We’re making Christmas cookies!    These are Peanut blossoms.

I suppose most families have traditional foods this time of year.  John’s family was famous for Christmas cookies: green spritz wreaths decorated with tiny red berries–real works of art, powdered-sugar snowy Mexican wedding cakes, red-sprinkled shortbread, peanut blossoms, and tangy lemon bars. 

Mexican Wedding Cakes

Made with butter!

I don’t bake as much as I used to, but when I take time to make holiday cookies I use butter.  None of the chemical concoctions manipulated to taste like butter.  I use the real thing or I don’t bother. 

Since this is a blog devoted to healthy living, (Healthylivingbeyondfifty.com/) why, you might ask, am I devoting an article to baking Christmas cookies with butter?  Actually butter is something we should talk about.

A couple of Michael Pollan’s rules for healthy eating, “In Defense of Food,” are

• Eat Food.  ”Avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number…”
• “Avoid food products that make health claims.”

(You know Michael Pollan…”The Botany of Desire,” “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and “In Defense of Food.”)

Pollan means you should eat things your body recognizes as food, not chemical concoctions stirred up in a lab by white-coats who have never touched a cow, let alone milked one.  Processed foods make your liver work overtime trying to break up and excrete the toxins they contain.

Your body recognizes butter.  It knows what to do with it.  It’s just butter, and, hopefully, it’s organic without antibiotics or hormones which very often are part of the cow’s food and which are, once again, toxic to our bodies.

What about Pollan’s second point: health claims?  What’s wrong with health claims? 

Whole foods don’t come with written health claims. There’s no list of health benefits on the side of an orange or apple, ribe eye steak,  or an onion.

If it’s packaged with health claims on the side of the box it’s probably processed.  If it’s processed most nutritional value has been removed because nutrients are the part of food that spoils and shortens “shelf-life.”  Shorter shelf life means lower corporate profits.

Look at a package of breakfast cereal.  Natural, essential-for-good-health nutrients are removed so the cereal can sit forever on the shelf.  To sell you on buying it, though, the sides of the box will be plastered with health claims for the few chemical vitamins that have been added back to replace lost nutrients.

Some mis-guided advice tells us to avoid butter because it’s a saturated fat that will raise “bad” blood cholesterol and also cause weight gain. According to Dr. Mercola butter slashes heart attack risk in  half.

Gaining weight?  You’re more likely to gain weight on simple carbohydrate foods, processed foods containing simple carbs, and toxins your liver can’t break down for excretion. 

Natural saturated fats such as coconut and butter are stable.  Some vegetable oils, on the other hand, turn into unstable compounds that aren’t good for your body. 

Butter is especially good when it comes from cows eating green grass because it contains a compound that helps build muscle rather than store fat, and it has an excellent ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids.  It contains many fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, K) and essential minerals difficult to get in our depleted western diet.  I always buy organic butter (Organic Valley brand) because it doesn’t contain those antibiotics and hormones.

Holiday baking is one of the fun things we do.  John is in the kitchen right now perpetuating the family tradition.  I think it’s lemon bars today.  Our two grandsons will be here next week, and they check out the cookie area where we stack the tins.  Father Daniel parses out the cookies or they’d finish them all in one fell swoop, I’m sure.

Have fun baking and sharing with friends and family. 

P.S.  Oh.  If you want to check out Dr. Mercola’s article on butter here’s the link.  More nutritional information that I quoted here.  http://bit.ly/hC84kQ

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AACK!!!

Toxins in the environment, in my food, in my shampoo. Mad Cow disease, e Coli, and Avian/swine/Spanish flu popping up in Africa and South America…

Panic time for my immune system. 

WHAT HAPPENS TO MY IMMUNE SYSTEM IF MY BODY IS OVERWHELMED WITH TOXINS?

If my body is overwhelmed with toxins, my immune system is compromised, and I’m more likely to get sick.  My body is naturally designed to capture and destroy bacteria and other invaders, but if it’s already fighting hords of poisons from food, environment, and personal care products how can it do its job of warding off disease? 

How often do you think about your liver?

Probably not very often. 

Yet it’s probably one of the most complicated organs in our body.  It works silently, below awareness, to break toxins into pieces that can be excreted through the skin, kidneys, and colon.

