And that pretty much sums up my experience with all group or school sanctioned sports right through high school. I always seemed to miss the part where they actually taught you how to play the sport, and everyone was new to it and kind of sucked. Yup, I was the stereotypical “last kid picked for the team” over and over.

People looked at me, with my skinny 105 lb body, and assumed I liked to exercise. (I once had a psychic tell me that exercise was really important to me, and when I told her no, she said, “well, it will be in the future”. Nice recovery.) In reality, I had no stamina, no speed, no muscle strength, and a resting heart rate of around 80 as a teen. I could not run a mile on the school track without feeling like I was going to throw up, let alone do it in under 12 minutes. I have never even been close to doing a pull up. I have very little hand-eye coordination. If I make contact with the ball when using a racket, it is cause for celebration, never mind where it goes. Badminton is about my speed.

Anyone remember the Presidential Physical Fitness Award test, that wonderful time of year when all participants in PE were tested in several categories to demonstrate for all to see just how much you sucked at all things physical? I did well once on two separate tests, each at a different time. I kicked ass on sit-ups in 4th grade, because I spent every recess on the monkey bars trying to perfect a “cherry drop” (swing on bar by knees, flip off, land on feet). I spent a lot of time pulling my legs over the bar using my abs. In 5th grade I did the bent arm hang past the timed goal because I had spent the entire summer in a swimming pool at the apartment complex where I was living. That was it. Otherwise, way below average, every year. By high school, I was actively searching for ways to get out of PE.

When I was a young adult, I was dating a guy who had grown up with three brothers. He loved sports, and eventually got me to go outside and throw a baseball around with him. The first few times I threw the ball, he watched me and said, “wait, what are you doing”? Turns out I had the wrong foot forward. You’d think that a PE teacher might have pointed that out sometime in the previous 12 years.To this day, I still resent all of my physical education teachers, and am too self conscious to participate in team sports.

With all of this baggage, it’s been a struggle for me to find an exercise routine that I can stick with. I love walking, hiking, back packing (taught myself from a book in my 20′s), biking, skiing (though I could never afford it during those formative years when you are fearless, so I’m a permanent blue square run kind of girl), roller skating (outside please, going in circles feels like, well, going in circles). I want to love running, because it is so low gear, a quick and effective way to burn calories, and can be done outside. But my body doesn’t love it. I’m an on again-off again runner as my hips and knees allow (even using the ChiRunning technique, which I recommend). I also like yoga and Pilates (aerobics, jazzercise, step, zumba… not as much. It’s a coordination thing. I can get there, but it takes me about twice as long as the average participant to learn the routine, setting off all of my internal “I suck at this” alarms).

Detect a theme here. Yup, when it comes to exercise, I love to be outside, and I like things that make me compete only with myself. If I had grown up in another time or location, I could have definitely gotten into gymnastics (great natural balance and flexibility) or rock climbing (small, flexible, outside). But it wasn’t meant to be.

But calories in > calories out = weight gain. So I try to keep moving. As an adult, I understand the importance of exercise for a whole myriad of reasons, from maintaining my weight and hormone balance to just feeling good. Not to mention just how empowering it is to feel strong. So I participate in different activities depending on my mood, the weather, my time limitations, and my boredom tolerance. I can honestly say I’ve never been in incredible shape. But I am definitely in better shape as an adult than I ever was in high school.

Here are a few things I have learned from reading and from personal experience. This is what works for me. It may not be what works for you.

Being a bit of a science and technology geek, I love my Timex heart rate monitor and my iPod nano for keeping track of my workouts. The heart rate monitor allows me to set an alarm when my heart rate is too high, creating my own personal “interval” training regime, and there is nothing like good music to help you go a little farther or boost your spirits.

Exercise will not necessarily lead to weight loss unless you also change your diet. I watched an amazing NOVA special a few years ago, about taking 13 novice runners and training them for a marathon. The big take homes were 1) some people are just naturally more fit than others (as measured by their VO2Max test – a test of the body’s ability to use oxygen efficiently while exercising) and 2) exercise does not necessarily produce weight loss unless you also cut calories. Even though 12 of the 13 participants completed the race, and were training at 10 miles + per day, only one lost weight, because she also changed her eating patterns.

The estimated max heart rate formula of 220 minus your age is total crap. According to this formula my MAXIMUM heart rate would be 175. I hit 176 on my jog yesterday! I have a naturally high heart rate. Using a more precise formula based on actual testing (as suggested by my Timex heart rate monitor manual) my max heart rate is closer to 192. I once had a chance to ask a cardiologist about this, and he confirmed that everyone is different, and that you should listen to your own body to determine at what rate you are comfortable exercising.

Interval training (high intensity period followed by recovery period followed by high intensity period…) is effective at increasing cardio fitness. There is also some evidence that it may induce more fat loss than moderate intensity workouts of the same duration. This is due to the metabolism boosting effects of the high intensity intervals. I also find it psychologically gratifying. As someone who has never been particularly fit or strong, there is a huge relief in knowing that if things get too intense, I can slow down or stop for a while. It somehow makes the whole thing much more doable.

Strive for overall calorie burn, not fat burn. The idea, perpetuated by countless cardio machines at the gym, is that the body burns a higher percentage of calories from fat when you are exercising in the “fat burning zone” which is 60-70% of your estimated maximum heart rate. This is true. However, at higher intensities, you burn a greater number of overall calories, which is what matters if you are trying to lose weight. Sixty percent of my max heart rate is 115. I get to that just by going out to feed the chickens.

Flexibility is important and stretching is good. Stretching is actually more effective if you are already warmed up (studies have shown that stretching before exercise does not necessarily prevent injury). Hold each stretch for a minimum of 30 seconds to see increased flexibility over time. Breathe in, breathe out into the stretch, breathe in, breath out into the stretch.

This is not me. It came from an internet search. Just saying.

You can’t lose “belly fat” by doing crunches. You’ll just end up with strong abs under the fat! When you lose fat, you lose it all over. Your belly, your butt, your face, your big toe. Everyone has different genetic variation on where you store the most, but when it comes off, it comes off everywhere. If 50% of your body fat is stored around your middle, than 50% of your fat loss is going to come from there. But you can’t spot train it away.

Little things can add up. Ever heard the joke about the woman driving around and around the gym parking lot waiting for a spot near the door to open up so she can go work out? Park at the far end of the parking lot at the grocery store. Take the stairs up to the third floor. Walk the mile to the neighbor’s house to return the baking dish instead of getting in the car. Stand up when talking on the phone. Use the networked copy machine in the other room rather than the one at your desk so you have to get up to get your copies. If you think about how much we must have moved, all day long, up until about 50 years ago, it is clear that we have evolved for movement, not sitting. Move as much as you can throughout the day, even if it is only 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there.

Do physical stuff you love when you can, even if it isn’t traditionally “exercise”. Those two instances where I did well on the Presidential Fitness Test? It was because I had gotten strong without realizing it, while doing something I enjoyed. I lost 4-5 lbs last year by working in the garden. I didn’t need to go for a run because I was getting a good workout shoveling dirt.

Do something physical on a regular basis, even if you don’t love it. I have a friend, who is probably reading this blog, who has told me over and over again how she “hates the gym” and so refuses to work out there. I get it. I would much rather be outside too. But in the dead of winter, with 8 hours of daylight and slushy roads and 30 degree temperatures and no time or money to head for the slopes, the gym is better than no exercise for 4 months. I also do exercise videos at home. Remember, we limit ourselves by the stories we tell in our head (and no, I’m not going to go join a co-ed softball league, even though it would probably be really really good for me on a whole lot of levels).

Forgive yourself for eating that piece of cheesecake what will take an hour run to burn off, or for not exercising this week because you were too busy. Tomorrow is always another chance to get out there and move. But do it tomorrow. Don’t do it next week. And forgive yourself for not looking like a supermodel, or an athlete. Remind yourself that it is about feeling strong and healthy and energetic and being able to do the things you want to do, not about being “cut” and turning heads of twenty somethings. As one of my exercise video’s says, “being strong will change your life”.

