Natural building is any building system that places the highest value on social and environmental sustainability. It assumes the need to minimize the environmental impact of our housing and other building needs while providing healthy, beautiful, comfortable, and spiritually uplifting homes for everyone. Natural builders emphasize simple, easy-to-learn techniques based on locally available, renewable resources. These systems rely heavily on human labor and creativity instead of on capital, high technology, and specialized skills.
Natural building is necessarily regional and idiosyncratic. There are no right answers, no universally appropriate materials, no standard designs. Everything depends on local ecology, geology, and climate; on the character of the particular building site; and on the needs and personalities of the builders and users. The process works best if the designers, the builders, the owners, and the inhabitants are the same people. Natural building is personally empowering because it teaches that everyone has, or can easily acquire, the skills they need to build their own home.
Natural building is not a new idea. In many parts of the world, almost all building still conforms to these criteria. Until the Industrial Revolution, the advent of cheap transportation, and the professionalization of building and architecture, the same was true throughout Europe and America. Pioneer families in the United States built their own homes out of local materials, as the First Peoples here and everywhere always have. Our modern building industry with its resource-extractive, energy- and capital-intensive, toxic, and inaccessible practices must be seen as a temporary deviation from this norm.
Many of the most fervent supporters of natural building are people with acquired chemical sensitivities and other environmental illnesses. These people are particularly aware of how modern buildings make us sick, but we all know it. Even the mainstream press carries frequent stories of cancers and respiratory problems linked to formaldehyde-based glues, plastics, paints, asbestos, and fiberglass, to name a few favorite culprits. The toxicity of these materials has an impact on everyone associated with them: the workers in the factories and warehouses, the builders on the construction site, and the inhabitants of the poisonous end products. Natural materials like stone, wood, straw, and earth, on the other hand, are not only non-toxic, they are life-enhancing. Clay, one of the most useful natural building materials, is also prized for its ability to absorb toxins and restore health.
There is increasing evidence that modern buildings compromise our psychological and emotional health. Right angles, flat surfaces that are all one color, and constant uniformity don't exist in the natural world where our ancestors evolved. Most modern homes certainly don't stimulate our senses with the variety of patterns, shapes, textures, smells, and sounds that our pre-industrial ancestors experienced. The uniformity of our environments may contribute to our addiction to sensory stimulation through drugs and electronic media.
In contrast, we get a good feeling from natural buildings that is difficult to describe. Even though conditioned to prefer the new, the shiny, and the precise, we respond at a deep level to unprocessed materials, to idiosyncrasy, and to the personal thought and care expressed in craftsmanship. Nearly all the natural buildings I have seen, regardless of the level of expertise of the builders, are remarkably beautiful. Living in a handcrafted cob house, I grew to expect the looks of mesmerized awe I saw on the faces of first-time visitors and the difficulty they had prying themselves from the warm earthen benches when it was time for them to leave.
- Michael G. Smith, founder of the Natural Building Colloquium and former Emerald Earth resident of 11 years
Now here is a slide show I created of pictures I took while living at Emerald Earth for 3 months this summer. Click here to see more pictures (photos 150-249).
As many of you know, I have been living at Emerald Earth for the past two months learning about how to build houses with natural materials (among other things). It's been a truly inspiring experience thus far, and I'm really excited to design and construct natural buildings and structures in the future.
Here is an excerpt from Paula Baker-Laporte explaining why American mainstream building methods are making us sick. Hopefully this makes up for the lack of posts in the past several weeks!
Building-related illness, 20th century (21st century) disease, multiple chemical sensitivities, sick building syndrome, environmental illness: these terms are recent additions to our vocabulary. Until about 25 years ago, indoor air pollution was a very limited phenomenon, but three basic things have changed in the evolution of building technology, resulting in the current widespread concern about environmental quality inside our homes.
First: The very fabric of our homes has changed. Postwar industrialization has introduced mass-produced building components and transportation networks to distribute these products nationwide. Building materials and methods, once regionally derived, have been replaced by manufactured components that promise to provide better performance for less cost. Have these products fulfilled this promise? Certainly not, when environmental and life cycle costs are considered in the cost equation.
Furthermore many of these new products have had a negative and costly impact on our health. Until very recently, our built environments have always been free of man-made chemicals. There are now more than 4 million registered man-made chemicals; between 70,000 and 80,000 of them are in common use. We know very little about the health effects of most of these chemicals and even less about what happens when they interact with one another in an enclosed environment. We do know that many chemicals found in building products - and once thought to be safe - are making people ill.
Second: As the cost of home heating and cooling skyrocketed, we recognized the need for more energy-efficient buildings. In solving this problem, however, we inadvertently created another, further contributing to the demise of our indoor environmental quality. For several decades now, new building technologies have been invented in order to seal homes more tightly, thus making them more energy efficient. However, in order to maintain health, a well-sealed home requires a ventilation system to replace stale and humid air. Given the number of synthetic and fuel-derived toxins that we have introduced into our homes, the need for fresh air exchange is especially significant in standard home construction. And yet no fresh air exchange is required by law, and most tight homes are insufficiently ventilated for optimal health.
Third: We have become accustomed to a new level of comfort and convenience undreamed-of just 100 years ago. These amenities have placed unanticipated performance demands on our buildings. We have introduced huge amounts of moisture into our homes through daily indoor bathing and the use of laundry and dishwashing appliances. In addition, with the advent of modern heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment, modern architecture has abandoned climatically responsive vernacular design in favor of the mechanically dependent 'machine for living in.' We have succeeded in equipping our homes so as to provide uniform temperature continuously, regardless of climate and independent of architectural form. We have also created extreme moisture and temperature differentials between the inside of our homes and the outside environment. The stresses placed on our building envelopes have contributed to the health-threatening conditions, such as mold.
