When I graduated with a degree in nutrition from a prestigious university, I knew a great deal about enzymes, hormones, and dietary regimes for various ailments, from diabetes to kidney dysfunction – but next to nothing about how to make healthier choices for simple homemade food cooked for basically healthy people.
Sure, I knew the basics – avoid over-processed junk, eat plenty of fruit and veggies, reduce sugar and salt. But I didn’t internalize the importance of what comes into the process of making food: organic vs commercially grown produce, pasture-raised eggs and meat vs animals raised in crowded feedlots. I wasn’t fully aware of the detrimental effects of commercially processed oils, or even sugar.
Fast forward a few years. I’m pregnant with my second child, and a friend sends me the wonderful book Nourishing Traditions. I gobble it up, fascinated. Some things I disagree with, but so many more make perfect sense. I discover a wealth of information about the diversity of diet and traditional food preparation techniques. My horizons are expanded, but I’m also discouraged. This is too much for a family who love their triple chocolate ice-cream and depend on the convenience of plastic white bread.
Slowly, bit by bit, I become convicted that health is a treasure in the sense that it makes everything else possible, and that it is my job, as the cook of the family, to make the most effort towards preserving and enhancing health. My means are ridiculously inadequate. I happen to be married to a man who isn’t exactly on the same page; who doesn’t just think that whole grains are nothing more than a nutritional fad, but who requests desserts, foods fried in large quantities of unhealthy oil, etc (we did make some progress there over the years, I am happy to say).
I yearn to exchange all the junk for an invigorating array of fruit and vegetables, for high-quality natural oils and whole flours, and excellent fresh meat, fish and dairy products. I yearn to remove all the temptations from us. I do so wish I could be the one who does the shopping, but unfortunately, this isn’t practical.
More recently, reading Sugar Blues made me more mindful of the effect sugar has on people, especially children. It’s actually chilling. Intelligent people lose all rational thought and consume foul junk like candy and soft drinks as if those were manna from heaven.
So, what do I do? I cook. I cook for my family. The ingredients are often inferior, but here’s what I do:
I cut down on desserts. I’ve realized that I can spend hours working on a fancy layered cake, lovingly decorating it, and what I’m really doing is investing my time in a poison bomb that is detrimental to my family’s health, because I don’t have the whole flour, high-quality eggs (depends on season), healthy oils and natural sweeteners that would make such a dessert even somewhat more nutritious than its store-bought equivalent. So, if I can’t make a dessert or a treat that isn’t an anti-nutrient, I don’t make it at all.
Of course, this has a downside, being that my husband, if he sees I’ve stopped making sweet treats, buys them at the store instead. Then he introduces something that is even more loaded with sugar and unhealthy oils than what I would have made at home. But my protest, in refusing to make such things, creates an echo that really serves to convince my family, bit by bit.
Same goes for white bread. Making bread from scratch is time-consuming, and I’ve repeatedly told my husband I don’t see the sense in doing it if I end up with a product that, nutritionally speaking, is only slightly better than what I can buy at the store (though it does taste better). So more recently we’ve been experimenting with slow-rise breads made partially of whole grain (because my husband still claims that bread made entirely of whole grain is too dense for him).
Of course, I cook a variety of real food – soups, stews, casseroles, quiches, meat, fish, and eggs-based stuff. In short, I’m doing the best I can with what I have, at this moment.
