My kids have all the usual fun trick or treating. I wouldn’t deny them that. Then, when they get home, I bribe them. Twenty bucks buys a big bag of sugar from each kid, which then gets upended into the garbage in the garage or handed out en masse to those scary teenagers who show up after 9 p.m. Best money you’ll ever spend. And the kids are happy when they get to buy fun stuff at WalMart the next day, stuff that lasts longer than a sugar rush.
My friend Kari was laughing the other day about the crazy accidental beginnings of GreenSmoothieGirl. I’d forgotten all about it. It was a little like that old commercial of the girl with the chocolate bar running smack into the guy with the jar of peanut butter—WHAM! A star is born.
I was sitting out on the front porch getting some sun on a summer morning. I’d just put my new concoction in the blender, a primeval ancestor of the much-improved-nutritionally green smoothie I now avidly promote. It was canned pineapple juice with home-sprouted alfalfa seed and lots of spinach in the blender. I made this thing every day for years, after this auspicious day.
As I was drinking it, my one-year old, then-only child, Kincade, tottered over, peered into the glass, and said, “Whazzat?” In a rare stroke of genius, I replied, “Ummm . . . ice cream?” He, of course, wanted some, and I decided to make a play for a long-term, scarcity-oriented nutritional strategy: “Nope. It’s just for Mom.”
I made a great show of enjoying it and finally relented as he longingly looked at me—and the glass of green stuff—with big, baby doe eyes under his crazy orangutan hair.
I gave him a little taste in a miserly, rationing fashion. He loved it, and that was that—liquified spinach became a regular feature at our house until I discovered my green smoothie template recipe that allows for vastly more variety, more plant fiber, and no nutritionally marginal canned pineapple juice. Until its obsolescence, we called this whole food green drink Green Cream for 10 years, in honor of Baby Kincade falling for my sucker line.
I heard a lecture by a registered nutritionist this weekend. My experience in the past with dieticians has been that they are all “party line,” totally under the influence of the meat- and dairy-industry-controlled curriculum. (Those with dietetics degrees are the ones designing the menus in hospitals and schools, remember? Enough said.)
The main thrust of her lecture was to tell mothers to make sure their children get LOTS of cow milk. She stated that cow milk is a better calcium source than greens, so if you have to, get your kids to drink “flavored milk” (a euphemism for antibiotic- and hormone-enriched dairy products full of sugar and chemical additives). I felt sad for the moms listening to the lecture who were unaware that this dietician works for a government agency directly funded by the dairy industry. And sad for the dietician herself, who doesn’t know any better. (In fairness, she did say breast feeding is best, so that’s good.)
About 10 years ago, I read a review of a study from the University of Washington. It was buried as a tiny article deep in the third section (if it had been funded by the megabucks dairy industry, it would have been front page). It said that if you want calcium, you won’t get it from dairy [though that's an excellent, bioavailable source of calcium if you're a baby cow, BTW---this is me talking, not the study]. The study found that people are not absorbing the calcium and magnesium in milk, whereas they do absorb what is found in LEAFY GREENS. It’s not about how many milligrams of calcium are in the food—it’s all about BIOAVAILABILITY.
We should take a page from our very close cousins, the primates. We share 99.4% of our DNA with them. Ever heard of a gorilla with osteoporosis? If you did, would you send him to obtain the milk of another animal and drink it by the gallon? That’s what OUR dieticians tell us to do. No, gorillas are some of the strongest animals on the planet, and what they eat, all day long, is a wide variety of greens. Their bodies gather the amino acids in those natural plant foods to assemble PLENTY of protein for impressive muscle mass. (You’ve seen King Kong—oh, wait—I guess that was fiction.)
We’re the highest dairy-consuming country on the planet, by more than double. And we also have the highest rate of osteoporosis, by a mile. You can do the math. I wish dietetics programs and medical schools would throw out all the biased and politically influenced curriculum and seek out the truth.
So I am researching for my 12 Nutrition Myths Debunked, and I did an experiment just now that is really quite astonishing.
I went to my BlendTec with a list of fruit and vegetable serving portions according to the USRDA. I made myself a green smoothie for tomorrow with 11 servings according those portions—that’s right, 11 SERVINGS, of fruits and vegetables. You are imagining a giant blenderful of stuff.
Nope. It yielded THREE CUPS of smoothie—that’s one cup less than I drink every single day—I would still be hungry if that’s all I ate. And consider that’s just ONE meal (I eat three, FYI), and I usually have some flax crackers, sprouted-wheat tortilla with almond butter, a quick raw-food bar, or manna bread, with my smoothie for lunch. Also consider that 3/4 cup of that smoothie is water!