In response to the problem of building-related illness, two very different models for the healthy home have emerged. The first, more mainstream, approach involves eliminating as many pollutants as possible from within the building envelope and sealing it very tightly on the inside so that there is less need to worry about the chemical composition of the structure or insulation. Clean, fresh air is then mechanically pumped in, keeping the house under a slightly positive pressure so that air infiltration is controlled and pollution caused from human activity is purged from the home. This is a technologically-based solution to a technologically-created problem. Impermeable or 'sealed' wall construction is a relatively new concept that relies on manufactured synthetic products to create diffusion-retardant walls. Mainstream building practices and codes are now based on sealed-construction theory.
The second approach involves designing and landscaping the building to be responsive to the local climatic conditions and building the structure out of natural or non-toxic materials that are permeable to air and moisture. The building is seen as a third skin (clothes being the second) - a permeable organism interacting with the natural world and facilitating a balanced exchange of air and humidity. This approach is based on the precepts of 'Bau-biologie.' Bau-biologie is a health-based approach to building, popular throughout northern Europe, that recognizes humans to be a part of, and not apart from, a greater natural system. Although technological innovation has been somewhat successful in both dominating and replicating the natural environment, many of the subtle benefits provided by nature have been overlooked.
Fern House - Emerald Earth
Ironically, natural building materials, once the norm for us and still the norm for the majority of humankind, are viewed with great suspicion and skepticism in current mainstream building culture. Even though people have surrounded themselves with natural, permeable materials throughout human history, and even though enduring models of these buildings are found throughout the world, mainstream building practices and codes promote manufactured building commodities that are laboratory tested, standardized, stamped, packaged, and shipped. In this current building climate, applying for a permit to build a natural home can be a discouraging process.
However, the natural building movement, championed by the theories of Bau-biologie and a small but growing sector of environmentally concerned builders, designers, and homeowners is gaining momentum. This is partially due to a burgeoning mainstream green building movement. In the past, issues of health, energy, and the environment were considered in isolation from one another by different sectors of the building industry, resulting in solutions that worked for one but were at cross-purposes to another. For example, an energy-efficient home often resulted in insufficient air exchange for health, while unsophisticated attempts to allow more fresh air into the house were not energy efficient. Recycled materials containing toxic glues may have been an efficient resource but did not promote health.
Red-Root House - Emerald Earth
Natural building by its very nature exemplifies a balance between energy efficiency, health, and a wise use of natural resources. Currently, the American Institute of Architects and the National Association of Home Builders are embracing an approach in sustainability that is inclusive of all three of these aspects. As green building rating programs are being developed throughout the country, natural building is gaining more recognition in mainstream American building culture.
Paula Baker-Laporte, A.I.A., has headed a prolific and wide-ranging residential practice in Santa Fe since 1986. Together with husband and builder Robert Laporte, she cofounded the Econest Building Company. She has lectured widely on the precepts of environmentally sound and non-toxic architecture and is the primary author of Prescriptions for a Healthy House.
Check out my pictures if you'd like to see more shots of my experiences with natural building (photos 1-15 and 150-225).
Makeover Mondays are a series of Michael Pollan's "food rules" that will hopefully shed some light on what it means to make responsible and thoughtful food choices that enrich our lives and our planet. Each week will be an expansion of these seven powerful words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. People who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than those of us eating a modern Western diet of processed foods. Any traditional diet will do: If it were not a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn't still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others, Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, for example, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and white flour?!) as much as their food habits: small portions eaten at leisurely communal meals; no second helpings or snacking.
Pay attention, too, to the combinations of foods in traditional cultures: In Latin America, corn is traditionally cooked with lime and eaten with beans; what would otherwise be a nutritionally deficient staple becomes the basis of a healthy, balanced diet. (The beans supply amino acids lacking in corn, and the lime makes niacin available.) Cultures that took corn from Latin America without the beans or the lime wound up with serious nutritional deficiences such as pellagra. Traditional diets are more than the sum of their food parts.
In response to the recent egg recall due to Salmonella, an excerpt from John Robbins:
It's actually quite amazing how often it is products of animal origin that cause food-borne illness. Although E. coli 0157:H7 has occasionally been found in raw apple juice and sprouts, and in water contaminated by cattle waste or infected humans, it's most often found in ground beef. In fact, it's so often a problem in ground beef that the serious illness it produces has been called "the hamburger disease."
Following the same pattern, outbreaks of Salmonella have been caused by contaminated tomatoes, mustard cress, bean sprouts, cantaloupe, and watermelon, but far more cases have been caused by eggs and other animal products. Similarly, Campylobacter is occasionally detected on vegetables, but it's widespread on U.S. chickens. Likewise, Listeria has been found on coleslaw (when the cabbage was grown in a field fertilized with manure from Listeria-infected animals), but far more often the culprit is soft cheeses and processed meats.
While chickens in the United States, for example, are frequently infected with Campylobacter and Salmonella, this is not the case in Sweden and Norway. In these countries, livestock are treated more humanely, and given more space, with the result that they are healthier and harbor fewer pathogens. But factory farming, as it has evolved in the United States, is geared for maximum corporate profit, not for animal well-being or for food safety.
