GR review of In Defence of Food

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
His book really did change the way I think about things. Not in way that made be want to do a whole foods diet, because I already knew that, but in a way that motivated me to do it better. In all, a good read with great points a tiny touch on the radical side for me. A couple of things I learned/accepted as fact:

I need to get over my "fear of fat".

Meat and starches are side dishes.

The idea of shopping around the outside of the store, not down the aisles, so true!

I need to be less concerned about how to replace the wheat in Caleb's diet and just focus on feeding him more plants.

I really think the most important point it the "eat less". I am constantly thinking about how he said if you ask an American how you know when you are done eating they say, "When the food is gone." As opposed to other cultures who actually stop when they are full, again so true. Mike and I started eating on the small plates (what do we even call these they are too huge to be saucers but half the size of a dinner plate.) that came with our set. I guess if you know that you have to (clean your plate!) eat everything there are many ways to play tricks on yourself. We are already noticing that we feel full with less.

I also love his explanation on when "what's for dinner" became such a hard question. I never thought about it and his answer is right on.

I also found his stats on the amount of money spent on groceries vs. other cultures VERY interesting. I totally agree that it's about making food a priority over things like cable, etc. However when it's hard just to pay your mortgage increasing your grocery budget is not really an option. This made an impact on me though and will keep it in mind as our income increases. I wish that he would have spent more time pointing out that sometimes eating whole foods is cheaper because you are making things from scrach, and that eating less is cheaper. These are two ways I can stick to my grocery budget and be healthier.

I couldn't give this book the full 5 stars because it was very dry at times. His talking about the same scientific studies (he used a lot of science to tell us to ignore modern science and listen to our mother) over and over made my eyes glaze over while I was reading and there were a couple of points I didn't agree with...Like not taking supplements. I don't take them myself but I am also not convinced that we can truly get all the nutrients we need from the food we eat in this day and age. If you could grow ALL your own food and live in an area with no pollution this would likely be true. I just know that they times in my life that I was taking a good quality* multivitamin I felt much better.

*quality being the key

View all my reviews.

odds and ends

So when was the last time I updated this? A few days I think. Not much has happened. I made my own meatballs for the first time and they were good but next time I think I will cook them in the skillet method where I can turn them because the turned into meat... I don't know something flat on one side because of the oven. Of course I substituted oats for the breadcrumbs for Caleb but I think everyone should do this anyway. I've always prefers oats in my meatloaf and salmon patties, etc. I discovered that I could buy WF pasta and flours at amazon.com for much less money than buying at the healthfood store or making the trek to Deirburgs, and I'm very excited about that. I am looking for someone to share with though because I can't store (or eat) a whole case (12) of spaghetti. Since I have decided that making WF bread in my bread machine is out of the question I bought a loaf at the health food store until I can purchase a machine with a GF setting. The last time I bought the bread it was all hard and dry. This time it was soft and Caleb has already enjoyed two peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches. Maybe it just seemed soft after all my failures at making GF bread in my machine. At $6 for a TINY loaf I think it's still worth my efforts to try to make my own. Now that I mentioned peanut butter I have to say I was very exicted at Shop n Save this week. I was buying Skippy "Natural" peanut butter at Deirburgs but hated to pay the price for PB and now shop n save is carrying it. Yea, shop n save. I was so happy I bought two. Well they were on sale for $1.50 too. Shop n save also carries Bob's Red Mill WF bread mix too, which is exciting. I am still disappointed at times because half the time they do not have Brown Berry Natural Wheat and half the time they do. I even talked to the manager and told him I was disappointed because I would rather buy from him than make the trip to Wal-mart for it... The next time I went it was back... now it's gone again. GRRRR. Oh, Jenn committed on buying organic canned tomatoes so I want to mention that I bought some at Shop n Save in the Wild Harvest brand. I love that they carry this brand and frequently buy from it. Like buying my produce from Aldi, I worry about what country it's coming from. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure it's distributed by the same people who do Aldi food. All in all, I have to praise shop n save for making the effort to offer organic at a very resonable price. I hope sincerely that more people are buying it so that store managers know there is a demand for natural products. Still in a quandry about how to make chili without canned beans but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Did I seriously start this blog with: Not much has happened?

