Archive for Changing Diet
The pale cold skies of January always bring me thoughts of the dense comfort foods of mid-Winter. I started off the New Year with these in my belly, and that feels good! Oatmeal cooked with diced apples and raisins filled the kitchen this morning with delicious smells. It got even better with the addition of chopped pecans (from Ridge Spring, SC – thanks cousin Joe Cal Watson), cinnamon, nutmeg, and a dash of ginger. I eat this with a sterling cereal spoon that belonged to my Great Grandmother Kate Hyde Sloan. There’s a crack in it I was always warned to be careful about, and I have been, for over 60 years. This oatmeal was so good, I ate small bites for a long time!
Lunch was as good – if not better! A bowl of rice and spicy baked butter beans (or lima beans) is still warm in my belly. These are not summer foods for me. They are too dense and heavy for the deep heat and light clothes of summer. And that reminds me of a question a friend from California asked me: “What is seasonal eating ?”
She was referring specifically to being able to buy strawberries in November where she lives. What an interesting question! I’ve spent time thinking about this, because it is different for different parts of our broad, wide country. And yet, there are similarities as well.
In the broadest terms, eating seasonally means eating what is ripe and ready, at that moment, in your locale. It means seeing foods in their freshest state come and go from your menu. It means paying attention to the local farmers world around you day by day. And it means listening to your body and it’s demands. California will be different than New York, Minnesota will be different than Texas.
Here in an area where there are four very distinct seasons it is much more obvious: yummy cold hardy leafy greens in the Spring are an ecstatic addition to any meal at the end of Winter! However it is more than that. During the growing season we eat all of the fresh foods we can, sometimes gorging ourselves with the bounty. The surplus gets dried, frozen, pickled, cured, preserved, canned, smoked, fermented, hung in the pantry or put in a root cellar for the Winter. As one of my Canadian friends said in his Year End letter: “Our search for food these days is fairly simple. What we have is stored in our pantry although there is a stray turnip or two under the foot of snow that finally arrived.” [Thank you, Graham!]
Our bodies have spent millennium adapting and adjusting to what is available, when, and what is not. We have long histories of ‘putting foods by’ so that we have enough to eat all of the time. The temperature and the light tell the cells in our bodies that there is a change in the seasons and we get ready for it. Growing up in a cold winter climate in an uninsulated farm house established a pattern in my body that the first true cold snap brings on. When there is skim ice on the water, my taste for winter foods kicks in – casseroles, baking, hearty soups, and steaming cups of spiced cider. I gain ten pounds each winter (except when I lived in Tucson) and lose it in the Spring once the weather gets warm. I’m used to it. My body obviously needs it. I don’t keep a scale!
My body is primed for seasonal eating, and now that I have added wild foods to my diet, it all makes so much more sense! At the end of winter, there are a few shriveled apples, potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips and parsnips. The garlic and onions are sprouting, and the pantry is becoming full of empty jars. When those first sprouts of green emerge, be they dandelions, wood sorrel, green onions, or lambsquarters, I want them! My body craves them to help purge the heavy winter foods from my body. I don’t want the tomatoes of high summer at that moment, I want new peas, asparagus and strawberries, and the wild baby greens that help me regain my summer figure!
Think of the time and money you save by only going to the store once a week for a few staples. It’s so much simpler once you remember to think about your food ahead of time. Just before bed grab something out of the freezer, put a cup of dried beans in to soak, and even soak the grains for a morning bowl of hot cereal in apple juice or cider! That’s ‘instant’ oatmeal that really counts! If you are not shopping on the way home, you have another 30 minutes to cook an outstanding evening meal.
So think ahead; make menus or find them on line; keep track of the seasons; and have a bright and abundant New Year!
[For those of you who have no idea what this means, it is a term used when you winnow the wheat after it is harvested. The chaff, or the hulls, dry straws and stalks, are separated from the grains of wheat – the wheat is stored or taken to the miller for grinding and the straw is used for animal bedding, mulch, and compost. It’s also used as an expression and applied to many different situations.]
So let’s take a dispassionate look at our food and separate the wheat from the chaff. Never mind all the emotion and slinging of mud – let’s get down to basics. Food is our focus activity three or more times a day. We want it to taste good, look good, and nourish us so that we stay well and feel good. We want the wheat without the chaff.
For pretty much the entire history of humans on the earth, food has been a very direct experience. You grew it, you exchanged it with your neighbors, stores carried the staples, and fixing it was up to a person in the house – for the most part. We started to fall in love with convenience, time-savers, prepared foods of all kinds. Life was good and more and more Mommies were out of the kitchen! Suddenly there was a hamburger joint, and a pizza parlor; sometimes even a Chinese restaurant. In the cafeteria, the Lunch Ladies still cooked everything from scratch. Most of the food was supplied locally and it tasted good.
