I’m wonderfully optimistic about the year to come. I think I’m finally coming to an understanding of what it means to let go and let God. To kick off the new year, I have decided to start a series of posts on things we have a right to know about (in fact in many situations our life depends on it), but for whatever reason they are kept “secret” whether through planned secrecy or by tactful exclusion of information.
John and I spent the evening on the couch last night watching our new Netflix arrival – Food, Inc. . I’ve been waiting on this movie since it came out a while back. This film demystifies our current system of industrialized food and the problems that arise from our expectation of fast and cheap food.
It was a little over a year ago now when a prolonged illness of mine prompted me to switch our diet to a traditional foods diet as proposed by The Weston A. Price Foundation and authors like Sally Fallon and Nina Planck. Since then, I have noticed a tremendous change in my health and well being along with that of my husband and children. I have lost and maintained a 100 pound weight loss (though I was already losing weight before changing my eating, I contribute most of it to traditional foods). I have more energy. My gums no longer bleed when I brush or floss my teeth. But, the most noticeable for me is my relationship to food. I no longer fear food making me fat, because I know that what I am choosing to eat is real food and not something fabricated in a factory. I enjoy my food and I eat plenty of it. I’m eating things the diet industry tells us will make us obese and sick – butter, bacon, red meat, and whole fat dairy.
This approach to eating (I don’t call it a “diet” in the terms of how most of us view the word) has changed my life so completely that I can’t help but get excited about sharing it with others. However, all to often I have noticed people don’t want to hear the truth about where their food comes from, and I tend to get tuned out. Instead of accepting that there is a problem here and we are in need of huge change as a society, they continue to eat from the conventional store shelves food that more often than not is some kind of factory made variation of corn or soy bean products and they wonder why they are sick with things like diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, or obesity. Why is that?
The fact of the matter is that we have a right to know where our food comes from and under what conditions it is being processed for our consumption. Our food is life. What we put into our body directly affects how we are able to live our life. However, now that our food supply is being controlled by just a few multi- million (billion) dollar corporations that treat their farmers and factory workers like second class human beings, who don’t care at all about the health of the animals they process for meat, and treat our meat, produce, and dry goods with a variety of chemicals to give them unnatural shelf lives, we are being kept in the dark of food practices that if they were public knowledge would incite the citizens of this country to demand a change.
The truth is that 1 in 3 children in this country born after 2000 will develop diabetes. 1 in 3 children in this country are either considered overweight or obese. Low-income Americans (under $30,000) a year find it hard to afford a healthy diet. This comes along with the idea of fast food being cheap. You now can buy chips for a lesser price than a head of broccoli, and then there are dollar menus at fast food restaurants. The question of food availability also arises. Living in rural Appalachia, I find it extremely difficult to find food I feel is appropriate for my family, and I have to make too many compromises.
Our country is facing an epidemic that is inexcusable. We owe our children a better chance at a healthy life than this. We owe it to ourselves as well. While industrialization has brought about many good changes in our way of life, when its principles are applied to certain more personal areas of our lives, we find we are detrimentally affected by its lack of concern for the greater human good as opposed to the low cost production industry holds so dear. A few profit from the loss of many.
After viewing this film and others like it, I can’t help but encourage others to become informed as well. Know where your food comes from. Know that in one pack of ground beef there is meat from 50-100 cattle. Know that most chickens raised for commercial slaughter for companies like Tyson never see the light of day or feel grass under their feet. In fact, they are lucky to be able to bear their own body weight on their brittle legs. Know that the tomato you are buying that is so pretty and red was shipped to your location in many cases over thousands of miles, and picked while still green. It was ripened chemically. Know this, and decide to change it. There are farmers out there with answers to this problem. We can have normal, affordable, healthy food. We can live without the fear of food related disease. Arm yourself with knowledge. Then, cast your vote for the foods you want every time you choose your purchases at the grocery.
A Mountain Mama - East Kentucky Gal 
10 comments
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January 1, 2010 at 7:05 pm
dcbright3
This is a great article. It is very neccessary to know where your food come from; because people are getting sick and dying to soon. We do need to be very careful with the foods we eat.
January 2, 2010 at 10:44 am
Cre
As I had children, I became more and more aware of our food and what we truly were eating, despite working in agriculture and being involved my entire life. I have always been lucky to be the recipient of garden produce but the past 3 years, I’ve learned to can and preserve. One of my goals is to buy a pressure canner to can more and faster! lol.
