Getting stressed about eating healthy isn't healthy

I'm in the middle of making sage cupcakes right now, so I'm hoping to keep this short. But this has been on my mind for a bit now and I think I'm really starting to grasp it.

I'll start here: I love food. You may or may not have guessed this about me. Less goes onto this blog than I think goes on it, but I think about posting about food ALL the time.

I'll go on to say: I also like being healthy.  I like feeling good and strong and energetic. And since what I eat affects my health more than anything else I do, I therefore like eating healthy.

But I like eating yummy too. And when healthy and yummy coincide, that's the ultimate bomb-diggity, I tell you.

There's a strange myth out there that healthy food isn't yummy food. But I guess it depends on how you define healthy food and I'm thinking that it's because people get healthy food mixed up with "health food." There's actually a BIG difference between the two.

Health food is soy protein, "candy" vitamins, wheat grass juice, spirulina* and cardboard "fiber" cereal that most people I've met have independently nick-named "twigs and stones." Yuck.  Yes, I agree, health food is grody!

Healthy food, however. Ahh, the goodness... don't even get me started on this. Okay, too late.

Real butter, fresh fruit and vegetables, homemade whole wheat sourdough bread, homemade pierogies with homemade sauerkraut. Homemade mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles, oh oh oh. I want to go eat something.

You're seeing a theme here: homemade = good. And it's true.

Of course, just cause it's made at home doesn't actually mean its healthy, but it's no doubt better than not homemade counterparts. I will never claim that my homemade marshmallows are "healthy" but they certainly are yummier than the jet puffed kind...

And you see, this is generally my motivation when it comes to food. I love making good food at home with real ingredients and, since I don't add superfluous sugar, chemicals or food-colourings, I really thought I was doing well. I was happy and felt healthy due to all this good food.

But then I read the first 70 pages of Nourishing Traditions. And I'd recommend you do it too, but I warn you: you will get freaked out. 

My first feeling was fear, then despair. I thought I had been eating healthy.

But no, I hadn't been soaking my grains, the milk I was using to make my homemade yogurt was nasty and full of trouble, my eggs weren't free-range and therefore hardly beneficial and I may as well be inviting hardened arteries and many other deadly diseases into my home by buying canola oil. And the fact that I was using white sugar? Forget it.

Oh what, those vegetables you buy aren't organic? You are dead, sister, or as good as.

I was scared. I was depressed. I was in complete distress. I thought I had been doing everything right! I mean, yeah, we still ate sugary laden treats every now and then, but I generally reduced the sugar... That's not good enough? Any amount of white sugar in my diet is going to kill me, wow, I had no idea.

So then I started wildly making changes. I soaked my flours for bread, biscuits, muffins. If I couldn't figure out how to make it without soaking the flour first I didn't make it.  And if  I had a whim to make something but hadn't thought of soaking, or if I had forgotten? Well, it simply didn't happen. I also did my utmost to stop using sugar.

Unsweetened oatmeal? gag it down baby, it's healthy and I remembered to soak it the night before. Mushy, flat banana muffins. What? You don't like them? Well, too bad, they're healthy so EAT THEM.

My good, delicious and nurtured baking skills and cooking talents went bye-bye for a while as I attempted to make things HEALTHY.

John did not complain. (much) He did mention the banana muffins "weren't particularly good" and he added his own sugar to his oatmeal (much to my alarm.)

But when I started trying to convince him of all the more money we'd have to start spending so that our food would be healthy... Well, he laid down the law. (Sort of.)

I had to calm down. Yes, spending boatloads of money on "organic" produce did kind of seem like a gigantic leap. Since our decision to to start saving money to buy a house we've tightened our belts, so to speak, on spending. Not that we spent a lot before, but I had decided I'd try to keep our monthly food bills under $130 a month. Then suddenly, I wanted to buy raw milk, organic vegetables, free-range eggs. These things are considerably more pricy than what we normally bought. My own mind's voice of reason yelled at me to calm down, and John's calm voice of reason calmly told me to calm down.

I was getting stressed out and feeling bummed about my non-organic potatoes in my gnocchi and at breakfast, I was cringing as I ate battery-raised chicken eggs. But I was also gagging as I ate unsweetened oatmeal and I was longing for a rich chocolatey sugar laden BROWNIE.  I had to think of my health!

Then it occurred to me. What's the point of food if it doesn't taste good? Yeah, yeah, I'll choke down some wild-caught salmon if someone else is paying, but really? I don't like the taste of fish. But it's healthy, and if someone else is paying, then I'm gonna get me some omega-3s down, baby! But when everything is gross because it's "healthy"? Um, no. I can't do it.

