Practicing Insanity ~ One Mom’s Perspective

January 31, 2010
This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Quest for a Better Life

There are so many things that kids (and adults) like that are not exactly good for you. So, if you didn’t start out using healthy cooking habits, and then something happens that makes you realize that you have to change your eating habits, how do you do it? Food is such a fundamental part of life that any big changes are really hard to stick with, especially if your kids (or husband) are picky eaters!

The problem is that we have been so inundated with information from the media and what I call the ‘pop heath’ culture of America that it can be very confusing to try to eat healthy. For example, why is it that when you cut all of the salt and fat, and follow that elaborately crafted food pyramid, that all you want to do is go find something that is chock full of fat? The next thing you know, you find yourself coming out of the drive through with a super-sized double bacon cheeseburger and a giant chocolate malt with a huge pile of greasy fries, or sitting in the middle of a pile of chocolate wrappers, holding an empty giant-sized bag from Costco, thinking “Did I really eat all of those?” So the next day, you go on a rampage to get rid of all the junk food in your cupboards, and you replace them with all of those ‘healthy’ no fat, no sugar junk foods that you can find at your local heath food store. And then you find that you still manage to eat a whole bag all at once, and you feel all bloated and after a week you have gained at least 5 pounds. So you decide that you are really going to start being ‘good’ and you apply the stringent self discipline of a monk. After forgoing fat for a while, you may find that you itch all the time, and you start finding more of your hair in the brush, shower drain, laundry;  and your energy levels drop and you can’t seem to get enough sleep. You are yelling at your husband, your kids, your dog, AND inanimate objects, you’re having fits of road rage, and pulling even more of your hair out.

So then you try the no/low carb diet, and replace your ‘artery hardening’ butter with a margarine spread, start drinking low-fat skim milk instead of diet soda, and you lose the weight you gained eating diet snacks, but you find that you are having insatiable cravings for sugar.

The next step is to go to the doctor, because there really must be something seriously wrong with you. . . after all, the healthy diet just isn’t working and you are pretty sure they work for everyone else, because you saw the before and after pictures in Woman’s Day. He takes one look at your lab results and says, “You’re fine. Just get more exercise and lose some weight,” in a very condescending tone, (how hard can it really be?) and he looks at you like you are some kind of deranged hypochondriac wasting the time he could be spending with ‘real’ patients. You look at him and you are pretty sure he has never had a weight problem, or any other kind of real health problem in his life, so how can he possibly understand yours? And geez, they guy just gave you a breast exam, so you go home and ball your eyes out, and when your husband asks what the doctor said, you wail, “He said I was fine!”

Eventually you figure out that all of these popular health fads that you read about in Prevention or Woman’s Health don’t ever offer any real lasting diets that can offer you permanent solutions and that your doctor can’t and/or won’t do a single thing for you. They rarely know anything about nutrition other than what is in the food pyramid, and you already know everything about that because you learned about it every year throughout your entire public school career, starting with preschool, and then again in college health class.

So, do you give up? Or do you practice insanity by trying to do the same thing over and over and expect different results? Of course we all practice insanity . . . what else can we do?

There comes a point where we either accept that there is nothing we can do about it, and we endure our poor health (even though the doctor says we are perfectly fine) and we live life dragging our bodies from one day to the next, and we start taking medications for this that and the other because the doctor advised it, OR we do something different.

So, if there is nothing else that can be done, what can you do? WHAT IF THEY ARE ALL WRONG?

This is the question that you ask right before you experience paradigm shift.

You suddenly realize that all those diets you have read about that have nifty menus like 1 scrambled egg white, a half a piece of toast with a quarter teaspoon of buttery flavored canola spread, and 1/2 of a grapefruit for breakfast, with all of these new unfamiliar recipes, DO NOT WORK! (at least not for most people.) And they especially don’t work if you have a husband and kids. Unless you want to fix six meals a day instead of three.

Almost EVERYTHING that I thought I knew about healthy lifestyle was wrong, and I’ll tell you why. It is because all of the pop health propaganda is influenced either by big pharmaceutical companies or the food industry. These corporations only care about one thing, and that is NOT your health.

“So, what are you? Some kind of anti-capitalist conspiracy theorist now?” you may ask.