In the poultry industry, the fervent desire to maximize profits has set the stage for infection and disease. When you cram 50,000 birds into one building, give them feed and water that are contaminated and exposed to mice and rats, give them antibiotics that will make them more vulnerable to disease as strains of bacteria become resistant to the drugs, and then deprive them of food and water for several days before going to the slaughter, you create near perfect conditions for pathogens to spread.
Leading cause of food-borne illness in the United States: Campylobacter
People in the United States who become ill with Campylobacter poisoning every day: More than 5,000
Primary source of Campylobacter bacteria: Contaminated chicken flesh
American chickens sufficiently contaminated with Campylobacter to cause illness: 70%
American turkeys sufficiently contaminated with Campylobacter to cause illness: 90%
Ok, ice cream is certainly not something I have in my freezer every day. BUT, since it's summer and everyone loves ice cream, I thought I'd throw out my choice for the best ice cream to eat. And there is not a single ounce of cream in it. The ice cream in my freezer is Coconut Bliss (Pineapple Coconut).
This particular flavor tastes like a creamy Pina Colada and is probably the best tasting ice cream product I've ever had.
And it's made from coconut fat which means it's so much healthier than cow fat. Here's the scoop (no pun intended), from the Coconut Bliss website: "While its natural richness creates the creamy texture that people love, the fat in coconut milk is very different from other fats. High in medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) identical to those in human breast milk, coconut milk has similar germ fighting and heart-protective properties.
Unlike other fats, MCTs do not need to be broken down and can be used immediately by the body as energy; it's the ideal fat for people who commonly have trouble digesting fat, such as those with a slow metabolism, colitis, and hypothyroidism. Coconut fat actually stimulates metabolism."
Other benefits of Coconut Bliss:
It's made with agave syrup, not sugar or high-fructose corn syrup like most ice creams.
It's vegan and organic.
It's low glycemic and gluten free. It's made with fair trade ingredients whenever possible.
You can find Coconut Bliss at grocery stores like Wegman's or Whole Foods, and most natural food stores. It will be more expensive than traditional ice creams, but for good reasons (health and environmental). It's made from high quality organic ingredients, and it's a dense product - there is less air than most other ice creams and no fillers like chicory root extract. It means you don't buy it so often because ice cream should be a treat, not something you have every night after dinner. It also means you savor it longer, and don't eat the entire container in one sitting. As the old adage goes, "The banquet is in the first bite."
"Eating is an agricultural act," Wendell Berry famously wrote, by which he meant that we are not just passive consumers of food but cocreators of the systems that feed us. Depending on how we spend them, our food dollars can either go to support a food industry devoted to quantity and convenience and "value" or they can nourish a food chain organized around values - values like quality and health. Yes, shopping this way takes more money and effort, but as soon as you begin to treat that expenditure not just as shopping but also as a kind of vote - a vote for health in the largest sense - food no longer seems like the smartest place to economize.
Makeover Mondays are a series of Michael Pollan's "food rules" that will hopefully shed some light on what it means to make responsible and thoughtful food choices that enrich our lives and our planet. Each week will be an expansion of these seven powerful words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.
My journey to being a vegan eater started over 2 years ago and came to fruition just a few months ago. I originally stopped eating red meat for the health benefits. I took a food science/nutrition class last year and over the summer switched to soy milk, diminished the amount of meat I ate, and increased my vegetable intake. At the end of the summer I stopped eating meat completely. I still ate cheese and eggs, but not huge amounts. I used eggs for baking and ate cheese occasionally, but over time found they weren't essential to my diet.
I've been doing a lot more reading about nutrition and food in the past year, and I started to realize all the other benefits of not eating animal products. I found that animal products really aren't necessary for our health, and in most cases are actually more detrimental. And that's when I started this blog - to spread the word that our health is directly affected by our diet. No drugs or medicine can do enough to keep us healthy. It's all about what we eat.
There are still not enough long-term studies on being vegan and lots of people have their arguments for the benefits of eating meat - like the fact that humans have "evolved" to eat meat. Humans evolved to eat wild meat that ate grass and plants and that wasn't fed antibiotics and hormones because it was caged up and not allowed to move its entire life. The quality of meat and the way meat is raised in America has dramatically gone downhill in the past century. Given the state of the industrial food system in America right now, I think the safest and healthiest way to eat is vegan.
"But where do you get protein?" most people ask. The average American eats twice as much protein as necessary (primarily from animal products). Protein from beans and grains are sufficient and are much healthier.
Advertising is the means that most Americans get their info about what to eat. Think about all the crappy food that is advertised today. When's the last time you saw an ad for beets? I bet you saw an ad for McDonald's in the past 24 hours though. Education is the first step to eating healthfully. And that's why you're reading this post, hopefully - to get healthified.
So here it is - my essential top 10 guide to going vegan. 10. Better personal hygiene. Better breath, less body odor, and healthier skin, hair, and nails are all benefits of a vegan diet. 9. More vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Not from a multivitamin. From real food. That's what happens when you eat more fruits and vegetables instead of animal protein. You get all the vitamins and minerals that regulate and improve the essential functions in your body including boosting your immune system so you don't get sick. (I haven't gotten a cold for over 3 years.) Here's a "health claim" for you - all fruits and vegetables naturally have antioxidants. You don't need to get them from packaged snack foods where they are artificially added.
8. Feel more energy. More athletes today - amateur and professional - are switching to a vegan diet to naturally gain more energy. Paired with getting 8 hours of sleep every day, you will feel like a new person.
7. Live longer...better. On average, vegans live longer than omnivores (some studies claim upwards of 15 years). And those extra years are not likely to be spent in bed at the nursing home.
