This coming year I am embarking on a project to learn more about optimum nutrition – what people need to be healthy, optimum sources of nutritional needs, and particularly how to feed kids well and in a way that they will actually enjoy eating.
I am starting from the premise that eating well involves mind, body, and spirit. I will be reading several books on the subject of nutrition like Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine by: Dr. Ronald F. Schmid and Staying Healthy with the Seasons by: Elson M. Haas, M.D. I will also be interviewing various people with experience on this topic, and playing with changes in my family’s food purchasing, preparation, and eating habits.
This project is the final step in the completion of my three year herbal apprenticeship at RavenCroft Garden, and with its completion I will become a Community Centered Herbalist.
Throughout the year I will be putting together blog entries that synthesize what I’m learning, so that others who are interested can share in this journey with me.
I’ve begun my journey with the book Traditional Foods are Your Best Medicine by Dr. Ronald F. Schmid. This book is very readable and summarizes much of the information compiled in Weston Price’s book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, as well as a multitude of other studies and Schmid’s own experience working with patients. In it he explores the wisdom of traditional diets, looking at cultures like the Eskimos and the Swiss of the Loetsdchental Valley and how the traditional foods they consume impacts their health.
Now, Weston Price was a dentist who studied the impact of food on people’s teeth. The photos in this book are very telling. They show the wonderful teeth of people eating a traditional diet, and the impact on these people’s teeth when they left their native area and began eating the more processed foods that are commonly consumed in the US today.
The pictures were certainly enough to convince me that looking to traditional diets for some answers about nutrition is a good idea.
Another study that stuck in my mind was one studying proper bone development. The “study compared the skeletal structures and bone age in 150 children drinking four different types of milk – breast milk, raw certified milk, pasteurized milk, and canned milk. The only group with consistently excellent development of the bones and skeleton with normal bone age was the group drinking raw certified milk.” (p.40-41)
This reminded me about the importance of incorporating raw milk into my family’s diet. Coincidentally, in the same week I got an email from the Snoqualmie Valley Tilth mailing list about a farm, River Valley Ranch, just 15 minutes south of our home that was starting to sell certified raw cow and goat milk. We went to their open house and the kids loved the place. Rowan (7) made friends with the woman who runs the farm, and we have returned every week since to purchase a half-gallon of raw goat milk for our family. Hailey (2-1/2) loves visiting the animals, and both kids drink the milk and think of it as something precious for our bodies. Rowan wants to start the 4-H program and adopt a goat to show in the fair as soon as he is old enough.
This kind of a connection to a local farm and local food sources is definitely something we have been fostering for a while in our family. We get our vegetables from a local farm called Jubilee, purchasing a CSA (community supported agriculture) share there year round. In the summers the kids go to the farm with me to get our vegetables for the week. We also have a local Farmer’s Market here in Carnation and our kids look forward to the summers when we can walk to the market each week to buy bread from a local baker, and other wonderful treats.
When we’re eating food from these local sources I know my mind, body and spirit are all nourished, and as I reflect upon it, I see that it is often true for my children as well.
Still, Rowan will turn up his nose at a lot of the dinner dishes I create from those local vegetables. Yesterday in the car on the way to Rowan’s piano lessons, though, an interesting thing happened. He asked me about the book I was reading. I told him it was called Traditional Foods are Your Best Medicine, and he wanted to know more. I started telling him about some of the things I’ve been learning, and he was truly engaged. He said, “Wow, mom, you should have told me all this before. Now that I understand why I need to eat well, I’m going to eat up all of the things you make us for dinner!”
We’ll see how that actually plays out, but the conversation did serve as a reminder that educating our children is a crucial part of helping them to get the nutrition they need.
