Eating Healthy

Define "healthy".

I grew up in a farming family.  My mother was a farm kid.  Her family, no matter the economic conditions of the times, always had food.  They had a huge garden for produce, plus chickens in the yard and pigs to be slaughtered and cows for milk and meat.
My father was raised in poverty.  He had few opportunities for good food other than what he could shoot or grow on limited resources.  I swear that the reason he was attracted to my mother in college was because her family had FOOD!  (In case you are wondering how my father could go to college as a dirt-poor youth, he went on an athletic scholarship because, by his senior year of high school, he was declared one of the top 25 student athletes in the state of Illinois.)

Except for the heaviest of the Navy days when we traveled a bunch, if there was ever a chance to settle down, our back yard had a garden.  Period.  Dad always helped my grandparents with their garden, then in later years, when my parents retired to my grandparents' farm, there was a huge garden.  Dad had a green thumb and relished all of the fresh produce that came from it:  lettuce (several kinds), Swiss chard, kohlrabi, beets, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, eggplant, asparagus, tomatoes, acorn squash, zucchini squash, hubbard squash, onions, peas, green beans, sweet corn, strawberries, raspberries...and just beyond the garden, apples.  (Did I miss anything??)  We never for a moment worried about the healthy part.  There were many, many meals on the homestead when the only thing on the table that wasn't home grown was the meat.

That was then; this is now.  I always had a garden as a younger adult, no matter where my then-husband and I lived.  Unfortunately, my divorce put me in a situation where a garden was no longer feasible.  I am now subject to the dietary buzz words and trends of the day because I have to buy from grocery stores.  Here are some of those:

Gluten free.  Many, many products now tout "gluten free" on their packaging.  Living gluten free is only helpful to people who have Celiac Disease--slightly less than 1% of the American population.  If you haven't been diagnosed with that, you actually aren't helping yourself by buying products that are "gluten free".  If I see that on product packaging, I have to look to see if the product is naturally gluten free or if the seller has tampered with it to remove the gluten.  Why?  If you are expecting to buy a product that normally contains gluten, and you happen to buy that same product but with the gluten removed, you will immediately notice the taste.  Pretty bad!

Dairy free.  Once again, unless you are lactose intolerant, robbing yourself of dairy products takes out a whole food group from your life.  Maybe you wouldn't notice it, but I sure would.  I can't imagine a world with no milk for my cookies, no cheese for my burger, and no butter for my toast.

No GMOs.  GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism.  I'm not the least bit sure why these aren't "healthy" for us, but it occurs to me that science is involved. If so, they have found ways to improve on a product.  (No one ever genetically modifies something to make it worse.)  Stay tuned on this one.

No high fructose corn syrup.  Much of what we eat is turned into glucose in our bodies.  I'm still at a loss to understand how this is so bad.  It's part of the nation-wide conspiracy against sugar!  I'm well aware that sugar is a non-nutrient, but it does provide energy for those who are active.  Studies have shown that human babies are born with a natural affinity for slightly sweet and slightly salty.  If we are born that way, can it all be bad??

Salt.  Well, here we go!  Table salt. Himalayan pink salt.  Sea salt.  Kosher salt.  Guess what folks?  It's all salt! Sea salt is no better than table salt.  It isn't healthier; it's just different...and one of the day's buzz words.  The body needs salt.  What do you think are in those IV bags they poke you full of in the hospital?  Usually saline (salt) solution, with or without glucose (sugar).  I rest my case!  My cardiologist wants me on a low sodium diet, but I confess that I am a saltaholic and have been unable to get away from the stuff.

Organic.  You pay more for organic produce at the store.  Why?  They claim that they don't use herbicides or pesticides or fertilizers, which means that there is a huge loss to growers due to bugs and blights. You get to pay for that.  Again I ask why?  If you wash your produce before you consume it, the risks to your health are minimal.

Simple recipe.   As you are buying your products, look for these words, either on TV or on your product.  Companies are taking perfectly wonderful products and changing them to make them "simpler".  Most of the time, what was once tasty is now ruined.  I refer to I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Lite.  Once they made it "simpler", it no longer tasted good and would not melt properly. My daughter and I abandoned it but did complain to the company about their "simpler recipe".

Wild caught; Free Range; Grass fed.  I guess the American public wants happy livestock just before it is slaughtered?  I am all for the humane treatment of animals, but I'm not insane about it. I'm not at all sure why wild-caught fish is supposed to be better than farmed fish, or why free-range chickens are better than farmed chickens when served on a dinner plate, but I claim ignorance. As for beef that is only grass fed?  It's tough.  Tender filet mignons come from cows that are corn fed in a feed lot shortly before slaughter.  If it weren't so, why would it happen in the first place?

