6 Ingredient Challenge!

By Lyndsay Kirkham

Join the Six Ingredient Challenge hosted by Hobo Mama and Anktangle!

We’re on a six-week path to eat more whole foods, guided by one simple rule: Buy foods with six ingredients or fewer. And we’re blogging about our journey on the way.

This week we’re answering the question: Why do you want to participate in the Six Ingredient Challenge?

You can see all the responses to this question on February 7 at the link-up post.

To join in the Six Ingredient Challenge anytime during the six weeks, visit the sign-up page for a list of posts and to link up!

I love a good challenge, and I also love eating good food. My heart and body tell me that good food is food that nourishes my body and soul, while also being good for the world around me. Despite being vegan, I am always up for a chance to reconnect with the mindfulness of making meals, eating healthful food, and thinking more deeply about where my food is coming from. Pregnancy and mothering have accelerated my interest in getting to know my food, and the intersections of society that shape food producing practices.

Two wonderful natural parenting blogs have offered up the opportunity to create a community of awareness around the idea of clean eating with their 6 Ingredient, 6-week Challenge. Anktanlge and HoboMama are offering people a chance to share a bowl of cyberbased soup; together we can discuss, write about, and connect with the food that we are buying, making and eating.

Being vegan means that I am already a voracious label reader and quite conscious about the ingredients I use, but there is always room for improvement when it comes to the food that we eat. Whether it is considering where it came from, who else does or doesn’t have access to it, or asking questions about how well we are nourishing our whole selves in the face of dieting mantras in media and how we are best meeting the nutritional needs of our bodies – the questions are there. This challenge is a great way to carve out some dedicated space to, if not answer the questions, at least consider them.

Anktanlge and HoboMama have already laid out the ground rules for the challenge, and are even supplying a weekly writing prompt for those who are keen to write through the experience. Their prompt for this week is:

Why do you want to participate in this challenge?

I want to participate in this focused study of my eating in order obtain a more mindful awareness of my eating. No longer am I a single vegan eating to recover from a workout or after a long day of teaching. Now, the food I buy and subsequently make is also tied up in issues of meeting the needs and desires of my 3.5 year old vegan son, while also nourishing my body that continues to return to stasis after almost 3.5 years of nursing my son. I want to reassure myself that my vegan diet is a healthy vegan diet, and not just a vegan diet. I have written before about the idea that any diet can be unhealthy, vegan or otherwise. Equally, all diets – omnivore, vegan, vegetarian – can be healthy and good for the earth.

Also, as a new blogger at Mothers of Change, I will be using this challenge as a springboard to address issues relevant to maternal health, such a nourishment during pregnancy, body issues during and following a pregnancy, and how healthy food should be a right and not a privilege, especially during pregnancy.

Will you join me in this challenge? I invite you to share your own experiences around eating cleanly and questions that you might have around nutrition, maternal health and healthful eating.