My answer to that is no, but that’s a whole other blog entry. Just think about this for a minute — and use some common sense. Big Pharma does not make any money if you are healthy, they only make money if you are sick. Food companies do not make money on natural, healthy foods, because they can’t sell them fast enough to prevent spoilage from cutting into their profits.

So, what can you do? Do you have to make drastic changes like becoming a raw vegan? My answer to that is also NO. In fact I don’t recommend that at all.

So what do I recommend? Well, take a seat because this is where it starts sounding really crazy. If you have just gotten off the merry go round, this is really going to twist your Twinkie. Stop eating margarine and  ‘heart healthy’ processed vegetable oils. Replace those with cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, organic coconut oil, butter, lard, and beef fat from healthy animals. Replace your white sandwich bread with organic stone ground whole wheat bread (watch for the fake brown bread with caramel coloring.)  Cut out processed foods, white flour, high fructose corn syrup, pasteurized milk products, and refined sugars. Stop buying cold breakfast cereal and start reading labels.

Now before you say “I thought that there weren’t going to be any drastic changes,” take a deep breath and read on.

One universal truth that our parents have taught us is that we are what we eat, and if you are going to be healthy, we need to eat healthy foods. Your grocery list will still look about the same as it did before, but you will change out your ingredients for higher quality ones. You MUST read labels. You have to switch from processed flour to whole grain flour. Buy another brand of peanut butter that doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils. Switch to whole grain pasta, buy fresh or frozen vegetables instead of canned ones. Buy fresh organic food whenever possible. Find out where your local farmers markets are – these are the best places to buy organic produce. Find a local dairy that sells fresh unprocessed raw milk.

“RAW MILK?! are you CRAZY?” You might say this, but remember that we have been lied to by the food industry. We have been taught to be afraid of wholesome natural foods. Be smart about it, sure. I mean don’t buy from a farm you have not visited in person and seen for yourself the condition and state of health that the cows are in. Ask the farmer what he feeds his animals. And, if you can’t handle the idea of raw dairy products, forgo dairy altogether. (Look for a future post to explain the benefits of raw milk and how to choose a good raw dairy.)

The best part about this is that for the most part, you can use your old recipes! You can have your comfort food, and maybe you won’t get skinny like Angelina Jolie, but you will start feeling better. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Upcoming Posts: Why Would Anyone Drink Raw Milk? and 5 Easy Changes for a Healthier Life

Posted in: Family Life, Health, Humor, Parenting, Whole Food – 2 Comments

Why Would Anyone Drink Raw Milk?

January 31, 2010
This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Quest for a Better Life

What are you nuts? Isn’t that pretty risky? I mean there are a lot of bacteria in milk and isn’t that dangerous? Wouldn’t it be irresponsible parenting to give your child something that could contain dangerous pathogens? That would be the typical reaction to the question “why would anyone drink raw milk?”

Well, I am going to tell you why. First of all, everything you eat could potentially have dangerous pathogens. You could seriously slip and fall in the bathtub and break your neck. That doesn’t make bathing inherently dangerous, and neither does the bacteria in milk make it dangerous. Our bodies are full of bacteria, and guess what? Not all of it is bad. our bodies need bacteria to digest food and complete a variety of essential tasks. We can’t lump all bacteria together–There are dangerous bacteria, and there essential bacteria. Raw milk contains essential bacteria.

It isn’t impossible for raw milk to contain dangerous bacteria, but pasteurized milk is actually responsible for more cases of food poisoning than raw milk. My daughter got food poisoning from pasteurized milk that she drank at her day care when she was 5. She was sick for a week, and we are very blessed because it could have been very serious — especially since I don’t have all of the knowledge about healing that I do now.

I was raised on raw milk. We had our own cow – her name was Jennifer, and she was a Jersey with big brown eyes. She let us ride her while my dad led her to get water. I remember leading her to the water trough myself with a rope attached to her halter and getting her into the milking stall and milking her into a bucket myself with a cloth over the top when I was probably seven or eight years old. She was part of our family and when we had to sell her when I was older, I remember crying.

We never got sick from her milk. I have 11 brothers and sisters, and none of us has ever had a serious fracture. We were never seriously ill and we rarely had cavities.

