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Green Beans

grrenbean1
photo belongs to www.ShelleyGoldbeck.com

The lowly green bean, as a rule, is not a vegetable that inspires poetry. But it has many virtues that are virtually unknown or certainly unsung.

You can buy green beans but there is nothing compares to them just-picked from the garden! Green beans are easy to grow. After the last frost in the spring, simply sow them ½ inch deep and one to two inches apart. With water and warmth tiny plants appear within days. Magpies like just-sprouted bean seedlings so beware.

Within six weeks the plants are covered with tiny blossoms and bean pods appear a week or so later. The pods hide easily in the foliage so hunt carefully!

Green beans are best eaten when they are not too big, when the seeds are still small and the pod is tender. They are good raw, something I learned from my Grandtoys.

I like them steamed until tender and green, not too soft or cooked until they’re brown. They are best served with a tiny bit of oil: butter, olive oil, coconut oil or any nut oils are good choices. Many of the vitamins in green beans are fat-soluble. By eating them with healthy fats, you make it easier for your body to utilize those nutrients.

A friend of mine told me recently that they are really delicious roasted in a bit of oil and salted. I imagine them to be like edamame, only you can eat the pods! I will try them.

Green beans are also easily pickled. Choose long, mature pods. Stand them up in the jars, pour your pickling solution over them and process. In a few weeks you have crispy pickled beans.

I became attracted to green beans as a young adult riding the diet roller coaster. Calorie counting was an integral part of my early efforts to manage my weight. As it happens, green beans are very low in calories, with just 31 calories per 100 grams or about 44 per cup.

grrenbean2
photo belongs to www.ShelleyGoldbeck.com

Green beans contain substantial amounts of Vitamins A, B-6, C and K and minerals, including calcium, iron, potassium, silicon, and magnesium. They are a good source of fibre and contain healthy plant-based protein. Recent studies highlight the antioxidant capacity of green beans.

Eating green beans, preferably fresh, but as an alternative, frozen, can enhance your cardiovascular health, help keep your weight down, and help you manage blood sugar.

To me, they taste like summer.

 

 

If you want to learn more about all the nutrients found in green beans check out this site:

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=134

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Get Off the Diet Roller Coaster: Ten Tips for Achieving Your Ideal Weight

Roller CoasterAfter just two weeks the diet roller coaster has already ejected a good number of its riders.

Some of those didn’t even get on. The pull of holiday goodies was simply too strong.

Besides the festivities really weren’t over until seven days into the year. Well, that wrecks it for the whole year, so why bother?

Others jump on with great enthusiasm, strapping themselves in and throwing their arms up in the air with abandon. Many of these fall off rather early too: their arms quickly tire and they can only handle so much of the stress of the ups and downs.

Some make it through numerous hills and valleys, but find themselves frequently dizzy and nauseous.

And by mid January, most people have already lost their grip and tumbled to the ground.

Here’s a radical idea. Let’s get off the diet roller coaster forever. In fact, I propose we skip that area of the amusement park altogether.

Let’s not give our money to the hucksters selling us the illusion that this ride is taking us somewhere. The facts are:

FACT 1: Diets don’t work.  Once you get off the diet all the problems return. Diets often distract us from dealing with the real problems.

Fact 2: Follow the money. Diets have never worked but the diet industry (including physicians and pharmaceutical companies) makes billions of dollars every year perpetuating the myth. We foolishly keep getting back onto the ride that takes our money and makes us sick.

Fact 3: Governments, Big Agriculture, Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Health Care and Big Health Insurance industries DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU! I am saddened by the blind trust the average person has in the “system”.

Fact 4: You must take responsibility for yourself, for your own health and education.

Fact 5: Food does not have to be complicated. We simply need to reconnect to it.

So what can you do? How do you relinquish your lifetime pass on the diet roller coaster?

Here are just ten examples:

1. Learn more about food. Why is broccoli good for you?  Why should you be suspicious of GMOs?

2. Cook more of your own food. Food made with hands is better for us than factory food. By preparing your own food you can avoid the chemical poisons of food additives.

3. Grow some of your own food. Some herbs and a tomato in a pot on the patio. Turn a patch of lawn into a salad garden. Plant berry bushes that grow well in your area. (Turn children loose in a raspberry patch for a soul-filling event.)

