June 21, 2010
Traditional Nutritional Wisdom
The human body is a complex wonderful organism that can often heal itself of injuries and conditions. Healing, like sustained well-being does require the body’s nutritional needs to be met consistently.
Nutrition varies among peoples living in different parts of the world. The Eskimos in the high Arctic live on sea animals they catch and caribou they hunt. The Masai of Africa live on products from the cattle they tend including blood. Chinese and Japanese people use rice, vegetables, and a little meat and fish. The Mediterranean people’s food consists of a variety of vegetables, pasta, fruits, meats, and fish including olive oil. These traditional diets promote health.
Western diet, typically containing processed grains, foods with added sugar and fats, and large servings of meat, is associated with high cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Traditional diets that use plant and animal products from a natural and local sources do not cause the diseases becoming endemic in Western Civilization. When people from these groups begin to eat things like white flour and sugar, however, they begin to develop diseases associated with Western diet
Food Quality
Healthful foods do not have added ingredients like sugars, fats, preservatives, coloring, starches, selected vitamins, or hard-to-pronounce chemicals. Food producing animals, fowl, and plants live in conditions natural to them and are not given added antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides, or inappropriate foods. The meat from pasture-raised grass-fed has a ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids that is correct for humans, whereas grain-fed cattle meat does not. Eggs from chickens having access to fresh vegetation and small animals like snails and insects have yolks with a higher vitamin content indicated by their brighter yellow color. The foods consumed by animals affect the quality of the food products they provide. The quality of animal products that we consume affects our health.
Biological knowledge tells us that we are connected to other living things by food chains which are parts of larger food webs. Traces of toxic chemicals that cannot be broken down and excreted by an organism move through a food chain, concentrating in the tissues of the animals consuming the most meat (the top predators). That happened when the pesticide DDT got into the food chain: The first sign we noted of this was that fish eating and water-bird eating birds like the pelicans and peregrine falcons had eggshells too thin to protect reproduction. As no young could be raised, the populations of these top predators declined rapidly. The peregrine falcons were put on the endangered species list, and concerned environmentalists began captive breeding programs to prevent their extinction. Food additives that cannot be broken down during digestion do not go away; they stay in living tissues engendering problems, including disease.
Organic foods not only are grown without pesticides but often have improved quality, especially if they are consumed while fresh. After a winter of imported, store lettuce, I cut the first of my organic spring lettuce and could actually smell the difference! I can often tell that organic produce has a slightly more concentrated flavor. When plants are grown organically without high-nitrogen fertilizers, their cells can be filled with more concentrated nutritive materials with lower water content.
Fully ripened fruit tastes better, and certain varieties taste great. These facts are often lost to many of the younger generations. Who has noticed the difference between a California dried apricot and any others? Those of us who became used to the fabulous rich treat of a Royal Blenheim apricot cooked or dried can attest to quality affecting taste! Other types of apricots are grown commercially because they ripen at the same time and are of similar size. The Blenheims may be partly green on one side and rosy on the other and come in different sizes. On the grocery shelf, they look odd to buyers expecting uniform fruits– a uniformity obtained at the cost of quality of flavor and, often, nutritional value as well. The fortunate tomato lover is familiar with the expected taste of vine-ripened tomatoes. Our local supermarkets advertise “vine-ripened tomatoes” year round including a bit of the stem for verisimilitude. I do not experience a real vine-ripened taste, however, until it is local tomato season. There is a big difference between an aromatic Meyer lemon and other lemons. I hope we discover more of these wonderful tastes lost to us through the elevation of appearance, quantity, and convenience over the actual purpose of food: to nurture not only the body but our pleasure in eating.
The Food Movement
There are many different movements under the umbrella of the food movement. According to Michael Pollan in an article entitled “The Food Movement Rising” in the New York Review of Books (June 10, 2010), these movements include school lunch reform; the campaign for animal rights and welfare; the campaign against genetically modified crops; the rise of organic and locally produced food; efforts to combat obesity and type 2 diabetes; “food sovereignty” ( the claimed "right" of peoples to define their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems, in contrast to having food largely subject to international market forces); farm bill reform; food safety regulation; farmland preservation; promotion of urban agriculture; school gardens and cooking; farm worker rights; nutrition labeling; feedlot pollution; and the various efforts to regulate food ingredients and marketing in terms of indoctrinating younger generations.
Pollan goes on to say that the movement coalesces around the recognition that today’s food and farming economy is unsustainable both environmentally and economically. The current food system consumes about one-fifth of the total American use of fossil fuel: today’s farming relies on chemical fertilizer derived from petroleum, tractors for extensive plowing, and long-distance shipping of foods from grower to consumer. In contrast, organic farming actually sequesters large amounts of carbon in the soil by composting, giving the potential to help solve environmental problems, especially when long distance transport is diminished through local farmers serving consumers.
Today’s health care system is overwhelmed with chronic illnesses many of which are created by the Western diet of highly processed foods laden with added fats and sugars. It is estimated that three-quarters of US health care spending goes to treatment of chronic diseases, which are preventable and linked to diet.
There are people who think fast food works against family values and who regard the slow food movement as a way to bring back much more than good nutrition. Food and its preparation is a vehicle for enjoyment as well as a way to experience interaction within family and community. The process of cooking and eating together are foundations for a considerate society, as the kitchen may be the place where sharing, communication, consideration, collaboration, and creativity can be practiced. The new solution to the hurried and harried mother who turns to convenience food to feed her hungry family is to have everyone in the household participate in kitchen activities. This new solution involves the preparation of fresh vegetables, whole grains, meats raised in natural clean environments like grassy fields, and fish raised sustainably.
The food movement has the potential to affect our daily lives in positive ways while improving our health and the health of our environment. There are many opportunities for involvement depending on individual preferences. We all enjoy good food.
Books that may be of Interest
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver
Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore-Lappe
Food Rules, by Michael Pollan
Laurel’s Kitchen, by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
