01Feb11
On the day I went for a check-up by the Cardiologist, my kitchen was crowded with a three foot tall pile of large pizza boxes, and I had crammed a flat of empty popcans onto the pile that now touched the roof.
Something tweaked in me as I squeezed that last flat of can on the top of the pile, put on my shoes and headed out the door. As I drove through Vancouver traffic, I pondered the many forms of heart disease I had come across in the hospital. What would the Cardiologist say?
I was going to the cardiologist because my education as a Respiratory Therapist had made me a bit of a hypochondriac. After working in the hospital for a year, my family history convinced me I had symptoms of heart disease
If I truly did have this serious heart disease the pop, cherry pie and pizza would have to go. I would have to cut back on fast food and eat more vegetables. Getting some exercise would probably be a good idea too. These were all things I was sure my cardiologist would say if he found I had heart disease.
I have a crazy high metabolism that lets me eat whatever I want without gaining weight, but the truth is that skinny guys get heart disease too. Most of the heart disease I see in the hospital has a strong correlation to lifestyle. There was no doubt that the lifestyle I was living put me in a very high risk category. I felt a sudden plunge in my emotion. How did I let my life get this way? What if I had already given myself heart disease?
I made a pact with myself on the spot. Regardless of what the Doctor had to say, I was going to change the way I was living my life. I knew what I had to do.
It took me another 5 years to do it.
I started by quitting Pepsi. It was my longest standing addiction with origins in years I cannot remember. Several times I had tried to quit, only to find myself driving away from the gas station with a bottle in my hand. Even then I experienced the occasional pain of sensitive teeth, but by now I was using special toothpaste daily in order to chew my food.
At first, I limited my fast food to road trips and special occasions. That is until I saw Supersize Me, the movie about a guy who eats nothing but McDonalds: breakfast, lunch and dinner. His plan was to eat McDonalds for a month, but after a few weeks his doctor told him to stop because he was going into liver failure. I realized I was better to go hungry than eat fast food, and have been on a boycott ever since.
The key to a good diet is to add lots of good food, so you have less room for the bad. Fill your fridge with fruits and vegetables. Less processed is the key - processing removes fibre and key nutrients. Try shopping the outer perimeter of the grocery store and avoid the center aisles where all the processed food is kept. Finally, before hitting the check out, scan your cart's contents and put junk food back with a last minute surge of willpower. I’ve found that if I can control myself at the grocery store, it is easier to control myself at the cupboard.
I try to give myself lots of healthy options. I started by filling the fridge with fresh vegetables. At first, lots of them spoiled, until I started planning my meals around the vegetable.
Growing up, mom would choose the meat, plan a starch to go with it, and then boil some vegetables – the classic Meat and Potatoes diet. My new strategy was to open the fridge each evening and choose whichever vegetable was going to go bad next. I would then start cutting it up and decide what I could make with it. Meat was added, along with a potato, pasta, beans, or rice.
One night, I forgot to add the meat to the stir-fry and neither my wife nor I noticed until we were cleaning up dinner. Meat had become less important to our diet - we have not become vegetarians but we now limit our meat to a few nights a week, and even then with reduced portion sizes.
The shift to a healthy diet has been steady and gradual. We made a conscious effort to buy as much food as we could at the local Farmer's Market. We also managed to store enough to feed ourselves late into the winter.
Now the days are lengthening and I look forward to the Market opening again in the spring. From Fast Food to Farmer's Market, it has taken me 10 years to change the way I eat.
But I have changed, and I am happy to say my heart has never been healthier.
28 Jan 2011
Most of the food eaten in North America bears little resemblance to the plant or animal from which it is made. We want fast and we want tasty. We don't care where it comes from, or whether it's good for us. Meat comes wrapped in plastic - it has no relationship to the muscle of a once breathing animal. Food comes from a box or a can - it is difficult to trace the biological origins, even if you read the label.
The industrial food machine has produced abundance, but the problem is that every stage of processing destroys the nutrition. Foods are engineered for maximum shelf life: they do this by adding preservatives such as salt, sugar and chemicals, or by removing the micronutrients which the bacteria need in order to survive. Food becomes sterile and lifeless.
