kitchen and couldn't possibly make it yourself from the whole form, it's processed") to the typical "if you can't pronounce it, it's processed." Just because I can pronounce an ingredient, or know vaguely what it is, doesn't mean I could or would cook with it in my own home.

It's an imperfect definition, but I think it's an improvement over the pronunciation-based one, at least for those who know their way around a kitchen.

I eat almost none at all, living on a farm and cooking nearly everything from scratch, including 100% of our bread - and no boxed foods in any form are ever allowed - but I won't spend a single moment worrying about those few things that we do allow in (this is limited to ketchup, mustard, and mayo, and while someone like me could make these at home, it's not worth my while).

I don't sweat it on the rare occasions I do eat processed food, but this is pretty much the way I already eat.

There are natural sugar options you can use in baking instead of sugar like dates, honey or maple syrup. I bake a lot of cakes or breads using dates.

My husband and I have been staying away from most processed foods for a few years. I don't even remember the last time we bought cereal. I think it takes time and definitely a lifestyle change, but it sure helped me a lot in the kitchen and I love the way we eat now. The outcome has been great and we're way happier.

I think I'll give this a try. October is a great month to be eating lots of fresh fruits and veggies! Thanksgiving meals are usually free of processed foods and I expect to eat a lot of turkey in the next few weeks (Canadian over here!).

I don't know if I can do it completely but at least I'll be making an effort to cut back.

I'm in!

Glad to see that this sort of eating is gaining ground. Chances are, if you make the commitment to eat real food for a month, you'll want to keep it up!

@jess13 - I hear you and feel your pain. I try to eat healthy and I even have a CSA box delivered to our house every other week. Still, he just wants to eat spaghetti with prego. I cooked up some eggplant and he refused to even swallow a bite.

Fortunately, he wants to eat healthy. The main problem is his limited palette. I'll find a recipe, get all excited, and then realize there is spinach or mushroom or squash or something else in it he won't eat.

Oh, and did I say - boxed/processed foods are unpalatable to me anyway. I grew up in Soviet Azerbaijan and processed things were few and far between anyway, certainly not in the same way as they are in US. When I came here 10 years ago, I was shocked at the garbage people shovel in.

I'm in!!!!

This is pretty much the way I already eat, but it would be fun to take on this challenge.

@jess13- my bf was the pickiest eater ever. but then he got into cooking, and suddenly, food that he would wrinkle his nose at before became "delicious" once he made it himself.

@BrianneA: LOL, I've had that exact thought process many times!

@annieh: yes I do believe that is the best way to overcome the issue, gotta start doing more co-cooking nights!

Challenging--are red pepper flakes "processed"? If so, I'm afraid I fail. I love my red pepper flakes!

@Charlotte they don't have a label now do they?

Some things are probably best left to the pros (for example, croissants, charcuterie, cheese, pasta). So, although I make most meals from scratch (and have even contemplated curing our own ham), I probably wouldn't make it through 30 days.

I'll pass. I have however, decided to give up fast food this month. I'm just trying to decide if whole foods' prepared section would be "fast food".

We're pretty close to this anyway, except for days when work runs late and we end up picking up crappy freezer pizzas. I might take the challenge.

Love this! W/o being too self promoting of my own sarcastic blogging, I JUST wrote a little snarky note to recipe makers everywhere about recipes that include processed packages (you know... 'recipes' for cake that include a box of jello instant pudding etc) on www.lettersfromlia.com. Though I don't think I could go totally unprocessed, as I do still love to bake with flour and sugar like grandma did, I think for my main meals this is close to possible. (I may have to keep my whole wheat pasta despite it being from a box and processed... sorry) But, I'll aim for it every day, and make a more concerted effort for these 30 days. Thanks for the inspiration. I'd love to hear from people what is most hard not to 'fall' for on those tough days.

@jess13 -- I'm doing the challenge and trying to convince my contrary husband to do it, at least at home (he eats in the work cafeteria a lot and can't realistically check labels). That basically amounts to him giving up Cheerios, and he can still eat Grape Nuts.

It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing. Challenge him to have his Hamburger Helper or mac and cheese, but make it from scratch. He can eat PB&J, but use it as a discussion of reading labels and making it natural peanut butter, jelly without HFCS, and bread with fewer ingredients. Maybe you commit to eating better dinners or snacks, or just adding a salad before dinner.

Or propose starting with a week, and if he thinks it will kill him after 7 days, he can opt out. Baby steps!

I am already on it since last one month and would definitely continue through October. As I cook & eat Indian food everyday; it is much easier to take this challenge.
But I am just bit confuse; whether should I consider food in restaurant as processed?