Well, it's been a bad weekend. Yesterday we had lunch at Subway and so we let Caleb get McDonald's. Then last night we went to his grandma's and she served beef hot dogs. I had ham and beans though. Then it got late so she served up a bunch of those little appetizers that come from the freezer. I don't even want to talk about them because it was really gross. Caleb spent the night there so goodness knows what he ate today. I fixed fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and mixed vegetables. The chicken was the best that I've ever made because I looked up on the Internet how to do it, never learned to fry anything. Not that knowing is good, but we rarely eat fried foods and it's much better than McDonald's. I used spelt flour for the breading and no one knew the difference. Mike wouldn't eat the gravy I made because it was too sticky. I have to try to remember to make my gravy out of corn starch like my mom has been recommending. To round out a weekend of bad eating Mike got us ice cream from Dairy Queen. It seemed kinda gross too actually. I think my tastes are definitely changing. I still need to work on incorporating "mostly plants." Caleb just requested "lemon water." for bed.

Well, tonight is breakfast for supper night. I was going to make the usual but I found myself reading on the Internet about how to make hash browns and found a site that showed how to make omelets too. I Know, I know it's silly. I figured hash browns were just shredded potatoes and fried but I wanted to make sure because I've never made them. Why do people even buy the frozen kind? I guess so they don't have to shred them; but frozen real estate is too valuable at my house so I never did. Plus it gives me something to do with the huge bag of potatoes I got at Aldi. So I'm going to make Turkey sausage for Caleb and regular for us (of unknown parentage), hash browns, and cheese and mushroom omelette's. Reflecting on the last two weeks of not eating out, what I am most impressed by is the amount of food that has not been wasted. I had some mushrooms left over from mushroom soup, a few I used in salad and I had just enough left still to chop up and use for the omelets. I never used to be able to buy them because they would go bad before I could use them all. Now that I am cooking more, I finding uses for everything. Leftovers are getting eaten too, for lunches or leftover nights. Today I did have a huge hankering for McDonald's. After I ate lunch (celery, peanut butter, honey, banana) it totally went away. It's just a body's habit: Hungry? OK, fast good = McDonald's. Speaking of natural peanut butter Caleb does not want to eat the kind that you have to stir. I'm going to have to shell out the money for the no stir kind... He's been so good about eating whatever I put in front of him I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. It really is kinda nasty, peanut butter has to have SOME sweetness to it. Caleb is also eating regular brick cheese now. He and I both love Colby Jack. It's better than the 'cheese food' he was demanding, which we still have some left in the fridge, but anytime he sees me slicing or shredding brick cheese now he's wanting some. I really love the land o'lakes individually wrapped cheese but I can't get over the excessive packaging it involves so I haven't bought anymore.

Last night was chili and I made my old famous recipe and for the first time read the ingredients on a can of beans. Why in the heck is there high fructose corn syrup in beans? I'm going to look for some different ones next time I'm at the store but I am also going *try* to use dried beans next time I make chili. I dump the whole can in with the juices so I'll have to figure out how to sweeten another way. We also finished off Caleb's turkey dogs and had white bread buns, oh the horror. Caleb did without a bun just fine. And unless I can find out how to make my own hot dog buns they are just going to have to be white bread. Considering we only eat hot dogs like 4 times a year I think we'll survive. I'm gonna try serving peanut butter and celery with chili from now on. That'll go over like a fart in church I'm sure.

