Real Food Nutrition: Lesson 10, Final
Unless you are interested in nutrition, there's no need to read this post, even if you are my LJ Friend.
I am very lucky to live in a city with a consumer food cooperative
http://www.karmacoop.org
and to have been a member for 25 years. I also live near two excellent farmer's markets http://www.anarreshealth.ca/node/926 , and grow much of my own produce in the summer.
The most passionate and eloquent argument for why belonging to a food coop, shopping at a farmer's market and growing your own food is essential to reclaiming our food-right is articulated in Wendell Berry's essay, “The Pleasures of Eating.”
I enjoyed the rant about how the commercial food industry would chew the food and put it in your mouth if they could profit by it.
"The food industrialists have by now persuaded millions of consumers to prefer food that is already prepared. They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into our mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so. We may rest assured that they would be glad to find such a way. The ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her stomach."
The passage that touched me the most is at the end where he quotes the poet, William Carlos Williams:
There is nothing to eat,
seek it where you will,
but the body of the Lord.
The blessed plants
and the sea, yield it
to the imagination intact.
Yet...
Petra has whooping cough, , Xana';s been coughing and under the weather since the fall, and I've barely been able to eat comfortably since November.
Our challenge for 2011 is to eat to boost our immune systems!
I checked my allergy tests from years ago and found that I have severe intolerance to cow cheese, cow casein, cow albumin, goat cheese, plus trout, cod, haddock and tuna. I have moderate intolerances to butter, yoghurt, herring, mackerel, salmon, halibut, whitefish, shrimp, sardine and (darn it all), kiwi, strawberries, cranberries and blueberries. Plus many herbs. I’m mildly intolerant of staples like bananas, mint, eggs, sesame seeds, almonds and most meats and organs. I am tolerant of soy products, most nuts (hazelnut, walnut, cashew), beans (kidney, lentils, soy), melons, cold crop grains (barley, rye, oats, amaranth, millet, rice, buckwheat), and most green vegetables. What meat am I tolerant to? Chicken, and lobster for goodness sakes!
No wonder I am inclined to live on tofu and spicy, green veggies!
Messing with my diet has turned on all sorts of flashing lights with a crisis of conscience, feeling so ill after eating, wretching, constant flu-ish symptoms and a paralysis around what to prepare for my children. At least Xana is happy today eating puffed millet with almond milk.
I am now decanting the giant pot of turkey broth that I stewed for 20 hours. I am saving the fat and juice in jars in the fridge and going to save bottles of soup base. I am mildly intolerant to turkey, but much more intolerant of eggs and beef and other meats.
I have:
~ four jars of schmalz and gelled broth
~ one jug of meat and stuffing bits
~ two containers of soup broth with lots of meat
~ very rich bones for the compost heap
I am seeing a naturopath next month to sort my eating out with. I'm so glad I learned and thought through through a lot in the Real Food Nutrition course, but I need to learn more to resolve my inner and digestive turmoil! Right now I am getting through by taking Flor Essence Herbal Tea Blend "with mild bitter qualities".
and
Money for food is a priority
What I can afford with my usual food budget ($25-$40 a week) is to buy a bit of lunch meat for my housemate and get a free chicken carcass at the butcher's. Then I can make a chicken soup and stew every week.
We did do our Christmas shopping at Karma Food Coop, buying a happy turkey plus all the locally grown feast foods: fingerling potatoes, sweet potatos, heritage yellow and orange carotts, rutabaga, parsnip, home grown acorn squash, cranberries I made into sauce with natural sugar. We also bought our stocking stuffers there - $250 worth!
I used to feel so proud of myself as a mother for making home made breads and soy and rice milk. Now I am confused. Am I going to induce gluten intolerance in my children? Are they going to get neuro-toxic from BPA in the liners of store bought milks? Are they going to become gluten intolerant from breads? I have grain paralysis!
I give up on making almond milk, sadly. It makes me SOOOO sick I can’t eat for the rest of the day, and I can’t get it to stop separating, although I used guar gum, so my child’s daycare throws it out as spoiled. Maybe I can combine a walnut or hazelnut milk with soy and rice milk… The experiment will continue!
I am the thriftiest person I know. We 5 eat on my earnings of $80 per week - many months I spend half that. My friends joke that they want to be with me when the Apocalypse comes. When the power went out for 5 days here years ago, my house was full!
We don't eat packaged foods and I cook from scratch from tomato sauce to chick peas. I take a deep, deep breath around animal products, though. At my coop, meat and fish are packaged in plastic (which I boycott), we don't have freezer space and if all we humans ate meat daily, 90% of us would have to die, and that seems patently immoral a pattern to live. I draw the line today at soup bones.
So the part that hits home for me is the end:
"To accomplish anything in the present that will benefit us in the future, we must forgive our past. Act in the present so that you can gain in the future. We have all made mistakes in our past, mistakes that have lasting consequences. We were acting with a limited set of information. Now that we know better, we can act differently. The future is glorious.
~ Ann Sargeant in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, Fall 2008.
To be connected to food and its sources, and the people who nurture it (farmers) is blessed. So is growing food ourselves, witnessing the magick of seeds becoming plants becoming food, feeding us. We feel more human, more Created and in sync with our Earth.
And if our gut flora are in order, we are not mentally or emotionally ill!
(And if I get to bed, I might be well, too!)
The 5 most important things I learned from the Real Food Nutrition course:
1. I am very lucky to have a food coop, a green belt and a patch of land to grow food on. Most places in the world would allow me a supermarket or food shortages.
2. Healthy fats and oils are critical to health. I've been preaching essential fatty acids to my clients with hormone imbalances, and I know am better equipped to explain the whys and hows, specifically to avoid unnatural oils from sources you couldn't squish and get oil from - corn and soy in particular - but rather from oily nuts, seeds, tropical palms like coconut and animal sources.
3. A working computer with RAM and free time are essential to taking an online course. I need to organize my life so that it works. I can't stay in emergency mode, work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and stay up one whole night a week just to "catch up" and not alienate my family, be perpetually sick and ultimately die young. My computer is not working because I haven't gotten it together to get my daughter's and my computer over to our computer guy. I am Action Woman and if I prioritize something, I MAKE IT HAPPEN. Obviously, I am overwhelmed.
4. Bone broths are nourishing and cheap. This confirmation satisfied me deeply. It affirms indigenous knowledge. It confirms my poverty skills.
I learned that bones are $3 a pound at Grace Meat Market and FREE with purchase at European Meats in Kensington Market.
I learned that you MUST pre roast or cook the bones or you invoke the stench of death in your home. There's a fancy new word involved, too: the maillard reaction, in which flavour develops and rotting corpse smells and nightmares are avoided.
5. I need check out some shocking ideas, look into the sources, consider the matters from various angles, coordinate the new info with my existing info and figure out where I stand. Some burning questions:
What role do gut flora play in making neurotransmitters and hormones, and therefore what role does disease there play in mental disturbances?
Is soy really in practice an anti nutrient and hormone disruptor?
Do germs really change form, size and behaviour when their environment becomes ill? Is there really and unhealthy and healthy form of every germ? (Note to self: check out live blood microscopy)
Is a vegan diet necessarily deficient for all people? Is vitamine A necessary versus beta carotene? Is vitamine D necessary versus sunlight?
What are/is the nature /mechanism of the cytophyllactic, immune boosting and hormone balancing properties of the essential oils I use?
AND
How do I
~ heal myself and family
~ revise my general advice to clients (sleep, water, healthy fats and oils, essential oil use)
I am very lucky to live in a city with a consumer food cooperative
http://www.karmacoop.org
and to have been a member for 25 years. I also live near two excellent farmer's markets http://www.anarreshealth.ca/node/926 , and grow much of my own produce in the summer.
The most passionate and eloquent argument for why belonging to a food coop, shopping at a farmer's market and growing your own food is essential to reclaiming our food-right is articulated in Wendell Berry's essay, “The Pleasures of Eating.”
I enjoyed the rant about how the commercial food industry would chew the food and put it in your mouth if they could profit by it.
"The food industrialists have by now persuaded millions of consumers to prefer food that is already prepared. They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into our mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so. We may rest assured that they would be glad to find such a way. The ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her stomach."
The passage that touched me the most is at the end where he quotes the poet, William Carlos Williams:
There is nothing to eat,
seek it where you will,
but the body of the Lord.
The blessed plants
and the sea, yield it
to the imagination intact.
Yet...
Petra has whooping cough, , Xana';s been coughing and under the weather since the fall, and I've barely been able to eat comfortably since November.
Our challenge for 2011 is to eat to boost our immune systems!
I checked my allergy tests from years ago and found that I have severe intolerance to cow cheese, cow casein, cow albumin, goat cheese, plus trout, cod, haddock and tuna. I have moderate intolerances to butter, yoghurt, herring, mackerel, salmon, halibut, whitefish, shrimp, sardine and (darn it all), kiwi, strawberries, cranberries and blueberries. Plus many herbs. I’m mildly intolerant of staples like bananas, mint, eggs, sesame seeds, almonds and most meats and organs. I am tolerant of soy products, most nuts (hazelnut, walnut, cashew), beans (kidney, lentils, soy), melons, cold crop grains (barley, rye, oats, amaranth, millet, rice, buckwheat), and most green vegetables. What meat am I tolerant to? Chicken, and lobster for goodness sakes!
No wonder I am inclined to live on tofu and spicy, green veggies!
Messing with my diet has turned on all sorts of flashing lights with a crisis of conscience, feeling so ill after eating, wretching, constant flu-ish symptoms and a paralysis around what to prepare for my children. At least Xana is happy today eating puffed millet with almond milk.
I am now decanting the giant pot of turkey broth that I stewed for 20 hours. I am saving the fat and juice in jars in the fridge and going to save bottles of soup base. I am mildly intolerant to turkey, but much more intolerant of eggs and beef and other meats.
