Food for Thought

When I was a child growing up in the 1970's I envisaged a future of food where we all would be eating a single pill that would provide our complete nutrition and thus do away with the need to eat food.

How different the actual future is.  With more variety of food than ever before and cooking shows amongst the most popular shows on TV, eating is still well and truly alive.  Kitchens are getting bigger and fancier, there are more places to go out and eat, and the access to foods from various cultures and the proliferation of super foods has shown that in no way are we ready to give up eating for a nutrition packed pill.

Imagine life, though, if this future had come to pass.

Firstly, all that time spent shopping for, preparing, eating and cleaning up after food would vanish.  That would amount to enormous hours of the day that we could reclaim to do other things.
Secondly, imagine the extra storage space in our houses. Plates, bowls, pots, pans, casserole dishes, cutlery, the "good" crockery, could all go, freeing up mountains of cupboard space.  Also the pantry would be a thing of the past, and who would need a massive fridge anymore?  The oven, the cook top, the microwave, the dishwasher, could all go.  There would be just so much stuff we could get rid of and then have so much less clutter to deal with and so much more cupboard space.  Now that's something I definitely need.
Thirdly, it would eliminate that whole issue of trying to eat a balanced diet and the weighing up of the pros and cons between various ways of eating.  But here is the crux of the matter.  How could any responsible scientific organisation possible come up with the perfect diet encapsulated into a nutrient rich pill when they can't even agree on what constitutes the optimal diet for humans?

For the past 30- 40 years we have been fed the mantra of low fat, high carbohydrate as being the way to live a healthy life.  I believe it, I've grown up my whole life being taught this.  It hasn't stopped me from having an 'apple shape' rather than a pear shape, which is now deemed unhealthy and a precursor to syndrome X and it's attendant diseases of modern living such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Nice.  But to a certain extent I feel a bit powerless as my father and his mother before him had the same 'apple shape'. Was it diet related or was it genetics? At least they didn't have to suffer the indignity of being told that they have a waist to hip ratio that is going to kill them.

It is tempting to basically ignore any government health warnings from this day forward.  It seems that no one really knows what they are doing in the field of nutrition. Hundreds of billions of dollars are thrown at all manner of studies trying to prove which is the optimal diet for us. All that seems to happen is that the studies are either inconclusive, are interpreted according to whoever is reading them's bias, or are instantly disproved by another study.

The bottom line is, there are just too many variables in the modern diet because it is such a cornucopia of variety.  To scientifically isolate one variable is well nigh impossible. People have slightly different genetic make up and respond differently to different diets too, which further complicates things.

I have come to the conclusion, after much reading about how the caveman diet is our optimum diet, that although that maybe true on an individual basis, on a population basis a high carbohydrate diet is better.

Think back, 10,000 years ago, we switched from predominately eating meat to growing and eating grains.  We may also have introduced a bunch of chronic degenerative diseases that became more apparent as we became clever enough to eliminate the other major killers of misadventure and infectious disease.  But these chronic diseases of modern living, still allow us to live long enough to reproduce, so they are not bad enough to impact on our survival as a species.  And this is the point.  Our population got to the point where it had to evolve to move further up the evolutionary scale.  As a population, we are incredibly healthy and successful. Perhaps as individuals not so much.

But, agriculture allowed us to guarantee a food supply that had never been guaranteed before.  It lessened our day to day reliance upon capturing or picking fresh foods because now we could store vast quantities for long periods of time.  It also meant that less people were needed to be involved in the actual procurement of food and that freed others to go and progress civilisation.  In the last 10,000 years not only has our population sky rocketed but our civilisation has moved ahead in enormous leaps and bounds that just wasn't possible while we were existing day to day on a tenuous food supply.

So in order for the human race as a whole to make the next development leap and form societies, government, religion, culture, science, technology, the list goes on and on, we had to free ourselves from the grip of the hunter gatherer lifestyle.  This is evidenced by the hunter gather cultures still in existence in the last few centuries, who were primarily living very primitive lives until they were introduced to Western civilisation.  Their rates of chronic disease were low, to the point of non existence, but their populations were relatively small and isolated which impacted their ability to develop technologically.

