Jennifer Garner Says She Never Ate Processed Food Growing: ‘We Had Only What’ My Mom ‘Could Make’

Jennifer Garner had a junk food-free childhood.

The actress told Molly Sims about how she feeds her children compared to how she ate as a child.

PEOPLE has an early look at the Nov. 12 episode of Sims’ podcast Lipstick on the Rim, which recently joined Sony Music Entertainment’s Global Podcast Division.

In the episode, the Deadpool vs. Wolverine star, 52, told the model host, 51, about her go-to and no-go meals for her three children.

While Garner frequently cooks up ground turkey burritos and butter noodles, she said she avoids keeping processed foods in the pantry out of habit from when she was young.

“We didn’t have processed food at all. Not because my mom thought of it that way. It was expensive. So we had only what she could make,” the 13 Going on 30 alum explained, adding that she “[tries] not to get too freaked out about any of that,” but she doesn’t purchase it for her family. “I’m not one to love having processed food around.”

Giving children natural food is important to Garner even outside of her household, she explained to Sims.

When discussing her Once Upon a Farm organic food line, Garner said, “Kids deserve better. It really matters what you put in a child’s body.”

Some of the produce used in the baby food line comes from Garner’s family farm in Locust Grove, Okla., where her mom, Patricia Ann Garner, grew up.

She said that her mom was happy to see her childhood home utilized: “Of anything I’ve ever done, this means the most to my mom — that her farm is being brought back to life, and it’s growing things for babies. It’s just the coolest,” Garner told PEOPLE in 2020.

On Sunday, Nov. 10, Garner posted a sweet photo on Instagram of her holding hands with her mom and sister, Melissa Lynn Garner, while going for a stroll in her home state of West Virginia. The touching photo comes seven months after the death of Jennifer’s father, William John Garner.

Garner announced the death of her father on Instagram on April 1. She shared at the time that he “passed peacefully” at 85 years old while surrounded by her family. 

“We were with him, singing Amazing Grace as he left us …” wrote Garner at the time. “While there is no tragedy in the death of an 85-year-old man who lived a healthy, wonderful life, I know grief is unavoidable, waiting around unexpected corners,” adding that her family is “grateful for Dad’s gentle demeanor and quiet strength.”