Archive for Personal Health
Posted by:
Kate
| Comments
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
| Comments
[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.
Posted by:
Kate
| Comments
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!
