Archive for Feel Better
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Kate
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Let’s look at another way to make healthy changes in the way we eat. This time we are going to focus on what is essential in our diet, and which items are just plain dangerous. What things do we need to have as a part of our meals and how does this look when we get to the grocery store?
If we reduce the grocery list to the bare essentials it could look like this: vegetables, fruit, protein, grains, seeds, nuts, and dairy. Paper products, cleaning products, and personal hygiene products are not foods, so they are a separate expense, and just for the moment we will take them off the grocery list.
When we get back to basics, the handiest way to get there is to use a menu. You don’t have to make them up yourself; you can find endless menus on line. The advantage of making them up yourself is taking into consideration your families likes and dislikes, needs and eating patterns. Some people need 6 small meals a day – more like a series of snacks – and another person likes 3 meals a day. You get the idea. Another thought…eat less of everything to reduce your food bill. In America, we are sending 40% of the food we grow to the landfill! So waste not; want not!
Let’s get into why I buy foods that fill a specific criterion. Let’s take one typical breakfast as an example. I am a person who needs protein and good fats in the morning or I am fading away by 10 am. Some days I have an egg (free range, vegetarian feed, no antibiotics), with mushrooms or green onions and cheese (no rBST), a piece of organic whole grain toast and butter with a little local, raw honey. Why the specific types of each ingredient? Read on…
Eggs from factory farms are not good for you. The hens are stressed so their eggs have high LDL cholesterol, and also antibiotics. The free range hens that are fed a diet high in grains, or better yet can forage outside, and don’t need antibiotics because they are not packed together tightly, give us eggs that are much lower in LDL cholesterol and much higher in HDL (or good) cholesterol. Stressed, unhealthy hens = unhealthy eggs. The original research on eggs being high in ‘bad’ cholesterol came from factory farms.
Let’s look at bread now. Bread never used to have ingredients we couldn’t grow and couldn’t pronounce. Most breads had whole ground grains, yeast or starter, water, salt, and maybe an oil. It was that simple. It was made fresh and sold fresh, so no preservatives were needed. We can still get bread like that. However there is one more problem now. If the ingredient list contain any corn products, any soy products, and/or any canola oil, (and is not organic) you are eating a Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) which contains pesticides in every cell. I can find bread that is ‘clean’ and not organic in most supermarkets; however it is just as cost effective to buy organic bread on sale and freeze it. Are you getting the idea? Local raw honey is good for me and helps protect me from local pollen allergies if I have a teaspoon or so a day.
If we simply cut out the foods that, as Michael Pollan says, are “food-like substances”, we will decrease our food bills even if all the other foods we buy are clean and/or organic and more expensive. We will also decrease our medical bills. Here is a list of the “dirty dozen” foods no one should buy unless they are organic because of pesticide residue: Apples, Bell Peppers, Celery, Cherries, Imported Grapes, Nectarines, Peaches, Pears, Potatoes, Raspberries, Spinach, and Strawberries. If it is too expensive, buy on sale or have as a treat. If you want more information on these and other best green practices go to www.GreenAmericaToday.org or other similar websites.
So the key concepts to changing the way we eat might be summed up this way: simplify; buy and eat whole foods; learn how to cook them; read the labels and avoid GMO’s; and beware of all the toxins in prepared foods! (www.care2.com/causes/study-finds-arsenic-in-baby-formula-and-cereal-bars.html)
Posted by:
Kate
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You know, it’s scarey out there when you’re looking for good clean food. The chemicals, pesticides, toxins, and altered substances in our food are making us sick. Maybe some iffy ingredients once in a while would be OK. Maybe our bodies could rid us of the toxins we ingest if it were just a few. Now, though, babies are being born with 200 or more chemicals in their little bodies before they draw their first breath. If more are added every time we eat, how will the body ever get rid of all those toxins?
This cumulative toxin load is sending many of us into ill health. This is showing up in so many different ways, it’s hard to keep track. My suspicion is that it shows up in which ever place in the body is the weakest. For some it is allergies; for others it is diabetes, heart trouble, obesity, and lung trouble; and in others it is behavioral issues from ADD/ADHD to Depression. I know this may sound far fetched, so check it out yourself.
I looked up sodium benzoate in Wikipedia, a very common preservative for acid foods including fruit juices and soda pop. When combined with ascorbic acid it breaks down into benzene, a known carcinogen. When combined with certain food dyes, it has been linked to hyperactivity.
OK. What to do. Well, the answer is to change the way we eat. That feels like a very tall order! We go to the grocery store and buy the things we know our family loves, the foods we love, and just want to grab it and go. In our busy lives we don’t want to have to think about anything else. We’ve got the routine down and want to leave it all on auto-pilot. But we are getting sick, especially our children!
Since I know a lot of people in this predicament I’ve decided to devote a series of blogs to this topic – not the toxic part – the part about how to change. So let’s get started. What comes first?
1. Talk to your family and take a poll of their all time favorite foods. Find out what each person feels is the ideal meal and write it down.
2. Convert all the processed foods into their whole food equivalents. (Potato chips becomes sliced potatoes plus oil and salt.)
3. Have each person make an ideal menu for one day. Make this into a list of the basic ingredients – or have them do it if they are old enough.
4. Keep it simple!
Let me give you an example. I like spaghetti with garlic bread and salad. I find organic sauce on sale for $2.99 which is less than most of the other brands. Most pasta is just wheat: $1.00 a pound (remember less ingredients is better). I read the bread package and find that house made Italian and French breads have the fewest ingredients, pick the one with no canola oil at $1.99, and move on to the salad. The only hurtle in this meal is the packaged salad dressing. Make your own or get a plain olive oil vinaigrette. Also use butter with no hormones, or olive oil, with the garlic to spread on the bread. Dried garlic is better than the chopped preserved garlic.
Honestly, the most potentially toxic foods are the most processed and have the most ingredients. Think about your foods and what you are putting in your mouth. Go back to the basics. Most of our comfort foods are all basic anyway, so learn how to make them from scratch with whole foods and you will actually save money!
Most of all, start small. Each change is one step in the right direction, so just do it. You can move a mountain with a teaspoon, you just have to get a spoon and begin!
Posted by:
Kate
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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!