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2012, where we’re miles away from being an elite athlete, or even knowing what that feels like, but we did jog almost 4 miles yesterday, with intervals.

Nutrition Buzz Words and What You Need to Know

Omega 3′s and Omega 6′s.
You’ve heard about them. They seem to be mentioned everywhere. Omega 3′s and 6′s are simply essential fatty acids (remember, that means the body can’t make them itself) involved in the body’s ability to synthesize hormones.  Sources of omega-6 fatty acids are numerous. Soybean oil alone (um…that would be big ag) is now so ubiquitous in fast foods and processed foods that it is estimated that 20 percent of the calories in the American diet come from this single source.

In modern diets, there are few sources of omega-3 fatty acids. The primary source comes from the fat of cold water fish (though some nuts and seeds can be a source as well). Many nutrition experts believe that before we relied so heavily on processed foods, humans consumed omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in roughly equal amounts. The typical American diet now tends to contain 14 – 25 times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 fatty acids. It is thought we should strive for between a 1:1 and 1:4 ratio.

In general, hormones derived from these two classes of essential fatty acids have opposite effects. Those from omega-6 fatty acids tend to increase inflammation (an important component of the immune response), blood clotting, and cell proliferation, while those from omega-3 fatty acids decrease those functions. Both families of hormones must be in balance to maintain optimum health. Omega-3s appear to decrease the risk of coronary artery disease. They may also protect against irregular heartbeats and help lower blood pressure levels.

It has been found that pasture finished beef (no fattening up on corn and soy at the feed lot) and other animals raised on pasture (pork, chicken etc.) have a more optimum ratio of omega-3 to omega-6. This is also true of pasture raised eggs. Think about it. When, exactly, did a cow evolve to eat corn and soy beans. The answer? It didn’t.

Artificial Sweeteners
OK, in an ideal world, you would have retrained your palette to appreciate the subtle sweetness in a cup of plain yogurt and not be reaching for sugar, or an alternative. But we don’t live in an ideal world. Sometimes we just want the taste of something sweet that isn’t going to go to our waist line. Here’s a quick summary. You could spend all day reading the pros and cons of each via Google.

• Acesulfumate-potassium. Mediocre testing (in the 70′s). Not available straight to the consumer, but found in a LOT of “low calorie” products from soda to yogurt.
• Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal – blue packet at the diner). Recent studies show slight increase in cancer risk. More studies should be conducted. Personally, it gives me a headache and so is not an option.
• Saccharin (Sweet’N Low – pink packet at the diner). Causes cancer in animal studies. My step-mother consumed massive quantities of the liquid version in her endless cups of instant coffee every day. She died of lung cancer, most likely from her two pack a day 50 year smoking habit.
• Stevia (actually, its derivative Reb A – Truvia, green packet when you find it). Appears to be safe, though independent testing is warranted. In the past, FDA protocol required repeated testing in two separate animal species prior to approval, but in this case it didn’t. The whole plant has not been approved, just Reb A.
• Sucralose (Splenda – yellow packet at the diner). Appears to be safe, though not much independent testing has been done. Sucralose is made from sucrose (sugar) whose molecular structure has been modified with chlorine.

I personally find stevia to be a bit too bitter, so default to Spenda when making no-sugar chocolate pudding or no-sugar lemonade. It works for me, but I don’t use a lot of it.

Fiber
The recommended daily value for fiber is 25 grams. Both soluble and insoluble fiber go undigested when consumed and are then excreted. Soluble fiber forms a gel when mixed with liquid, while insoluble fiber does not. Insoluble fiber passes through our intestines largely intact. Soluble fiber lowers total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (the Bad cholesterol) therefore reducing the risk of heart disease. Soluble fiber can also helps regulate blood sugar for people with diabetes. Insoluble fiber helps your system “move” faster. If you start reading labels you will realize that you are probably not getting 25 grams per day. Beans, whole grains, fruits and vegetables are your best sources. Look for 4 grams or more per serving on packaged foods.

Beware of products claiming to be a “good source of fiber”. If you read the labels you’ll find that often the fiber doesn’t come from traditional sources — whole grains, bean, vegetables or fruit — known to have health benefits. Instead, food makers are adding something called “isolated fibers” made from chicory root or purified powders of polydextrose and other substances that haven’t been shown to lower blood sugar or cholesterol.

Salt (i.e. Sodium).
Salt is a necessary part of everyone’s diet, but how much is too much? The maximum recommended amount of sodium is 2,300 mg per day, or about 1 teaspoon. The average American gets about 4,000 mg, 3/4 of this estimated to come from packaged foods. It is predicted that by reducing sodium intake by 1,200 mg per day (putting us at 2,800 mg/day, still above the recommended amount) 92,000 deaths and 66,000 strokes could be prevented every year.

Note that salt and potassium in the body are basically two sides of the same coin. They both are involved in the acid-base balance (maintaining proper internal pH), water body balance (hydration) and nerve function. It is speculated that the problems with our high salt diet are really an issue with high salt/low potassium. Good sources of potassium are cantaloupe, bananas, oranges, grapes, grapefruit, blackberries, yogurt, dried beans, leafy greens, potatoes and sweet potatoes. If you are primarily eating homemade minimally processed foods with a good dose of fruits and veggies, the salt/potassium problem probably isn’t as much of an issue.

Cholesterol
Cholesterol is required to build and maintain cell membranes and it regulates the cells flexibility over the range of physiological temperatures. It is also critical in the synthesis of some hormones. Your body makes its own cholesterol, and we (unless we are vegan) also get it from our diet. All foods containing animal fat contain cholesterol to varying extents. (My step-mother’s first husband had a medical condition where his body overproduced cholesterol. This was long before the days of cholesterol reducing drugs like Lipitor. The only partial remedy was to try to eliminate cholesterol from dietary sources. I remember my step-mom explaining how she had “cut every bit of fat off of any meat she cooked” and mentally cringing, as the only real way to eliminate cholesterol from the diet is to become a vegan. He eventually passed away from a massive heart attack, which was probably unavoidable regardless of diet.)

Since cholesterol is insoluble in blood, it is transported in the circulatory system within lipoproteins. High-density lipoprotein (HDL) helps remove fat from the body by binding with it in the bloodstream and carrying it back to the liver for disposal. It is sometimes called “good” cholesterol. A high level of HDL cholesterol may lower your chances of developing heart disease or stroke. Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) carries mostly fat and only a small amount of protein from the liver to other parts of the body. It is sometimes called “bad cholesterol.” A high LDL cholesterol level may increase your chances of developing heart disease.

A note on eggs and cholesterol, from Harvard Health: Eggs, even though high in cholesterol, are a good source of nutrients. One egg contains 6 grams of protein and some healthful unsaturated fats. Eggs are also a good source of choline, which has been linked with preserving memory, and lutein and zeaxanthin, which may protect against vision loss. For most people, only a small amount of the cholesterol in food passes into the blood. Saturated and trans fats have much bigger effects on blood cholesterol levels. The only large study to look at the impact of egg consumption on heart disease—not on cholesterol levels or other intermediaries—found no connection between the two. In people with diabetes, though, egg-a-day eaters were a bit more likely to have developed heart disease than those who rarely ate eggs.

Pasture raised eggs have been found to have 1/3 less cholesterol than conventional eggs. I eat a lot of eggs, and my cholesterol/HDL/LDL levels have so far all been fine. This is what works for ME.

Vitamin D
The body makes its own Vitamin D, which is really more of a hormone than a vitamin, when the skin is exposed to UV rays from the sun. It is needed to maintain strong bones by helping the body absorb calcium. Your muscles need vitamin D to move and your nerves need it to carry messages between the brain and the body. The immune system needs it to fight off invading bacteria and viruses. Together with calcium, vitamin D helps protect older adults from osteoporosis. Vitamin D is found in cells throughout the body.

It is estimated that 60% of people in the U.S. get too little vitamin D. This is partially attributed to the increased use of sunscreen, and the fact that we spend most of our day indoors, and that even if you are outdoors, if you live north of the midsection of the country, it is difficult to get enough sun exposure due to the sun’s angle. Adults also don’t consume a lot of milk, which is fortified with vitamin D to prevent rickets in children. The recommended daily allowance for vitamin D was recently upped to 600 IU’s.