Processing vegetables and grains breaks down the complex carbohydrates into simpler sugars and removes the fiber that would have slowed the absorption of those sugars. The result is a spike of sugar in the blood, which the body then stores as fat. If the sugar spikes too frequently the cells of the body develop difficulty absorbing the sugar and diabetes is the result.
Too much fat causes inflammation. Inflammation causes vascular disease. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer: all can be traced back to the processed foods we consume.
Even minimally processed fruits and vegetables suffer from being grown on nutritionally depleted soils, then picked unripe and refrigerated for days to weeks before arriving at the supermarket.
It seems people instinctively understand their diet must be lacking essential nutrients because dietary supplements are one of the hottest markets these days. Our folly is to believe that a processed nutrient can fill the void.
If we are to have any hope of good health, we need to start eating more “whole foods”, and less pocessed. But whole food is just one-half of the food equation.
Just as the modern food system affects the health of the individual, it also affects the health of our environment. Industrial agriculture strips huge tracts of land. Rainforests are cut down, grasslands plowed under and marshes drained. Pesticides and herbicides are sprayed. Monoculture crops are planted. Rivers and aquifers are pumped dry. The result is declining soil health and loss of biodiversity.
Industrial Agriculture also relies heavily on fossil fuels. To compensate for depleted soils, the industrial system applies millions of tonnes of fertilizer every year - most of which is derived from natural gas. Furthermore, it is estimated that 10 calories of petroleum are burned for every 1 calorie of food produced: those tractors, trucks and machinery require a lot of fuel for plowing, seeding, fertilizing, spraying, watering, harvesting and transporting our food. From field to factory, from store to plate, most processed foods travel thousands of kilometers, from all over the world.
The Globalization movement claimed location was irrelevant. However, Climate Change and rising energy costs have suddenly made location very relevant indeed. Can we really reduce greenhouse gas emissions and continue to run refridgerated food trucks across the country?
We still need international trade: not everything grows in every climate, and I want my morning coffee and occasional treat of dark chocolate (preferably fair trade). Different regions have always had specialized products for export and can be encouraged to continue to do so. But does it make sense to import apples and beef from New Zealand, when BC produces the finest of both in the world?
There are many reasons why we need to start growing the food we eat a little closer to home. I don't mean to say that each and every one of us needs to pick up a shovel and start a garden, although many are choosing that path. Rather, it is my hope that we will recognize the health, security and environmental stewardship that local food brings us.
Personal choice is the key to this movement. It is easy to feel insignificant, like “I can't make a difference in the world”, but our entire society changes direction as a result of individual choices. It all adds up.
I don't believe in absolutes: such thinking only leads to overwhelm and inaction. The “Hundred Mile Diet” is a beautiful ideal, but it is unattainable if not undesireable for the majority of people. It is not necessary to exclude all processed foods; it is not necessary to buy all your food from within a defined area. The solution is to simply try to eat more whole foods and make an effort to buy local whenever possible.
As more people make the choice to buy their food locally, there will be more incentive to produce food for that market, and as the market grows it becomes more affordable and easy to choose to buy locally, which grows the market further.
In economics, growth equals prosperity - the local food movement could literally grow out of this global recession (pun intended). Eating local food improves the health of the individuals, the economy and the environment. It is a win-win-win situation.
We are in the midst of another agricultural revolution. This time the paradigm is shifting back to local small scale organic farming. People are reconnecting to the land within the confines of the city: lawns, rooftops and empty lots are being reclaimed for growing food. “Pocket Markets” are creating a niche to sell the surplus produce of the smallest garden. Factory workers are, in essence, again becoming farmers.
I am excited for our future: The Urban Agriculture Revolution will strengthen the health of our bodies, communities and the Mother Earth with local environmentally sustainable food.
From Fast Food to Farmer's Market
If you were to look at my lifestyle now, you would never believe the gluttony I lived in only 10 years ago. I was addicted to sugar, drinking a six pack of pop daily. I also consumed a large cherry pie weekly - although it didn't always take a week to eat the pie!On the day I went for a check-up by the Cardiologist, my kitchen was crowded with a three foot tall pile of large pizza boxes, and I had crammed a flat of empty popcans onto the pile that now touched the roof.