So yes, your government says that 5 servings of fruits and veggies a day is enough, and I am telling you that 11 servings, liquified, make a meal that liquifies to just over ONE PINT (without the water). That would not satisfy even my 7-yr. old for more than an hour or so.
Here’s a quote from the 5-a-day website: “These portion sizes are for adults. Children under five should also eat at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables a day, but the sizes may be smaller.” My goodness. How much smaller can they get? A portion of blackberries is 10 berries, and a portion of cucumber is 2 inches!
Apparently, according to the portion sizes, my kids and I eat 20-25 fruits/vegs a day. I really want to say that the USRDA serving sizes and nutritional recommendations are pathetic. In fact, yes, I will say that. They are dumbing down nutrition curriculum and standards because only a small percentage of Americans are getting even 5 servings (I wonder how many that would be if they quit counting french fries, which should happen *yesterday*). So, friends, they’re telling you need MUCH lower quantities of fruits and veggies than you really do—lower than any truly healthy population on earth eats—because they don’t want to HURT YOUR FEELINGS. They don’t want anything to be hard for you.
Green smoothies are EASY. This is what’s in my too-small green smoothie that I just made and will have to add to, tomorrow, to survive my day at work:
3 servings of 10 blackberries, 1 serving of a medium apple, 1 serving of a medium banana, 5 servings of one cereal bowl of raw spinach, and 1 serving of three celery sticks. A pinch of stevia, 3/4 cup water, and VOILA! Yummy. Sixty seconds in the BlendTec and I’m outta there. Do not try this with an Oster blender or some old thing you got at WalMart unless “CHUNKY green smoothie” sounds appealing.
So this morning at the gym, the trainer was trawling for customers and asked if I wanted a free body comp analysis. He entered my height (5′ 8 1/2″) and age (40) and weight (133 today, usually closer to 130). After the analysis, he informed me that I am BELOW the minimum acceptable body fat range. Anyone who knows me or has even seen my photo can see that I am a healthy weight—I’m a size 6/8, and I’m pretty sure no one would say I am too thin. (My husband informed me that I was too thin on two occasions in the past 20 years, when due to stress my weight dipped into the teens—he prefers women to have curves!)
Yet the LOWEST healthy range (“very lean”) on the body mass index says women should be 15%-19% body fat. I am 14.8%. They’d still be calling me “lean” at 24% body fat!
This weekend I have been researching and writing my nutrition manifesto, debunking 12 common nutrition myths (coming soon). Ironically, I’ve been writing about how the weight charts mislead people, because they are geared towards averages, and they are meant to appease America in its current state—the charts have nothing to do with health. Other first-world countries where people are healthier and thinner have different charts that reflect much lower weights. I know this will be a strong as well as politically incorrect statement, but the weight charts are worthless.
Dr. John McDougall (who isn’t right about everything and pioneered the “low fat” myth I’m also writing about, but who is right about many things) says an average, healthy weight for someone my height is 130. According to normal Body Mass Index chart endorsed by our government, I could be 35 lbs. heavier without even being “overweight.” That would be another 35 lbs. of fat, and I’d be a size 14! The average size for women in America is a size 12, and weight charts have shifted accordingly. Keep in mind that my size (6/8) is only slightly thinner than what the national average was 50 years ago.
Even more annoyingly, I then went to my appt. with the Red Cross today and was rejected for having a hematocrit of 36 (I got rejected a few months ago, too). A normal female hematocrit (red blood cell count relative to white blood cells) is 36-44 (another chart says 38-46), and new data says that having higher numbers in that range indicate health risks, and low numbers in that range are preferable. I’ve been borderline low all my life and used to get routinely rejected in college. By the Red Cross, I mean. ;-)
My theory is that since people who are dehydrated have artifically HIGH hematocrit, my habit of drinking 1/2 a gallon of water by 1 p.m. has artificially decreased mine. I’m going to go again to give blood next week, having drunk very little water. Which is stupid, of course, but I bet I test just fine and they take my blood.
I called the Red Cross to try to call their attention to the fact that new data says it’s healthy to be at the low end of the range. The lady still didn’t want my blood and told me to go home AND EAT MORE SPINACH! (I’m still laughing . . .)
Disclaimer: I acknowledge that eating disorders are real, and that there is definitely such a thing as “too thin.” (I’m just not it.) I also acknowledge that a perfectly healthy person without pockets of fat on the body could weigh more than 130 at 5′ 8 1/2,” for instance—many factors play into that number. Just don’t place much stock in the current charts.