I have:
~ four jars of schmalz and gelled broth
~ one jug of meat and stuffing bits
~ two containers of soup broth with lots of meat
~ very rich bones for the compost heap
I am seeing a naturopath next month to sort my eating out with. I'm so glad I learned and thought through through a lot in the Real Food Nutrition course, but I need to learn more to resolve my inner and digestive turmoil! Right now I am getting through by taking Flor Essence Herbal Tea Blend "with mild bitter qualities".
and
Money for food is a priority
What I can afford with my usual food budget ($25-$40 a week) is to buy a bit of lunch meat for my housemate and get a free chicken carcass at the butcher's. Then I can make a chicken soup and stew every week.
We did do our Christmas shopping at Karma Food Coop, buying a happy turkey plus all the locally grown feast foods: fingerling potatoes, sweet potatos, heritage yellow and orange carotts, rutabaga, parsnip, home grown acorn squash, cranberries I made into sauce with natural sugar. We also bought our stocking stuffers there - $250 worth!
I used to feel so proud of myself as a mother for making home made breads and soy and rice milk. Now I am confused. Am I going to induce gluten intolerance in my children? Are they going to get neuro-toxic from BPA in the liners of store bought milks? Are they going to become gluten intolerant from breads? I have grain paralysis!
I give up on making almond milk, sadly. It makes me SOOOO sick I can’t eat for the rest of the day, and I can’t get it to stop separating, although I used guar gum, so my child’s daycare throws it out as spoiled. Maybe I can combine a walnut or hazelnut milk with soy and rice milk… The experiment will continue!
I am the thriftiest person I know. We 5 eat on my earnings of $80 per week - many months I spend half that. My friends joke that they want to be with me when the Apocalypse comes. When the power went out for 5 days here years ago, my house was full!
We don't eat packaged foods and I cook from scratch from tomato sauce to chick peas. I take a deep, deep breath around animal products, though. At my coop, meat and fish are packaged in plastic (which I boycott), we don't have freezer space and if all we humans ate meat daily, 90% of us would have to die, and that seems patently immoral a pattern to live. I draw the line today at soup bones.
So the part that hits home for me is the end:
"To accomplish anything in the present that will benefit us in the future, we must forgive our past. Act in the present so that you can gain in the future. We have all made mistakes in our past, mistakes that have lasting consequences. We were acting with a limited set of information. Now that we know better, we can act differently. The future is glorious.
~ Ann Sargeant in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, Fall 2008.
To be connected to food and its sources, and the people who nurture it (farmers) is blessed. So is growing food ourselves, witnessing the magick of seeds becoming plants becoming food, feeding us. We feel more human, more Created and in sync with our Earth.
And if our gut flora are in order, we are not mentally or emotionally ill!
(And if I get to bed, I might be well, too!)
The 5 most important things I learned from the Real Food Nutrition course:
1. I am very lucky to have a food coop, a green belt and a patch of land to grow food on. Most places in the world would allow me a supermarket or food shortages.
2. Healthy fats and oils are critical to health. I've been preaching essential fatty acids to my clients with hormone imbalances, and I know am better equipped to explain the whys and hows, specifically to avoid unnatural oils from sources you couldn't squish and get oil from - corn and soy in particular - but rather from oily nuts, seeds, tropical palms like coconut and animal sources.
3. A working computer with RAM and free time are essential to taking an online course. I need to organize my life so that it works. I can't stay in emergency mode, work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and stay up one whole night a week just to "catch up" and not alienate my family, be perpetually sick and ultimately die young. My computer is not working because I haven't gotten it together to get my daughter's and my computer over to our computer guy. I am Action Woman and if I prioritize something, I MAKE IT HAPPEN. Obviously, I am overwhelmed.
4. Bone broths are nourishing and cheap. This confirmation satisfied me deeply. It affirms indigenous knowledge. It confirms my poverty skills.
I learned that bones are $3 a pound at Grace Meat Market and FREE with purchase at European Meats in Kensington Market.
I learned that you MUST pre roast or cook the bones or you invoke the stench of death in your home. There's a fancy new word involved, too: the maillard reaction, in which flavour develops and rotting corpse smells and nightmares are avoided.
5. I need check out some shocking ideas, look into the sources, consider the matters from various angles, coordinate the new info with my existing info and figure out where I stand. Some burning questions:
What role do gut flora play in making neurotransmitters and hormones, and therefore what role does disease there play in mental disturbances?
Is soy really in practice an anti nutrient and hormone disruptor?
Do germs really change form, size and behaviour when their environment becomes ill? Is there really and unhealthy and healthy form of every germ? (Note to self: check out live blood microscopy)
Is a vegan diet necessarily deficient for all people? Is vitamine A necessary versus beta carotene? Is vitamine D necessary versus sunlight?
What are/is the nature /mechanism of the cytophyllactic, immune boosting and hormone balancing properties of the essential oils I use?
AND
How do I
~ heal myself and family
~ revise my general advice to clients (sleep, water, healthy fats and oils, essential oil use)