There is a lot of debate about vitamin D in nutrition and research circles. We’ll have to wait and see how it all shakes out. But to me, it makes sense that we would have evolved with a lot more sun exposure than we get now, and since it is difficult to get enough vitamin D from diet alone, I do take a 400 IU supplement daily. Some people have reported a lessening of depression symptoms with vitamin D supplementation.

Calcium
Calcium is the most abundant mineral in the body, known for building strong bones and teeth. Calcium helps muscles contract, nerves transmit signals, blood to clot and blood vessels to contract and expand. These functions are so important that your body will extract calcium from your skeleton if you aren’t getting enough from your diet. (My grandmother had three children, while living on a dry land farm in wind-swept southern Idaho. She was lactose intolerant. Carrying these three children to term robbed her body of enough calcium that she lost most of her teeth. There are literally almost no pictures of her smiling, anywhere, and she lived into her 90′s.) It is recommended that adult women get 1,000 mg per day.

The primary source of calcium in the diet is dairy products. I must admit, I struggle with the recommended dosages of calcium for the exact reason I DO take a Vitamin D supplement. I don’t think we spent 50,000 years of evolution consuming dairy. So I doubt that our ancestors consumed 1,000 mg of calcium a day. But then again, our age expectancy was probably only in the 30′s way back when, and pregnant women have been known to crave eating dirt for the minerals it contains…so I try to get some calcium from dairy sources (milk, cheese, yogurt) and take 1 calcium pill a day (not the 3 that the bottle recommends).

Water
Our bodies are about 60% water. We use it to cool ourselves with sweat, to circulate oxygen and to bring fuel to our cells and take away waste products. It’s critical for our body’s function. So, we need to drink 8  8-oz glasses of water a day (64 oz or two quarts/two liters), right? Turns out that amount was totally made up and probably started circulating in the 1940′s. I LOVE this kind of story! An interview with Heinz Valtin, a physician who looked into this common myth in-depth, was in Nutrition Action in June 2008. His advice? “Drink what you usually drink with meals and in between meals plus when you’re thirsty. As long as the concentration of blood remains normal, that’s the gold standard for our being property hydrated. And population studies show that blood concentration is normal whether we drink 15 liters a day or only one or two liters a day.”

Me, I am a big water drinker (no calories) and probably do average about 2 liters a day, counting herbal and black tea. Bottoms up.

Hidden Sugar
Concerned about added sugar? Ingredients on food labels are in order by quantity. So if the first ingredient (or the top 3) is sugar, there is more sugar in the product (by weight, unless it’s a liquid) than anything else. Look for sugar under its other names too: high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, dextrose, any kind of syrup or malt,  fructose, honey, molasses  etc. Avoid products that have sugar or other sweeteners high on the ingredient list.

Meaningless Food Labels

Fortified, enriched, added, extra, and plus. Code for highly processed. This means nutrients such as minerals and fiber have been removed and vitamins added in processing.

Fruit drink. This means there’s probably little or no real fruit and a lot of sugar. Instead look for products that say “100% Fruit Juice.”

Made with real fruit: Often code for mostly sugar and high fructose corn syrup. The “real fruit” is found in small quantities and sometimes isn’t even the same kind of fruit pictured on the package.

Made with wheat, rye, or multigrains. Usually code for mostly refined white flour. These products usually have very little whole grain. Look for the word “whole” before the grain to ensure that you’re getting a 100% whole-grain ingredient.

Made with whole grains: Also usually code for mostly refined white flour. Many products make a whole grain claim even though they often contain refined flour as the first ingredient and the amount of whole grains are minimal. Sometimes these products actually contain more sugar than whole grain. Look for the words “whole wheat” (or “whole rye” etc.) listed first in the ingredients to ensure the product is mostly whole grain.

Natural. This means the manufacturer started with a natural source, and then likely processed the heck out of it. Once it’s processed the food may not resemble anything natural. Look for “100% All Natural” and “No Preservatives.”

All natural. Although the F.D.A. has issued several warning letters to firms making misleading “all natural” claims, the agency has never issued formal rules about the term, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). As a result, some products containing high fructose corn syrup claim to be “all natural.”

Organically grown, pesticide-free, or no artificial ingredients. Trust only labels that say “Certified Organically Grown” unless you know the farmer personally.

Sugar-free or fat-free. Don’t assume the product is low-calorie. The manufacturer compensated for the loss of sugar/fat with unhealthy ingredients that don’t taste very good and, here’s the kicker, have no fewer calories than the real thing. Reduced fat mayo…pretty good. No fat mayo…disgusting.

Lightly-sweetened: Cereal packages often contain the phrase “lightly sweetened” to suggest less sugar. The Food and Drug Administration has regulations concerning the use of “sugar free” and “no added sugars” but nothing governing the claims “low sugar” or “lightly sweetened.” The phrase is meaningless.

Strengthens your immune system: Through “clever wordsmithing,” food companies can skirt F.D.A. rules about health claims and give consumers the impression that a product will ward off disease, notes CSPI. As we’ve learned from previous discussions, these claims are often not based on conclusive science to begin with, and the “active” ingredients are often miniscule compared to those used in the study.

No Nitrites Added or Uncured. Here’s the deal. Nitrates (found naturally in many fruits and vegetables) turn into Nitrites in our guts. Nitrites are anti-microbial agents. This is a good thing. Nitrites (and Nitrates) are added to preserved meats to keep them from 1) going rancid and 2) prevent bacteria, most importantly the one that causes botulism, from growing 3) enhance flavor and 4) preserve color. In the 1970’s studies found that at high temperatures, nitrites could form nitrosamines, cancer causing compounds. This was bad,  so everyone freaked out over nitrites added to food. Food marketers took note.

But here’s the truth. Those “no nitrites added” foods? They add nitrates, usually in the form of celery powder. The food is cured with the naturally occurring nitrates found in the vegetable. So it isn’t that you aren’t eating nitrites. It’s just that you are getting them from a natural source (just like if you ate a spinach salad). There is nothing wrong with this, other than the sleight of hand on the part of the manufacturer, which is downright dishonest (Applegate Farms, Trader Joe’s).

There is growing evidence that vitamin C (ascorbic acid) enhances the effect of nitrites while prohibiting the development of nitrosamines in cured and cooked foods such as bacon. Glass of orange juice with breakfast anyone? My approach. Don’t burn the bacon, or ham, or bratwurst, eat cured meats in moderation (because of the fat content, not the nitrites), and don’t be fooled by labels on packages in the meat cooler. For a much longer discussion on this, read “The No Nitrites Added Hoax” blog post by author Michael Ruhlman, and the many many well thought out and linked comments that follow. Much of the above information came from there.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Does it now seem like no matter what you eat, it’s the wrong thing? What’s a girl (or guy, or family) to do? Just remember:

• Calories in > calories out = weight gain
• Everything in moderation. You’re looking for a healthy sustainable lifestyle here, not deprivation followed by binge.
• Eat a large variety of minimally processed foods that your grandmother would have recognized
• Try to get your nutrition from your food, not from a pill
• Try new things so you don’t get bored
• And to repeat Michael Pollan once again, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2012, where we’re miles away from having covered everything you need to know about diet and nutrition, but feel like our brain is wrung out, so we’re done for now.

Learn to Try New Things

One of the best things about going on a diet is that you get bored. Yup, boredom. Because when you are bored, you’ll try new things just for the novelty. Lets face it. We get into ruts. We eat the same 15 meals week in and week out because we are 1) pressed for time or imagination 2) don’t know how to cook anything else or 3) don’t want to try anything new. It’s an evolutionary advantage to eat the same things all the time. That red berry on that bush? It might be great. It might just kill us. Best to just stick with what we already know. We’re inherently creatures of habit.

I’ve mentioned before that I wasn’t much of a vegetable eater when I was young. I liked what I liked (which wasn’t much) and that was that. But when you are on a low glycemic index diet, there are only so many green salads you can eat before you want some more variety. And so you try some kale, white bean and turkey sausage soup, (after googling how to clean and cook kale) and figure out that kale is not bad. So you try it sauted with some red wine vinegar and garlic and like that too. Kale chips? Why not.