Well, tonight was Chicken Fettachani Alfredo with Broccoli. (Betty Crocker's Fettachani Alfredo) recipe) I *think* that every one liked it. I had no idea how easy Alfredo was to make! The only problem was the huge mess and huge amount of dirty dishes I had when I was done. I guess I could solve this problem by using left over chicken and leftover broccoli. I think next time I make it I will double the sauce recipe because it was plenty to go with the noodles (wheat free) but it didn't cover that great when I added the broccoli and chicken. I don't know it still tasted good and made it not quite so heavy so maybe not. I served it with a leftover salad which would have been better fresh but oh well. Caleb didn't eat totally awesome but he ate enough for me to know that it wasn't because he didn't like it. When Mike came home and saw the pot on the stove I told him it was chicken-pot-pie (I had been experimenting with wheat-free gravy and made that 3 times within two weeks) He just about had kittens. So he was relieve that it wasn't that. He also said that it tasted better than Alfredo out of the can. With that and the fact that it was so easy, I know I'll never buy another jar. Of course I wouldn't be able to add this to my wheat free fiasco blog without mentioning that I used a rice fettachani that was a mix of white and brown. This was great. I know from previos experiemnts with whole wheat pasta that a mixture is the ticket if I expect the fam to eat it:)

written in a notebook several days ago, converted to blog

Why am I spending so much time, energy and money on figuring out how to replace wheat in my sons diet. Obviously it's more logical to replace it with the many available fruits and vegetables to fill him. When he was a baby I pureed all of his food myself... the bigger he got the worse his eczema and allergies became finally resulting in asthma. Finally causing me to put on the breaks and take a step back. I don't know why it took so long to see problems with our diet. OK, I'm gaining weight but "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and daw-gone-it people like me!" So? My son has skin problems? So I get a prescription and slather it on. More skin problems resulting from the skin cream? New prescription! My kid is hyper and I'm going broke from eating out too much... I could go on and on, I even smoked. Fact is I was blaming society and sitting back to accept things for what they are. I wish I had paid attention sooner to the things in my environment and my choices that were poisoning my family but it took that trip to the ER to put on my breaks. Now things aren't perfect. I've stepped up on my " 3R's" I removed chemicals from my home, but as my super smart friend Jennifer said, "what's the point of worrying about what goes on my body if I'm not worried about what goes in it. I know the medical community in general ignores what we eat... My son's doctor told me I probably didn't need to worry about his allergy to wheat, eggs and pork because they were "low" positives. But he was sure surprised when I brought him back a month later eczema and "allergy shiner" free! As some of you probably read in my goodreads review of "in defense of food," Pollan really made me think less about using substitutions to change Caleb's diet into a wheat free version of the western diet and more about changing the way we all eat over all. So, I see in myself a real need to start think about meat and grains as side dishes and focus on eating mostly vegetables and fruits.

New Year!

I didn't used to make resolutions because they don't last long. However, last year Mike and I decided to quit smoking. It's now been 1 year and 10 days since either of us smoked. All last year we let our other health concerns, dietary, sleep, etc. take a back burner. After all we had quit smoking. What could be harder? So, we would worry about our weight later. Well this year we have many many things to get a handle on. We each gained weight when we quit smoking. We need to think about Caleb's diet more. And with the economy, more importantly our budget, being the way it is we really need to think very hard about how our money is being spent. So, here I am in the midst of my Wheat Free Fiasco. The main idea or resolution is to eat at home, all the time. No fast food, no mulligans steak for two, no dinner out just because we didn't plan what to eat and it's 5:30... Obviously eating at home we are going to allow us to eat wheat free, healthier, and cheaper! We sat down and came up with 28 meals that we like to eat regularly, put them into the palm to repeat every 4 weeks and voila I never have to think about what's for supper again:) The second part of the plan is to figure out how to replace the wheat in all of our favorite recipes and third to replace convenience foods with whole foods in my cooking. Whew! Actually getting the wheat out goes a really long way in eliminating junk food as well. So, I hit the stores with a two weeks list of groceries. I'm one week into it! We ate out this week:( It was Caleb's birthday. He had a mickey mouse pancake and fries. Yikes!! The closest I could come to whole foods was to order breakfast, eggs and hash browns. But that's the whole point that we, and most Americans were getting away from. Going out to eat should be a once in a while special occasion thing. So, if we can keep it that way we'll be doing good I think. Other thoughts this week? I made wheat free lasagna and ate it with friends who liked it. I made the sauce myself and it was really good but I had to use canned tomato paste and canned tomatoes. I can't wait to try it this summer with fresh tomatoes. Next month maybe I'll try with supermarket tomatoes but I'll have to learn how to make it:( I am having A LOT of trouble getting over my fear of fat! I've always thought that butter was probably better than marge because it's a natural product but I'm going to have problems getting over buying skim milk and reduced fat cottage cheese etc. Luckily I never ever bought into the low carb thing but there are some guilt issues over the white potatoes. I made roast last night and put some butter in a pan to start the gravy and then added the juices from the roast! It was the only time I've ever made gravy that taste that amazing but it sure is a wake up call to know what you are eating. I love recipe's involving a can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup! So, I made mushroom soup myself. OMG it was SOOO Good. But I was so scared to eat it! Butter, heavy cream, AND some chicken broth with the fat still in it!!! It was so much better for me than the canned version but all that fat... guilt, guilt, guilt. I used it in wheat free tuna casserole so it's not like I made a meal off the fat, but still!!