Something tweaked in me as I squeezed that last flat of can on the top of the pile, put on my shoes and headed out the door. As I drove through Vancouver traffic, I pondered the many forms of heart disease I had come across in the hospital. What would the Cardiologist say?
I was going to the cardiologist because my education as a Respiratory Therapist had made me a bit of a hypochondriac. After working in the hospital for a year, my family history convinced me I had symptoms of heart disease
If I truly did have this serious heart disease the pop, cherry pie and pizza would have to go. I would have to cut back on fast food and eat more vegetables. Getting some exercise would probably be a good idea too. These were all things I was sure my cardiologist would say if he found I had heart disease.
I have a crazy high metabolism that lets me eat whatever I want without gaining weight, but the truth is that skinny guys get heart disease too. Most of the heart disease I see in the hospital has a strong correlation to lifestyle. There was no doubt that the lifestyle I was living put me in a very high risk category. I felt a sudden plunge in my emotion. How did I let my life get this way? What if I had already given myself heart disease?
I made a pact with myself on the spot. Regardless of what the Doctor had to say, I was going to change the way I was living my life. I knew what I had to do.
It took me another 5 years to do it.
I started by quitting Pepsi. It was my longest standing addiction with origins in years I cannot remember. Several times I had tried to quit, only to find myself driving away from the gas station with a bottle in my hand. Even then I experienced the occasional pain of sensitive teeth, but by now I was using special toothpaste daily in order to chew my food.
At first, I limited my fast food to road trips and special occasions. That is until I saw Supersize Me, the movie about a guy who eats nothing but McDonalds: breakfast, lunch and dinner. His plan was to eat McDonalds for a month, but after a few weeks his doctor told him to stop because he was going into liver failure. I realized I was better to go hungry than eat fast food, and have been on a boycott ever since.
The key to a good diet is to add lots of good food, so you have less room for the bad. Fill your fridge with fruits and vegetables. Less processed is the key - processing removes fibre and key nutrients. Try shopping the outer perimeter of the grocery store and avoid the center aisles where all the processed food is kept. Finally, before hitting the check out, scan your cart's contents and put junk food back with a last minute surge of willpower. I’ve found that if I can control myself at the grocery store, it is easier to control myself at the cupboard.
I try to give myself lots of healthy options. I started by filling the fridge with fresh vegetables. At first, lots of them spoiled, until I started planning my meals around the vegetable.
Growing up, mom would choose the meat, plan a starch to go with it, and then boil some vegetables – the classic Meat and Potatoes diet. My new strategy was to open the fridge each evening and choose whichever vegetable was going to go bad next. I would then start cutting it up and decide what I could make with it. Meat was added, along with a potato, pasta, beans, or rice.
One night, I forgot to add the meat to the stir-fry and neither my wife nor I noticed until we were cleaning up dinner. Meat had become less important to our diet - we have not become vegetarians but we now limit our meat to a few nights a week, and even then with reduced portion sizes.
The shift to a healthy diet has been steady and gradual. We made a conscious effort to buy as much food as we could at the local Farmer's Market. We also managed to store enough to feed ourselves late into the winter.
Now the days are lengthening and I look forward to the Market opening again in the spring. From Fast Food to Farmer's Market, it has taken me 10 years to change the way I eat.
But I have changed, and I am happy to say my heart has never been healthier.
28 Jan 2011
Local Food Manifesto - Chris Semrick
The Industrial Revolution drove people off farmland and concentrated them in cities. Farmers became factory workers: disconnected from land and food source. The geographical, social and cultural gap between farm and consumer widened over the years and has created an entire generation of people who don't understand the consequences to our health, economy and environment. We have forgotten that food is literally life, and we really are what we eat.Most of the food eaten in North America bears little resemblance to the plant or animal from which it is made. We want fast and we want tasty. We don't care where it comes from, or whether it's good for us. Meat comes wrapped in plastic - it has no relationship to the muscle of a once breathing animal. Food comes from a box or a can - it is difficult to trace the biological origins, even if you read the label.