6. Keep animals free from cruelty. Just watch this video clip.
5. "You are what you eat eats too." Do you actually know what you're eating when you eat that quarter-pound burger? Do you know all the antibiotics, growth hormones, and euthanasia drugs in that meat? Do you know which parts of the cow you're eating? There's simply no way to know what you're actually eating when you eat animal products. Most industrial farms feed animals cheap, high-protein seeds and grains to bulk up the animals, even though their natural diet is leaves. And that's on a good day. Some animals get fed recycled manure of various other animals. How would you like it if you were only fed Snickers bars every day? It would get old after a while and you'd get sick after several days. Well, most animals are given antibiotics to keep them from getting sick, but even still, 90% of chickens are sick when they are slaughtered. And those disease-infected chickens are now on your plate in the form of "wingz." Yum!? Is it really worth the health risks to eat cheaply produced, unnaturally fed, drugged up meat?
4. Lose weight. Considering 2 out of 3 Americans are overweight or obese, it's safe to assume that most people want to (or should) lose some weight. When you eliminate animal products from your diet you stop eating unnecessary calories, saturated fat, and cholesterol and replace it with nutrient-packed fruits, vegetables, and whole grains which fill you up without all the bogus calories and fat. Key word: fiber. It slows digestion and leaves your stomach feeling satisfied longer. Losing weight doesn't mean dieting or counting calories. It means eating a balanced diet of clean food - unprocessed, whole foods that are naturally rich in phytochemicals. 3. Help the global food and water supply. It's simple - raising animals for food requires more water to be used and more food to be grown. If that food was grown for people instead of animals, there would be 10 times as much food for people in the world. Over 3/4 of the corn grown in the U.S. goes to feeding livestock, whereas people eat 2%. In order to produce 1 pound of beef, you'd need over 5,000 gallons of water compared to 25 gallons for 1 pound of wheat. You could save more water by not eating a pound of meat than not showering for an entire year. And here's the kicker: Americans would only have to reduce their beef consumption by 10% to save the amount of grain (12 million tons) to adequately feed every person in the world who dies of hunger annually. 2. Prevent getting the Western diseases. Cancer, stroke, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, and high blood pressure and cholesterol (to name a few) are all conditions that are virtually unheard of in countries that have not yet adopted the American style of eating - lots of meat and fried foods. Not many people realize that these diseases are totally avoidable by eating a low-fat, plant-based diet.
1. Save the environment. If you really want to be sustainable and help reduce stress on the environment, stop eating meat. It turns out that a greener diet is more efficient than buying a greener car. The effects of raising animals for consumption that are destroying our environment: land degradation, rainforest destruction, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming. The amount of global warning emissions that come from livestock is more than the emissions from the entire world's transportation combined.
The BP oil spill is all over the news right now, but what about the amount of waste - 5 million tons (which is more than 100 times that of humans) - produced daily by livestock that ends up polluting our water systems because our land cannot handle that much crap. And that crap emits methane and nitrous oxide, two of the more harmful greenhouse gases with more warming power than carbon dioxide. Think about all the extra fossil fuels (10 times as much) required to eat an animal compared to that of a plant - transporting the animals to get slaughtered, factories to handle and slaughter them, refrigerating the carcasses, and then transporting the meat across the country (or world).
Raising animals industrially for food is simply a waste of resources. Please read this article for more on why it's important for the environment to stop eating animals.
Makeover Mondays are a series of Michael Pollan's "food rules" that will hopefully shed some light on what it means to make responsible and thoughtful food choices that enrich our lives and our planet. Each week will be an expansion of these seven powerful words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.
Imitation butter - aka margarine - is the classic example. To make something like nonfat cream cheese that contains neither cream nor cheese requires an extreme degree of processing; such products should be labeled as imitations and avoided. The same rule applies to soy-based mock meats, artificial sweeteners, and fake fats and starches.
Having just returned from a four-day hiking trip, perhaps I am still "on a high" from all the hill climbing. This past week I paid a visit to one of America's most diverse and scenic National Parks - Olympic National Park and Forest. Stunning panoramic views of snow capped mountains, temperate rain forests, and foggy beaches with tide pools and huge rock formations are just some of the highlights of the park. Check out my photos here (starting with photo 82).
After only two days of hiking - about 32 miles and 4000 feet of elevation gain - I was definitely feeling more sore than after the Seattle marathon. And 11 of those miles were on a flat beach.
Uphill hiking is a great low-impact activity that certainly raises your heart rate and gives your leg muscles an excellent workout. It's also a great way to exercise your brain - focusing on the trails to avoid tripping over a root or to make sure your foot lands on that large rock to cross a stream. And it's a good opportunity to clear your mind and simply enjoy nature.
There are cultures (written about in John Robbins' Healthy at 100) where people in their 90s and beyond are still scaling mountains on a daily basis and doing it just as fast as people half their age. There can be much more said about why those cultures are living healthfully into their 100s while Americans start shriveling decades sooner, but you'll have to read the book.
For now, make it a point in the next week or two to find a big hill or mountain near you and devote a couple hours to do a good climb. Your legs (and heart) will thank you.
The meat, dairy, and egg industries in the United States are remarkably creative in what they feed livestock today. Always looking to save money, they've come up with some ingenious ideas to supplement the grain and soybeans the animals are fed.
Recycled chicken manure, for example, is routinely incorporated into the diets of U.S. chickens. (Is it a coincidence that 90 percent of U.S. chickens are now infected with leukosis - chicken cancer - at the time of slaughter?) By the same token, raw poultry and pig manure are routinely fed to U.S. pigs. And the water they are given is often only the liquid wastes draining from manure pits. (Three-quarters of U.S. pigs are infected with pneumonia at the time of slaughter.)
Meanwhile, dried poultry waste and sewage sludge are routinely fed to U.S. cattle (supplementing the basic diet of grain and soybeans). In 1997, in the wake of the British epidemic of Mad Cow disease, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally banned the practice of feeding cow meat and bone meal back to cows. But pigs and chickens are still routinely fed the bones, brains, meat scraps, feathers, and feces of their own species.
There are many people who love their pets, and would be appalled at the idea of eating cats and dogs. They are glad these animals are not part of the human food chain in our culture. But is that confidence warranted? Tens of millions of unclaimed cats and dogs are euthanized every year by shelters and veterinarians, who then must dispose of these bodies, many of which are picked up by rendering plants. Much of the livestock feed in the United States today is made with rendered ingredients. Thus commercial meat, dairy, and egg products often come from animals whose diet included the ground-up remains of cats and dogs, including the euthanasia drugs injected into their bodies.
It's enough to make you understand why Oprah Winfrey said she would never eat another burger.
Makeover Mondays are a series of Michael Pollan's "food rules" that will hopefully shed some light on what it means to make responsible and thoughtful food choices that enrich our lives and our planet. Each week will be an expansion of these seven powerful words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. Cook and, if you can, plant a garden.
To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be fast, cheap, and easy; that food is a product of industry, not nature; that food is fuel, and not a form of communion, with other people as well as with other species - with nature.
The work of growing food contributes to your health long before you sit down to eat it, of course, but there is something particularly fitting about enlisting your body in its own sustenance. Much of what we call recreation or exercise consists of pointless physical labor, so it is especially satisfying when we can give that labor a point. But gardening consists of mental work as well: learning about the different varieties; figuring out which do best under the conditions of your garden; acquainting yourself with the various microclimates - the subtle differences in light, moisture, and soil quality across even the tiniest patch of earth; and devising ways to outwit pests without resorting to chemicals. None of this work is terribly difficult; much of it is endlessly gratifying, and never more so than in the hour immediately before dinner, when I take a knife and a basket out to the garden to harvest whatever has declared itself ripest and tastiest.
When the basket of produce lands on the kitchen counter, when we start in on the cleaning and cutting and chopping, we're thinking about a dozen different things - what to make, how to make it - but nutrition, or even health, is probably not high on the list. Look at this food. There are no ingredient labels, no health claims, nothing to read except maybe a recipe. It's hard when contemplating such produce to think in terms of nutrients or chemical compounds; no, this is food, so fresh it's still alive, communicating with us by scent and color and taste.
As cook in your kitchen you enjoy an omniscience about your food that no amount of supermarket study or label reading could hope to match. Having retaken control of the meal from the food scientists and processors, you know exactly what is and is not in it: There are no questions about high-fructose corn syrup, or ethoxylated diglycerides, or partially hydrogenated soy oil, for the simple reason that you didn't ethoxylate or partially hydrogenate anything, nor did you add any additives. (Unless, that is, you're the kind of cook who starts with a can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, in which case all bets are off.) To reclaim this much control over one's food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing; indeed, in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts.
And what these acts subvert is nutritionism: the belief that food is foremost about nutrition and nutrition is so complex that only experts and industry can possibly supply it. When you're cooking with food as alive as this - these gorgeous and semigorgeous fruits and leaves and flesh - you're in no danger of mistaking it for a commodity, or a fuel, or a collection of chemical nutrients. No, in the eye of the cook or the gardener or the farmer who grew it, this food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some not, but each of them dependent on the other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight. I'm thinking of the relationship between the plants and the soil, between the grower and the plants and animals he or she tends, between the cook and the growers who supply the ingredients, and between the cook and the people who will soon come to the table to enjoy the meal. The cook in the kitchen preparing a meal from plants and animals at the end of this shortest of food chains has a great many things to worry about, but "health" is simply not one of them, because it is given.
Apparently it's summer... or so I'm told for those of you on the east coast. So to cool off, here's a recipe that requires no cooking or baking and takes all of 10 minutes (or less) to prepare and will leave your taste buds feeling refreshed and satisfied.
This week I'm introducing jicama (pronounced hee-kah-ma), a mexican root vegetable which is slightly sweet and softer than a potato. The outside is papery and yellow, the inside is creamy and white. It has a fairly neutral flavor and slight crunch, similar to a water chestnut, and pretty much absorbs whatever its surrounding flavors are. Since you can eat it raw it makes a great device for eating dips or guacamole, or add it to a fruit salad for some extra fiber and a little crunch. Or slice it up and put some peanut butter or jam on it. It's low in calories (as are most vegetables), low in starch (unlike potatoes), and high in potassium and vitamin C. Some common pairing ingredients include cilantro, ginger, lime, lemon, chili powder, and soy sauce. Be creative!
For my recipe, I'm pairing the jicama with mint and lime, and throwing in some cucumber to heighten the "coolness" of the dish and then some mango and black beans to maintain its mexican character.