4. Shop the periphery of the supermarket. The fresh real food is usually found around the outside and the junk is usually on the middle shelves, especially at the ends of the aisles. Even better, forego the supermarket for the farmer’s market.

5. Get to know your grower. When you learn about the inputs required for successful organic farming, you won’t mind paying a bit more at all. You will gain an appreciation for the resources required to feed you and perhaps you’ll stop taking the earth for granted.

6. Buy colourful foods. Fruits, vegetables, and berries come in a rainbow of colours. We are genetically programmed to associate bright colours with good nutrition. It’s no mistake that junk food is marketed with brightly coloured packaging and messaging (but the food itself is often bland and colourless). We are being misled.

7. Stop poisoning yourself. Avoid “unfoods”.  You know, they come in a colorful bag inside a colourful box wrapped in plastic, with a shelf-life of decades and a list of ingredients that sound like they could power a space station, er, I mean “look”, because they are invariably unpronounceable! Avoid factory food. Eat whole real food.

8. Stop counting calories. Yes, they matter to some degree but focusing solely on calories is dangerous. (That is how fats became villains, even though many are actually heroes). Nutrient density, the total nutrients per calorie, is what really matters. Micronutrients are probably more important than macronutrients (fat, protein, carbs). Choose foods that give you the most nutrient bang for the buck/calorie. Go for quality, not quantity.

9. Start paying attention to your body. My great-grandfather said your body will tell you whether you should eat it. I’m often chided for avoiding bread but it bloats me and adds up to eight pounds to my weight in one day. My body is telling me bread isn’t serving it. If you have inexplicable health problems try eliminating some of the worst offenders from your diet for a while. Wheat, soy and dairy are some of the common foods that cause mystery illnesses.

  1. Drink water. This one step, if practiced many times each day, can revolutionize your health.

Finally, remember this. There is evidence that we are not sick because we’re fat, we’re fat because we’re sick. Fat is a symptom. Treating symptoms doesn’t work. It only masks the problems.

The accumulation of fat can be the body’s way of defending itself from toxins. Those toxins can be emotional, from food or from industrial chemicals.

Therefore the goal to “lose weight” is off track. When we strive for optimum health the body will detoxify itself, heal itself and we achieve our goals.

We’ve been riding the wrong ride!

I am happy to point you in the direction of many good resources if you decide to stay off the diet roller coaster forever. Feel free to contact me.

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The Real Estate of Your Plate

realestateoriginally posted October 27, 2011, Revised Oct 2013

Think about your usual dinner. Look closely at the food on your plate.

How would you describe the real estate of your plate?

Is your plate one big ghetto of factory food?

Or is it an estate of whole real food?

Food is a huge issue in our society. Billions of dollars are made manufacturing food.

Basic commodities are heavily subsidized. We all would like to think those subsidies are going towards ensuring small family farms avoid what seems inevitable: extinction.

The truth is huge corporations receive most subsidies because they run most of the farming operations in Canada and the USA. The small independent farmer is an anomaly and the few left aren’t making a living on the farm nor can they compete with the large companies.

Heavily subsidized commodities like sugar, wheat, corn, and vegetable oils cost very little so they are ideal ingredients in factory food. What little nutrition these foods have is stripped in the manufacturing process. Synthetic vitamins are added but they’re usually not as effective as vitamins from natural sources.

Machines spit out food products en masse. In the end the packaging is often the most expensive part of factory food, and truth be told, often as tasty and nutritious as what’s inside.

Then there’s the marketing. Words like “light” and “natural” and even, alarmingly, “organic”, have been rendered impotent by food companies using every trick in the book to fool their customers into believing their food is good for them and that it is good value. Sadly most people believe their hollow claims.

If people only thought about what goes into that box of cereal and what they’re getting out of it for $6 or $7 a box, they would be outraged! So many products are nothing more than a handful of different sugars with chemical flavourings and colours.  So-called “kids” cereal is almost pure garbage; you might as well feed them candy for breakfast.

Then we have the diet industry, also worth billions, that strives to convince us their products will help us not be fat. Their food makes us sick and sick leads to fat. The body, in its desperation to partition itself from all the toxins, stores those toxins in fat cells. I also think that’s why we feel so terrible when we’re losing weight. It’s part of the reason diets don’t work; it’s hard to stay on them when you feel so toxic.

Back to the plate. For me learning how to eat healthy food has been a lifelong process, requiring basic knowledge of food, what’s in it and where it comes from, how food affects the body, and how the body feels.

When I was young I was ignorant of the impact food has on the body. I scoffed when people said eating candy could make me sick. I had a stomach of steel and thankfully, a young healthy body that could recover from the abuse of a candy binge.

I remember confiding to the older ladies at my first job that I routinely had Rice Krispie squares and root beer for breakfast. I argued I was getting cereal into my body and I wondered why they were horrified. (I haven’t had root beer or Rice Krispies in my house in decades.)

As I grew older, I figured out that certain foods caused certain outcomes. My first daughter was borderline ADHD so I educated myself and found the most probable contributors were reactions to sugar and chemicals, including colours, flavours, and preservatives.

Without being too much of a food nazi I limited my children’s intake of those substances and therefore I was more conscious of my own consumption. My children grew up to shun fake food.

The real estate of my plate has evolved to a minimum footprint of three-quarters plant- derived foods including at least one raw vegetable.

I’ve found I feel better when I don’t have many grains. The grains I do eat are always whole, never white or processed. I’ve eaten brown rice for over three decades. To me, white rice is tasteless, like eating the box and about as nutritious.

The older I get the more important it is for me to ensure that my portions are smaller than they were when I was 20. The fact is if you don’t change your portions, you’ll gain a pound a year after age 30.

Paying attention to how I feel is also an important part of assessing the real estate of my plate.  I like peppers but they don’t like me. When I eat wheat I bloat like a balloon. A quarter glass of wine puts me into a coma-like state. So I avoid these foods, rather than taking drugs to handle my indigestion, as we are so often encouraged to do by drug-pushing television commercials.

I often consume meat-free meals. My plate used to always include a huge portion of meat; growing up in a meat-and-potatoes family will do that. We only need 30 to 70 grams of protein each day but most people in the western world eat far more. A hamburger patty is 115 grams; many people consume two or three in one sitting.

While there’s no question that having adequate amounts of protein is beneficial, for some reason we think more is better. It’s not. Too much protein triggers minerals to leach from bones and stresses kidneys and adrenal glands.

Animal protein is a good source of concentrated protein but it is hard for our bodies to digest, with many unfavourable “side effects” including making our body’s natural pH more acidic.  Some theorize that an acidic environment in our bodies contributes to many of our modern chronic diseases, like cancer, diabetes and heart disease. High protein diets may even increase the risk of osteoporosis and kidney disease.

Contrary to popular belief, there is protein in grain and vegetables. (All living cells are constructed of protein). They also contain fibre, vitamins and minerals, essential components of a healthy diet. Table of Protein Content in Vegan Foods

I urge you to pay close attention to the real estate of your plate. Hopefully it is dominated by a meadow of fresh raw plant food with no more than tiny enclaves of simple carbs (sugars and starches), meats and processed foods.

My observation is that unhealthy food or “Unfood” catches up with the human body eventually and that many aches, pains, diseases and conditions are preventable, treatable or manageable with improved lifestyle, including revolutionizing the real estate of your plate.

Believe me; living on an estate beats living in the slums!

 

Recommended Reading:  These are just some of the books about food I recommend.

Body for Life                              Harvey and Marilyn Diamond
Living Foods for Optimum Health            Brian R. Clement
Food Inc.                                  Karl Weber
Fast Food Nation                           Eric Schlosser
The Thrive Diet                            Brendan Brazier
The End of Overeating                     David A. Kessler MD
The Botany of Desire                       Michael Pollan
In Defense of Food                         Michael Pollan

 

Other sources:

 

http://exercise.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/protein.htm

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm

http://www.cornucopia.org

www.NaturalNews.com

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Eggs: Eggscelent or Evil?

chickens

Photo from ShelleyGoldbeck.com

Are you confused about whether you should eat eggs?

Your confusion is justified.