I think it would be really neat! I think that a month is a really good goal. Years ago I went a month without sugar, inspired by a blog, and liked to think of it as an educational gauge to find out how much sugar I really do eat. Isolating one food type was really very telling to me about my usual habits by finding where i had to work hard. I always think I don't eat a lot of processed foods, but even just today I ate a donut that someone brought into the office...

My family has multiple food allergies, so I already do this. To be honest, we are usually disappointed when we go out to eat, since food at home is so good. And I love hearing my daughter ask us to "please pass the celeriac puree." My hope is that if she is raised eating "real" food 95% of the time, she will have no palate for junk later in life. It's a great challenge, and I hope a lot of people try it!

I already do this, so count me in!

@Jess13 - I feel your pain, sistah! I have the exact same problem. My boyfriend is a die-hard Texas born, grease and junk food lovin' man. Although he has gotten used to me making stuff from scratch a lot, there are still a lot of times that he just rejects things outright because they don't look like the processed junk from a box he grew up eating. No way he would do this challenge either.

I'm going to try to do it for myself as much as I can. More of a commitment to really paying attention and rooting out the processed stuff I'm still using, than a true pledge to not use any at all. But I think it's a good step in the right direction.

"an ingredient you'd never use in your kitchen and couldn't possibly make yourself from the whole form"

It's that second part I'm wondering about. How far down the production line do we go? For instance: even raw, "unprocessed" sugar is separated from the sugar cane by a method that's not really possible in the home kitchen. So is that out? Same goes for things like powdered pectin - yes, it is naturally derived and widely available to home cooks, but I couldn't possibly isolate the pectin from citrus peels in my own kitchen.

Where are we drawing the line on what is "processed"?

I am all over this. I have been eating using the ANDI Top 30 list for the past some weeks and am totalling loving life.

You know I am sort of feeling disdainful of the whole project - I think it's mostly to generate the publicity for the dude - and my, did that ever work. People love to feel guilty. But in reality, progress is good, and having someone else make your cheese and sweetened condensed milk and chocolate and sausage is just the thing to do. As long as you roughly are comfortable with where it comes from. I think this project might impress people who are used to eating junk, but it strikes me as conceited and bourgeois. Life is short, and life is to be enjoyed, and puritanical projects like that are self-serving at best.

We eat very little processed food at home and our kids eat even less.

But we do eat out a fair amount, albeit at "better" places with real food. That is the source of any of the junk in our lives.

@Jess13, I'm very sympathetic. My husband (thank goodness) is reasonably game to try most things, but several members of his midwestern family are extremely meat-and-potatoes and have been known to visit McDonald's en route to family events 'just in case.' Heaven forbid your marinara sauce has chunks in it!
The thing is, you can't *make* him view food differently, at least not at first. And if he feels like he's sacrificing, he'll start craving his favorites more than ever. But you can lead your horse to water: make *less* processed things easily available (e.g. terra chips instead of Lay's, baked corn chips with a chunky guacamole with lots of tomatoes and onions instead of Doritos. Still junk food but may have a few extra vitamins and may expand his taste buds just a bit.) Make healthy snacks EASY - cut up some apples, offer snap peas and dip. Make things that are inherently irresistable that just happen to be made of whole or near-whole ingredients (lasagne, pizza, moussaka, baked sweet potatoes, au gratin anything). It's more work for you, and it's not fair that you should have to do all the work, but hopefully you can help him find some new favorites and hopefully over time he will acquire a taste for cleaner food. (And make big batches that you can divide into smaller portions for reheating when you don't want to cook.)
And without dipping too deep into pop psychology, build up his self esteem. Putting clean, wholesome food into your body is a sign of healthy self regard.

On Tuesday, September 6, 2011, I began the 28 day challenge at Whole Foods, which sounds very similar to this diet, only plant-based (fruit, vegetables and whole grains). I never imagined I could go without dairy, eggs or sugar, but have been doing a pretty good job of it. The first week was definitely the most difficult, and there have been a few slips along the way, but overall I've been true to the challenge. Don't know that I'll stay this restricted forever, but it's great to know that I can and actually enjoyed it.

I'm not sure I could stick to it, as I do enjoy going out to eat and have no idea what I would do for breakfast (I'm apparently too picky!), but I definitely want to give it a try! Hopefully my boyfriend would be interested as well, even if it meant bringing lunch instead of always eating out...

My husband and I just finished our first 30 days as paleo-participants. It's been a great learning experience and our health feels greatly improved already. The only difference between what we do and what what this presents is that we allow ourselves one cheat day a week. I think in this world and culture, it is impossible to stay on this kind of plan without it.