Reverting to a hunter gatherer diet is a luxury that affluent Westerners can embrace.  It may make their individual health outcomes more positive.  But for the entire world population to revert to such a diet is unsustainable.  We just don't have the capability to feed the whole world on a predominately meat diet.  That ultimately means that the third world and poorer populations will be fed with the cheaper high carbohydrate model and be prone to chronic disease, while the affluent will live long happy lives.  There is an inequality here.  Our success as a species has meant that we are destined to be less healthy individually.  It's a small sacrifice we all make to ensure the species remains strong.  Like herds who have their strength in numbers and can afford to sacrifice the weak few, so that the herd as a whole survives.

If this be the case, then governments trying to control what we eat and haranguing us about our health to do it is futile.  Basically we are damned if we do and damned if we don't.  Arguably Western nations have the wealth to manage expensive health budgets that deal with chronic disease.  It may be the pay off we have to make to avert the greater evil, that of starvation and malnutrition.

As I ready myself and the family for an experimental dietary change to explore the hunter gather diet epitomised by the Paleolithic diet I find myself reducing cupboard stock of carbohydrates and legumes.  I am starting to feel slightly unsettled by this, and we haven't even begun the diet yet. As the large fridge in the shed which houses the 'staples' of rice, pasta, bread mix, flour, dried beans and legumes becomes emptier and emptier I start to feel a small pearl of worry forming. It is ironic that the very carbohydrates that supposedly store themselves as excess fat on our bodies are the same carbohydrates that we store in stockpiles outside the body in order to protect ourselves in lean times.  With an empty 'store' of carbohydrate staples I feel vulnerable.  What if there is a truck strike, or we have an event that wipes out the electricity for a few weeks?  Focussing our diet on just meat and fruit and vegetables is a predominately fresh food diet.  It is extremely reliant on me being able to access the supermarket, butcher and greengrocer.  We grow a few of our own vegies, fruit and herbs and have our own eggs, but in reality, these will not go anywhere near providing adequate calories or nutrition for our family of 6 if the need should arise.  By having a fridge and pantry laden with carbohydrate foods, a short breakdown in the food chain supply, although inconvenient, would not be catastrophic.
As the one who is primarily responsible for the provision of food in the house and the mad one who is proposing we trial this diet, I feel a small sense of responsibility here.  Obviously the likelihood of some disaster occurring and interrupting the food supply is slight, but it is not entirely out of the question either.  Should I cover my bases and stockpile some emergency food in case of need?  After all the advent of agriculture cemented our survival as a species because it insured as against this very thing. But as the Paleolithic dieters advocate, all carbohydrate (particularly refined) needs to be gotten rid of in order to avoid temptation.  Refined carbohydrate is the evil one in all of this, the most likely culprit of chronic disease and obesity, but it is also the food that is least perishable and so the most useful in times of food shortage.

It is a dilemma. Oh wouldn't life be so much simpler if we just had a pill to take and all these decisions would not need to be made.

Christmas shopping is all done

We finished our Christmas shopping in true last minute fashion by waiting till Christmas eve to get the last of the presents and the food.  I am quite confident that we will just about have enough to eat.
We made a list last night while playing monopoly and worked out the menu for the day:

Breakfast
croissant
bacon
eggs

Snacks
nuts
soy crisps
fruit
marshmallows (Evan's contribution to the list)
cheese
cabonossi
crackers

Lunch
humane leg ham
salad
prawns
oysters
pasta bake
cheesecake

Dinner
A turducken - never had one of these before but it sounds so cool I am excited about trying it.  This turduken is wrapped in bacon, so our carnivores are in raptures over the sheer meatiness of it.
roast vegies
gravy
Christmas pudding with custard and icecream


and if we are still not totally stuffed after all of that we have shortbread and mince pies for afters.


Looking forward to all the fun of eating and unwrapping pressies tomorrow

Ho Ho Ho bring it on Santa.

In the meantime to pass the time we have engaged in a massive floor game of monopoly.  Sarah and Harry laid out a square of mats that they named after the streets in monopoly.  We grabbed some big game pieces and are walking them around our improvised board.

We have all of the cards and money from the original game.  So it's exactly the same, just in jumbo version.  While playing the boys are still managing to use their ipads and ipods, playing their apps at the same time as playing the big family monopoly game.