But when my parents divorced when I was 11 we had to give all of that up. And our food changed. I still never got really sick until after i had my first child and that is when I really started noticing that I wasn’t where I used to be. I didn’t really understand it though because when I was growing up, the homestead that we had was more out of necessity than for healthy living, so when we moved to a house without property and we no longer had the animals, there wasn’t really any discussion about the change in where the food came from, just that we were going to have to buy store milk.

My second child was born when I was 27. I knew I didn’t feel well, but it didn’t really click so much until he quit nursing and I never got my period, except for spotting every once and a while. I started having hot flashes and night sweats. I didn’t know what was wrong, and I was too young for menopause. I thought maybe I had a thyroid condition, because thyroid problems run in my family, and I had checked all of my symptoms and looked them up. But after going to the doctor, he told me I was normal. I didn’t feel normal at all. I never went back to the doctor, but I suffered with my symptoms because I couldn’t bear to go back for more humiliation. When I was 30 I decided enough was enough, and I started researching herbal remedies and nutrition. I started taking flax seed oil, and I regained my fertility (much to my surprise) and was pregnant with my third child. I read about Dr. Weston A. Price, and I had this unexplainable drive to look for raw milk.

I called dairies. They told me I was nuts. I called health food stores. They said if I found some to tell them, because they would really like to know. I finally called a goat farmer who told me about a family who had raw milk, but it wasn’t certified dairy so it was all hush hush. I picked up my first gallon from a little shed at the back of a farm. I put my money in a box and took the milk out of a cooler and I was pretty much sworn to secrecy. We got our milk that way for a couple of years, before we finally had a certified raw dairy open in our area (and by that I mean within an hour drive).

I noticed a big difference in my energy levels, and after a few months, I had regained my muscle tone. When Zee was 1 I discovered that he was severely lactose intolerant. I feel I was led by the spirit to find the milk when I did, because of his special needs. I only found out because the childcare I was taking him to at the time kept giving him milk (UGH!) and he would come home with horrible diarrhea.

“Did you give him milk?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? He had really bad diarrhea when I brought him home yesterday.”

“Let me check his card . . . ok, no, it doesn’t say he had milk.”

agghhhhh I wanted to run screaming from the building. “I brought milk for him to drink while he was here. Regular milk makes him sick.”

“Oh, well, we’ll make sure no one gives him any then.”

This happened a couple of times and then we didn’t go back. (This is a whole other story, please don’t judge me! I would never under normal conditions ever take my child to a day care, but life happens while making other plans . . .)

I now have two younger children, who didn’t get cavities and were never sick until this last year. We moved to an area where we were not near a raw milk dairy and I continued to get milk from a nearby farm on a tip from a friend, but their cow dried up and so we were left again without a source of milk. After a year, Zee ended up with 5 cavities, and Bee 1 serious cavity that I could see a black hole in her tooth. I was starting to notice that my teeth were very sensitive and I had a sore place on one of my eye teeth. I started searching for a raw milk source again.

After 1 week I noticed a difference in my teeth, and the one really sensitive spot is now gone. Why would I drink raw milk and give it to my children? Because I have seen first hand the difference it makes. But if you want stats and figures, you should read Top 10 Reasons to Drink Raw Milk by Cheeseslave. If I can’t convince you, maybe she can.

Posted in: Family Life, Health, Whole Food – 2 Comments

5 Easy Changes for a Healthier Life

January 31, 2010
This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Quest for a Better Life

1. Start eating real fat.

Stop buying into the low-fat lie and eat FAT! The thing about fat is not cutting it, but the types and quality of fats we eat. For example, raw butter from grass fed cows can actually help your LOSE weight. That’s right . . . lose. The cream on raw unprocessed milk helps build myelin which is the coating around nerves that is 70% fat. Our brains are made of fat, our cell membranes are made up of lipids, which are fats. Get over the popular media already! Our bodies NEED fat!

But we can’t just start scarfing down hotdogs and margarine, the fats we eat need to be high quality REAL fats. There is a difference between butter and margarine, and butter is NOT the bad guy. I know we have been told by doctors and scientists that margarine is more healthy. That is a lie. Here is a little experiment from bestandworst.com

Try this:
Leave a tub of margarine in your garage or a shaded area. Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things: no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something) It does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value. nothing will grow on it. Even micro organisms will not a find a home to grow because it is nearly plastic. Might as well melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast.

Have you ever seen mold on margarine? There is a reason for that — Margarine is one molecule away from being PLASTIC! My cat is a butter licker, and she will not touch margarine.

So how about those vegetable oils that have not been hydrogenated then? Like ‘heart healthy’ canola? Well, if you have read about how those oils are chemically extracted with industrial strength solvents, sure, you can believe they’re good for you if you like. I for one choose not to. And even if you use expeller pressed canola, consider the fact that these oils may be fine out of the bottle, but heating them as you do in cooking, causes the oil to change. You know how your pan gets this sticky coating on it that you have to scour off with a brillo pad? Try getting a brillo pad in your arteries, because that’s where you are going to need it the most. Olive oil is one of the only oils that is liquid at room temperature that can withstand heat enough to cook with it.

So, lets ditch those sissy fats, and get cooking with some REAL fat. Lard, suet, butter, and organic coconut oils. Yeah, I said lard. Let’s have some fried chicken! And for breakfast, how about some cracked wheat cereal slathered in butter, cream and raw honey? Mmmmm! Build your brain!

2. Switch to raw dairy products.

You may have noticed that I specifically stated RAW butter while talking about fats. Raw dairy is good for you. DO NOT skim the cream! Not only is it yummy, it’s good for you. Raw milk has vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and nutrients in it that are destroyed by heating. Vitamin B12, C, and D are destroyed by pasteurizing. Calcium from pasteurized milk cannot be absorbed, because the magnesium, which your body needs to be able to utilize calcium, is destroyed. Lactoferrin, which helps your body absorb iron, is destroyed by pasteurization.  Lactobacilli, which enhance mineral absorption, are destroyed.

“Pasteurization destroys all the enzymes in milk— in fact, the test for successful pasteurization is absence of enzymes. These enzymes help the body assimilate all bodybuilding factors, including calcium. That is why those who drink pasteurized milk may suffer, nevertheless, from osteoporosis.” — Sally Fallon-Morell, RealMilk.com

These enzymes also facilitate digestion of lactose, which is why people who are ‘lactose intolerant’ can usually drink raw milk. This is also why people with milk allergies and asthma can often find relief by drinking raw milk, and why many autistic people see a reduction in symptoms when using raw milk. People have used raw milk for thousands of years, and the human race has survived. It has only been recently in human history that milk has become ‘bad for you,’ but that couldn’t possibly correlate with the relatively new processes of pasteurization and homogenization. Nah . . . it’s gotta be something else . . .

3. Cut white processed flour.

This is one thing that the health industry does get right. Whole grains. In lip service at least. Because the whole grain label is slapped on everything from fluffy sugar coated cereals to fake brown bread. The best way to get REAL bread is to grind your flour and make your own, which is great if you are at home all the time, which I wish I could be 🙁  To get the most out of your grains, you should have a good grain mill, because you will get the most nutrition out of flour where the grain has been soaked and sprouted before grinding. If you can’t make your own flour, you can still soak your flour before using it to bake with.  Wheat comes in many varieties, and wheat is not the only grain! Get to know your flours. Bob’s Red Mill has a fantastic whole wheat pastry flour using a finely ground soft white spring wheat that makes awesome pie crusts! They also have spelt, rye, quinoa, oat, and a whole range of specialty organic stone ground flours. If you live in Oregon I am sooo jealous!

The lie here is that using whole grains means you have to sacrifice and give up that nice soft fluffy bread that you know and love. Just remember all of the many grains we have. The higher the gluten content in the flour, the better it will rise, (sorry to any celiacs 🙁 ) so use very fine grind soft white spring wheat for quick breads and use a nice hard red turkey winter wheat for baking yeast breads. Soak your flour overnight, and then beat the sponge (dough that has not had all of the flour added yet) with a good industrial strength mixer until it starts to get stringy. Then, only add enough flour so that the dough is still really sticky, and then butter your hands really good to handle it. That is how you get nice soft whole wheat bread 😉

If you don’t have time to bake, you need to become a super label reader, and make sure you know what all of those long words are on the bread bag, because the second best place to canned goods for hiding food additives is in baked goods. The fewer ingredients the better.

Always use whole grains and don’t listen to that fat bottomed little food pyramid guy that’s running after you whining “Hey, you only have to eat whole grains 80% of the time! C’mon don’t make my buddies Nabisco and General Mills mad at me!” Make the switch from white rice to brown rice, use whole steel cut rolled oats instead of quick oats, find recipes that use whole grains, or add whole grains to recipes you already have!

4. Eliminate refined sweeteners such as sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

If you want to see your body stack on the pounds, this is the way to go! Refined sugars not immediately used by the body for energy go straight to fat. And here we blamed fat for that! Well, when we eat sugar, our bodies create a bunch of insulin to stabilize the rise in blood sugar, and bam! It starts stacking up. Most people do not use the amount of energy in one day that would be necessary to burn all of the extra sugars that we eat. High fructose corn syrup is in almost everything. Read the labels! It is even in places you might not expect, like in processed meats. If you have food allergies, you have learned this already.

Raw sugars, like raw honey, contain minerals and enzymes, and are less likely to cause severe fluctuations in blood sugar and insulin levels. Our foods already have many natural sweeteners already built in. When you cut back on added sweeteners, or forgo them altogether, you will find that things like candy, or baked goods with a lot of sugar are now much sweeter than you like . . .  for recipes calling for sugar, you can often cut the amount of sugar called for in half without compromising the results.  Or you can substitute raw brown sugar, honey, or maple syrup. Some things you should know for substituting natural sweeteners in recipes:

“A cup of granulated sugar weighs 8 ounces. A cup of brown sugar weighs only 6. But a cup of maple syrup weighs 11 ounces and a cup of honey weighs 12. So if you were to substitute honey in a recipe that calls for brown sugar, you’d be adding twice the amount needed.

In addition, honey and maple syrup add moisture to a recipe, which can upset the texture of what you’re making. Honey adds acid to a recipe, which you might have to neutralize with the addition of a pinch of baking soda. And honey can cause baked foods to brown more quickly. Brown sugar, on the other hand, attracts moisture, so it will keep baked goods from drying out so quickly.”

  • In spite of their difference in weight, you can substitute raw brown sugar for granulated white on a 1 to 1 basis, and the most significant difference will be taste.
  • To use honey in place of sugar, use 7/8 cup for every cup of sugar, and reduce the liquid in the recipe by 3 tablespoons.
  • To use maple syrup in place of sugar in cooking, use 3/4 cup for every 1 cup of sugar.
  • To use maple syrup in place of a cup of sugar in baking, use 3/4 cup, but decrease the total amount of liquid in the recipe by about 3 tablespoons for each cup of syrup you use.

(Taken From O-Chef)

5.  Switch from canned vegetables to fresh locally grown organic produce.

Canned vegetables are cooked to death, have a LOT of added salt, and have lost most if not all of their nutrients. If you have a freezer (which I highly recommend) switch to frozen vegetables. Of course fresh is best, but I find I have a lot of waste if I buy too much at once, and it is really hard to find time to go shopping as often as you need to to keep fresh vegetables on the table. That doesn’t mean frozen are best. . . Definitely the ideal is fresh, and the best way to have fresh veggies is to have your own garden. This gives you fresh vegetables as long as they are in the ground without the worries of spoilage. Of course some get to big, overripe, etc. A few hens running around will take care of that – and the side effects? Fresh eggs! Just make sure that you fence in your garden, because a few hens can decimate an entire garden in less than a day. You can read more about chickens in my backyard chickens series. Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew is the best for getting high organic yields out of very little space.

Another way to find less expensive fresh organic produce is to check your local classified adds. I have found potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, green beans, free fruit (u-pick in someones back yard) berries, and many other things in my classified ads!

These are just the basics. Some other fundamental switches would be to change your iodized table salt for unrefined sea salt, switch your meats to natural free range grass-fed beef, free range chicken, wild caught fish, and wild game, use water filtered with a reverse osmosis water filter, and quit using fluoridated toothpaste that contains glycerin. Using raw unprocessed dairy and natural foods will also eventually free you from the need for chemical underarm antiperspirants. (Yay!)

I’m sure that there is so much more that I could add, but for those of you just starting on this journey, this could possibly be really overwhelming.

So, God speed in your quest and start enjoying your new found health – You can use that extra energy to kick the big five (General Mills, Nabisco, Oscar Meyer, Meadow Gold, and Monsanto) a swift one in the rear!

Posted in: Family Life, Health, Whole Food – 6 Comments