Nutritional guidance
Now’s the time to stock up for the coming fall and winter school days!
Let’s talk about how the immune system works. Through a series of steps called the immune response, the immune system attacks organisms and substances that invade body systems and cause disease. The immune system is made up of a network of cells, tissues, and organs that work together to protect the body. Some exposure to germs can help build a child’s immunity and protect them. Many microbes are actually essential to our health and moderate exposure to pathogenic organisms provides positive stress for our immune system the same way exercise helps strengthens our muscles and bones. Best to focus on building the immune system by following a few guidelines. Sleep is high on the priority list. 8-10 hours is not too much for active bodies. Limit the amount of sugar, white flour products and significantly processed foods. Regular exercise is necessary (1-2 hours a day) to combat sitting in school, doing homework or watching TV. Hand washing is important but use natural soaps, not the antibiotic wipes. The diet needs to be rich in fresh fruits and vegetables to help fight infections and build a healthy and strong immune system. In order to get kids to eat the best – allow them to help you choose meals/prepare and shop for items even if it’s 1X a week. Make sure there are all the colors of the rainbow in fruits and vegetables as much as possible. Have healthy snacks on hand when they get home – nuts, seeds, smoothies, bananas, - use what’s in season and cut down on costs. These are some supplements to keep on hand for those colds and possibly flu or coughs that pop up.
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This is a needed book review. The book is The Big FAT Surprise by Nina Teicholz. The author is an investigative journalist who has written for Gourmet magazine, The New Yorker and The New York Times and others.
I have read books debunking the whole "eat less fat in your diet" but this one is very in depth beginning from how the low fat diet was introduced to America to how all of us but especially women and children do not fare on this diet.. Everything we (the general population since the 1950's) know about dietary fat is wrong. I tell people all the time as a nutritionist - eat more fat - butter,olive oil, whole diary. It's good for you! This book proves beyond a shadow of a doubt why and more so "How" we got here in this SAD (standard american diet) situation. Nina T explains how and why the foods we have been denying ourselves are actually in truth good for us. And --- that they will help this now population in America of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. She proves with science that meat,cheese, whole milk and eggs can now be brought back into our diet with positive results. What's the culprit, then? Carbs!!!! They(white flour and sugar) have been killing us surely with cancer, heart problems, diabetes - all brought about through inflammation in the body. She also looks at the "high" cholesterol topic -two studies in Israel with 10,000 men and in Chicago with 2000 showed that the low fat diet did not affect blood cholesterol. Also, that cholesterol is balanced in our bodies through homeostasis (the property of a system in which variables are regulated so that internal conditions remain stable and relatively constant). Teicholz ends the book with the last chapter Why Saturated Fat is Good for You and explains how the Mediterranean diet is one, if not the best, diet to be on. Diet means these days to infer withholding but here it is used as the food of a particular culture. If you don't want to read through the 337 pages - read Chapters 3, 6, 7 and 10...and Happy FAT eating! One of the best things you can do for your family - is to always have a first aid kit ready and fully stocked.
Put it by the front door ready for your summer trips to the beach, mountains or just a quick hike. I recommend not leaving it in the car because of the heat affecting all of the products. Here is my go to list for help and care of the body. These are my top ten to have in the bag and ready to go but there are other items you could include as well. 1. Arnica - both pills and cream to rub on the body - 30X or 30 C is a good dose for most problems Arnica is used for trauma to the body (i.e. bike accidents, sprains, bruises, cuts, muscle strains,etc..) - use immediately. 2. Apis - another wonderful homeopathic remedy like arnica - for bee or wasp stings or really any bite or swelling from an insect! It is also great for itchy skin in animals and humans, including hives! 3. Nux Vomica - use for nausea (car sickness), tummy upsets, headache or insomnia. 4. Calendula cream - for skin rashes, burns - an alternative can be aloe vera gel or spray, especially to soothe sun burn. 5. Sun care cream or lotion - get one with the most natural ingredients - Aubrey or Badger or Green Goddess are good! 6. Band aids/Sterile gauze/scissors 7. Antiseptic cream containing - goldenseal,comfrey,calendula and possibly echinacea 8. Bug spray - natural with no DEET - try Quantum's Buzz Away 9. Poison Ivy soap - Marie's is one of the best 10. Lastly, some kind of packets to mix easily with water for dehydration such as Emergency C or Trace Minerals Always carry plenty of water (don't forget the dogs - :-), hats for protection and energy bars to keep your blood sugar balanced (homemade is best - try this Recipe Even if the following conventional foods are relatively safe for your health, some would argue that you should still buy organic in order to support the workers and protect the environments exposed to agricultural chemicals. That’s totally valid, and it’s part of the reason why I try to buy organic, but it’s not what I’m discussing here. It’s a topic for another time. Today is about maximizing the health of you and your family while cutting costs when and where you can.
