Thermogenic Thoughts

Nika — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:16:05 +0000

When I first delved into the raw diet I really noticed and appreciated the immediate effect that green smoothies have on the functions of the gastrointestinal tract. Wow, it really helps the intestines when you eat plant matter that speeds itself through versus protein heavy foods (dairy and meats) that tend to dessicate the intestines and can lead to unnecessary constipation, especially if you do not drink enough water!

After a few days though, I noticed another result of eating a raw diet in the middle of our snowy really cold New England winter – raw foods are not thermogenic like cereals and meats are. I quickly found myself unable to maintain body temperature (and I have lots of padding, let me assure you). No amount of sweaters and huddling under several blankets and high heat output from the wood boiler would warm me up!

This quickly lead me to pretty much fear a day starting out with a delicious green smoothie because it meant I would be rendered frozen the rest of the day! I do not use ice in any of my smoothies, ever. I am fine with the cool temps I get from the fruits and greens, do not need it to be a frozen drink. So, its not an icy smoothie that was causing this problem.

With regret, I introduced cereals back into my diet and after one sitting, I was able to maintain body temperature and emerge from the blankets. As you might imagine, this posed a problem for me because I am not moving my family to Costa Rica just so I can eat a raw food diet! Nor does this mean that a thermogenic diet that keeps me warm in the brutal cold of New England is necessarily good for my body, it just means I have a challenge that will take some time to approach.

What it means for now, I think, is that my diet will need to be more seasonal. With the coming warmer days (they are not here yet, it still dips into the low 30s here at night), raw foods will become a larger part of my diet and then I hope, in the summer, become the dominant part of it.

We are starting to plant the brassicas out in our raised beds. You can learn all about our homestead at my Humble Garden blog. The photos below show you the raised beds we built two years ago. I intend to feed myself raw veggies from my garden even more, beyond the usual mesclun lettuces, with kales, etc.

I think the main take home message with anything about life and diet is to listen to your body (I know cliche but actually true) and then give yourself a break, dont get rigid in your thinking but rather see it as a continuum of responses to a complex world.

Rededicated Food

Nika — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:00:41 +0000

Ever since I have not been spending every moment either driving to or from work or at work, I have been able to spend some time at home reconnecting with the family in ways I have not been able to do in the whole of this past year. There is some qualitative difference for us between 2 and 3 kids that made me feel wildly out of balance with respect to making work and life mesh. Now that I have been able to decompress a bit and even tho the stress doesn’t end due to continued unemployment, I have been able to concentrate on something that was simply beyond my capacity before – our day to day food.

Sure, we have our own dairy goats but we have only one in milk and that was mostly for the toddler (with pasteurized cow milk intolerance). We have still be supplementing with conventional 1% cows milk.

We have bred the girls and there is some chance that soon we will have a visit from the caprine stork who will leave us baby goats (kids) and mommas in milk, thus increasing our milk output. I will be pushing hard then for a total ban on milk from the store.

Sure we have our own chickens and we buy no store eggs but we still have been eating conventional meat (organic store bought meats are WAY beyond our budget). I have been having to buy mostly chicken because that is whats inexpensive (99c/lb often) even though I KNOW that this meat is filled with unknown additives and are veritable nutrient-depleted bags of estrogen and estrogen mimics that are hell on our bodies (many cancers are estrogen-activated).

I have been putting together the seed starting schedule and I have already started indoor mesclun spring mixes for nibbling in the mean time. I have lots of tiny little seedlings which one day will give us fantastic organic nutrient rich eggplants and squash and cucumbers and lots more!

Yummy green sprouting lettuces

So, as you can see, we teeter between fantastic home-crafted food and cheap store-bought staples – considerable cognitive dissonance for me.

It has been an ambient undercurrent that had been festering for me for quite a while and then just recently the boil burst (to put it crudely) and I was left with an epiphany of sorts.

On the one had our diet didn’t suck all THAT badly. Its not like we drink sodas or eat frozen pizzas day in and out or any manner of things but on the other hand why do I feel so utterly unhealthy and have so much weight to lose? What part of this equation is not working. I think part of this is timing. Its been MANY months since the fresh bounty of our garden – we have not been eating fresh green things, fresh fruity things because those things in ADDITION to meats are expensive.

My epiphany boiled down to the fact that we do not experience natural health because of the things we buy from the store and our bodies are depleted of vital goodness (vitamins, cofactors, fruity juicy goodness).

For this reason I am exploring a diet that brings more living fruits and vegetables into our world, even in the dead of winter (I am looking out at several feet of snow as I type).

I am learning about the raw food diets out there and think I have decided that what makes sense to our family is not your traditional raw food diet. We already drink raw milk and I intend on keeping it that way. Our raw diet will mean that we will not drink any more “cooked” milk from the store. We wont start eating raw eggs but we will look for ways to use them that are easier on the proteins. We will eat MANY more fruits and uncooked vegetables.

We here includes our family of young kids and 2 adults. My personal diet is going to be even more raw and less egg intense than the rest. I am enjoying learning how the vegan raw foodists have crafted all manner of recipes that bring texture and variety to the raw table. One way to do this is by using a dehydrator. You can take sprouted seed and grains, add other ingredients (fruits, coconut for sweet; spices, peppers, shoyu for savory) to make crackers and flat sheets that make great wraps or other dish elements.

This doesn’t have to be about salads all the time! (If it were, I could not do it, I need more depth to my cuisine than that).

We already had a juicer and a butch blender so getting the dehydrator was the final step in preparing for this new way. I am also teaching myself the simple craft of sprouting beans. Tested the family on store bought sprouts and they seemed to like it so its a yes-go!

As with any diet, there seems to be no end to the fantastic health claims that you see associated with raw foodism (take a peek at the abundance of YouTube testimonials). I am not interested in all of that. I just know that my body is not thriving on the standard american diet (SAD). Neither are the other bodies in my family. If the SAD is what we have tried, not sure how bad it can be (and I am thinking there has to be an enormous upside) to adopting a more raw approach to our food.

Tell me if you have any experience with raw food and if you have any favorite recipes, sites, books, mentors.
I will be writing again about recipes that I like or that I come up with that fit in this category.

I am not big on making faux burgers and such so I will be exploring how raw food recipes can move beyond that inherently disappointing goal on to a more holistic celebration or exploration of food in it’s raw state.

Resources:

Raw+Simple » philosophy

Thermogenic Thoughts

Rededicated Food