I really believe that a lot of diet success is a willingness to try new things. To eliminate “I never eat” or “I only eat” from your vocabulary. To retrain your palette. It is absolutely astounding how sweet a strawberry can taste if you haven’t eaten sugar in a few weeks. And what this leads to is a whole lifestyle change. Suddenly, the kid who would only eat corn and canned green beans loves borscht (beet soup) and sweet potatoes and cabbage sauted with a little fresh apple and some vinegar and roasted carrots and cauliflower. She’ll eat quinoa and brown rice and couscous. She likes tabbouleh. She could eat beans at almost every meal. Which opens up a whole new world of “whole food” eating, and makes grabbing a frozen pepperoni pizza for dinner a whole lot less likely. (This doesn’t mean that I like everything. I say no to raw celery, millet, buckwheat, and black-eyed peas, to name a few. But I have tried all of these things, several times, as an adult.)

Bare with me a bit. This story does relate. All the way through high school I did very well in all things related to English (high scores on the SAT), and not great in all things related to math (low scores on the SAT). So I concluded that my career should be on the English side of the spectrum (human resources, marketing, public relations…you get the idea) and should definitely NOT be on the math end of the spectrum (biology, chemistry, physics). The problem? While I was good at the English stuff, I didn’t really like it much. It seemed like just so much pushing paper. And what I loved loved loved was science. Always had. But it took me until I was 28 to figure this out, go back to school, STOP telling myself I sucked at math, get a tutor, and knuckle my way through calculus (in which I got an A) to get a biology degree. I could have saved myself 10 years and a second degree if I had just been telling myself slightly different stories in my head.

Food and diet are the same way. We tell ourselves that eating dog is disgusting, but we relish pork, and a pig has been shown to be just as smart as a dog. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we start.) We don’t eat bugs (gross) but most of the world, outside of North America and Europe, does. We eat raw oysters, for heaven’s sake. That HAS to be learned culturally. I know a woman who pretty much hates all red vegetables (and will pick apart a meal to make sure there are no tomatoes or bell peppers hiding within). Got to tell you, she was a joy to eat with. What stories are you telling yourself, maybe have been telling yourself since you were a kid, that may not be true anymore. Or that you have the power to change by simply challenging yourself to trying new things. The only thing constant in life is change. It you learn to embrace it, it might just change you.

New Ideas about Nutrition

The USDA has been publishing nutrition guidelines since the late 1800′s. Why? To help us understand how to meet our nutritional needs with the food we eat. (Rickets, a disease caused by nutritional deficiency, is among the most frequent childhood diseases in developing countries.)

I was raised on the “Basic Four” food groups. I can still name them. Meat, Milk, Grains, Fruits and Vegetables. My dinner plates growing up always consisted of a meat, a starch, a vegetable, a salad, a glass of milk, and a piece of bread. Oh, and dessert of course. And when I started to learn to cook, this is what I did. Half the plate was meat, 1/4 was starch, 1/4 was vegetable. The problems with an animal centric diet (meat and diary are two of the 4 food groups) are many fold.

• Having a meat centered diet (at least the kinds of meats we buy from commercial feed lots via the grocery store on little styrofoam trays) has pretty much been shown repeatedly to be bad for our heart, and may be contributing to cancer rates.
• It’s really expensive. A pound of meat costs a lot more than a pound of beans.
• It’s hard on the planet. You can feed a lot more people on the same piece of land if you grow plants instead of a cow.
• Big piles of starch raise, then crash our blood sugar, making us hungry a few hours later.
• This is a ton of food. It is difficult to keep the calories in check when you have a seven coarse meal. No serving sizes were suggested.

So then we transitioned to the Food Pyramid recommendations, which for the first time attempted to include serving size guidelines. The bottom of the pyramid was grains (no mention of whole vs processed) at 6-11 servings per day. That is a boat load of carbs. Wonder how much that had to do with the massive amounts of wheat, soy and corn grown in this country, and the never ending quest to morph it into new consumable products?

Now we’re up to the MyPlate recommendations, which is all about getting more fruit and vegetable servings per day. If you notice, we’ve actually just gone back to the old 4 food groups, but we’ve now included serving proportions and split fruits and vegetables. Bet the grain growers are pissed. The nice part about this is you don’t really need to know what a serving is. Just fill 1/2 of your plate with a fruit or vegetable and you’ll be doing pretty well. Note that processed sugars and oils are nowhere to be found.

Nutrition Action Healthletter did an interesting piece on sugar consumption in the U.S. (Sugar Overload: Curbing America’s Sweet Tooth. Jan/Feb 2010). Turns out, if you meet all of your nutritional needs with the food you eat (not just carbs, proteins and fats, but vitamins, minerals, fiber etc.) you only have a few calories left over for things like refined sugar and extra fats. For an average woman, the amount of discretionary sugar works out to about 6 teaspoons per day (that’s 1/8 of a cup), for a man, it’s 9 teaspoons.

We’re genetically programmed to love sweetness. Babies will make a face if you put something in their mouth that is sour or bitter, but sweetness? They are all smiles and reach for more. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. Sugar is a quick energy source, and sweet things are rarely poisonous (not so with bitter or sour). Those who ate the most sweet things had the energy to run away from predators and survived long enough to reproduce. But now everything from BBQ sauce to salad dressing has added sugar.  A 16 oz coca cola has about 13 tsp of sugar in it. Wonder why 2/3 of American’s are overweight?

Your Eyes SHOULD NOT Be Bigger Than Your Stomach

So, you’ve challenged yourself to eat new things, drastically increased your consumption of fruits and vegetables, and learned how to make a dozen whole wheat bran muffins with only 1/4 cup of sugar (um…that would be me). But you are still gaining weight. Why?

Remember, calories in > calories out = weight gain. Yup, it doesn’t matter how nutritious or healthy those calories are. They are still calories. So now we have to learn portion control. I was watching one of those “celebrity weight loss” shows the other night (guilty pleasure) and one “C list” musician was saying it clicked for him when he was in Japan. He was a big guy with a big appetite so he went into a fast food joint and ordered a large. They gave him what in this country would have been a small. And he looked around him at all the diners in the restaurant, and no one was fat.

Ah, portion control. Small plates help. (I was once in an old cabin with melamine plates, cups etc. from the 50′s. It was like looking in a doll house cupboard. It’s fair to say we don’t drink 6 oz of coffee or orange juice anymore.) Consciously deciding in a restaurant how much of the plate you are going to eat BEFORE you start eating helps. I often physically split the entrée in half, knowing that I am going to take 1/2 home before I even start. My husband and I also often split a meal. And he outweighs me by 50 lbs. So the portions should not be 50/50. He can eat more than I can without gaining weight.

Try to eat something (a hand full of nuts, a piece of cheese, a piece of fruit, some carrots and humus) every 3-4 hours. This is critical for me. If I wait until I am seriously hungry before I start eating, I have no will power and will literally eat until I am uncomfortable because my brain has gone into starvation mode. It’s not pretty.

When I serve myself at home, I put less on my plate than I think I want, and then listen to my body. It takes 20 minutes to really feel the full effects of a meal. Give yourself that time before you decide if you really need another portion. Maybe you do. Most likely you don’t.

You also need to harden yourself against the onslaught of media telling us that more is always better, so you had better supersize that. That Carl’s Jr Western Bacon Six Dollar Burger with large fry is about 1,500 calories (not including a drink), which is about my total calorie allotment for the day if I want to maintain my current weight. What am I going to eat during the other 23 1/2 hours? (And learn to ignore your Mom’s voice in your head. You do NOT need to clean your plate. Sorry Mom…or in my case, Gram.)

Next up, graduate work: Specific nutrition buzz words and misleading package claims.

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2012, where we’re miles away from getting to eat everything we want whenever we want it, but generally almost never feel deprived.

www.oldwayspt.org/mediterranean-diet-pyramid. Not a bad way to eat.

It seems to me that we humans fall into several categories when it comes to food. There is the simple “I live to eat” vs ” I eat to live” category. I’m clearly in the “live to eat” camp. Food is a great pleasure in life, and I probably spend more time than the average person thinking about it (how it’s made, where it comes from, how it’s processed, how much it costs, how healthy is it, and can I grow it or make it myself, just to start). I know there are people who simply see food as fuel for their bodies, and don’t really give it much thought after that (like about 80% of all teenage boys I have met).

And then there are the Justifiers and the Controllers.  The Justifiers: “I want to eat what I want when I want it in any quantity, and I will go to great lengths to defend this behavior. Red wine contains antioxidants… why yes, I’ll have another glass. And could you please poach that chicken in butter, because butter adds so much flavor!” The Controllers: “the world is a scary and chaotic place. I need to set boundaries about what goes into my mouth, because at least I can have control over that. So I’ll have a vegan raw cookie, please, with a shot of wheat grass juice on the side.”

And while I clearly have tendencies toward the “controllers” camp, I’m actually just a big believer in evolutionary biology as a role model. I roll my eyes when I read chef centered cookbooks about how more butter is always better because it’s all about the FLAVOR, or watch Paula Deen, bless her warm, loving, likely clogged-up heart, throw yet another stick of butter into the mashed potatoes. And then I roll my eyes at raw foodists who believe that food is DEAD and therefore not fit to eat if it is heated over 120 degrees. (Though it is one hell of a diet strategy since your body has a much harder time extracting energy and nutrients from raw food.)

Humans did not spend the last 50,000 years eating giant quantities of butter or consuming all of our food raw. We’re not well adapted to either strategy. We have both meat tearing and plant grinding teeth in our head, because that is the diet we ate for a very long time. (There ARE good environmental arguments for eating vegetarian, and ethical arguments, and I DO respect that. It’s just not for me).  Google “Catching Fire. How Cooking Made Us Human” by Richard Wrangham for an interesting discussion on some of this. Personally, I choose the path of “everything in moderation” or “opportunistic feeder” as a friend of mine says.

I think that one of the biggest problems with today’s eating and diets is that we are so disconnected from how food actually makes us feel. Not the psychological feelings of desire or comfort or control but the actual physical feelings. It is often difficult to separate the two. Am I actually hungry, or am I just feeling sad because my coworker was just unkind to me? Is this headache due to stress, or did I sleep on my pillow wrong, or is it the aspartame in this diet drink? (For me, it’s the aspartame, which gives me a mild headache, confirmed through repeated trials).

What’s the big deal about how food makes us feel physically? Because how a particular food makes ME feel may not be the same as how it makes YOU feel. We SO want there to be a one size fits all solution to weight and health issues. And we want it to be easy. If I just avoid X, I’ll feel so much better. If I just add Y to my diet, I’ll live to be 100. And people who have found something that works for them become zealots about it. We want everyone to do what we do. We feel superior. We preach. We drive people crazy and alienate our friends and relations. We write books and go on Oprah.

Sometimes, many times, we don’t even understand the basic biology. I once knew a woman who self-diagnosed as gluten intolerant. One day, she was very hungry, and rooting around in the fridge for something to eat. She found a flour tortilla, which she promptly rolled up and ate. Shortly thereafter she felt light-headed and shaky. She determined she was allergic to gluten, and proceeded to revamp her entire diet to avoid it. More than likely, she had actually just had a drop in blood sugar from eating a highly processed white flour product on an empty stomach. But I kept my mouth shut and ate her gluten-free zucchini bread.

Correlation (I see B after I do A) does not equal causation (A caused B). Maybe L caused B, but you weren’t looking at L, so didn’t notice it. And maybe L and A are often found together, so it seemed like A was causing B. Can you see why nutrition/diet research might be difficult? And why a headline or sound bite about a new study might not tell you the whole story?

I’m a big reader of nutrition news. For years I had a subscription to Prevention Magazine (a surprisingly good USA Today type read on the latest diet and exercise studies to help keep you up-to-date and motivated. I finally let my subscription lapse because I couldn’t take the sensational headlines on the covers designed to drive up grocery line sales). I love the Nutrition Action Healthletter (put out by the Center for Science in the Public Interest) and trust their information. I also love Eating Well Magazine, which along with great recipes, always has great pieces on the latest health studies along with inspiring stories on eating closer to home.

But you know what? If you read these stories long enough, the studies start to contradict each other. I remember in high school, antioxidant vitamins were all the rage, and you could buy a mixed A, C and E vitamin pill that would run around in your body fighting cell damage and preventing cancer so you could  live to be 100. Now too much beta carotene (a precursor to vitamin A) is bad for you if you smoke, many double-blind studies of vitamin C show no conclusive evidence that it shortens the common cold and too much vitamin E might aggravate prostate cancer.

Here’s what I think. For some people, vitamin C DOES shorten the common cold. For others it doesn’t. If you do enough studies, you’re going to find some that say yes and some that say no. And if you do a meta analysis (put all the studies together and recrunch the data) it all averages out and nothing has an effect. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t work for some people. Or make things worse for others. I suspect that as we become more sophisticated with our understanding of human genetics, we will reach a point where we can tease out what works for specific people and why. But until then, you have to listen to YOUR body and see how foods and medicines make YOU feel. And remember that just because it works for you, that does NOT mean that it works for everyone.

I recently read (OK, skimmed, as a lot of it was information I was already familiar with) the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Here’s the book’s description from Amazon.com.

It’s really an interesting read, with everything footnoted and referenced to the hilt (which I love). Basically it’s one big giant justification for eating lots of butter and animal fats. And there may be something to this. The part about enzyme-enhanced foods (i.e. fermented foods) is particularly interesting. However, the big fat fact that the book fails to mention? The reason heart disease and cancer were not killing us 100 years ago was that heart disease and cancer are diseases of the old. In the early part of the 1900′s American’s were lucky if they made it into their late 40′s because antibiotics had not yet been invented. The three leading causes of death in 1900? Pneumonia & Influenza, Tuberculosis and Diarrhea.  Diarrhea! Heart disease was still forth, even in 1900.

All this is just a long way of saying, educate yourself. Do your own research. Read. Ask questions. Try things out. See how YOU feel. See how what you eat affects your weight and energy level and health. Take responsibility for your own well-being! Me, I practice author Michael Pollan’s advice in Food Rules. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” And by food, I take that to mean foods my grandmother or great-grandmother would recognize. If I can’t pronounce it, I try not to put it into my body.

Next up: Trying new things, National nutritional guidelines (and how they’ve changed over the years) and Portion Control, baby.

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2012, where we’re miles away from thinking of food only as fuel, and make no apologies for that position.

I’m self diagnosed as somewhat hypoglycemic. This is basically the opposite of being diabetic. In diabetes, the body does not produce enough insulin (the hormone that helps glucose [sugar] in the blood stream move into the cells for storage). With hypoglycemia, the body overproduces insulin in response to a sugary meal, causing too much circulating blood sugar to be removed.

I’m one of those people who gets crabby and shaky if I haven’t had something to eat in a while. (And once food is available, you had better not get between me and the meal if you want to walk out with all of your body parts intact). I once ate a butterfinger candy bar on an empty stomach while driving somewhere, and had to pull over and let my passenger take the wheel, I had become so shaky and light-headed from the blood sugar crash.

Strangely, this has actually served me well. I have learned to not eat sugar on an empty stomach if I want to be functional. No doughnuts for breakfast, no matter how good they look on the break room table or how hungry I am. No eating the whole box of cookies in one sitting because they are there. There is nothing like the correlation of feeling lousy and having a headache after eating something to make you not want to repeat the experiment.

So generally, I have pretty good control around sweets. A small piece after a meal and I’m good to go. (I’d probably weigh 150 lbs if this were not so). But bread…that’s a different matter. Give me a good loaf of crusty chewy bread and a bit of butter or oil to put on it, and I’ll keep eating it until it is gone, often even after the meal itself is done.

When I found my weight creeping up in my 30′s, I started researching what I could do about it. I’m not one to weigh out all of my food to the last teaspoon and count every calorie. I know this works for some people (in fact, it is often a necessity to help them learn portion control), but I wanted to lose 5 lbs, not 50, and counting calories was just too persnickity for me. While reading Prevention magazine, I kept seeing references to the South Beach Diet, which they were promoting heavily at the time. The diet was designed by cardiologist Arthur Agatson for his heart patients, as an alternative to the low fat Ornish and Pritikin diets advocated by the American Heart Association in the 1980′. It was the fact that it was designed by a cardiologist (science, people) that caught my interest. And it did not require you to count calories. I ordered the book and dove in.

The main thing I learned? Glycemic index, baby. Glycemic index is a measure of the effects of carbohydrates (i.e. sugars) in a food on blood sugar once eaten (and was originally designed for diabetes patients). Lower glycemic index foods are digested at a slower rate, release their sugars into the blood stream at a slower rate, and thus even out the spike/drop blood sugar pattern typical when one eats an easily digested/high glycemic index meal.

To test a food’s glycemic index, food must be eaten by real human subjects. Pure glucose is given a baseline value of 100. Subjects are given an amount of food to eat where the carbohydrate content equals 50 grams (so the amount of food eaten varies depending on what else is in it. A 16 oz coca cola has about 50 grams of carbohydrate. You’d have to eat three apples or four cups of raw carrots to reach the same 50 g of carbohydrate) and then their blood sugar is monitored for 2 hours.  Many fruits and vegetables (but not potatoes) contain very little carbohydrate per serving, and the average person is not likely to eat 50 g of carbohydrate from these foods in one sitting. Therefore, fruits and vegetables tend to have a low glycemic index.

Low glycemic foods are < 55. Medium = 55-70. High > 70. High foods tend to be white and high in starch. White bread, white flour tortillas, white rice, potatoes. And of course, foods high in sugar (white or otherwise) because they sugar is a simple molecule that is easy to break down.

Because in order for a food to have an index, it needs to have been tested on human subjects, not every product you encounter will be on a list somewhere. The answer? Eat whole recognizable minimally processed foods, remember that calories in > calories out = weight gain and listen to your body. Yes, peanut M&M’s might have a low glycemic index, but they are also high in fat from the peanuts, and pretty low in nutrition, so you shouldn’t be substituting them for carrot sticks for your afternoon snack every day.

The other big part of the South Beach Diet is the idea that this constant blood sugar spike/drop pattern makes you constantly crave more food. They distinguish between real hunger (the feeling you get when you experience a normal and gradual drop in blood sugar about four or five hours after a meal) and a craving (caused by exaggerated spikes and dips in blood sugar that occur after eating highly processed carbohydrates like white bread, cake, and white rice. It’s this drop in blood sugar levels that causes a craving, not real hunger). But to break the cycle, you have to “detox” for a few weeks, fighting through the cravings until your body evens out and gets used to healthy eating.

Does it work? For me it does. When I have really mastered my cravings, I am no longer sitting on the couch at 8:00 pm thinking about the chocolate in the cupboard or the ice cream in the freezer. I truly don’t want it. And no more mid afternoon slump where all I want to do is take a nap under my desk. Are there other routes to this same end besides South Beach. Absolutely. South Beach just happened to be the gateway I found into what worked for my own body.

Fats, fiber, acids and protein will also slow down the digestive process somewhat. Faced with a big bowl of potato salad at a pot luck? If you only eat a small portion, you’ll have less of a blood sugar spike (because of the fat and acid in the mayonnaise and pickles) than you would if it was just a bowl of mashed potatoes. Have some pulled pork with that (skip the bun), add some baked beans, and you’ve added protein and fiber and some additional fat, which should also help you stay on an even keel. Is this better than a nice green salad with a small amount of vinaigrette and a lean grilled piece of chicken? No. You’re more likely to gain weight with the typical BBQ meal, but at least you’ll have the energy to go for a walk later to burn off the extra calories.

Do I follow the South Beach Diet to the letter? No. In the first version, it was recommended that diary be avoided in “phase 1″. I saw no reason for this, as plain low-fat yogurt has a low glycemic index and ricotta cheese was allowed. I tried out different things to see what worked for me. I listened to my own body. I used common sense. I ate yogurt and berries during phase 1. I did not find excuses to eat poorly (this flourless chocolate cake has a low glycemic index because it is mostly butter – so I’m going to have a piece).

But it did change the way I ate, and cooked (for a while I stopped baking with all-purpose flour all together) and shopped (packaged food = bad, shopping the perimeter of the grocery store = good). Do I fall off the wagon and eat a big hunk of ciabatta bread once in a while? Oh hell yeah. If I do this too much do I notice I’m searching for the cookies in the back of the cupboard at 10:00 pm? Yes. But this diet gives me a tool to bring things back into balance.

Next up: Control and Justification

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2012, where we’re miles away from understanding how the human body works, but appreciate the one we have, no matter what its weight.

Summer 1970 I'm guessing. My father is about 47 here, mom about 39. Me, I'm about 4. The dog is a Chesapeake Bay retriever named Charlie. He was my buddy.

Yup, it’s that time of year. The time when we come out of the holiday season and say, holy crap, how did that happen, I gained 5 lbs! And we resolve to cut back and get real and lay off the dessert menu.

And I am no exception. I was a skinny kid. So skinny in fact that at one point a pediatrician recommended a glass of chocolate milk every day as a midday snack to try to put some meat on my bones (of course, now days they serve that with the hot lunch at school…childhood obesity, huh, wonder where that comes from). I’m 5’3″, small boned, and weighed 105 lbs through high school (last seen in my early 30′s after a difficult break up – serious stress makes me lose my appetite). I had the metabolism of a hamster when I was young. I could drink milkshakes as an after dinner snack every night and never gain an ounce. If I got sick, I dropped a few pounds in a few days. Honestly, I was too thin and would have loved to have gained 10 lbs.

I'm about 14 here. I spent a lot of time getting my hair to do the Farrah thing.

Oh how times change. Like most people, my metabolism shifted when I hit my 30′s. I’m happily married (no stress weight loss in the last 14 years) and I’ve become a foodie, who loves bread and chocolate and bacon (OK, I always loved these things, but now my body hangs onto them like it may never get to eat again). I now weigh in the high 120′s, low 130′s. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll probably never see 115 lbs again. And that’s OK. I want to be healthy, not win any “top model” contests.

But when I start to feel bloated and lacking energy, I know it’s time to get onto the better eating bandwagon for a while and regain some control over what goes into my mouth. Most of the time, this happens to coincide with the month of January. Go figure.

There will be a lot less of this for a while.

As I’ve begun my “no starches, no sugars” January, I’ve been reviewing what I’ve learned over the years about nutrition and diet. I have a degree in Biology and a deep desire to understand how and why things work the way they do. I’m not one to go with the “eat grapefruit and cabbage” diet because it worked for some movie starlet (for 5 minutes). Give me the science! So I thought I’d write a series of posts on basic diet and nutrition, on what works for me, and encourage others to find their own way with practical knowledge and common sense.

The Basic Inescapable Facts

Calories in > Calories out = weight gain. There is no magic bullet, no way of short circuiting the basic way the body digests, uses and stores the food you eat.

As a rough rule, your current weight x 12 = the number of calories you need every day to maintain your current weight. So for me, 130 x 12 = 1560 cal/day. This is a ROUGH rule because some of this will depend on your inherent metabolism and how active you are each day. If you want to lose weight, it is recommended that you cut 500 calories per day from the number above, but NOT go below 1,200 calories per day, which sends the body into a panic because it thinks it’s starving. So, clearly, for me, I’m aiming for 1,200 calories per day when dieting.

1 lb of fat = 3,500 calories. So the above reduction of 500 cal/day should result in about 1 lb of weight loss per week. Remember, you didn’t gain all that weight in a week, and you aren’t going to lose it in a week either. It is this basic fact that sends people looking for diet pills, liquid diets, boot camp and any other “quick fix” out there, because we don’t want it to take 2 1/2 months of not being able to eat whatever we want in any quantity to lose 10 lbs.

