Quarantine Health Food Purchases I Never Regretted Buying

Staying indoors has nearly driven me stir crazy. Without access to a swimming pool and shopping mall for two months, there wasn’t much entertainment apart from binging on trashy dating reality TV shows on Netflix, enlightening Sunday sermons from my pastor, a marathon of takeouts with the family and countless video calls/texts from friends all around the world.

If there was one thing that kept me sane, it’s health food shopping. Although I look like the kind of girl that would splurge on Alo Yoga sets, most of my spending has been allocated to food. More specifically, health food.

For the past five years, I’ve been more consistent with upgrading my health; however, my journey started with a scare. In July 2015, my mom took me to see Dr. Rachel West for an allergy test. My skin was breaking out, I gained weight and although I looked healthy, I was always feeling sleepy after a meal. After I took the allergy test, it turned out that the highest allergens were gluten, dairy and eggs. On top of that, I had high mercury and yeast levels from consuming too much bread, fish and macaroons when I vacationed at the South of France, Milan and Paris that summer. While I was being treated with IV drips to remove the mercury and yeast, I decided that it was time for me to go vegan and gluten-free temporarily.

With the vegan and gluten-free experiment, I found out that my body felt lighter, I had more energy and there was minimal bloating on my stomach. In addition to eliminating the allergens, I’ve also decided to ramp up my diet by snacking clean, too. Flash forward to 2020, I am still that health nut from 2015, but I’ve made improvements since then.

Rather than relying on an all or nothing mentality (a trait I’m working to unlearn), I’ve came to realize that indulging healthy doesn’t mean that it’s boring! With more vegan substitutes of pantry classics (think Nutella), it’s beginning to open my mind that something healthy can enlighten your meal without making sacrifices.

If healthy eating is completely foreign to you, it’s never too late to try out different kinds of meals!

Here are my top go-tos: