LearningHerbs Blog

Components of a Healthy Diet

I found a great passage in Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine by: Dr. Ronald F. Schmid that feels like a wonderful starting point for creating a healthy diet. Here it is:

An example of a balanced regime would be 1/3 animal source food (fish and shellfish, meat, organs, eggs, raw milk and cheese), 1/3 raw greens and sprouts, 1/3 whole grains, other vegetables, and fruits. Grain and cooked vegetable consumption increases in winter as raw vegetable consumption decreases. In late spring, summer, and early fall fruit might be used in quantity; consumption of grains may decrease and even approach zero. Raw vegetable consumption too goes up in summer, when animal source foods are usually eaten less. (TFBM p. 102)

Schmid also says that “Eating large amounts of fish and shellfish may be one of the most beneficial changes one could make in the diet.” (TFBM p. 79) – optimal levels maybe about 9 ounces per day. (TFBM 81) I love seafood so this is an easy one for me, and I'm hoping to find a good source of quality seafood. In these times, I guess we also have to be conscious of heavy metal content in our seafood. I'll be exploring how to balance that.

I also believe that fermented foods are an important component to our diet, and am getting set up to experiment with home yogurt making and already make a batch of fermented pickles every year, as well as home-made saurkraut. John and I also eat miso soup most every day. We get (and love) dandelion/leek miso from the South River Miso Company. I have a book called wild fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz, so I'll blog more about this aspect of diet when I get to reading it.

I also believe that a daily herbal infusion is a good practice, and think of it as my replacement of a daily multi-vitamin since infusing herbs in water extracts their vitamins and minerals, and drinking them in the form of tea means their much more easily assimilated than vitamins in pill form. My kids each made their own infusion today too, and often they are up for drinking tea, so this can be a great practice for all members of the family.

Having these basic starting places is very helpful for me as I sift through the numerous resources on the subject of diet and nutrition. I hope it will be helpful for you as well.

Blessings,

Kimberly

The Future of Food

Last night, John and I watched a documentary movie called The Future of Food. It provides us with a glimpse into what's happenning with genetically modified food in this country and leaves the viewer speculating about the possibile implications for the future of food on our planet. In many ways it is scarier than any Steven King story, because it's documenting what's really happenning right now.

The film makes the important statement that we as consumers have tremendous power in deciding the future of food. Now is the time for us to educate ourselves and exercise our power by buying foods that we know are going to nourish us and our families. I highly recommend clicking on the link above and finding a local viewing of this movie.

We're in the news!

A local paper recently did a nice article on our family. You can check it out by clicking here...

Mothers' Wisdom

Part of my project for the year includes interviewing other mothers (and maybe fathers too) about how they have approached nutrition with their families. I've talked with two moms over the last couple of weeks and have loved getting their tips and suggestions.

One of the moms said that up until her children started going to school, she would simply have nutritous food available all day for them to snack on. Rather than having specific meal times, she would put out a plate with carrot sticks, apple slices and peanut butter for dipping, maybe some nuts and cheese sticks arranged in a way that would appeal to the children. She trusted their innate wisdom to choose the food their bodies needed on different days and at different times of the day.

I've been experimenting with this method with Hailey, since she eats very little at meal times, and does seem to like having her food left where she can get to it when she feels hungry. If she leaves it too long, though, Rowan comes home from class and gobbles up what's left on the tray. (This is fine with me, since it means he's getting healthy snacks.)

Much of this mom's thinking about nutrition has been informed by the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. One concept in particular stood out for me during our conversation: Taking in "food that our bodies don't need and can't use, actually does us harm. It's not simple for our bodies to just let go of unneeded food.

This led me to the thought that developing our ability to tune into our own inner wisdom, and choose food that our bodies really need becomes very important. (And, having a variety of good foods available for our children can be a step toward them developing that ability for themselves.)

The second mom I talked with had some great sources for quality foods that she shared with me. For quality meats she buys at Thundering Hooves. This is a fourth generation family farm and their animals are well-treated and pasture-fed. They have beef, lamb, turkey, pork, and sometimes chicken for sale. This mom added up what she spent on supermarket meat for her family over the course of a year and found that buying her meat once a year from Thundering Hooves (a side of beef and a lamb) and keeping it in her freezer actually saved her about $300.00, and the quality of the meat is oh so much better!

She also gave me instructions for making my own yogurt and gave me a source to buy a starter culture, danlac.com, a company suppying products for cheese making.

