With the end in sight for our latest Additive Free Challenge, we wanted to share with you some of the most probing questions asked by our participants and our followers in general.

These are the top five questions asked:

5. I don’t have time to make everything from scratch, what can I still buy and eat?

If we had a dollar for every time we heard this, then we would have retired long ago! We will start by breaking down the illusion that we make everything from scratch! This is nothing but a myth! We each work full-time, have two children each, husbands, go to the gym and a life in general! If we make something from scratch, it’s because it’s what brings us joy!

If you find yourself not wanting to go additive free, simply stressing at the thought of having to make everything from scratch, it’s just a mindset matter! Even if you shopped for everything at the supermarket, without making it from scratch, it’s still possible to eat a relatively healthy diet! However, there are ways to switch it up, such as shopping at a fresh food market to buy homemade sauces or dips.

Our turning point is in the power of knowledge, knowing that today you might make just one meal from scratch because you know it’s so much better for you. Remember that when you do cook from scratch, there’s nothing stopping you from bulk cooking and even freezing! By planning ahead, you can truly maximise your cooking times.

4. Where do I get my meat from?

In our challenge, we dedicate a section to meat, for example, hidden nasty preservatives in sausages or nitrate in bacon. Tracey shares with you a recent experience with friends that visited her for dinner, bringing sausages for their kids to enjoy. It was quite shocking at just how their behaviour changed and how quickly after dinner, how restless they became, compared to their pre-dinner state. This is all too common thanks to the nasty hidden preservatives!

Without freaking too many of you out, we talk about the average sources of additives and

preservatives in just one meal sitting from a lazy dinner of sausages in bread:

  • Sausages with preservatives
  • Bread with additives
  • Store-bought tomato sauce with preservatives
  • Margarine with preservatives

Pretty quickly your humble sausage in bread with sauce could mean the intake of around 20 or more additives!

That’s why our course helps to give the right information, about what you’re truly sharing at the dinner table. So where do you get your meat from? Don’t be shy! Talk to your butcher- most will make a batch of 5kg sausages that are preservative free, that you can easily freeze for future use.

We find butchers generally have better-quality products over supermarkets. Don’t be scared to ask your local butcher where they get their meat from, and if they have preservatives in their products.

3. What are “flavours”?

This is a little word you’ll see written on many supermarket products, however, it’s a mystery what’s actually contained in “flavours”. It’s a generic and random word, that simply allows companies to copyright their products. There could be multiple chemicals contained in flavours and we’ll never truly know what it’s comprised of.

If you contact the food company direct, you’ll likely hear “It’s copyright, I can’t tell you what that flavour is, but you can tell me what you’re allergic to, then I can disclose whether it’s in the product or not”. This might shed a bit of light to get around the problem, but it can be a lengthy process. The better solution is to do the best you can in avoiding products that contain the word flavours.

2. What do I put in a sandwich?

In our challenge, we talk a lot about bread, to the point where you might freak out and think to yourself I can’t eat it anymore, due to the many preservatives. We then go on to disclose just what’s in Vegemite and other popular spreads. This might leave you wondering “Oh My Gosh” what do I pack in my child’s lunchboxes? and the answer is plenty!

Firstly, every now and then our children still make a Vegemite sandwich, but it will be on bread that’s preservative free, using butter instead of margarine. So for half a teaspoon of Vegemite, we know everything else that they’re eating, is additive and preservative free and that’s OK with us from time to time!

Much of the time, however, we would use cheese, eggs, avocado, nitrate-free ham, lettuce, carrot or a salad in a sandwich (if your kids will still eat it)! There’s a brand called I Am Mighty Spread (We stock I Am Mighty on our website) which is an alternative to Vegemite and our kids love It!

Look for peanut butter that is just that – peanuts (and maybe a dash of salt!) There are so many in stock now. Think about putting in leftover foods from the night before into their lunch boxes, which keeps your kids fuller for longer, that are much healthier alternatives than sandwiches. Focus on switching it up!

1. I’m feeling really overwhelmed, I’m Scared! I don’t know what to eat now, and I’m terrified to go to the supermarket, what can I eat?

At the very beginning of our own additive-free journeys, this was us! There were bucket loads of uncertainty, thoughts of this are just too hard! All we will say is that once you know some information, and you’ve read the science, it’s near impossible to ignore it! Basically, once you know it, you can’t unknow it.

Diving into the unknown is always going to be a little bit daunting and scary! But as soon as you find yourself overwhelmed, it’s all about breaking it down into bite-size pieces (so to speak)! If you look into your pantry and realise that everything has additives in it, just wait until you run out of a product, before replacing it with an additive-free version. One product at a time is making huge progress! Just think how many products you then end up switching in a month, and then in a year! It all adds up! You’ve got your whole life to change things around for the better, and learning new information is exciting, especially when it comes to dramatically improving your life, as well as your family’s lives.

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