You'll need:
1 large cucumber
1 jicama (mine was about the size of a softball, but it doesn't really matter if it's smaller), about 2-3 c. chopped
1 large mango
1 (15 oz.) can black beans drained and rinsed or about 3/4 c. dry beans if you cook them yourself
somewhere between 1/4 c. and 1/3 c. of brown rice vinegar (depending on how big the jicama is)
juice of 1 large lime or 2 small limes
a couple sprigs of fresh mint leaves (I used orange mint, but use whichever variety you grow or can find at the store), about 2 tbsp. when chopped *alternative: you can try fresh cilantro if you don't want mint
salt and pepper to taste
(optional: 1 medium red onion if you use cilantro)
To prepare the jicama, simply slice the skin off with a knife and roughly chop into 1/2" chunks. Cut the cucumber into 1/4" slices and then quarter the slices. To cut the mango, start at the top near the middle and run the knife down along the edge of the seed. Repeat for the other side and then cut off whatever remains for the thin sides. Slice up the mango halves into long slices, and slide your knife along the skin to remove it. Then cut the slices up into roughly 1/2" chunks. Finely chop the mint until you get about 2 tbsp. If you feel like adding onion, thinly slice it into whatever size pieces you prefer.
Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Cover or store in an air-tight container and refrigerate for several hours or overnight to let the flavors combine.
Just as your car needs the right fuel mixture to run well, your body needs the right nutrients, too. Protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins, and minerals - you need them all. So you may be wondering if you're getting everything you need.
Here's the bottom line: It turns out that the more low-fat vegan foods you add to your routine, the better your overall nutrition becomes. In our research studies, we carefully watch people's nutrition before and after major diet changes, and we find that a vegan menu brings tremendous improvements. Your plate frees itself of animal fat, cholesterol, and unnecessary calories, and serves up an abundance of vitamins and minerals.
While meat-centric diets are often low in fiber and several vitamins, and overdo it on fat and cholesterol, a vegan diet is just the opposite: It brings things into much better balance. Legumes and whole grains provide plenty of complete protein, without the cholesterol and fat found in meat, eggs, and most dairy products. And vegetables and fruits bring you vitamins, minerals, and natural plant compounds that a meaty diet just can't match.
Even so, three nutrients merit a bit of attention:
Calcium. For many people, calcium means dairy products. But dairy products bring you animal fat, animal protein, lactose sugar, cholesterol, and a sprinkling of hormones, none of which your body needs. More healthful sources of calcium are green leafy vegetables, such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, or collards, along with beans, peas, and lentils. Or, simply put, "greens and beans." Include these foods in your daily routine. One caveat, however: Spinach is different from most other greens in that its calcium tends to be poorly absorbed. In contrast, most other greens have highly absorbable calcium.
Image: Kale
Iron. Green leafy vegetables and beans are also rich in iron. So that's another reason to include these great foods in your routine. Vitamin C increases iron absorption. So when citrus fruits, red peppers, or other vitamin-rich foods are consumed at the same meal as an iron-rich food, your body tends to take in more of the iron.
Vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is essential for healthy nerves and healthy blood cells. You'll find it in some fortified foods, such as fortified soy milk, breakfast cereals, meat analogues, or nutritional yeast (look for the words "cobalamin" or "cyanocobalamin" on the labels). It is essential to include a reliable source of vitamin B12 in your routine.
If you've been reading my posts for any number of weeks, you'd know by now the importance of whole grains in our diet.
This week my featured pantry item is the mighty whole grain quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah).
If you haven't heard about this grain yet, get on the boat. Quinoa is an ancient grain that originated in South America, where it was one of the Inca's 3 staple foods, along with corn and potatoes. It's pretty versatile and is increasingly found in more and more food products today like pasta, cereal, and even in polenta. If you can't find quinoa in the bulk section at your grocery store, you can probably find it on the shelf in the rice section. Look for the Ancient Harvest brand or Bob's Red Mill. There is a red variety too, but I prefer the traditional kind. You can also find quinoa flour if you're lucky.
Quinoa is very nutritious and high in protein. Unlike most other grains, quinoa contains a balanced set of the essential amino acids, making it a complete source of protein. It's also gluten-free and easily digested. It's got a light and fluffy texture, and is not sticky or heavy like other grains.
You can use it instead of rice or pasta in virtually any kind of dish. Add it to a stir fry or soup. Instead of sugar-loaded cereal, eat it for breakfast. It also is really good on its own. Check this site out for basic cooking instructions and recipes.
Milk and most other dairy products are considered part of a vegetarian diet, but it's a fine line. I stopped eating all meat except for seafood in October of 2006, and dropped seafood in October of 2009. Prior to becoming a vegetarian, I only ate raw foods for 30 days to curb my meat cravings, and more easily adapt to a vegetarian lifestyle.
My body feels best without any dairy products. The only reason that I still consume dairy products is because they taste good. Even though I don't eat it daily, I love variety and flavor of cheese and the creamy, sweetness of ice cream. I don't drink milk, but have justified my cheese and ice cream addictions, by only eating them "once in a while".
I stopped drinking milk several years ago, when I started to understand that the purpose of cow's milk is to promote growth. A baby cow goes from 90 pounds to 2000 pounds in less than 2 years. Trust me when I say, I do not want to consume anything that promotes growth.
I used to drink milk because…
I thought it was the best way to get calcium
It was inexpensive
It was convenient
I believed it would help me lose weight
I never considered the options
It's not surprising if, like me, you thought milk was the only way to go. The National Dairy Council spent 190 million dollars on their Got Milk campaign to convince you that you need 3 glasses of milk a day to stay healthy. Those celebrities wearing milk mustaches are cute but they don't tell you about the ugly side of milk and other dairy products.