After the extensive interstate road system went in during the Eisenhower years, food was trucked farther and farther. As the distance from field to table increased, so did the preservatives and chemicals in our foods. Even the fresh veggies had to be sprayed to prevent rot on the way to market. No blemishes allowed in our supermarkets!
Industry had it made! Things we love to eat started to be manufactured with chemicals, and esters, and artificial color to the exclusion of all natural ingredients. It was no longer food. As the chemicals increased in our diet, our bodies found it harder and harder to get rid of these toxins fast enough. Every day another load of chemicals came into our bodies; and every day we struggled to rid our bodies of all the chemicals. We also stopped noticing all the small differences in our bodies and in our health.We stopped noticing we just didn’t feel as good as we used to.
Gradually, all the chemicals in our food, in our water, and in our air became so prevalent and common that a new born baby has 200 chemicals in their little bloodstream at birth before ever having the first drink of Mother’s milk. This is very serious. This means that when that baby takes in food for the first time – even Mother’s milk – that child is increasing the amount of chemicals in their tiny body because it’s in the Mother’s bloodstream as well. Is it any wonder the number of children with chronic conditions of all kinds has gone up so high? For the first time, the prediction is that the parents of today will outlive their children!
So here’s an experiment you can do on your own. Grab one of your favorite foods that is prepared for you. Read what’s on the label and for every ingredient that has a chemical name, look it up. I did it and was shocked by what I found. Sodium benzoate or benzoate of soda is a very common preservative. It’s been in use since I was a child and before. In Wikipedia the description includes the words “a known carcinogen” and says it becomes more toxic when combined with an acid. Like orange juice? Vinegar? Wine? They’re having a party in my tummy!
So go for it, Friends! Keep track of what you are eating. Make a list for the refrigerator and have everyone old enough to read put the ingredients of the food eaten on the list. Check off each ingredient every time you eat it again. One night sit down and look up each item to see what you are eating – and how much of it. Then talk about ways to reduce the chemical overload on your bodies.
Here are a few good rules of thumb: If it isn’t the color of food, it isn’t food. Red and blue dyes are very upsetting to some kids systems. Even the amount in their toothpaste can ‘set them off’. Until genetically modified foods (GMO’s) are labelled, avoid soy and soy products, corn and corn products, canola or rape seed oil, cottonseed oil, and beet sugar. All of these products have been shown to be very harmful to all living creatures after they are genetically modified. Apparently we don’t do well with a load of pesticides in our food either!
You can choose, you know. You can change the system with your choices. This is being proven again right now in the world. Everyone deserves clean food. For the moment, that is only possible if we eat whole foods, organic foods, foods we grow, and foods that are labelled “No GMO’s”. It’s tough to change; but the alternatives are truly grim! If we keep eating chemicals every day in everything we eat, we will all be very sick.
One of the loudest arguments against buying organic foods is the cost! Organic is so expensive compared to…what? Ordinary food? And what are we getting with ordinary, cheap food? And why is organic food so much more expensive?
First, a tiny bit of history. Back in the 40’s and early 50’s your budget was very simple: 25% for housing, 25% for food, and 50% for everything else. Today we are complaining that food costs too much, and yet it is only 7.5% of the household budget. Hum-m-m-m-m…
The big food producers, the agribusinesses, have almost taken over. They have access to the government subsidies and use all that our technology can provide. In the mean time, the very chemicals designed to “improve” the soil and increase production have, instead, diminished the health of the soil to the point where it is almost dead. Production is down, nutrients in our food is down (it now takes 30 bowls of spinach to add up to the vitamins and minerals found in one bowl of spinach in the 50’s), and we are basically ingesting a huge load of chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, and ‘manufactured’ nutrition.
Cheap food is almost completely without nutritional value, and we go away from the table hungry. Our bodies are not satisfied, and we want more food. The more of the manufactured food we eat, the more weight we are carrying and the more we want because we are still hungry!!
You remember the old saying: “You get what you pay for”? Organic food costs more because ounce for ounce it has more in it. [There are other reasons, of course, but I’m just pointing out one piece to this enormous puzzle.] So ask yourself: do you go out and buy the cheapest clothes, the cheapest car, the cheapest tools? Why not? Because they are really not as good? Because they won’t last and aren’t really a savings in the long run?
Since food, good healthy food, means the difference between being healthy and being sick, maybe it’s time to rethink where you really want to spend your money. You need and eat much less food if you have local whole foods. You feel better and have a better attitude with really good, nourishing foods. I have read that up to 80% of the people who are depressed in today’s society simply need to take all the trace minerals that are missing from factory foods to feel better again.
Give it a try, a two week try. Right now is the season of bounty. Farmers markets are bountiful with wonderful fresh foods. Put the money you would spend on factory foods into what is on sale and organic. Experience the marvelous feeling of being full and well nourished! Fill up your mouth with things your taste buds will notice and enjoy!
Bonne Appetite!