I drink a lot of water during the day.  Almost a quart in the morning as I take my morning herbal drink and shake and vitamins. Through the day my trusty water bottle goes with me to town and downstairs as I work on the computer.

Water is the most important thing you can do to support detoxification. I filter mine even though we have water with no chlorine at our house. I don’t feel good drinking chorine.  It makes water supply in the U.S. safe by killing bacteria, but I don’t want to deliberately put a poison into my body. So I filter.

John and I eat lots of vegetables and local free-range meat (lamb, beef, chicken) and eggs. Animals in the industrial agricultural system are routinely fed various antibiotics and hormones to prevent infection and increase weight gain.

We get those vegetables from a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm. That’s new for us this year. We love getting healthy produce every week. In the process we support a farmer who is small–not part of the military-industrial complex that is U.S. agriculture today.

40% OF AMERICA’S FOOD GROWN TODAY IS NOT INTENDED FOR PEOPLE

Next week I’ll send you the trailer for “Fresh,” the movie. It’s all about what’s happened in just the last 50 years or so to America’s food supply. We all need to be aware how vulnerable our food supply is today.  Our food supply is controlled by only 4 companies, and 40% of food grown in the U.S. is not grown for human consumption.  Many conventional farmers today, subsidized by our government, grow nothing on their farms that is intended for humans.

More in a couple of days. In the meantime, do you buy “organic” at the store? Why is it important to you? Why not?
 
 

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If you care about your health you need to be aware of toxins in your food.  As we grow older, these poisons build up and slow the body’s cleansing process.  It’s critical to our health that we be aware of what goes on in American agriculture today.  Denying the facts may give us impaired immune systems, sore joints, and extra weight around the middle, and definitely not a flat stomach!

SO WHAT’S THE ANSWER TO GREAT HEALTH WHEN WE’RE LIVING IN A SEA OF CHEMICALS?

John and I live in high desert country between Reno, NV, and Salt Lake, and we grow great sagebrush, but not many vegetables!

It’s high here, elevation wise.  It freezes and snows, sometimes even in summer.  It’s usually dry.  The sun is strong and harsh, making lettuce, and spinach bolt in early spring, and peas quit producing, even though they just began.  Gardening is tough.

We get most of our summer vegetables from a Community Supported Agriculture program, CSA, in Fallon, to the west of us on the way to Reno.  The vegetables are grown without toxic chemicals (pesticides fungicides, pre-emergents) and fertilized with natural manure and local compost.

Produce the farmer brings us is high in vitamins and minerals and low in toxins.  It’s picked the morning he comes.   Chickens have free-run of the farm, doing what chickens naturally do.

For a contrast: Many fields and produce grown in the U.S. are blanketed in toxic chemicals, chemicals that build up and effectively “sterilize” soil.  These conventionally grown vegetables are lower in vitamins and minerals since they’re grown in depleted soil.

This video shows the contrast between much of American’s agriculture and the small family farm, especially an organic farm.  You’ll also see Will Allen of Growing Power, in Milwaukee’s urban agriculture project which grows vegetables and fruit in its greenhouses, raises goats, ducks, bees, turkeys, and tilapia and Great lakes Perch in the center of the city. 

There you have it.  You saw in this video rows of vegetables covered in spray, unsanitary conditions for our food animals, and toxins that stress our bodies. You also saw inspiring scenes of healthy agriculture, a new paradigm.  What can each of us do?

• First step is to become educated about America’s food.
• Second step might be to support healthy agriculture, perhaps buy organic.
• Third could be to give your body a break from toxin overload by becoming educated about the food supply. 
• Supporting your body’s cleansing function, keeping your immune system and liver healthy.

WHAT’S YOUR EXPERIENCE?  SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS BELOW:

• How do you find time to cook food from scratch?  Does it matter to you?
• Do you buy organic produce?  Is it more expensive? The movie pointed out that not all costs, such as environmental degradation, higher sickness rates, are figured into conventional agriculture.
• What time-saving ideas do you have for preparing food from scratch?
• Do you shop at Farmers Markets?
• How do you keep your immune system strong?  Your liver?

Comment and Share this post.  Let’s start a discussion!

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