As far as beef goes, we rarely buy it. For us, we take advantage of hunting. Hunter took 8 deer this year. That should get us through the year. My family provides us with all of the homegrown pork we could want but Hunter is wanting to raise our own in 2010. I’m not 100% on board with that one yet.
I haven’t bought green beans since….May? And have many many more bags in the freezer along with bags of green peppers from MY garden. I rarely buy tomato sauce anymore either since I have so much in the freezer.
There’s not an economical source of chicken though. And we can’t afford the high dollar stuff. We can’t. I am working back toward organic milk but the only thing available here is the “big farm” organic milk and the articles I’ve been reading tell me that there’s not much difference anymore honestly. There’s also no where to buy flour and the like in bulk economically. For now, I settle for unbleached.
Hunter does have a junk food tendency but through the years, I’ve slowly dwindled him down off of Mountain Dews and the such. He’s getting more and more interested in growing our own food. We’re much more about sustainability than we are about organic. The American food system just isn’t sustainable on its own anymore. We’ve got to get back to buying local and learning to eat IN SEASON. Americans demand cheap food and a lot of it, and that’s what they’ve been given. It’s time now to demand quality food. It’s also time for our farmers to realize that the traditional system is not working and to demand higher prices for their product.
I also think that people truly don’t know how to cook unprocessed foods. Which is sad. Why are there starving children when a bag of dried beans is 0.60 at Walmart and a huge bag of rice is $3? I don’t understand. Learn to cook it and to cook it healthy. It’s better for you and much more economical.
I’d love to lose just 20lbs!
January 2, 2010 at 2:11 pm
angie
Kelli, I am just now catching up on your blog. It sounds like you are doing a lot of neat things!
i made the mistake of acquiring Nourishing TRaditions and reading The china Study in the same year. the china study won out for me, combined with Michael Pollan’s books. So, I do purpose to eat real food, just not so much meat. I am also going to blog about diet…just a personal thing i am going to try. As for the kids, my teens eat a lot of sugary crap. They get it from outside the home, where it is cheap and plentiful. I won’t keep junk in my house. The 6-year-old…she is picky. I am thinking about feeding her meat…she likes lots of processed foods too, when she can get them. Not so much candy, but anything that looks like a cheddar bunny.
Blessings on the new year! Love to you and your sweet family….
January 3, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Catherine
We’ve pretty much quit eating any meat from the stores. I pressure-canned 20+ chickens this past summer that we’re still eating on, and I buy our bacon from a local butcher. And that’s all the meat we eat. I’m almost afraid to feed WalMart meat to my girls, since they gas it so you can’t tell how old it is! I’m doing my best to switch us to a local diet, with just a few things added in that we can’t produce here (i.e. olive oil, sea salt). Unfortunately, since the neighbor dogs decided to make lunch of our last batch of chickens, we have to buy factory-farmed eggs until our new chicken batch starts laying this spring. And we’re having to buying the store milk until our goats freshen again in March…I’m looking forward to homemade cheese and butter this year!!!
Our biggest adjustment with eating locally was switching from a wheat-based diet (since wheat won’t grow here in the Appalachian mountains) to a corn-and-bean based diet. And surprisingly enough, once we stopped eating (GMO/bleached/over-processed/additive-loaded) wheat products, an goodly number of our health problems disappeared. Eliminating wheat was harder than I expected (and I still haven’t managed to get rid of all of it, just most).
Most Americans have become so removed from where our food comes from, that it never occurs to them that what they are putting in their mouths is making them sick.
January 4, 2010 at 1:39 am
lesleehorner
I just read Angie’s comment and I was going to recommend you read Michael Pollan’s books. He was featured in Food Inc. and although I haven’t read his books, I have read an article and watched interviews with him. A friend of mine absolutely loves his work. I just looked at The China Study at Border’s yesterday, might have to buy it now.
We are a lot better than the average family at eating healthy, but I still fix too many can foods and tend to buy the cheaper fresh and frozen veggies rather than the organic ones. I let my laziness win out all too often…
January 4, 2010 at 4:06 am
eastkentuckygal
Cre – I agree with you that the most important thing is to eat in season and locally when possible. We buy Laura’s Lean Beef as it is antibiotic free and is at least somewhat grass fed. I wish John knew more about hunting. I love venison and rabbit. That might have to be a future goal. We have no source of good pork, but we eat it anyway, it’s an Appalachian staple, and I haven’t been able to get rid of it in our diet. I hope for a better garden this year. I might look into more types of canning and the nutrition value of canned foods this year. I also agree that farmer’s are being mistreated and it is sad. I’m for paying more if it means a better quality.