So, what common, Primal staples can you buy conventional? Coconut- You won’t see coconut on any Clean 15 or Dirty Dozen lists anytime soon, because the general public has yet to catch on to its fatty, nutty delights. That said, we Primal people eat coconut. We sauté with coconut oil and slather it onto vegetables, sweet potatoes, hair, skin, and armpits. We drink and make curries with coconut milk and cream. We obsess over coconut butter, paying tribute to its glory with a greasy spoon. And when we’ve been running or training particularly hard – or it’s hot out – we often reach for the coconut water. We like our coconut, so it’s in our best interest to determine whether we should be buying organic or not. Luckily for us, it doesn’t look like organic coconut makes a big difference. Several studies have looked for pesticide residues in coconut products and come up virtually empty handed. There’s this 2008 study, which was unable to detect any pesticide residues in crude coconut oil. Poly-aromatic hydrocarbons, which are generated during the coconut flesh quick drying process and are carcinogenic, were detected in crude coconut oil but were removed in the refining process. Virgin unrefined coconut oil, then, may still contain these hydrocarbons, unless it’s wet-milled and processed without quick-drying the flesh. That goes for both organic and conventional coconut oil, to be clear. In another study, researchers examined 15 samples of coconut water using two different methods of pesticide detection and were unable to detect any of the 11 pesticides they were looking for. Coconut milk is also going to be as free from pesticides as any other coconut product. Since it’s made from fresh flesh, not the dried, heat-treated stuff, coconut milk should also be free of poly-aromatic hydrocarbons. Onions Onions don’t just make you cry for cutting them, they make pests weep at the thought of eating them. Onions are naturally resistant to pests, which is probably why just 0.3% of onions tested for chemical residue came up positive. Big Agra may cut corners and prioritize profit over quality or consumer health, but that just means they won’t fork out the money for chemicals if they don’t have to; they’re not comic book villains, dumping drums of noxious endocrine disruptors and carcinogens onto their crops to punish us. Not onion farmers, at least. So, feel free to go wild with conventional onions, because there is very little, if any, advantage to organic onions from a health perspective. Unlike many other fruits and vegetables, conventionally grown onions have the same level of polyphenols as organically grown onions. Avocado Avocados are another safe food that ends up with some of the lowest pesticide residues around. Maybe it’s the scaly skin and the way they just kinda “lurk” there up in tree tricking pests into thinking they’re up against alligators. Maybe it’s the fact that a bug got burned one too many times with a beautiful looking avocado that turned out to be stringy and brown on the inside. Maybe pests just hate waiting for an avocado to ripen (who doesn’t?) and give up. Actually, even though a somewhat significant amount of chemicals can be used on avocado orchards, they just don’t make it into the fatty, delicious flesh we crave and consume. Avocado farmers, both organic and conventional, do use extensive amounts of copper as a fungicide. Copper is an essential nutrient, but too much can be harmful. A single Florida avocado contains 0.9 mg, which is about 100% of the RDI, so don’t go around eating several a day. Honey The idea of organic honey is fantastic – who wouldn’t want to eat honey produced by bees who dined exclusively on organic, wild, untouched, pure flowers? I sure would. But the reality is that bees will be bees. They’re going to buzz around and get into trouble, and they’re not going to distinguish between organic and conventionally-grown plants. I suppose you could surround the bee with only organic plant life, but considering bees have an average range of five kilometers from the hive (and twice that when food is scarce), you’d have to control a lot of land to do it. Plus, you know how bees have those cute furry bodies? Yeah, that fur picks up all sorts of stuff from the air. Not only do you have to worry about non-organic pollen, you also have to contend with every non-organic airborne particle in the