The industrial food machine has produced abundance, but the problem is that every stage of processing destroys the nutrition. Foods are engineered for maximum shelf life: they do this by adding preservatives such as salt, sugar and chemicals, or by removing the micronutrients which the bacteria need in order to survive. Food becomes sterile and lifeless.
Processing vegetables and grains breaks down the complex carbohydrates into simpler sugars and removes the fiber that would have slowed the absorption of those sugars. The result is a spike of sugar in the blood, which the body then stores as fat. If the sugar spikes too frequently the cells of the body develop difficulty absorbing the sugar and diabetes is the result.
Too much fat causes inflammation. Inflammation causes vascular disease. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer: all can be traced back to the processed foods we consume.
Even minimally processed fruits and vegetables suffer from being grown on nutritionally depleted soils, then picked unripe and refrigerated for days to weeks before arriving at the supermarket.
It seems people instinctively understand their diet must be lacking essential nutrients because dietary supplements are one of the hottest markets these days. Our folly is to believe that a processed nutrient can fill the void.
If we are to have any hope of good health, we need to start eating more “whole foods”, and less pocessed. But whole food is just one-half of the food equation.
Just as the modern food system affects the health of the individual, it also affects the health of our environment. Industrial agriculture strips huge tracts of land. Rainforests are cut down, grasslands plowed under and marshes drained. Pesticides and herbicides are sprayed. Monoculture crops are planted. Rivers and aquifers are pumped dry. The result is declining soil health and loss of biodiversity.
Industrial Agriculture also relies heavily on fossil fuels. To compensate for depleted soils, the industrial system applies millions of tonnes of fertilizer every year - most of which is derived from natural gas. Furthermore, it is estimated that 10 calories of petroleum are burned for every 1 calorie of food produced: those tractors, trucks and machinery require a lot of fuel for plowing, seeding, fertilizing, spraying, watering, harvesting and transporting our food. From field to factory, from store to plate, most processed foods travel thousands of kilometers, from all over the world.
The Globalization movement claimed location was irrelevant. However, Climate Change and rising energy costs have suddenly made location very relevant indeed. Can we really reduce greenhouse gas emissions and continue to run refridgerated food trucks across the country?
We still need international trade: not everything grows in every climate, and I want my morning coffee and occasional treat of dark chocolate (preferably fair trade). Different regions have always had specialized products for export and can be encouraged to continue to do so. But does it make sense to import apples and beef from New Zealand, when BC produces the finest of both in the world?
There are many reasons why we need to start growing the food we eat a little closer to home. I don't mean to say that each and every one of us needs to pick up a shovel and start a garden, although many are choosing that path. Rather, it is my hope that we will recognize the health, security and environmental stewardship that local food brings us.
Personal choice is the key to this movement. It is easy to feel insignificant, like “I can't make a difference in the world”, but our entire society changes direction as a result of individual choices. It all adds up.
I don't believe in absolutes: such thinking only leads to overwhelm and inaction. The “Hundred Mile Diet” is a beautiful ideal, but it is unattainable if not undesireable for the majority of people. It is not necessary to exclude all processed foods; it is not necessary to buy all your food from within a defined area. The solution is to simply try to eat more whole foods and make an effort to buy local whenever possible.
As more people make the choice to buy their food locally, there will be more incentive to produce food for that market, and as the market grows it becomes more affordable and easy to choose to buy locally, which grows the market further.
In economics, growth equals prosperity - the local food movement could literally grow out of this global recession (pun intended). Eating local food improves the health of the individuals, the economy and the environment. It is a win-win-win situation.
We are in the midst of another agricultural revolution. This time the paradigm is shifting back to local small scale organic farming. People are reconnecting to the land within the confines of the city: lawns, rooftops and empty lots are being reclaimed for growing food. “Pocket Markets” are creating a niche to sell the surplus produce of the smallest garden. Factory workers are, in essence, again becoming farmers.
I am excited for our future: The Urban Agriculture Revolution will strengthen the health of our bodies, communities and the Mother Earth with local environmentally sustainable food.
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