No antibiotics.   This one, I have to think twice about.  Even I, ignorant as I am about these things, can see how antibiotics given to dairy cattle could get in the milk supply and create antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans.  But how?  Are antibiotics given routinely to dairy cows?  Do they have the same antibiotics that humans get?  Do they get the same kinds of diseases that humans get?  I don't know.

I do get a chuckle out of the Perdue chicken ads on TV that promote that their chickens get no antibiotics.  They put oregano in the chickens' water to keep them healthy.  If oregano has antibiotic qualities, I should be immune to every disease on the planet!  I love Italian food and use lots of oregano.  Yay me!

Raw milk.  There is a trendy move afoot for people to drink unpasteurized milk because it is "natural".  "Pasteurization is the process of heat-processing a liquid or a food to kill pathogenic bacteria to make the food safe to eat. The use of pasteurization to kill pathogenic bacteria has helped reduce the transmission of diseases, such as typhoid fever, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, polio, and dysentery."

I'm sorry.  There will be no consumption of unpasteurized milk in my household!  I personally have milked a cow by hand a number of times in a barnyard situation.  I know what falls into that open milk bucket--flies, dirt, hair from the cow--you name it.  (Fortunately, professional modern dairy barns use the "unnatural" means of vacuum extraction of the milk--a closed system that keeps most of those impurities out.) 

When my family was sent to Japan (1957) where my Navy father was to be stationed, we were given a brochure about things to watch out for. One among many was not to drink Japanese milk because the Japanese at that time did not test their dairy cattle for tuberculosis.  I assume it also meant that the milk wasn't pasteurized to kill the bacteria that cause it.  While in Japan, I drank one glass of Japanese milk while visiting my Japanese friend at her house because it was supplied to me, along with Omocha, a traditional Japanese New Year treat.  I was trying to be polite.

A decade or so later when I became a teacher (1969) Illinois teachers had to be tested for TB before every school year.  My skin test always came back "positive"...so I would have to follow up with a chest x-ray that would show I didn't have TB.  I blamed the Japanese milk. Who knows?  Fortunately, the law about yearly chest x-rays for teachers disappeared as TB almost did.  Otherwise, we educators would all glow in the dark!

On a similar note, but about eggs this time, one of my dear friends moved out of Plainfield to the country west of town.  He started raising chickens and would bring me eggs when he came to visit.  I asked if the eggs had been "candled".  He told me no because they were unfertilized eggs.  Candling simply means passing an egg through a bright light to look for dark spots.  Obviously, eggs that aren't fertilized won't show evidence of an embryo inside, but eggs sometimes contain blood spots.  Blood spots won't hurt the taste of the egg, but they are sure unappetizing when you happen to break one in a pan!  (Hence the reason that older cooks recommend breaking eggs into a separate dish before adding them to other ingredients.)  Just a few years ago, I was trying to feed my family--here on a visit--one of my famous skillets for breakfast when, I had the misfortune of breaking a commercial egg into a pan with other eggs to scramble.  That particular egg was so full of blood that it almost made me gag!  Not sure how it passed inspection at the company, but I had to find a way to get it out of the pan or risk the whole breakfast.  Yeah..."natural" isn't always "better". 

Call me naive, but I believe that American food sources are the safest in the world.  (Just ask my Russian friends, Luda and Sergei.)  I think, however, that we Americans are guilty of following trends that have no basis in truth.  People need to do their homework before they jump on bandwagons.  (Look alive, anti-vaxxers!)  I am guilty of picking three strawberries and throwing the fourth in my mouth, straight off the plant.  As a kid, I drank out of the hose, crunched on carrots I had just pulled out of the ground, and drank well water that hadn't been tested in decades (if ever).  I'll be 70 next month.  Draw your own conclusions!

Obviously, I'm not a "foodie".  There is a show called Portlandia that pokes fun at those who are.  It seems to be a Pacific Northwest thing, but getting popular elsewhere (except in the Midwest).  I'm not making fun of anyone.  My daughter tells me that I am "weird" about food. No, I'm not weird.  I am a Midwestern, home-grown person who cooked for a meat-and-potatoes family for most of my life, as my mother did.  I didn't grow up with couscous, quinoa, edamame, or other such offerings, most of which I can't even spell, much less know what they are.  And **I** am weird?

I just noticed that the box my little Banquet cherry pie came in says, "Made with real cherries" on the outside.  Do they really have to say that?  What is the alternative truth for cherry pie?  FAKE cherries?  Strange world we live in!

To each his own!