Calories and Where they Come From

A calorie (actually technically a kilocalorie, but we never call it that) is the amount of energy needed to increase one kilogram of water (about 35 oz or just over a quart) by one degree celsius (1.8 degrees fahrenheit). So food is really just potential energy that our body turns into the ability to walk and talk and breathe and think big thoughts. Pretty amazing, when you get right down to it.

• 1 gram (.141 oz) of carbohydrate = 4 calories
• 1 gram (.141 oz) of protein = 4 calories
• 1 gram (.141 oz) of fat = 9 calories

So if we read nutrition labels, which specify the grams of carbohydrate, protein and fat in the food, we find that:

• 1 tsp sugar (pretty much a pure carbohydrate) = 4 grams = 16 calories
• 2 oz tuna = 13 g protein = 52 calories (plus about 8 calories from a little bit of fat for 60 cal total)
• 1 tbsp oil = 14 grams = 126 calories

A Balanced Diet

You need carbohydrates, fats and proteins in your diet, period. Not only is it pretty much impossible to completely eliminate any one of these essential energy sources, you wouldn’t want to. Here’s why.

Protein. Proteins are all basically some combination of 20 amino acids bound together into chains, and from there into complex shapes that do amazing things like allow you to stand up. Your skin, bones, muscles, organ tissue, blood, hormones, and the enzymes that help you function all contain protein.

Protein can come from both plant and animal sources. Legumes (beans and peas), animal (including from the sea) flesh and their byproducts (dairy, eggs), nuts and seeds are your richest sources of protein. There are nine essential amino acids (protein building blocks) that the body can not make itself and MUST receive from the food it eats. Animal derived proteins are “complete”, i.e. contain all 9 essential amino acids. The only complete vegetable proteins are soy (a legume) and quinoa (a seed grain).

As a rule, 10 to 35 percent of your total daily calories should come from protein. The minimum U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is 0.8 grams/kg per day for adults. So divide your body weight in pounds by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms, and then multiply that number by 0.8. For me, this is 47 grams of protein per day. One 8 oz chicken breast would cover this and would be about 16% of my daily calories. I’m likely more in the 35% range.

Carbohydrates. Consisting of only carbon, hydrogen and oxygen chains formed into simple or complex molecules, carbs are the body’s most important and readily available source of energy. Carbs are also often referred to as sugars or saccharides. There are two major forms:

• Simple sugars (mono or disaccharides), which include sucrose (one molecule each of glucose and fructose) and lactose (one molecule each of galactose and glucose). Sucrose can be found in fruits (or the sugars derived from them i.e. cane or beet sugar, maple syrup etc.), lactose is found in dairy.
• Complex carbohydrates (polysaccharides), which include starchy vegetables, grains, rice, and breads and cereals.

It is suggested that 45 to 65 percent of your daily calories come from carbohydrates, with an absolute minimum of 130 g per day. (Which would put me at 43%.) Simple sugars give the body a quick burst of energy because they take so little energy to break down into a substance usable by your body, but there are pitfalls…to be discussed in a future post. A healthy diet should emphasize complex carbohydrates, especially from whole grains, beans and nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables.

Fats.  Fats are molecules of  fatty acids and glycerol, also called triglycerides, because the fatty acids form three arms on the glycerol base. Like proteins, there are essential fatty acids that the body can not make itself and must get from the diet.  Fats play a vital role in the body, transporting fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) and helping maintain cell function, healthy hair, skin and body temperature.

Fats can be saturated (solid at room temperature – generally animal derived) or unsaturated (liquid at room temperature – generally plant derived). It is generally accepted by most doctors and nutritionists that unsaturated fats (particularly monounsaturated) are better for the body, causing fewer issues with heart disease (more on this in a later blog post). Trans fats, fats which were unsaturated, but then chemically manipulated to be partially saturated, have a strong correlation to heart disease (one theory – the body can’t break them down completely and they float around and clog arteries) and should be avoided all together. Trans fats tend to be found in processed foods, because they are inexpensive and increase flavor and shelf life. If you see the word “partially hydrogenated” on the label, put it back and walk away.

Because fats give us such a calorie bang per gram (more than twice that of carbohydrates or proteins), and they are carriers of flavor (can we say butter, cream, bacon fat…) it is easy to overdo them. Fat intake should be limited to 20 to 35 percent of your daily calories. Emphasize fats from unsaturated sources, such as nuts and seeds (canola and olive are good choices).

Future posts will cover my own diet strategy, omega 3 vs 6, why I take a lot of health studies with a grain of salt (or a pat of butter), the book Nurturing Traditions, and why I try to eat whole foods.

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2012, where we’re miles away from that 105 lb girl, but are down about 3 lbs in the last week, and feel much better. Time to go walk the dogs and get some movement into my day!

The grape arbor you see in the picture above had not been pruned in years, so I removed about 80 lbs of old vines from it about a month ago (on a sunny day). Grapes produce fruit on second year vines, so hopefully I left a few for a crop this summer. It was hard to know what was second year and what was 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. According to a tag found while pruning the variety is white concord. It’s going to take a couple of years of pruning to get it totally rehabed (grapes will also root from the vines, given contact with the ground and enough water (and since the former owner had the sprinklers going for 15 minutes EVERY DAY, root they did). So we have a few dead original vines and quite a few volunteer new plants in the wrong places. I’m personally thinking that some zinfandel vines need to go in instead!

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2012, where we’re wishing everyone a happy new year and the weather you wish for. For me, I’ll be wishing for some sunshine.

When the chai tea craze hit in the 90′s, I climbed right on board, and worked my way through Oregon Chai, Tazo Chai and 3rd Street Chai, along with most other concentrate brands out there. I generally found them way to sweet. A 3/4 cup serving (12 oz by the time you add milk) of Oregon Chai Original Concentrate has 6-7 tsp of sugar in it. Seriously, I want a cup of tea, not a soda.

As for the powered chai concentrates, I feel about them the same way I feel about non-dairy creamer. So much so that I once wrote a letter to the editor of a local weekly paper appealing to coffee places to please please stop thinking that this abomination was acceptable. If you wouldn’t serve instant General Foods International Coffee to your coffee drinkers, why serve the equivalent to your tea drinkers. The headline the paper chose for this diatribe? “Keep Powder Off The Streets”. Still makes me laugh.

I had pretty much stopped ordering chai in coffee shops due to the unpredictability of the product. I had thrown away more than one partial cup because it had cooled off enough to make the sweetness cloying (and I HATE throwing food away). But there was one exception. The home-made secret recipe chai from Durango Coffee Company(DCC). I LOVED this chai. Not to sweet, just the right amount of spice. Durango is a small enough town that I was able to contact the owner and beg for the recipe, playing on a mutual position we had both held on a local board of directors. He refused. When I moved to Washington, and could not possibly be a competing threat, I asked again. No dice. They wouldn’t even tell me the spices that were in it. But they did offer to sell me a bag of the spice mix and tell me how to brew it. Here’s my chance, I thought. I’ll be able to ID the spices. Nope. It came preground. Drat!

I had tried brewing my own chai over the years, and had collected a lot of not quite right recipes, including Oregon Chai copy cat attempts. Chai, referred to as masala chai in India, where it originated, almost always contains five main ingredients; cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, black pepper and cloves. Nutmeg, star anise, orange peel, vanilla, and fennel appear less often. Most call for putting whole spices, tea and vanilla in a sauce pan and seeping for about 15 minutes.

The problem here is three-fold. One, in my experience, adding milk to tea too soon seems to interfere with its ability to brew correctly (as I have experienced repeatedly when adding half and half to a cup of tea at a coffee shop too soon, not wanting to stand around for 4 minutes when my friends were ready to go). Plus, I wanted a concentrate, not a ready to drink brew. Second, brewing tea for more than about 4 minutes brings out tannins, and will make a brew that practically takes the enamel off of your teeth. Third, seeping whole spices for 15 minutes is not nearly long enough to extract much of their flavor.

When DCC explained their brewing method, it was a revelation. They brew the tea two-fold strong (because it will be diluted by half with milk later). After they remove the tea, they add the spices, let the mixture seep until cool, strain and store. And because their spices were ground, not whole, maximum flavor was extracted with very little energy input. It was time to revisit home-brewed chai using this new method (but first, I needed to use up all the spice mix DCC sent me, which took about a year).

