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Seasonal Eating

summereating
Photo owned by www.shelleygoldbeck.com

A healthy way to live is to eat “in season”.

That means eating foods that are at their peak of flavour and nutrients. This often happens only once per year, for a very short time, especially if eating locally is the goal.

Eating in season is also economical. Whatever is in season is usually cheaper than it will be any other time of the year.

In my opinion, food eaten in season tastes better. It’s usually fresher and more nutritious.

The best season of our food year is imminent. It starts with spring baby lettuce, baby spinach leaves, green onions and crisp, tangy radishes. All these are easy to grow at home. They like cool weather and can be seeded in Calgary anytime after mid-April.

If you’re really lucky, you have an asparagus patch. Their tender shoots magically appear overnight. Raw, they remind me of fresh raw peas. Lightly steamed until al dente and brushed with a teaspoon of butter or olive oil, they have their own unique flavour. Very yummy!

I get really excited about spring fruits. Early rhubarb always reminds me of my grandma, who made rhubarb “pudding”, a yellow cake batter poured over a pan of chopped rhubarb, baked and served warm with ice-cream.

Strawberries in June embody the spirit of summer! A touch of honey. A bit of cream. Fit for a queen!

The first cherries arrive in June. When their skins are crunchy and their flesh, sweet and juicy, I can eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I often do!

Picking berries was an integral part of my childhood summers. My siblings and I would mount our bikes or horses with our ice-cream pails and larger buckets. We headed home when the buckets were full. It could take all day: we spent more than half our time cramming berries into our mouths!

When the first peas are ready, I am at peace in the garden, splitting the warm pods to discover the sweet treasures inside. The best carrots are the true babies, (not the peeled to shape varieties) pulled, wiped on my pants, and crunched, soil granules and all, right there in the garden.

And potatoes! New potatoes stolen from the periphery of the plant are creamy and sweet. If I never ate another mature potato I wouldn’t care but new potatoes are a completely different animal!

In the old neighbourhood where I live many yards have raspberry patches. Kids love to stick a berry on each of their ten little fingers, wiggle them around, and then devour them one by one.

As summer wanes plums and peaches come into season. More feasting on fruit. And what to do with all that zucchini? (I like them baby so I don’t have that problem).

Alas! Our season is short! By fall, some vegetables are just coming into their prime. The brassicas like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, all like cool weather. Turnips and parsnips are sweeter if they’ve experienced frost.

Eating in season will bolster the total nutrients you take in, reduce your carbon footprint since it’s easier to eat locally, and likely give your pocketbook a break. I highly recommend it.

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Head-Lies: Headlines that Mislead

headliesLast week a friend sent me some links to a story trumpeting that vegetarians are not healthier than carnivores. She felt this story justified her meat consumption. I disagree.

I am not against eating meat. But I am against misleading information.

This story is a classic example of a Head-lie, a misleading headline: one that rings true but upon further investigation, it’s fishy.

First there are many significant studies that show otherwise, that vegetarians have lower rates of modern diseases like cancer and heart disease. In light of dozens of studies showing that reducing meat consumption brings health benefits, I would not change my life because of this one study.

In fact it wasn’t a study but a survey. Big difference. A study has a chance of following good scientific protocol, not that it automatically does; but a survey has little chance of being accurate.

Then there is the ambiguous definition of vegetarian. I once worked with a man whose wife was a “vegetarian”. When I met her I was surprised to see she was overweight and looked unhealthy in general, unlike the vegetarians I know.

I asked him about her diet. It turns out she was a vegetarian who hated vegetables. She lived on vegetarian pizza (hold the veggies!), cereal, Kraft dinner, frozen dinners, chips, crackers, soft drinks, milkshakes, ice cream and French fries.

No meat. But no nutrition. Grain-heavy, like feedlot cattle. Not “vegeta”rian, but simply a person who doesn’t eat meat! If the vegetarians surveyed ate like she did I don’t doubt the “study” is accurate.

I know vegans who shun animal products but they eat “fake“ meats like hot dogs and luncheon “meats” and fake cheese made with vegetable oils. They are full of chemical fillers, artificial flavours and colours. I call this stuff “unfood”.

I do eat meat. I know my meat. I know my farmer. My small servings of grass-fed beef and lamb are far healthier than a vegan hotdog or most veggie burgers in restaurants or in the freezer aisle.

I’m not a great fan of labels like vegan, vegetarian, or carnivore. If I have to choose a label for myself it is “flexitarian”. I eat a variety of foods, as I believe our bodies were designed to secure nutrients from many available sources.

Apparently there are 80,000 edible real foods (I don’t think of processed foods as real or edible in the sense of nutrition). About 3000 of those foods are commonly eaten.

Sadly the average North American’s diet is derived 90% from only twelve foods, including wheat, corn, soy, and milk, incidentally some of the most modified and processed of foods.

Consequently we are deficient in micronutrients: vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients. The ensuing malnourishment leads to all kinds of mysterious conditions and diseases.

Because mainstream medicine refuses to see the food-health connection they blindly treat symptoms with drugs. Many people still are in god-like awe of their doctors, despite their ignorance of food and any “medicine” other than what they prescribe.

Media collaborates by running head-lies like this one. People don’t know what to believe and eventually give up trying to understand. My advice is:

1. Broaden your sources of information. We live in the Internet age. Snoop around. Go beyond the first Google page! Sign up for a variety of health newsletters. Find opposing views and information and weigh it yourself.

2. Don’t ever change your life or your diet based on one news story. Investigate.

3. Read widely about both (or many) sides of issues. Coconut oil was once vilified as a heart-disease-causing-saturated-fat. When evidence began to emerge that coconut is actually more beneficial than so-called-healthy-processed-vegetable-oils, I was skeptical. I began to research it for myself and found much evidence supporting the use of coconut oil.

4. Remember that there is no single right way to do anything. What works for me may not work for you. In fact pharmaceutical medicines are allowed on the market if as few as one third of patients realize desired results, often regardless of side effects. (The other two-thirds may have no benefit, but still suffer from side effects.)

5. Try things. Nothing crazy. But if you’ve been plagued with something and tried everything the doctor suggests, what have you got to lose by removing gluten or dairy or sugar from your diet for a month?

I tried coconut oil. Now I use it in my cooking and baking, on my skin and to oil pull (swishing oil in mouth to improve mouth/teeth health). I stopped using all processed oils like corn, sunflower and canola, regardless of their health claims, which I’ve learned are simply marketing tactics.

Articles like the one heralding unhealthy vegetarians are often designed to get out a message, an agenda, propaganda for a product or industry. In fact, they mention that the study authors are suspected of working for the meat industry.

Be cautious. Don’t believe the head-lies!

Besides eating does not have to be so complicated. Food writer, Michael Pollan says: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

I like that.

My policy is:

Eat the Food, the Whole Food and Nothing but the Food.

Links:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vegetarians-are-less-healthy-and-have-a-lower-quality-of-life-than-meateaters-scientists-say-9236340.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan