Standard American Diet

As I have been online more recently, I have been reading more and more about food and different things in the Standard American diet that are supposed to be problems.  And, I’ve been doing more research on different aspects of foods and diets.  Some things seem clear.  Vegetables are good for you.  Fiber is good for you.  Too much of almost anything else is not good for you.

Macaroni and Cheese Crackers:American junk food

 

by greencolander on Flickr

But, from what I can tell I may have cut the wrong things from my husband’s diet.  Let me explain.  When I was in nursing school I was taught that diet, mainly saturated fats are bad for your heart.  And my husband’s grandparents had heart disease and high cholesterol.  What is frustrating to me now, is that this is a theory.  And it has been debated since its creation.  I never heard this until recently.  And I didn’t hear it through the medical community.  I found it through a blog.  

Luckily, I never bought into the whole margarine thing.  The whole idea of blowing hydrogen atoms into liquid oil to make it solid at room temperature just sounded like a problem.  In general, my theory is that God created us to digest our food, and if we do too much to modify our food it might become more difficult for the body to digest and eliminate the things we eat.  That is also why I like to understand the ingredient list on the foods I buy.

But, fat is generally what makes food taste good.  And if you eliminate all or most of the food, then you add sugar to make it taste good.  So, for years, I had fat free milk in my coffee with lots of sugar.  Come to find out that with a little cream, I don’t need any sugar at all.  And I now believe this is much healthier than fat free milk with sugar.  Putting the fat back in our diet is easy.  Getting rid of the sugar is much harder. 

So, between now and New Year’s, I am going to look at each of the following parts of our diet.  I think I will tell you what I can find in research, what traditional diets have done, and what my gut is telling me.  I obviously have no idea whether my gut is right or not.  But, since my gut did a better job with butter vs margarine 20 years ago, I think I’ll pay attention to it.  Topics you can expect to see are full fats (like cream, butter, whole milk, lard, tallow), fiber, probiotics, grains, anti-oxidants, and sweeteners.

In past years I have done an elimination diet in January.  I haven’t decided if I will do that this year.  It would have to be relatively mild because I will still be breastfeeding.

Yeast Culturing

Well, we had a great Thanksgiving.  We spent time with my parents, went to Great Wolf Lodge, ate a great meal, had friends over on Saturday and had no school for almost a week.  My schedule was completely off, but the house does not look half bad and most of the Christmas decorations are up.  I do not yet have the croup post for you.  And I do not have any videos, I got lucky and neither boy was sick the next night.  During the last week the baby got his six month shots, which included rotavirus.  That night he threw up all over me at Olive Garden.  Yuck!  And that is why the diaper bag should have a change of clothes for mom in addition to baby.  He only threw up once on Monday, so I think it was maybe a reaction to the rotavirus vaccine, but there really is no way to tell.  He had had a respiratory virus and little kids especially can vomit with a respiratory virus.  He had no fever and was acting happy the whole week. He even enjoyed sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving.

So now, it’s Monday.  School is back in.  Hubby is at work and I need to get back in the groove.  Saturday I started the San Francisco Sourdough yeast starter from Cultures for Health.  I had gotten it earlier, but I was pretty sure life would be too crazy over Thanksgiving to keep it alive.  Since I barely got on the computer to check on the blog, I think I made the right choice.  In the video on Cultures for Health, they advise to throw away part of your yeast culture with the third feeding so that you don’t have too much.  I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I was afraid I would mess up what I had left and not have back up.  I thought, I’ll just split it into too, and have an active one, a frozen one, and a fridge one that I feed once a week.  This is still my plan, but I am beginning to understand why I should have thrown some away.  Or why I might need to soon…I may run out of flour.  I took out 1 ¼ cups of the starter to make sourdough focaccia bread from Jeanne’s recipe at SimpleMath Bakery.  We will see how strong the starter is.  If it rises well, then I will make a loaf of sourdough bread.  And then do the whole fridge and freezer thing so I have back up when I kill my starter.

Arguments with myself

I argue with myself. Sometimes it feels like there are two of me.

One of me wants to be a physician with one or two kids in a big city with a big fancy house and a maid and nanny to go with it. This person likes fast and easy and agrees with traditional medicine. She wants a super successful husband with a nice car and fancy vacations. She can afford to buy local organic fruits and veggies, grass fed beef and free range eggs and chicken.

The other me wants to be a stay at home mom with at least six kids on a farm. She does not want someone else to clean her house or teach her kids. She homeschools, makes everything from scratch, grows most of it in her back yard. She has a dairy cow and chickens. She is into sustainable living. She works with her husband on the farm with the kids and that's all they need. She is suspicious of anything that hasn't been around for 200 years.

These two me's agree on few things. They both love Jesus. They both want to be healthy and do what's best for the family. But this looks different to each of them. One cares what the newest research says and the other wants to how things were done 50 or 100 years ago.

You may see me argue with myself on this blog about full fat dairy, raw milk, immunizations, the value of kids activities, etc, etc. And you can chime in with why you believe as you do. But please be respectful of both me's :)

I will never be able to be just one or the other. Somewhat because it is unlikely that I will be a rich physician or a farm wife any time soon. In this Jesus is showing me how to be content with the life He has for me. And right now with a tight budget and no farm, some of the choices I would like to make are not in reach.

Foods - Real and Unreal

Real Foods. I expect we all have an idea of what that means. I know I do. The stuff that is unprocessed and even my kids know all the things on the ingredient list. Common sense tells me these foods should be healthier than processed foods with unknown items in them. I have tried to buy organic foods when I could afford it and I have avoided margarine since I found out in college it was vegetable oil with extra hydrogen atoms blown into it. It seemed like our bodies might not know how to digest and eliminate foods that man created. Now, almost twenty years later I am beginning to hear of research that is indeed confirming what I have long suspected.

However, despite believing that the foods that God created for people to eat had to be better for people than the foods man created himself, for either time or money reasons I have not always fed myself or my family according to my beliefs. Bad Mom.

Now I am home and have more time to cook and less money to eat out. I have been learning to cook new things from scratch and started wondering how to research what my gut tells me. I have started by looking at other blogs for ideas and recipes.

I’ve learned to make chicken and beef broth, yogurt, egg noodles, bread and tortillas. I have even made bagels, cakes, pretzels, cinnamon rolls, croissants, graham crackers, and copy cat “wheat thins”.

I have started a compost pile.

And I tried to start carrots and lettuce in the garden. Twice. I have a lot of learning to do. And I plan to share my trials, failures, and successes here with you. Hopefully you will tell me what you are doing and trying and why so I can catch up with you.

I know there are a lot of blogs out there where others are sharing on these topics. But here are my favorites so far:

http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/
http://ourlifesimplified.com
http://smittenkitchen.com
http://www.choosingvoluntarysimplicity.com
http://gnowfglins.com/
http://www.littlenaturalcottage.com
http://www.oursimplefarm.com/
http://www.traditional-foods.com