Real Food FAQ

What Is Real Food?

Real food is traditional, sustainable, health-promoting, whole. It’s unrefined, unprocessed, unadulterated: pasture-raised beef, raw milk butter, and farm-fresh eggs from organically grown, free-range poultry. Real food is the fruit, not the fruit rollup. It’s never industrial, toxic, or fake. Real food is a connection with the people who raise and grow the food we eat. It’s how we used to live and how we strive to live now.

How does food get real?

Real food is whole food. Whole food is grown in healthy soil teeming with life: living systems of microorganisms, worms, insects, small animals, mycorrhiza fungi, healthy bacteria, minerals, organic matter, water, and air. No herbicides. No synthetic pesticides. Whole food grown in healthy soil derives its nutrition and flavor from the abundance of minerals that living systems make available to the plant and animal.

How does food stay real?

Once whole, organically grown food is harvested, it must be kept as whole as possible. This means knowing how much heat to apply and knowing what foods should be consumed in their raw state. It means learning how to preserve and increase the health benefits of real food through fermentation and culturing methods that add critical lactic acid to the diet. Like soil, whole food is a system within a system within many systems. These include mineral complexes, vitamin complexes, enzymes, and co-factors we might not yet know about. When we keep these systems whole, we keep food real.


To choose your organically grown and fresh ingredients wisely, use the following criteria:

    • chemical- and hormone-free meat
    • wild-caught fish
    • pasture-raised, organic eggs
    • whole, unrefined grains
    • virgin, unrefined, first-press organic oils
    • whole-food, unrefined sweeteners
    • pure, clean spring water
    • sea salt
    • raw and/or cultured milk and cream products

How do I find real food in a restaurant?

More often than not dining out means facing a gauntlet of unwholesome ingredients. Even so, there are times when cooking at home isn’t an option. At these times, the best you can do is arm yourself with information. That’s where the following tips come in handy. READ MORE