After all, I had to think of my health. Enjoyment of food is so very important to me that, I'm much more willing to eat something that's a little sub-par of the perfect health food every now and then, if it's yummier.

So I never figured out how to soak flour and get a good cookie out of it. No way am I giving up cookies! Right, yes, limit cookies, yes, yes. But give up sugar all together? No.

So I've drawn the line. Some things are more delicious when it's healthier, like homemade bread being a trillion times tastier than store-bought bread. And when you add whole-wheaty goodness? Yes! Oh and sourdrough bread? My gosh, I'm drooling and it's way more nutritious than regular old bread. And I was in on sourdough way before Sally Fallon approved of it.

Raw milk? TOTALLY worth the price for it's goodness and it's entirely more yummy than pasteurized, homogenized milk. My husband agreed and we've made that step. But some times you really do just need a little bit of sugar in your porridge, and if I forgot to soak flour before dinner, well, the non-soaked biscuits ain't gonna kill me. And dang it, I'm going to enjoy this peanut-butter chocolate chip cookie even if it IS slowly killing me due to non-organic peanuts and the fact that chocolate has caffeine and it has WHITE death sugar in it.

Obviously, real butter is better than margarine because it tastes better. Also happens to be healthier. And olive oil really does taste better than canola, so even if it's a bit pricier, I'll switch to using it all the time instead of just when the taste will make a difference.

Plus, John is happier. And by default, I am too. A healthy marriage is also an important key to being healthy, you know?

And fermented foods are FANTASTIC and healthier. And guess what, Sally Fallon? I discovered and liked fermented foods before I read your book. So there. *raspberry*

Okay, but actually, her book does have valuable information and I say "read it if you dare." But pick and choose your battles, because you can't win them all. I've even read some things saying that a certain amount of phytates (what I'm trying to get rid of by soaking my flour) are actually beneficial. So whats up with that? And while I, personally, never drink soda and find it absolutely disgusting, I don't think I would go so far as to call it "the veritable drink of the devil" as she does. And I also prefer my cook books to let me choose my own flours and not "allow" unbleached white flour in certain recipes. You don't allow me anything, sister! I make my own choices.

I'm so empowered and free now. Now that I figured out that stressing out about eating healthy isn't healthy.

And now I'm going to finish making my sage cupcakes and I'm going to put brown butter frosting on top that's CHOCK FULL of SUGAR.

But don't worry, they're soaked and made with sourdough, so it's not too bad.

*I actually like spirulina, but don't tell anyone.

Sally Fallon is making me paranoid: a milk rant.

About two weeks ago, I used our inter-library loan system to check out Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. I had heard the book mentioned a few times by bloggers I liked so I thought I'd take a look. I figured it probably had a great selection of fermented food recipes and maybe some other interesting stuff.

Scary but fascinating

What I did not expect was to be scared out of my whits concerning nearly everything I eat on a regular basis. And we eat fairly healthy compared to the standard American diet. I make my own bread and every baked item we eat. I use whole wheat flour the majority of the time. I'm always reducing sugar in recipes if I can get away with it.

When shopping, I read labels and ingredients carefully. If a food item has more than ONE ingredient, I scrutinize it closely. The only product with high-fructose corn syrup that I allow into my house is ketchup (although, not anymore. I'll do a post on my homemade ketchup soon). If I can't pronounce an ingredient I put the item back on the shelf.

As I've mentioned before, I don't buy organic in general because of the cost. But we eat primarily vegetables and whole grains and if I'm going to buy meat I usually will splurge on that to make sure it's actually good (i.e hormone free). I do buy free-range eggs for when we eat eggs, but I still use the cheap store-brand ones for baking purposes. I even drink whole milk, because separating all the fat from milk just sounds nasty and wrong.

But even though I felt good about the fact that I love olive oil, real butter and whole milk, I soon became panicked. I used regular non-extra virgin olive oil for cooking (saving my good stuff for when I'm not going to be heating it up) but the way they process olives after they get the first press causes the resulting second pressed olive oil to be rancid and unhealthy. I learned that my butter was missing valuable nutrients because it came from cows who possibly never saw the light of day and have been fed soy-products (among other nasties). And not only was I putting undo stress on my digestive system because my milk is pasteurized, but I was also endangering my heart by the tiny fact that my milk is homogenized.

What the-!? I didn't even know what homogenizing was!