She passed on another source of raw goat milk too, Lucky Hook Farm. They will actually ship the milk to you UPS or Federal Express. Another resource for those of you interested in this whole question about raw milk is the Real Milk website, a project of the Weston Price Foundation.

Talking to these moms has reminded me that among us we have lots of wisdom and if we help each other and just take one step at a time, we can get to a place of being truly nourished and inspired by our diet!

What's going well?

Over the past couple of posts I've told you some of the challenges I'm facing as I try to feed my children well. This time, I feel like telling you some of the things that are going well, some of the choices I've made that I feel good about.

First and foremost, since Rowan was born 7 1/2 years ago, we've been getting our summer vegetables from a local CSA farm. The kids and I go to the farm together every week, and they help me harvest some of our food from the fields. This is part of our family's rhythm, and we love the farm fresh produce. I also love that my kids know where their food is coming from.

Now, our CSA runs most all year long. Though we can't go to the farm (due to flooding) in the winter, we still know that our vegetables are coming from good sources, and we love supporting Jubilee all year long.

We also get 1/8 of a grass-fed buffalo from eastern Washington every year. We freeze the cuts and feel good every time we eat this good quality meat.

We also shop at our local co-op and buy mostly organic products and we limit our sugar intake. (Usually one candy per day for the kids.)

I make my own soup stocks, using bones from organic chickens and nourishing herbs and vegetables.

I drink a daily herbal infusion, and the kids sometimes drink some as well.

We rely on herbs for nourishment and to help our bodies heal in times of sickness.

I cook most all of our food from scratch using whole foods, providing nourishing, seasonally appropriate dinners almost every day of the week.

I know about the benefits of fermentation and eating live foods, and am interested in bringing this aspect of good nutrition more and more into our lives.

We drink some raw milk every week, and for a while I was making soft cheese for our family and for a long time kept a keifer culture going in my fridge.

Some things, like the cheese making and the keifer culture, proved unsustainable during John's schooling, but now that things are settling down a bit for us I am interested in slowly reintegrating some of those healthy practices.

So, as I move through this journey (and through the journey of life in general) I think it's important to continually ask, "What is going well?"

Bursting Spring Bud Blessings,

Kimberly

Sugar

The other day, I took Rowan and Hailey with me to plant trees to help in a salmon restoration project at a local park. Snacks there included hot chocolate, muffins, and soda. And, somehow it worked out that I'd agreed to buy Rowan ice cream after the planting project. This was not one of my better parenting days...

My kids are both crazy for sugar. They love candy, and at home we limit it to one piece per day. Still I notice that most everywhere we go - tree planting, the bank, gymnastics class - the kids are offered sugary snacks.

In Traditional Foods are Your Best Medicine, Schmid says simply, "How white flour and sugar adversely affect the human body has been detailed in many excellent books." This is such a basic, obvious fact to him that he doesn't even bother going into it. We all know it, don't we? And yet, it's the sugary foods we consider treats, and culturally we shower these treats on our children - giving them sugar on holidays and birthdays, almost any "special occasion."

I can't help but think that our bodies must dread special occasions at least as much as we look forward to them.

Where does this intense love of sugar come from? Well, back in our hunter-gather days, sources of sweet foods must have been a rare treat - coming upon a bee hive while out gathering. Maybe we have retained that intense love for a kind of food that was once a rare treat, but now is just all too available.

So, how do we handle sugar consumption in our kids diets? Well, that's going to be one thread of this year's journey. Right now all I have are questions. Knowing it's bad for us, shouldn't we just eliminate it from our diet? But then will the kids feel deprived and binge on it later when they move away from home? Is a little okay, even healthy in some way, because sharing sugary treats together is such a celebratory social custom in our culture?

This question leads me back to one of my original beliefs, that nourishment is a mind, body, spirit experience. Perhaps true nourishment has less to do with the actual constituents within the food and more to do with the complete experience of consuming it.

Information Overload

Sometimes I find myself feeling kind of ashamed about how little I really know about proper nutrition. My most recent mantra is “I’m almost 40, for goodness sake.” Part of me really believes that I should have most everything figured out by the time I reach that milestone. It’s only a few months away now, so I think I better find a way to let go of that story or I’ll be in for some real self-created misery.

Really, though shouldn’t I know how to feed my children well by now? It seems like a pretty basic thing for a mom to have a good handle on.