This game is gonna take days to finish

I don't wanna live in a group house again

This morning I opened the household fridge and noticed that my 11 year old son had placed a glad wrapped plate of pudding and custard in there with a message written on it in dark texta.  Words to the effect of "This belongs to me, do not touch!! This means you Evan!!!" I knew last night that he was setting up this little offering, but it wasn't until it confronted me this morning that I had shocking flash backs to Uni life in the dorms...................................................

I shared a residence, though we called it a dorm, with around 24 males and females who were all aged from around 18 - 24.  They had the personal habits and social skills that you'd expect from that age group, ie: very few.  There were signs up that had been posted by various (we called them anal) people who were fed up with certain behaviours.  Things like, "wipe up after washing up".  I guess someone wasn't happy with a dish drainer full of plates and cups.  I would have thought that it was quite an achievement that the dishes were getting washed at all.  Anyway that sign got vandalised and soon became "wipe up after having sex".  Well we were at Uni.

I remember another person getting frustrated by others using the bath tub and leaving their pubic hairs behind once they'd pulled the plug.  She went to great pains to design and make a very large paper pubic hair to place in the bath tub in the hopes that the offending person would get the hint.  I was quite impressed with her effort given that she was an Ag student and not an Early Childhood student teacher.  Of course the students doing the teaching courses were always accused of just doing finger painting all day, so perhaps they wouldn't have been up to the creative rigours of making a large paper pubic hair.

The most common notes in the dorm were the ones in the fridge.  Food is very important to that age group and especially seeing as the meals provided by the accommodation start to become pretty uninspiring fairly quickly.  The wondrous treats that could be stashed in the communal fridge for a late night study binge was something to be savoured and looked forward to with much anticipation.  The only problem with that scenario was that the dorm was populated by a bunch of students with a tendency to come home late from a night of drinking and devour anything remotely edible in the fridge.  No amount of notes, with ever increasing bold insults and threats would have any effect on a drunk's conscience.  See food, eat food. Worry about consequences later.

So this morning I found myself right back there in that dorm kitchen, peering into the fridge seeing the tempting little morsel, emblazoned with keep out signage, staring forlornly at me as it breathed it's possibly last gasps of life.  With only one year til my eldest daughter is off to Uni herself, I felt a strange juxtaposition forming like a vortex in my kitchen as I imagined the future of me in a house full of boys writing notes to each other to leave their stuff alone.  I fell to my knees in despair and clasped my arms over my head and yelled "Nooooooooo, I don't wanna live in a group house again".  Me and three boys, with my beautiful daughter off into the wide wonderful world, I started to wonder if I could perhaps prevent her from leaving, or perhaps convince her to take me with her.  Then I realised that there is a good chance she'll be living in a group house of her own and she will have all the wonderful fun of learning how to live with a bunch of young adults with questionable personal habits. I've been there, done that, and don't intend to do it again.

As I slowly recovered from my horrifying flash back, I remembered with extreme thankfulness and relief, that I wont be a female alone in a house of boys.  I have my little Ellie, who will be turning two by the time Sarah is off to Uni.  What a brilliant piece of foresight that was to have a baby right when the older ones were almost all grown up.

Paleo diet

The whole premise behind the Paleo diet is that under today's diet we have increased levels of inflammation in our bodies that is causing a wide range of health problems.  Our ancestors who ate a paleo diet didn't have inflammation, so had less health complaints; were stronger, fitter, healthier and lived longer. 

I'm not sure I agree with all of this and am interested in investigating the claims and evidence for the Paleo diet.  Particularly as many aspects of it are starting to permeate into the more general recommendations for dietary advice.  Some of it is in direct contrast to official government dietary guidelines.  The most notable one being the advice about saturated fats.  The last generation has seen us switch our choice of fat in our diet from what were supposedly bad fats that increased our cholesterol and heart disease as well as a range of cancers, the animal based saturated fats, to good fats that are vegetable based and non saturated.  Now it seems we are being led to believe that the reverse is true. Margarine, once seen as a healthy alternative to butter has become likened to poison and one of the worst things that you can possibly put into your body.
Sugar, has never been seen as anything other than unhealthy, but is even further maligned in this diet and strictly eliminated.  Grains are demonised as well, even though the advent of farming was probably one of the most significant evolutional leaps we made as a species to sure up availability of a good quality food supply. Other staples  from various cultures around the world that have enabled their survival and ability to avoid famine like potatoes, rice, oats and corn are also off the menu. Though interestingly some super foods like quinoa are on the menu, even though their availability was quite restricted.