Eggs have been called ‘the perfect food”. Although, so has milk.

When Ancel Keyes’ flawed hypothesis that cholesterol causes heart disease became “common knowledge” in the medical community, eggs became villains.  Too much cholesterol.

Doctors warned their patients off eggs, despite their having other essential nutrients like protein, omega 3 fats, and various vitamins and minerals. To learn more about egg nutrients see: http://www.eggs.ca/eggs101/view/22/egg-nutrition and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_(food)

It was a sad time when the doctor insisted my grandma eat no more than three eggs each week. She had eaten a boiled egg nearly every day of her life, at that point, over eight decades.

I told her that eggs have components to help the body metabolize cholesterol. They have other beneficial nutrients. There was as much reason to eat them as not.

But who was I? The doctor surely knew better than I did.

Recently I found out she didn’t even have a cholesterol problem. It turns out she never fasted before her lipids blood test. To Grandma, skipping breakfast was intolerable. She needed to eat!

And of course eating an egg an hour before the test will skew the results.

When the lodge withheld her breakfast before the tests, all was normal.

She deprived herself of her morning egg for many years for nothing!

That’s not the end of the egg debate.

You see, the egg you eat today is not the same egg she ate.

Hers came from a family farm, where the chickens have access to grass everyday. They have fresh air and sunshine.

They exercise, poking around looking for insects. They fly up in terror when a fox strolls by their secure enclosure.

They have nest boxes so they can lay their eggs in privacy; (they seem to like that).

They aren’t confined to a space smaller than a sheet of paper, with their coop mates in their faces 24 hours a day.

Their feed consists of grain, lots of green grass and weeds, the odd insect, and plenty of assorted kitchen scraps.

My grandma would say that they are happy chickens. She believed happiness was a vital condition for healthy chickens.

The egg she ate was fresh, perhaps two days old. It had a golden yolk with a firm, jelly-like white that didn’t cover the entire frying pan when cracked. The egg she ate may have been fertile. It most certainly had more nutrients than the anemic orbs in the grocery stores today.

The eggs we buy in supermarkets are up to two months old before we buy them.  The Egg Marketing Board says it’s okay. The egg white is almost liquid, the yolk is anemic, and it just doesn’t taste fresh.

The conditions in which factory farm hens live are appalling. Their diets are garbage: waste from food processors, the carcasses of their colleagues, antibiotics, arsenic, and other unnatural substances. There is no happiness. There is much illness and despair.

Lately I’ve noticed commercials on TV for egg farmers. They have a catchy tune, “I’m an egg-man….” And they show pictures: a farming family, bucolic pastures, red barns, soft morning light dancing through the leaves.

Not once do they show a chicken.

They know we wouldn’t be singing the happy tune if we saw the chickens.

It’s like almost everything else on TV. It’s not real.

The reality is the commercial egg business has such slim margins that farmers are cornered into factory farming and its accompanying tortures.

Besides being cruel, the end product is inferior. Sick animals produce sick food. It’s that simple.

Even so-called Omega 3 or Organic eggs are suspicious products. I recently helped an elderly friend with her grocery shopping. She wanted organic eggs. I opened the carton to check them for cracks. They looked like they had been dyed. The shells were an unnatural, almost glowing orange. I would be leery of eating those eggs, despite their organic label.

Ideally, you have a few chickens in your backyard coop. It’s legal in some jurisdictions.  Before Calgary changed their by-laws I had a backyard coop with three little red hens.

We had the freshest eggs possible plus the enjoyment of caring for other creatures, observing their habits, and being connected to our food. My hens composted my kitchen scraps faster than any compost system. They provided hours of entertainment for the dog, the grandchildren, and even the grandpa to those children. He loved checking for eggs as much as they did.

If you can’t manage having your own chickens, find a neighbour or a farmer with a few.

If you have access to healthy eggs from happy chickens, I recommend you eat eggs. In moderation, like everything.

If you can’t get real eggs, I suggest you eat them sparingly or not at all.

 

Breaking news: The US FDA is campaigning to outlaw organic eggs. See:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/no-more-organic-eggs-zw0z1309ztri.aspx#axzz2epVodpjP

Another article to read here