Angie and Leslee – I’ll have to look at Michael Pollan’s books. I’ve heard about The China Study. Many Tfers have mixed feelings about it. I don’t know enough about it to make a decision. I know though, that meat is important for me. I was vegetarian for 5 years, and once I started breastfeeding I craved bloody red meat like crazy. Deladis also wasn’t a good eater at first, but when we made the family decision to add meat back in everyone ate well and was happy. I think it is a personal health related decision myself. If I had been able to go without it and still feel healthy – I’d probably still be vegetarian. TF eating though has changed my health so tremendously I know it is a fit for me.
Catherine – I’m going to have to email you for some pointers. 🙂
January 5, 2010 at 2:55 am
Desiree
Wow! This is very timely-it’s something I am working on once again at our house. I also lost some weight by eating healthier. I started by drinking water and cutting out all pop. Of course, breastfeeding and being on an elimination diet for two of my children taught me very fast to read labels and research what I was actually eating and it really turned me around. My husband is diabetic and raised on junk food, so him researching it has really turned his diet and health around. He actually craves vegetables now! I cook 95% by scratch with whole foods unless we travel.
Have you contacted a local farm bureau/extension program about local pork? If there’s a health food store around Hazard, I would ask the owner and see if you can leave your phone number/email about any farmers who would be willing to sell you some.
I haven’t read NT yet. I got it from the library but didn’t have it long enough to fully read, but I do read blogs and information online about it. In general I agree with it, but there are some things I don’t agree with from what I’ve read online. I love Pollan’s books, though. We eat mostly organic and local when we can find it. We had our first garden this year. But after being on elimination diets and then crashing our healthy eating with a busy schedule and junk food this year, we are getting sick and depressed like crazy. Not to mention behavior changes in the kids!
One of our goals for this year was to totally detox the junk we have managed to grow accustomed to again. I also think two of my kids have dairy/gluten issues still, and me as well. 😦
Thank you for reminding me to actually read the NT book once and for all!
January 7, 2010 at 12:48 am
Raine Saunders
I totally understand what you are saying about having a clean house (and sometimes that’s questionable for me…just the amount of fuzz and dirt I find on our wood floor that is endless) but not tidy. We homeschool also and I find that after a day of schooling and getting all the meals in order, launddry, dishes, etc. I’m pretty spent. It’s very hard to keep the house organized and orderly after all of that. Sometimes I’m glad people don’t come over that often as when they do, it’s almost always when my house is in a state of disarray.
We don’t eat out much, and I find that I have to go to the store more often than I’d like to. We were eating out more than normal over the holidays due to some traveling and my family who lives here (in Boise, ID) doesn’t really cook or have any interest in sustainable, real food (sadly), and now we’re back into our routine of eating at home mostly. It’s so expensive to eat out, and the food quality is never on par with what you make at home, especially if you are as careful as we are about buying local and sustainable, organic, etc.
We saw Food, Inc. in August and it motivated me as well to educate and try to get the word out to others. I recently obtained a copy of the companion guide to the movie as well and I’m looking forward to reading it.
Great blog, I hope all is well for you and your family. Keep up the great work, and don’t worry too much about housework…most of us can’t keep our homes in perfect condition, and it’s good to know there are others who struggle with the same types of things. We’re all human and we just get by, doing the best we can, with God’s loving hand. 🙂
January 11, 2010 at 12:46 am
Carmen
I thought about you as we ate dinner tonight. We had a rabbit killed by Don, corn we grew and froze, green beans we grew and canned, fresh salad greens and onions from the green house (which are surviving the deep freeze) and the last of the green house tomatoes (picked before the recent freeze). Once in a while as we’re cooking, we realize the whole meal came from right here on the farm. That’s a good feeling!
January 29, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Emma
Amen! I was already on the path of eating fresh, healthy foods but Food, Inc. helped me to solidify my choices. I loved their analogy that every food item you scan to buy at the grocery store is a vote. I am a student living on a limited budget, but I will happily give up other luxury items in order to vote for organic local foods.