area. Buy local honey. Buy raw honey. Buy honey from someone who raised the bees and (at least kinda sorta) knows where they spend their time. But don’t shell out extra money for organic honey unless you happen to really like that particular honey. Those first two characteristics – “local” and “raw” – should come before organic. Asparagus I love asparagus, but even I balk at the astronomical price of organic asparagus. Luckily, it’s one of the cleanest vegetables around. When you read that residues from nine different pesticides were found on it, though, you might get a little worried until you look a little closer and realize that the most prevalent of the chemicals – methomyl – was only detected on 3.3% of samples tested. Organic might eliminate that small probability of pesticides showing up on your asparagus, but I don’t think it’s worth the price tag. Conventional should be just fine. If you’re really worried, domestic conventional (referring to the United States) is far better than imported conventional. Sweet Potato Sweet potatoes are a hardy bunch, and the hardy among us – the athletes, the lifters, the highly active – sometimes need a bit of dietary starch to fuel their efforts. Conventional sweet potatoes are a fine choice. Their leaves sometimes get eaten by bugs, but since that rarely affects the viability of the underground tubers that people actually eat, farmers generally don’t feel the need to protect the leaves with agrochemicals. However, sweet potatoes do sometimes have a problem with fungal growth after harvesting, and the tubers have been known to receive a quick dunk in a dicloran bath before being packed and shipped to curtail this. Dicloran (not to be confused with the flame retardant known as dichloran) is a fungicide that gets a “possible carcinogen” rating from “What’s on my food?” It’s also the only chemical to show up consistently in conventional sweet potatoes. On average, a kilogram of sweet potatoes contains 1.69 mg of dicloran. Based on toxicology studies that suggest a dicloran upper limit of 0.14 mg per kg of bodyweight, a 60 kilogram human can easily get away with consuming up to 8.4 mg of dicloran. Peel your sweet potatoes and you’ll get rid of even more. Farmed Bivalves I’ve mentioned this before in a previous post on farmed seafood, but farmed oysters, clams, and mussels are essentially “wild.” They’re not kept in ponds, nor are they given pesticide-rich soy and corn topped off with unsustainable fishmeal. Instead, they sit there attached to their moorings in actual ocean water acting like the filter-feeders they are. For all intents and purposes, the farmed bivalves you eat are identical to wild ones. As such, there would be little point to eating “organic” shellfish. In 2002 (PDF), Greenpeace did an exhaustive survey of all the chemicals used in aquaculture to find out whether consumers eating the end product had anything to worry about. And, while they found extensive usage of parasiticides, anaesthetics, spawning hormones, oxidants, disinfectants and herbicides in fish and shrimp farming, only one instance of chemical usage in bivalve farming was found: northwest US oyster farming sometimes used carbaryl, an organophosphate that inhibits acetylcholine esterase and increases the levels of acetylcholine in the brain (which kills parasites but can actually enhance human brain function, provided you eat or make enough choline). Organic bivalve farming standards are being unveiled, but, since “conventional” bivalve farming doesn’t use chemicals, those new standards won’t affect the amount of chemical residues that end up on your plate. Instead, they’ll be focused on managing sediment buildup from bivalve farming, with no impact on the actual nutrition of the animals. Regular old farmed bivalves are perfectly fine – and I recommend you eat oysters, mussels, and clams regularly. That’s what I’ve got, guys. I hope some of you are pleasantly surprised and feel a little more empowered to make educated decisions on whether to buy organic or not. Remember: you have to eat something, and conventional fruits, vegetables, and animals are way better than not eating fruits, vegetables and animals at all. Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/7-foods-you-dont-need-to-buy-organic/#ixzz35CYIPdrx Published on Organic Gardening (http://www.organicgardening.com) How to Make Natural Easter Egg Dye An Easter without dyed Easter eggs wouldn't be much fun at all. And why waste money on artificial Easter egg dye, especially when you've already grown your own natural Easter grass and made a basket from recycled containers? Natural egg dye is easy to make using berries, vegetables, and spices, and you can create just about any color you want, from pastels to deep hues. The results vary from batch to batch, which adds to the fun in my book. In some cases you can have your dye and eat it, too! We will be having pickled red cabbage some night soon, with mashed berries over ice cream for desert. Even if you don't eat the dye leftovers, you can toss them in the compost pile. At our farm, eggs come in creams, browns, olive, and even pale blue-green—right from the chickens—so we usually enjoy those as is (you can dye non-white eggs if you enjoy the antiqued shades you will get). For clear, bright colors you’ll want to use white eggs. Store-bought eggs are ready to hard-boil as soon as you get them home, but if you buy eggs directly from a farmer, you'll need to wait until they're a week old. Fresher eggs haven't absorbed enough air to make an air pocket inside, and the result will be almost impossible to peel. Prepping Your Eggs Most folks I know dye hard-boiled eggs, but you can also blow the stuffing out of raw eggs and dye the empty shells. To blow a raw egg, you need either a heavy pin (a corsage pin is good) or a long, sharp needle, and a plastic straw (the kind with a bend in it). Use the pin to poke a hole slightly larger then the end of the straw in one end of the egg, and carefully remove the bits of shell. Insert the pin through the hole and stir the contents to break them up a bit. Hold the hole end of the egg over a bowl, insert the straw into the hole and blow into the other end to force air into the shell. This will cause the yolk to come out the same hole you're blowing into, which is why it's important to make the initial hole bigger than your straw. Rinse the inside of the empty shell and let it dry. Make Your Dye Most natural dyes will take longer to work than synthetic dyes—sometimes overnight—so be sure to allow sufficient time to prepare the dye and dye the eggs. Many common foods and spices make great dyes. Here are a few to start with, along with the resulting color: Yellow onion skins = Yellow to dark orange Turmeric or cumin = Bright yellow Red beets = Pink to red Red onion skins = Pale purple to red Red cabbage = Blue (strange, but true) Spinach = Green Purple grape juice (use as is) = Lavender Coffee (use as is) = Tan to brown Chili powder = Orange Raspberries or blackberries = Pink to purple Yellow or green apple peels = Yellow-green To make the dye, take 4 cups of chopped or mashed fruits and veggies, or 4 Tablespoons of spice, and boil them in 4 cups of water (use less if you're working with watery produce, such as spinach) and 2 Tablespoons of white vinegar. Let that simmer for 30 minutes. Then, strain out the bits of fruits or vegetables, and the remaining liquid is your dye. Have fun trying other items you may have around: If it’s brightly colored and stains your cutting board or fingers, chances are good it will stain eggshells nicely too. If the eggs have soaked overnight and the color still isn’t intense enough, carefully transfer the dye and eggs to a small saucepan and gently simmer them for up to 30 minutes. Add Designs While solid-color eggs are attractive, you can make some of your eggs a bit fancier with wax. Using a crayon or an old candle, make designs on the eggs before soaking them in the dye. The waxed areas will remain undyed. You can also wrap rubber bands tightly around the egg to achieve the same effect. Naturally dyed eggs will have a matte finish. If you want them to shine, apply a few drops of olive or other vegetable oil and polish with a soft cloth. If you plan to eat your colored hard-boiled eggs, store them in the fridge and eat them within a week. If you want to use them as decorations at room temperature for more than an hour or two, put them in the compost when the holiday is over. Farm gal, library worker, and all-around spendthrift Jean Nick shares advice for green thrifty living every Thursday on Rodale.com. |
Herbs and ThingsHave tried most of what I write about in these articles. Archives
June 2018
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