Is food actual real food any more? Diets, Vegetarian, Vegan, and is food even 'natural' food any more?

How courteous, a thank you from a 'new friend' - Lighter Footstep. I added as a link and Chris Baskind from Lighter Footstep took the time to comment at this blog and give a thank you for the link. I appreciate the net courtesy.

Well, so far this blog is shaping up to be predominantly recipes. I don't intend for it to remain as such, and will be getting around to 'rounding it out', otherwise it will default to another 'themed' blog and I already have too many of those. I don't want this one to default to food and recipes, but I do need a place to contain the food and recipes, and I like blogger's new label that permits categorizing the blog entries. Eventually, perhaps using the labels, I can transport the recipe collection into a more useable format. But for now, while Sweetie and I make the switch to a more healthy diet, not quite ready to be strictly vegetarian and not ready to go the whole distance as my daughter has done with vegan, we are making a purposefully more slow transition, leaving some white meat in our diet.

Thanks to RealAge, I do have a shopping list and I will post it. Essentially though, it is pretty much unlimited fruits and vegetables, and a focus on 'daily minerals and vitamins. I'm so looking forward to our trip to the city and a food co-op or health food store to do our food shopping. However, when I converted us to the Dr. Ornish diet some years back, it required completely altering the pantry and buying food products I never heard of or used before. So I had a well stocked pantry with the ingredients such as wheatberries, oat bran, wheat germ, whole grain flour, basamati rice, polenta and on and on. That was six years ago, and I still have many of those pantry items left over. I'm quite sure their shelf life was not intended to be six years.

Why do I still have, after six years? The Ornish diet lasted for us six months, and then Sweetie had an extreme gout attack, and I mean extreme. We mistakenly surmised that the change in diet had aggravated the underlying condition that brings on his gout attacks, and I gave up on the Ornish diet, feeling guilty for subjecting Sweetie to the pain he was experiencing with gout attack. As it turns out, he had been seeing a PA who had prescribed his medicie to prevent the gout attacks, but the regimen wasn't working for him. He saw a new Dr who had begun a practice in our small town region, who referred him out to a Specialist. Once the inflammation episode resolved itself (and it took many weeks to resolve), the new medicine regimen has been working out quite well for four years now. And, Sweetie seems to believe that he is in tune enough now with his predisposed gout condition to know what kinds of diet adjustments he can and cannot make, which accounts for why we want to transition slowly and watch for cause and effect.

I'm not taken to trying diets or different diet du jour programs. I carefully read the Dr Ornish diet which makes claims of being able to reverse heart disease and then proceeds to show how that is done, how the body absorbs food and reacts and impact on heart. It made sense to me, still does and is a diet that is right in there with the healthy food diets. It does require a change in cooking habits though, and I'm pleased to have caused myself to get into the discipline of learning to cook less sugar, butter, salt, meat, fats.

I am not inclined to return to his diet or any other diet regimen at this time. Between the diet wars and claims, I'm more interested now in a tailored transition for our needs, our ages and our lifestyles. Many of the cooking techniques required by the Ornish diet have stayed with me, and I'm grateful for making myself go through that transition. It will be easier now as we transition again. However, with my daughter doing the full vegan thing, and gracefully, I might add, as she has not become an activist lecturing us on the ills of eating animal products, but it certainly has raised my awareness. I'd like to get to less animal products in our diet over time.

When I think of getting back to the land, I tend to think of farming, growing one's own food, having the functioning cow, chickens, a pig, etc. and being able to raise and butcher. Not to worry, it's only imagery as I doubt I'd have the heart to slaughter, butcher and dress out any animal. I point out my imagery though, to show that I tend to think in a different time era - before commercialized dairies, slaughterhouses, chicken farms, hybridized seeds, terminator seeds, patented seeds - Montsano, cloned seeds, and such like corporate giants taking over the food industry. I have no
wish to assist the corporations, and I also recognize that my singular efforts are but a drop in the bucket as the corporate food giants take over and assimilate us into buying and eating un-natural food. But I will get there eventually, and meanwhile, I applaud my daughter for already getting there and making the committment to not grow her children (another generation) into going along with popular food consumerism.

posted by Lietta Ruger