The thought of living without processed food seems impossible. According to US Law, processed food is "any food other than a raw agricultural commodity and includes any raw agricultural commodity that has been subject to processing, such as canning, cooking, freezing, dehydration, or milling." Which means unless you're growing the ingredients in your backyard, chances are you're ingesting some form of processed food.
Well that's exactly what author Megan Kimble did. In 2012 Kimble, who was then 26 years old, decided to make good on her New Year's Resolution and go an entire year without eating any processed food. The story of those 12 months of clean eating is documented in her new book 'Unprocessed: My City Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food'.
In an article she wrote for Shape Magazine, Kimble describes the criteria she used to determine what types of food she could consume during the period:
"For the purposes of my year, a food was unprocessed if I could theoretically make it in my own kitchen. I could grind wheat berries into flour, but, short of storming a chemistry lab, I couldn't separate the wheat germ and bran from the endosperm. So no refined flour. If I wanted to make table sugar at home, I'd need a centrifuge, bleach, and a few de-clumping additives; honey required only figuring out how to collect the plant nectar that bees regurgitate onto honeycombs."
It wasn't always smooth sailing however. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Kimble admitted to a few slip ups:
"I was a single when I started the year and then wanted to start dating. I went out with this guy who sort of ordered food for us in this really macho, annoying way and then food came and I didn't know what to do. It was a sushi roll. White rice is processed, but I decided to make an exception."
In the end though, Kimble is convinced of the benefits of such a lifestyle saying it helps just more than our bodies. Pointing to economic and environmental benefits of going unprocessed:
"By eating unprocessed, I hoped to situate my sustenance just a little closer to home, to keep my food dollars in my own community, where I hoped they might be visible, scalable, and accountable. "