Turns out, it's when they blast the fat particles of milk into tiny pores so they stay suspended through out the milk instead of condensing at the top. Sounds clever, right? You don't have to shake your milk...or whatever it is they do when people drink real milk.

But because it changes the chemical make up of the milk - making the fat particles tiny, as opposed to the large fat molecules they used to be - the fat is no longer healthy. Now, rather than hanging in the gut and intestines and drawing in toxins to help your body clean out, the teeny, teeming fat molecules go into your blood stream and contribute to hardening of arteries.

See why I'm so scared?

Added to the fact that since my milk is from cows who are fed GMO soy, corn and other crap (like other cows and their waste, no kidding), crammed into tiny space, given hormones to produce far more milk than any cow should be able to - even if I were to get this milk raw, unpasteurized, non-homogenized, it still wouldn't be a beneficial food product.

And I've been drinking this stuff for a good five years now!

So what do I do? One thing is certain, I cannot not have milk in my house. John - a milk addict - would go on strike, riot, rampage, foam at the mouth....

Okay, I'm joking. He actually understood fairly well when I explained my terrors to him. The alternative, however, is finding a local farm and buying fresh raw milk. Um delicious, and I wish wish wish, I could. But it's so expensive. And one day I'd like to own my own milk cows and live off that, but that dream waits until we have some land.

At least turning my milk into yogurt arms it with beneficial bacteria and enzymes to promote healthy digestion. But it doesn't solve the homogenized problem. Even Stonyfield Farms, who I used to love and trust, started homogenizing their whole milk yogurt. It didn't occur to me to be mad about this until recently. In fact, I didn't even realize that the reason that their amazing, most-delicious-yogurt-on-the-face-of-the-planet cream top yogurt was non-homogenized until after it wasn't anymore. I just noticed that they stopped doing the cream top thing and started crying. (Well, not really.)

Then when I started making my own yogurt (and I've got a batch going right now) I thought, "I want to try to make that cream top kind. How did they do that??" so I looked it up. That's when I found out they started homogenizing it, much to the dismay of many people. But apparently it cuts their costs so they won't change (though I'm still going to write them to let them know my displeasure. You should too, if you care.) That said, I'll never buy anything from Stonyfield again. And that makes me sad because they're based in my state, a forty minute drive from my apartment, and I used to love them.

So local farmers it is. I asked John if we could start buying local raw milk and he said... Well actually we had a really long conversation about it and it involved many other things, but what it summed up to was "maybe."  The thought process went something like this: continue to buy gross cheap milk now and save enough money to buy a house quickly, buy our own cows (or goats), never spend a cent on milk again (other than upkeep costs) and drink the best milk we can imagine in the future. Or, buy expensive good milk now,  buy a house one day, and then buy cows (or goats) and cut costs on milk then by drinking our own (and possibly make money on it by selling some too.)

Course, let's be realistic here. I know nothing. Zilch, nada, zip, about cows. Or goats, for that matter. And increasing our food budget to pay five or six dollars per gallon of milk rather than $2.50, isn't going to set us back that much. Seriously.

I'm trying to think of it in this way (and convince John to as well): Local raw milk (hormone and antibotic free, but I'm not worried if they aren't certified organic because that certification is just dang ridiculous.) Is not actually expensive. It that mass produced, hormone filled, pasteurized, homogenized, cattle farm milk that's cheap. Way cheaper than milk should be. I should look at the price of that milk on the shelf and think "Okay, why's it so cheap? What's the catch here?" And well, now I know what the catch is.

Taking care of cows, even on a small scale, can be expensive (probably). But I want to support local farmers, small scale farms and real people making a living on growing real food.

It's the culmination of several things, this new attitude and revelation. I've always approved of small farms and eating as local as possible, but, except for when I grow and forage my own food, I've never really done it myself. Then I read The Omnivore's Dilemma and I realized just how bad the food industry really was. But I still didn't do anything about it. And now I'm reading Nourishing Traditions, and then one of my favourite bloggers wrote this article, and I felt very convicted.

I've known it all along.

It's time to make some changes. I've been slowly getting around to it with my fermented foods kick, which has given me a new appreciation for what I can do with what I normally buy. But I need to change what I buy, too. So maybe we'll be drinking (homemade) almond milk for awhile until I find some local milk. And then we'll start small. We'll just have to cut back on our milk intake for awhile. A gallon every two weeks instead of one a week, whatever, no big deal. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Because even though I'm just one person, I think I can make a difference. Even if it's just a tiny one