It’s going to freeze any night now, and I’m leaving town, so we undertook a family project today to bring in most of the remaining garden crops. Since I quit putting up sugar-added, processed food in jars years ago, I’ve learned new ideas to preserve nutritional value in my garden’s yield. Here’s how the garden will “keep on giving” its raw food in the next few months, based on what we did today:
1. We made sauerkraut, one of Libby’s favorite foods. It’s raw AND preserved for the winter, and it provides good lactic acid and healthy cultures your body needs to aid digestion, when used as a condiment or side dish at dinner. Dennis cut all the last heads of cabbage out, and shredded them in the food processor. I banged on the shredded cabbage with a metal ladle for a while (couldn’t find anything better to use) to release the juices. I then packed it tightly in quart jars. Then I added to 12 cups of water (for my six quarts), 6 Tbsp. Original Himalayan Crystal Salt, 6 Tbsp. whey (from my kefir), 4 Tbsp. whole mustard seed, and 1 Tbsp. cumin (those last two ingredients are optional, and if you don’t have whey, just double the salt). I stirred it well and poured it over each of the 6 quarts of cabbage until covered. I put on lids tightly (used ones are fine—they don’t need to seal) and put them in my pantry for a few days. I will transfer them to the basement cold storage next week (but anywhere dark is fine). It will keep all year.
2. Emma and Cade cut down all the chard, washed it, cut it in thirds, bagged it in gallon freezer bags, and put it in the freezer. It’s many weeks’ worth of green smoothie ingredients. You can’t preserve greens for other uses, but who cares if wilted, formerly frozen greens go in your green smoothie where it gets all blended up anyway.
3. I made 3/4 gallon of nutritious pesto sauce with spinach and basil from the garden (I would HATE to see the basil go to waste—see my recipe collection). I put enough for individual family dinners in containers and stuck them in the freezer.
4. The kids brought in all the bell peppers—red, yellow, and green—as well as jalapenos and Anaheims, and I chopped and bagged them in sandwich bags to add to big pots of vegetarian chili (see my recipe collection) this winter.
5. Cade pulled most of the beets—some as big as softballs!—and washed/bagged/froze the greens for use in green smoothies. I peeled the beets and froze chunks for my Hot-Pink Breakfast Smoothie and Beet Cake (see my recipe collection). I think I have enough to last the year in my freezer.
6. Tennyson and Libby picked all the green tomatoes and laid them on newspapers in the basement. Once we had fresh tomatoes all the way until Christmas using this method of slow-ripening green tomatoes! I chopped some tomatoes and froze them in small bags in the freezer, too, for soups and chili when it’s cold.
7. I shredded all the zucchini (I hate to see it go to waste—those plants are SO prolific). We put them in the freezer in quart-size bags, to make zucchini bread and zucchini fritters (recipes in my Sept. blog) and zucchini pitas (in my recipe collection).
I didn’t have much corn this year, but if I did, I’d cut corn off the cobs and freeze the corn for our favorite black bean/corn/red pepper salad (in my recipe collection). I planted some chard and spinach a few weeks ago, and though it’s much too small to harvest now, it will survive the frost and just explode in early spring! At that same time, I’ll be planting, so I have plenty of greens from April through June—and chard will take us all through the summer and fall (it doesn’t bolt like spinach).
My husband is building me some winter grow boxes so I can experiment with maiche and other cold-weather greens growing throughout the snowy, cold winter.
So it was a productive day—the kids learning a work ethic and participating in “the law of the harvest.” And we have lots of food for the winter.
In case you’ve been thinking that medical science is on a linear path to progress . . .
The L.A. Times says reports of “adverse events” are soaring as Americans take more and more pills: in ’05, nearly 90,000 bad drug reactions were reported, with over 15,000 resulting in death. These numbers have tripled in less than 10 years—and what about the adverse reactions not reported or not even known?
Ninety percent of reactions are attributed to just 20 percent of the drugs, and they include painkillers, estrogens, insulin, anti-clotting and anti-arthritis meds, and antidepressants. Painkillers comprise five of the six that KILL most often, including acetaminophen—that’s right, Tylenol.
Thomas J. Moore of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices says, “The clear finding is that we are losing ground in terms of drug safety.”
This is just another pebble in the mountain of compelling evidence that we ought to take responsibility for our health, change our lifestyles, and consider nutrition and alternatives to drugs to address health concerns.