Gotmilk.com tells you that drinking three glasses of milk a day may reduce your risk of bone disease and fractures. According to their study sourced, principal influences on bone mass are genetics, hormonal structure, mechanical loading and calcium intake. That means the only factor you have control over is calcium intake. They want you to believe that the best way to get calcium is by drinking milk, but there are better ways. Based on absorption, calorie for calorie, kale, bok choy and broccoli are all better sources of calcium than milk. Other veggies that contain high levels of calcium include kidney beans, black beans, arugula and spinach.
Interestingly enough, hip fractures and osteoporosis are much more common in populations with high dairy consumption. American women consume 32 times the amount of cows milk as women in New Guinea, but suffer 47 times the number of broken hips. (The China Study has a great chart on page 209 showing the association of rates of hip fractures with calcium intake for different countries.)
Top 6 Reasons to Drop the Dairy (Especially Milk)
Cruel to calves – Cows produce milk to nourish their young, but calves on dairy farms are taken away from their mothers when they are just 1 day old. They are fed milk substitutes (including cattle blood-ugh) so that their mothers' milk can be sold to humans.
Cruel to cows – Cows have a natural lifespan of about 25 years and can produce milk for eight or nine years. However, the stress caused by the conditions on factory farms leads to disease, lameness, and reproductive problems that render cows worthless to the dairy industry by the time that they're 4 or 5 years old, at which time they are sent to be slaughtered.
Cows are also fed unnatural, high-protein diets, which include dead chickens, pigs, and other animals, because their natural diet of grass would not provide the nutrients that they need to produce such massive amounts of milk.
Cruel to adults - A U.K. study showed that people who suffered from irregular heartbeats, asthma, headaches, fatigue, and digestive problems showed marked and often complete improvements in their health after cutting milk from their diets. This is especially true for people living with inflammatory conditions and auto-immune diseases.
Cruel to the earth - In California, America's top milk-producing state, manure from dairy farms has poisoned hundreds of square miles of groundwater, rivers, and streams. Each of the more than 1 million cows on the state's dairy farms excretes 18 gallons of manure daily.
It's just weird - Besides humans (and companion animals who are fed by humans), no species drinks milk beyond infancy or drinks the milk of another species.
If you are considering a vegetarian diet or dumping the dairy, I highly recommend reading The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, The Kind Dietby Alicia Silverstone and Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. There are many more great books, but these really made a difference in what I decided to put in my body.
If you're not convinced, here are a few more reasons to give up dairy...
"When you consume dairy products, you are ingesting the same antibiotics, pesticides, steroids and hormones you would if you ate meat directly."- The Skinny Bitch
The biggest factors in breast cancer include fat, excess estrogen and animal protein. Milk delivers all three. Cows injected with bovine growth hormone have higher levels of IGF-1, which is connected to tumor growth. (Yep – Cancer)
Cows are milked by machine, metal clamps are attached to the cows' sensitive udders. The udders become sore and infected. But the machines keep on milking, sucking the dead white blood cells into the milk" – Skinny Bitch
Records from the Food and Drug Administration show that "virtually 100% of the cheese products produced and sold in the U.S. has detectable pesticide residues." – Skinny Bitch
40 Day Dairy-Free Challenge
Stop consuming all dairy products for 40 days
Avoid dairy free cheese until you kill your cheese cravings (read ingredients – many dairy free cheese products contain milk proteins)
Add non dairy sources of calcium to your diet. Include leafy greens, soy, sea vegetables, beans, seeds and nuts.
Experiment with other types of milk, like soy, almond or hemp.
Bonus challenge: Drop eggs too. Eggs are not technically dairy, but the incredible, edible egg is really just a chicken period, and that is kind of gross.
Here are a few of the perks you can expect from a dairy free diet:
weight loss
calm belly
better sleep
less anxiety
Please let me know if you are up for the challenge, and how long it takes to start feeling the results of a dairy free lifestyle. I'll post challenge updates on Twitter and weigh in, literally, at the end of my 40 days and tell you how I did.
Where are the calories in the foods you eat? Think about it for a second. A chicken stores calories in chicken fat. A cow stores calories in beef fat. A fish stores calories in fish oils. If any animal eats more food than is needed for energy, those extra calories do not end up as feathers or hooves. They are stored in body fat. So if you eat chicken fat, beef fat, or fish fat, you are eating the animal's calorie-storing tissues.
How many calories are we talking about? If you were to measure the calories in any of these kinds of fat - chicken fat, beef fat, or fish oil - you might be surprised to find that they are all exactly the same: Every gram of fat - no matter which animal it came from - holds 9 calories.
This is important to remember, because many people imagine that the fattening foods are carbohydrates - breads, rice, potatoes, etc. The fact is, a gram of carbohydrate has only 4 calories - less than half the calories in any kind of fat.
So, if you are aiming to lose weight, skipping animal products is a great first step. If you don't eat any chicken, beef, fish, or other meats, you will not get any of their stored calories. You might be thinking, well, what about lean meat? Is that okay? Sorry to depress you, but fat permeates animal muscle tissue, like water lurking in a damp sponge. Even if you trim away all the visible fat, there is still a sizable amount of fat lurking in that "lean" meat. You may not see if, but it is there.
Let's say you bought a chicken breast and threw away the skin and all visible fat. Still, as many as one-fourth of its calories come from fat hiding within the muscle tissue. So if your curry were made from chicken, instead of spicy vegetables, you'd get a load of animal fat you never bargained for. Cholesterol lurks in the lean, too - there is actually more cholesterol in the lean portion of meats than in their fatty parts.