This recipe isn’t perfect. I’m still playing with the ratio of spices. But it is quite good. Certainly better than anything I can purchase in the store. Play around with it yourself, and see what you think.

Homemade Chai Concentrate
Makes enough spice mix for a few batches of 16 oz concentrate, which happens to be the size I brew because that’s the size of my small teapot. Feel free to double the recipe or make the whole batch at once.

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon (or 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon chips or 1 3-inch piece stick cinnamon, broken up – you do know about my spice addiction, right?)
• 10 whole green cardamom pods
• 1-2 whole star anise pods (or to taste – I’m not a huge licorice fan, so tend to shy away from all anise and fennel flavors. I even struggle with chervil, tarragon and Thai basil for their anise overtones. I use one star anise)
• 8 whole cloves (I once had a locally brewed chai that had so much clove in it that my tongue went numb. There is a reason clove oil is used for tooth ache. It IS possible to have too much)
• 8 black peppercorns
• 4-6 pieces crystalized ginger (most recipes call for fresh, but then you can’t store the spice mix. And since I liked DCC’s mix so much, and clearly they were not using fresh ginger, I figured this would work. Plus I had a bunch of leftover crystalized ginger from a Christmas cookie baking extravaganza a few years ago. It never goes bad. You could use ground ginger here, but it tends to lose its potency pretty quickly. I’d go with a fresh 3-inch piece, chopped, if you don’t use the crystalized.
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg (about 1/4 of a whole nutmeg – fresh ground really IS better here, and it grinds pretty quickly

To make the spice mixture

Grind all ingredients, including crystalized ginger, in a spice grinder (i.e. repurposed coffee grinder) until pulverized. Notes: whole cloves can be hard on plastics. The oils are somewhat caustic and they are hard little buggers. After killing the plastic lid of my old grinder with cloves, I now have one where the lid fits over the outside of the grinding mechanism, rather that down into it. I grind the cardamom with the outside husk and all. I throw in any preground spices as well, as it helps to mix it all together. Store in a sealed container.

To make tea concentrate:

• 4 tsp loose leaf black tea of your choice. Assam, a strong Indian tea, is the traditional choice. You can use tea bags instead. Just double the amount you would normally use for two cups of tea.
• 16 -20 oz water, filtered if your tap has chlorine
• 2 tbsp spice mix, above

Place tea and boiling water in a pot (I have this nifty tea brewer with a built-in straining liner, but any pot would work – just be sure to give the tea leaves room to expand. Don’t put them into a standard tea ball, it will be too small). Cover and seep tea for four minutes. Remove/strain out tea. Add 2 tablespoons spice mix to the hot tea liquid and stir. Cover and let sit until mixture reaches room temperature. Strain (most of the spice mix will sink to the bottom and you can just pour until you start to get to this layer. A clean coffee press would probably work great here too.) Store concentrate in the refrigerator for up to a week.

To make your tea, add 1/2 concentrate and 1/2 milk of choice to mug and heat in the microwave until hot. Stir in 1/4 tsp vanilla extract and sweetener of choice (one tsp of raw sugar is just about right for me) and enjoy. Note that a lot of recipes call for whole vanilla beans, seeped with the spice mixture, but buying one vanilla bean locally can run you $7-8, so I go with the extract. (You can get great deals on whole vanilla beans in quantity on eBay – I made my own extract this way.)

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2011, where about half the time, when I am making a cup of chai, my husband observes “shai-hulud”, which was the name the Fremen called the sand worms in the Frank Herbert science fiction book Dune. Yup, he’s kind of a nerd.

Spot, my not quite all there rooster, evidently tried to perch on top of this hay feeder in the barn and slipped down into it, where he got well and completely stuck. Once I determined that he wasn’t going to expire in the next few minutes, I ran to get my camera before freeing him, because…well…it WAS funny. Once freed, he was a bit wobbly on his feet, but then he’s always a bit wobbly on his feet. He’s just fine.

Post hay feeder incident. A bit embarrassed, I think, but otherwise fine.

Some of us are adjusting to the new location better than others.

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2011, where we’re miles away from feeling completely unpacked (it’s that last 10% that takes forever, right?) but are enjoying the sunshine, the rocking wood stove, and the lack of snow.

Yup, I grew everything here except for the garlic.

I was home for a visit to northern California back in the 1990′s, during the height of summer, and my step-mom was making ratatoullie, a French vegetable stew. Not one to eat many vegetables at the time, I reluctantly tried some, and it was a revelation. It was SO good. Nothing like vine ripened tomatoes and fresh basil to make all vegetables taste fantastic. I was sold, and have been making ratatouille in September, during the height of the warm weather vegetable glut, ever since.

The trick to making sublime ratatouille, rather than just good ratatouille, is really good tomatoes and cooking most of the vegetables separately, only combining them at the end (ala Julia Child). Generally, the order is Eggplant, Zucchini, Peppers, Onions, Tomatoes, or EZPOT (ala some random reality show episode on Food Network). Cooks Illustrated also has a ratatouille recipe where the eggplant and zucchini are roasted instead of sautéed. Play around and see what you like.

The best part of this recipe? It freezes beautifully. Portion it out into quart freezer bags, thaw in the winter, add a small can of cannelleni beans, diced red potatoes or small pasta of your choice, some chicken or veggie stock, and you have a healthy flavorful soup to help counteract all of the holiday eating. It’s also great as a pizza topping.

Ratatouille

• ½ lb. eggplant. Note that the smaller Italian or Japanese eggplant are less bitter and do not need to be salted and drained, as is often recommended for the large globe eggplant.
• ½ lb. zucchini or other on-hand summer squash
• 2 (about 1 cup) green and/or ripe bell peppers
• ½ lb. (about 1 ½ cups) storage onions (i.e. not sweet)
• 2 cloves garlic, or more to taste
• Olive oil
• 1 lb ripe tomatoes. If you can’t get vine ripened ones, you are better off substituting a 14 oz can of diced tomatoes rather than the tasteless ones available in winter.
• 3 tbsp minced fresh parsley (or 1 ½ tbsp dried)
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh basil (or 1 tbsp dried)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Dice eggplant, squash, peppers and tomatoes into 1/2 to 1 inch dice. Peel and seed tomatoes if that is your preference (I personally don’t bother). Coarsely chop the onion. Mince the garlic.

Skim the bottom of a dutch oven with about 1 tbsp olive oil and heat over medium-high heat. Saute the eggplant until lightly browned on all sides, 3-4 minutes. Remove from pan.

Adding more oil, saute squash until lightly browned on all sides, 3-4 minutes. Remove from pan.

Reduce heat to medium. Adding more oil, saute peppers and onions until cooked through, but not browned. Add garlic and saute briefly until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add tomatoes and cook until they have released their juices and some liquid has evaporated, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. (Start with 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper. Add more to taste).

OK, this is not the best picture, taken with a flash, post pot luck. But this did get frozen, and I will be feasting on it in January.

Return eggplant and squash to pan, along with parsley and basil. (The original Julia Child recipe calls for layering the squash and eggplant with the tomato/onion/pepper mixture for a total of 5 layers. The goal is to help each vegetable retain its individual flavor. I find this too fussy. Do so if you wish. I just stir it all together). Simmer, covered, for about 10 minutes. Uncover, and continue to simmer for about 15 minutes, being careful not to scorch the bottom.

Ratatouille is great served hot or cold, with a nice slice of crusty bread. This is a great pot luck dish for summer gatherings. If you want to try this recipe roasting some or all of the vegetables, simply toss veggies/whole garlic with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast on a foil lined sheet pan in a 450 degree oven, stirring ever 10 minutes or so, until vegetables are tender. It should take about 30 minutes depending on the size of your dice. Then combine and add your fresh herbs.

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2011, where we’re miles away from summer ripened tomatoes, and could use a big dose of vegetables in our diet. I’ve been enjoying cooking for my husband for the last two weeks, and the scale is reflecting all that good food.