Fats and oils

I have been reading quite a bit about good and bad oils and watched some youtube offerings on the subject as well. What is a good or a bad fat/oil depends on where you sit in the argument as both sides directly contradict one another.  The only point that both sides seem to be able to agree on is Olive oil.  If you are sitting on the fence and not sure which way to jump in the good fat versus bad fat debate, perhaps olive oil would be a safe bet.
I have read both of David Gillespie's offerings on the subject: Toxic Oil, and Big Fat Lies.  They are follow up books to his sugar free advice books Sweet Poison and the recipe book to go with it.  I read the Sweet Poison books a few years ago and have them both on my book shelf.  Fast forward a few years and now David Gillespie has twitter and facebook as well so the conversation can be continued long after you've finished reading the book.  I think that's pretty cool.

From what I understand, vegetable oils are a super processed food that our body is just not adapted to handle.  They primarily are derived from seeds, which we were never able to eat too many of due to their fibre content.  Turning them to oil strips them of their fibre and enables us to ingest far more of the oils than we ever could have, or as it turns out should have.  Vegetable oils are high in polyunsaturated oil, which is not the best kind of oil for our bodies.  Our fat cells are made up of saturated fat, monounsaturated fat and very, very little polyunsaturated fat.  If our diet is to emulate this ratio then we need to be have a lot less polyunsaturated fats.  Basically all we need consume of them is enough to ensure that we get our essential omega 3 and omega 6 oils.  We need very small amounts of these and preferably in the ration of about 2:1 omega 6  to omega 3.  Unfortunately the polyunsaturated fats that we consume, through grain fed meat and seed oils are very high in omega 6.  This blows our desirable ratio way out of the water, in the order of 10:1 and causes inflammation in our bodies.  This inflammation had been linked to our chronic lifestyle diseases of arthritis, heart disease,  diabetes, etc.

Sugar

Like the oils argument, sugar is also a highly refined product that having been stripped of its fibre and is too concentrated for our bodies.  The main problem with sugar is the fructose part, according to David Gillespie and others.  I'm not convinced that this issue is a problem so much with the paleo people as they seem pretty fond of raw honey, which would have to be very high in fructose.  It seems that the paleo diet is deliberately high in fats and so in order to not get fat, something has gotta give in the diet.  So removing an entire food group like carbohydrates would definitely help.  I'm guessing the thinking here is that apart from raw honey and some berries, very little other sweet stuff was available in our paleolithic diet 10000 plus years ago.  Given that consuming coconut oil is high on the list of desirable behaviours, I'm guessing because of the pacific islanders use of that oil for most of their history, It follows that they also would have had access to a lot of very sweet fruits.  Mmmmm mangoes, anyone?

Grains

Grains are out too.  They have phytates which block absorption of essential minerals.  There are plenty of other sources of these minerals (for a non vegetarian) that eating grains is rendered unnecessary. I'm pretty sure that some grains and seeds were consumed in our caveman existence and made up an important part of the diet in between big animal kills.  Examination of native bush tucker for Australian Aboriginals showed consumption of starchy roots, nuts and seeds in addition to their meat.  It didn't take the Aboriginals long to prefer the easy meat and grains offered by the Europeans in the form of mutton and  flour, over the arduous process of the hunter gatherer lifestyle.  Granted, we stole a lot of their hunting grounds and they still enjoyed supplementing with traditional tucker.  But there is no way this country could have supported a population the size that it has now with a hunter gatherer approach.  The country could barely feed it's native inhabitants with some tribes being pushed right to the edge of subsistence living. Agriculture definitely ensured  the proliferation of the human race.

Potatoes, corn and oats have been the staple diet of different groups of people throughout history.  But each of these, and soy are much maligned in the paleo diet.  Again the same argument is used as for grains, that these vitamins and minerals can be gained from elsewhere in the diet, so consumption of them is not necessary.  Sweet potatoes are on the list as desirable food, which is great for me as I grow sweet potato in abundance in my garden. Based on my garden, at the rate sweet potato grows I am sure we could solve world hunger just by simply planting sweet potato right across the world.

Super foods such as quinoa and chai seem to be popular additions to the paleo diet as they are considered to be ancient grains  They have amazing properties such as omega 3 oils and many nutrients. I often wonder, though, that if wheat (or oats or potatoes, insert your chosen starch) was discovered today wouldn't it be seen as a wonder food?  I know that it has been genetically altered over the ages to produce greater yields but it has the sort of nutrient profile that would herald as something pretty amazing if we discovered it today.  Because it's been around for so long we are quite ho hum about it.

Meat and dairy

Meat is a big part of the paleo diet, and raw dairy.  I'm not sure that we particularly had access to dairy foods in the stoneage.  Dairy strikes me a very domesticated, farming activity. I do grant that meat would have been a large part of the diet when they could get it.  But all parts of the animal would have been eaten. I know that I am no big fan of organ meats, or eating the skin and other yucky bits.  ( I think this maybe where bone broths and gelatine come into the diet).

Supplements

Any newest, and most wonderful diet that is the answer to all our ills and that also requires us to supplement sounds somehow flawed to me.  If the diet is so great then supplementation should not be needed.  In my view supplementation is about as highly processed as you can get.  To take the individual nutrients instead of the whole foods, that contain them and other properties besides, sounds very unnatural.  Surely a wider diet encompassing a greater variety of foods would be preferable to supplementation.  Supplements, like diets too, I guess, are faddish.  Every year there is the lastest greatest supplement that you just have to have or you will die early and in great pain, whilst having lived a demented life where you are chronically tired, fat and have a crap sex life.  Have I covered all the things that each new supplement claims to improve?

Modern diet and weight gain consists of junk food, high access to a lot of very high calorie foods with low nutrient value. We are eating more and getting fatter.  anytime you remove a major group of foods from your diet you are likely to lose weight.  It restricts your choice of food and immediately prevents you from snacking as effectively and reduces your unhealthy choices when dining out or socialising.  Don't under estimate the calorific punch of a regular handful of bikkies or a slice of cake with your cuppa.

There's so many things that we are not evolved for if you take the premise that anything that our ancestors from the paleolithic period didn't do, we shouldn't do.  Surely if diet has such a big effect, so would shelter, population density, artificial light, pollution, and many other modern parts of life that would have been totally alien to a stone age man.  I quite frankly don't buy that they lived longer healthier lives.  They died younger and never had the opportunity to develop life long chronic medical conditions.  And if they did suffer from chronic conditions, how would we know? How could we know if they were generally happy with their day to day life and health?  We can't.

Every diet I have ever seen involves the same basic principles packaged differently so that they look like the newest latest thing. If you pick up the junk food, excess fat, sugar and oil and toss them out of your diet, whilst incorporating more salads, fruit and whole (real) food in your diet you are automatically healthier and going to lose weight.  And yes, paleolithic people probably ate more like this, they certainly didn't have bags of chips, lollies, cakes and biscuits.
Add to this the removal of a major food grouping and you also automatically drastically reduce your food choices, again removing the opportunity to as easily overeat.  This would have had parallels to paleolithic people too, they had drastically less food choice and food availability compared to what we have today.  This would mean they would tend to be leaner, and also more prone to be at risk of starvation or malnutrition during extreme times.

And finally, just to complete this ramble, what is it with coconut oil?  How many of us have the genetic lineage to claim that we are evolved for eating coconut oil?  Surely you would have to claim some more recent northern African or South East Asian  descent to be able to say we are used to that food.  Most of us spent an awful lot of years in cold old Europe with no sign what so ever of coconuts.

I know I still have a bunch more to read on this topic, so my views may change over time. But at first investigation this is where I sit.  Maybe I will find  some answers to my questions and I will discuss them in a future blog, or perhaps not, we'll just have to wait and see....