What about dairy products? Well, whole milk is about 49 percent fat, as a percentage of its calories. Typical cheeses are around 70 percent. These are both huge sources of fat and calories. And if you were to remove the fat - as in skim milk - the number one component is now sugar, believe it or not. Lactose sugar is the main source of calories in skim milk.
Vegetables, fruits, beans, and whole grains are a whole different story. Nearly all are very low in fat, which means that while they fill you up, they are naturally modest in calories. Now, there are tiny traces of natural oils in vegetables, fruits, beans, etc., and they are healthful. The trouble starts when oils are extracted - when olive oil is taken from olives, sunflower oil is removed from sunflower seeds, etc. - and are dribbled all over your pasta or salad, or cooked into French fries. The calories add up fast.
So avoiding animal products and added oils helps you steer clear of a lot of unneeded calories. Many people are told by their doctors that weight loss would help their diabetes, bring down their cholesterol, or help in other ways. "Yes, but what about taste?" they ask. As you slim down and improve your health, you discover tastes and aromas you never knew existed. You'll find yourself looking at meals in a whole different way. Your palate expands and you really enjoy eating again!
Makeover Mondays are a series of Michael Pollan's "food rules" that will hopefully shed some light on what it means to make responsible and thoughtful food choices that enrich our lives and our planet. Each week will be an expansion of these seven powerful words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
There are hundreds of foodish products in the supermarket that your ancestors simply wouldn't recognize as food: breakfast cereal bars transected by bright white veins representing, but in reality having nothing to do with, milk; "protein waters" and "nondairy creamer"; cheeselike food-stuffs equally innocent of any bovine contribution; cakelike cylinders (with creamlike fillers) called Twinkies that never grow stale. Don't eat anything incapable of rotting is another personal policy you might consider adopting.
There are many reasons to avoid eating such complicated food products beyond the various chemical additives and corn and soy derivatives they contain. One of the problems with the products of food science is that they lie to your body; their artificial colors and flavors and synthetic sweeteners and novel fats confound the sense we rely on to assess new foods and prepare our bodies to deal with them. Foods that lie leave us with little choice but to eat by the numbers, consulting labels rather than our senses.
"Tastes great, less filling!" could be the motto for most processed foods, which are far more energy dense than most whole foods: They contain much less water, fiber, and micronutrients, and generally much more sugar and fat, making them at the same time, "More fattening, less nutritious!"
Swimming is good exercise (that's obvious). Swimming is a lifetime sport that benefits the body and the whole person! But what is it that makes swimming good, specifically? That depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
Swimming is a healthy activity that can be continued for a lifetime - and the health benefits swimming offers for a lifetime are worth the effort it takes to get to the pool.
Why do you swim? For the health benefits to your heart and lungs? For the chance to be with some of your friends at the pool? Because, in your case, running everyday hurts? Because you like the feeling of floating and sliding through the water? Or is it something else? If you are looking for a break from the heat of the summer, then a dip in the water is exactly what you need; swimming is a way for you to cool off. It fills a wonderful recreational need for individuals and families, from beach and pool fun to water parks.
Maybe you are a runner, training on a regular basis, and want to find an activity that keeps your heart rate up but takes some of the impact stress off of your body. Perhaps you have been doing some other form of land exercise, and now an injury prevents you from putting weight on a knee or ankle. Swimming can help you. Kicking workouts, water aerobics, pool running, or a regular swimming workout can all give you a great exercise session without the weight of your body pounding you with each move.
Regular swimming builds endurance, muscle strength and cardio-vascular fitness. It can serve as a cross-training element to your regular workouts. Before a land workout, you can use the pool for a warm-up session. Swimming with increasing effort to gradually increase your heart rate and stimulate your muscle activity is easily accomplished in the water. After a land workout, swimming a few laps can help you cool-down, move blood through your muscles to help them recover, and help you relax as you glide through the water.
Swimming does burn calories at a rate of about 3 calories a mile per pound of bodyweight. If you weigh 150 lbs. and it takes you 30 minutes to swim one mile (1,760 yards or 1,609 meters), then you will be using about 900 calories in one hour. However, many swimmers do not swim that quickly, and many cannot swim for that distance or duration.
Spending time in a group workout, whether water aerobics or a master's swim practice, is a great social outlet. Exchanging stories, challenging each other, and sharing in the hard work make swimming with others a rewarding experience.
There are other psychological benefit to swimming, if you allow it to occur. Relax and swim with a very low effort. Let your mind wander, focusing on nothing but the rhythm of your stroke. This form of meditation can help you gain a feeling of well-being, leaving your water session refreshed and ready to go on with the rest of your day. Many swimmers find an in-direct benefit form swimming. They develop life skills such as sportsmanship, time-management, self-discipline, goal-setting, and an increased sense of self-worth through their participation in the sport. Swimmers seem to do better in school, in general terms, than non-swimmers as a group.
One thing swimming is not good for is losing a lot of weight. The on-line Merck Manual explains that swimming is not the best way to lose weight due to the cooling effects of being in the water. While you do use a lot of calories swimming, once you get out of the pool much of that calorie burning stops. Doing land based exercise like running or cycling may use about the same amount of calorie per hour as swimming, but once you stop exercising the land-based workout usually leads to continued increase in calorie use for as long as 18 hours after the workout. Why? Because when you are in the pool you don't heat up as much as you do on land, and your body does not have to work to cool you down as much once the exercise session concludes. Swimming does exercise almost the entire body - heart, lungs, and muscles - with very little joint strain. It is great for general fitness, just not a great way to drop excess pounds.