I take comfort in realizing that in this age of information, we are surrounded by so much (often far too much) information. These days, I think I could find a study to back up just about any idea or thought. Healthy eating has been defined and redefined again and again year after year, until my head begins to swim, and I give up ever being able to really know anything.

So, there are the different food groups we learned about in grade school, right: Fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, and grains. But what proportions are really best? Do I trust the new food pyramid? Many such tools seem based more on whose pocket book is benefiting from the public believing them, so that doesn’t seem like much of a starting point.

Reading, Traditional Foods are Your Best Medicine, I begin to question the need for grains in our diet, but can I afford to feed a family of four with meat providing the bulk of our diet? Would that even be best?

My head can easily start swimming, and I long for simpler times when there were traditions about what foods were eaten and how they were gathered and prepared. Perhaps we wouldn’t have enjoyed such variety in our meals, but at least the traditions would leave us well nourished and knowing how to pass our knowledge along to our kids.

Well, that’s not my reality. So, this year is about learning. I’m sifting through the information, finding things that resonate for me, and piecing together a way that works for my children and myself.

Perhaps some of it will work for you as well.

Blessings,

Kimberly

A Mom's Dilemma

As I continue with my project on nutrition and feeding my kids well, I’ve been reflecting on my own situation and how very challenging this seeming simple act has become. And, I know that all of us, as parents, want to feed our children well.

I hope that this blog can help you find your own way with all the questions we face about food in these times.

I started reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma this month, and very much appreciated his clarity about this dilemma we are all facing. As omnivores we have a lot of options about what we take into our bodies. In modern times, we have a phenomenal number of choices available all year round. While this may be favorable in some ways, it also creates an overwhelming situation for many of us.

How do we sort through the choices and find food that will truly nourish us?

How do we know what our bodies need and what foods will best meet those needs?

Even if we can find answers to these questions, how do we prepare the food so that our children will actually eat it?

In a traditional culture like the ones studied in Traditional Foods are Your Best Medicine, there were fewer choices for parents. AND there were traditions about how foods were gathered and prepared which were based on many of years of experience.

It wasn’t until I read Pollan’s introduction that I fully realized how our modern abundance of food and information is truly contributing to my confusion and frustration as a mother wanting to nourish my family. Over the next few blog entries I hope to provide a picture for you about where I am on this learning journey and share some of the challenges I’m currently facing. Then, hopefully we can meet parent-to-parent, human-to-human, omnivore-to-omnivore, and move slowly forward in some new understandings together.

Blessings,

Kimberly

Got a sore throat?

For sore throats, try a cup of boiling water, 2 teaspoons of dried sage and a half teaspoon of sea salt.

Pour the water over your sage, steep for 10 minutes.

Strain, add salt....

Gargle the solution several times a day...

Hope this helps

-john

Biodynamic Composting

This last weekend I attended a workshop on Biodynamic Composting. It was a very hopeful and inspiring couple of days for me. Barbara Scott, MSc from the Aurora Farm Family Foundation taught the course. You can check out her website here.

I've always been curious about biodynamic farming and have been wanting to really get my compost going so that I can have great soil for my medicinal herb and edible flower gardens that I'm planning to put in as soon as they've finished digging up our yard to connect us to the city sewer. So, this workshop seemed perfect for me.

The most inspiring part about the whole experience for me was realizing that biodynamics offers us a method to create vibrant, healthy soil - a method that's tested and is effective. This feels to me like a central issue in these times. With our nation's soil poisoned with pesticides and fertilizers and depleated by monocropping and other modern farming practices, if we are to survive and thrive we are going to need to create healthy soil once more. For only from healthy soil can healthy plants emerge to feed us.

The farmer from our local CSA farm, Erick, was also at the workshop, and he has announced his intention to make his farm biodynamic. I'm so excited to watch his progress with this and to enjoy the wonderful vibrant vegetables that are sure to be the result of his transition.

Biodynamics is a system of farming developed by Rudolf Steiner. It brings spirit and folk wisdom about farming that was common before the industrial revolution together to create soil that's teaming with micro-organisims. The Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association has a good introductory website if you'd like to learn more.

At first the practices can seem a bit hokey or far fetched, but the results are enough to convince me to give this a try. I'll write more about my personal experiments with it and about Erick's work at Jubilee.

For now, I just want to highlight how important healthy soil is to the health of the plants and how very hopeful it is that there are effective ways of building healthy soil!

Blessings,

Kimberly