Why do we eat factory-made food while enjoying nature?

“We’re camping next week, so I’m going to fail at my diet again,” one client admitted.

She meets her extended family each summer for one of my personal favorite activities: huckleberry picking. Every year, they gather on family property and spend days picking berries to preserve and enjoy until the next harvest. Like most family reunions, each family signs up to prepare a meal. She described the menu in great detail, including the huckleberry cobbler she didn't want to eat, knowing the cake topping came from a boxed mix with questionable ingredients and the conventional ice cream contained refined sugars and other contaminants.

Strange, right? To spend hours tromping through the underbrush picking tiny berries—enough to make dessert for 24 people—then bake those berries with food made in a factory. It seems nonsensical. Why not make the cake batter from scratch using real ingredients that complement nature's perfection?

"It doesn't have to be that way," I assured her.

I've never understood why people spend so much time, effort and money going into nature, only to eat industrially made food, power giant campers with noisy generators, and complain about bugs, weather, dirt, stinging nettle and other such inconveniences.

Notably, my client wasn't complaining—yet she was missing the point of our work together, which is connecting the dots between what we eat and how we feel. When we eat foods grown as close to nature as, well, nature intends, we feel better. Humans are an extension of Earth: water, soil and sunshine. Foods grown in harmony with their natural environments theoretically provide us with everything we need to thrive.

Camping, therefore, is the perfect opportunity to stay connected to the foods humans evolved to eat. Berries. Mushrooms. Leaves. Nuts. And, yes, animals.

My client inspired me to take my kids berry picking over the weekend, too, and commit to a much-overdue camping trip at our favorite alpine lake. I knew, however, my kids would want exactly what my client feared she'd succumb to: junk food.

"Junk food" isn't my favorite term, but since my client used it, let's address it.

I loosely define "junk" as something we have in excess, don't use and don't need. In terms of food, we generally mean ultra-processed, pre-packaged convenience foods containing excessive sugars plus preservatives, dyes and additives our bodies neither recognize nor require. Ironically, these are the very foods my kids beg me to buy at remote mountain lodges after a day of jumping off rocks into pristine lakes and soaking in picturesque mountain vistas: French fries. Chips. Soft-serve ice cream. Root beer floats.

"Please don't keep asking me for these foods," I told them after what felt like the seventeenth request, and after offer a choice of nourishing foods still in my backpack: apples, dried apricots, trail mix.

Many parents would justify those choices using the 80/20 rule—80 percent nourishing foods, 20 percent treats. I'm not that mom. I've read the research. I work with people every day whose health has been shaped by the Standard American Diet—foods we've normalized and expected at rustic campsites, on remote hiking trails and alongside rushing rivers: hot dogs, chips, marshmallows, beer, soda.

I've healed my own body from eating—and drinking—too many of those foods. I feel better in my late forties than I did in my early twenties. I watch clients thrive when they replace ultra-processed foods with more wholesome alternatives. I'm not opposed to pleasure. In fact, I revel in it. I simply plan for it.

And it can be simple.

Our first night's dinner, for example, was one of my kids' favorites: Annie's organic mac and cheese with organic peas, skipjack tuna (lower in methylmercury than albacore), and a side salad made with fresh garden lettuce and cherry tomatoes. Dessert wasn't s'mores, but fair-trade organic chocolate.

Breakfast was organic oatmeal (from the package), with Greek yogurt (yes, organic), granola (which I didn’t make), nuts, seeds and freshly picked raspberries.

Lunch on the trail included homemade cardamom buns from our baker neighbor, wild salmon jerky, aged cheddar, apples, nuts, fruit leather and coconut water. My kids happily ate these foods with berry-stained fingers.

Later, while at the lodge, their contentedness shifted.

Did I give in to their requests? Yes. I'd planned on it, which is why I'd prioritized nourishing meals beforehand. My kids know my rules: no artificial food dyes in the soft serve and only local root beer made with cane sugar.

An hour later, they wanted French fries.

Oh, the struggle. Oh, the temptation.

Normally I would have dug in my heels, but I'd eaten a gummy and found myself in an unusually relaxed state, gazing at the mountains and listening to children laughing in the summer sunshine. I didn't want the begging for French fries—or my incessant denial of them—to become the center of the afternoon.

For once, I gave in.

My heart still hurts a little because I'd gone against a boundary I'd set for my kids: one lodge food only. This conviction has kept us from conceding to our relentless food culture of, well, junk food everywhere.

What wears me down isn't my children. It's the American food system. It's our disconnected food values, even in places where nature is the main attraction. It's the pull of convenience, economics and marketing that often overshadows nourishment—for both our bodies and the environment that sustains us.

Are my food choices perfect? No. I don't aim for perfection. I aim for nourishment.

That evening, our simple dinner soothed my soul: pasture-raised beef tacos with organic tortillas for the kids, a pre-cooked quinoa and rice blend, sweet potatoes, avocado, shredded cheese, and local cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and lettuce.

I was proud of myself for keeping the meal simple—simplifying where it made sense without compromising what mattered most. The ice cream on the cake? My kids were happy, too.

Your meals—and perhaps your values—may differ significantly from mine. Still, I invite you to consider how you might prepare one or more meals on your next camping trip using foods grown the way nature intended. Then notice how that choice shapes how you feel and how you experience the natural world around you.