Baby led weaning

The main idea behind baby led weaning is to trust your baby to make good food choices by providing them with a range of foods that they can eat at each meal.  Their instinctive needs and likes and dislikes will drive their food choices.  Although each individual meal may not look balanced as babies often favour  just one or two food groups, their overall diet will tend toward being balanced over the course of a few days.

I decided to give baby led weaning a go with Ellie. Certain aspects of it were not that dissimilar to the way that I introduced solids with the other three.  I started them all at around six months when they were old enough to be able to sit up by themselves and to be able to hold onto food.  A lot of the food was finger food, but I did use some purees as well.

I remember the first thing that I fed Sarah was rice cereal, which promptly set like concrete inside her and she had great difficulty passing it out the other end.  Evan presented problems as he had eczema and I wanted to be very careful which foods I introduced and in which order.  The thinking back then was to introduce foods one at a time and wait a few days to see if there was a reaction before introducing the next food.  This was rather time consuming and I can remember us getting stuck with just eating pumpkin for a very long period of time.  Not surprisingly, he is not that fussed on pumpkin to this day. With Harry I don't remember too much about the solids stage except that it was really messy, and with carpet under the dining table I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees scrubbing it clean again.

Ellie, like Evan suffered eczema, so I was a little dubious about introducing foods haphazardly and simultaneously.  But if I was going to give this baby led weaning a go, that was what I had to do.  I must say that I got a pleasant surprise, with the introduction of food, far from getting worse as I had feared, her eczema improved.  Now she has very little eczema, so I was wondering if a restricted diet could have been the cause rather than the cure.

To start with very little if any food goes down. By handing baby chunks of fruits and vegetables they either taste them or toss them depending on their mood.  At first, Ellie was quite suspicious of this food thing, as when she shook it, it didn't make a noise.  Once she got past that she would then feel it by squishing it in her hand. As she was used to handling toys, she preferred foods that were nice and solid.  Banana, initially, was way too squishy and she wasn't interested in that at all.

The thing that mainly worries mums about baby led weaning is the fear of baby choking on a piece of food.  Obviously, you don't leave baby alone with food, but also,try not to be overly protective and watch them obsessively either.  Yes, it's true babies do gag their way through for the first few weeks.  This can be a little hair raising, but it's worth remembering that the gag reflex is a protective one, and it is natural.  It actually stops them from choking, so if you hear the gag reflex in action you know that baby is doing exactly the right thing and learning how to deal with chunks of food in her mouth. The gag reflex in a six month old baby is quite a long way forward in the mouth, about half way along the tongue.  I watched Ellie gag on a small piece of food and when I looked into her mouth I could clearly see the food sitting about halfway back in her mouth and no where near the windpipe. What she was doing was biting small pieces of food off, moving it around her mouth with her tongue, if it went in too far she'd gag it back to the front, and then she'd use her tongue thrust to push the food out of her mouth when she had finished with it.  She really wasn't bringing anything to the back of her mouth to be swallowed in the beginning.

This is where continuing with milk feeds is still so important.  You may have 'officially started solids' but the amount that baby is actually eating is negligible. Again, this means you need to trust your baby  and give her time to be able to learn how to eat, because this is exactly what she is doing.  Eating is a many step process and she needs to learn each one and also start to associate this food concept with the concept of hunger.  For Ellie, this took until she was about 9 months before she really started to 'need' food. Her nappies were still predominately consisting of the breastfeeding poo, nice and sweet smelling, with chunks of undigested food in them. Around nine months she started to pass some smellier poohs and she started to be really hungry for food.  Breast milk was still making up the majority of her diet but it became evident that it was no longer enough.

The great thing about baby led weaning is that baby eats what the family is eating.  It is so easy to just put a little aside on a plate for baby.  They sit up with the family and share meal times and they enjoy being a part of family life.  Basically, anything goes with food, so long as you are mindful about keeping it healthy and avoiding junk food.  Spicy food may need to be used with caution too, but that's not to say we haven't tried it on Ellie with some funny results. One meal laden with chilli made her bounce up and down in her seat and we could almost see the proverbial steam coming out of her ears. Ooops, maybe that was a bit too hot, mental note to tone it down a bit next time.
How we wish we'd had the camera handy that time!