early adventures

I wish I had stared this back then but I just want to say that my early efforts were met with much resistance from the family who still do not want to support me in my efforts to make Caleb healthy. It's really hard to get people to understand that just because having the things he's allergic too is not going to cause immediate death, as with anaphalatic shock or something, it's still harming him. Although we were not able to eliminate everything the first few months we did some and Dr. Lions seemed kind of amazed at the improvement in his eczema and his "allergic shiners". I guess there is really no clinical evidence that a restrictive diet is helpful for food allergies that come in with low numbers but he could not deny there was a huge improvement. I have to note that the elidel is not the lone cause for improvement because we haven't needed to use it. Extra steps were taken such as getting mattress and pillow covers, removing chemical cleaning products from our home, etc. We often talk about getting an air purifier too, but it hasn't made it's way into the budget. I would love to think that modifications to the environment would rid him all all allergies and asthma once and for all but that is really unlikely to happen since he's allergic to trees and grass.... can't really get away from those things. So, for now it looks like medicine is an absolute necessity. I am happy to say that we use elidel very very infrequently and have not used albuterol in MONTHS. We'll see what this spring brings. Many people ask me if he'll outgrow this. I don't know, it happens, especially with food allergies but it's not something I spend time hoping for we just live in the moment. If he is the same or no better by the time he is 6 I think that I will ask for a referral to an allergist to get a better understanding of his triggers. For, now we are controlling things very well and having been a human pin cushion myself, I am hesitant to do that to him when he's so young.

Background

Beginning last summer, Caleb was having problems with allergies and asthma (seems he's had a runny nose and eczema since birth). Unfortunately, this also coincided with losing his pediatrician due to insurance reasons. The first asthma attack brought us to the hospital and began our adventures with Albuterol. Back home, we visited a few doctors. The first specialized in internal med. and had no business seeing a 3 year-old, not to mention giving me the creeps by moving closer so our knees touched no matter how many times I moved back... The next was a family doctor and most likely about 110. He left the room, without exaggerating, 4 times to look things up and sent us home with another prescription on albuterol, some kind of inhaled steroid to be taken every day, advise to continue taking benedryl, and an official diagnosis of Asthma. None of this setting very well with me, I contact my friend the pharmacist and start looking for a new doctor. So, with a recommendation of my sister the nurse I make an appointment with Dr. Lions who sees her kids. When we met Dr. Lions I was immediately set at ease. I really can't say enough good things about this man. When he comes in the first thing he does is get a high five from Caleb. From the first visit Caleb took to him as if he'd known him all his life. But, before I turn this into a blog about how much we like Dr. Lions I will say that he agreed with me about some of the medications he was on and prescribed Singulair and Clairiton. The Singulair did wonders for Caleb but he still had this constant runny nose and horrible eczema. So, after a few more trips back and forth we got him on Singulair, Zyrtec, and elidelel. So, at this point, up to now, I'm reading everything I can get my hands on about asthma and allergies. This is how I learn about the RAST. So, on one of our trips to Dr. Lions I express my frustrations with his eczema. He had been on a topical steroid for this since about 6months old, and just name any lotion potion or cream and we've tried it. Nothing. This boy would scratch himself until he bleed and the only thing to be done was to keep his nails SUPER short. When summer was in full swing and Dr. Lions noted the discoloration in the pigment in his legs due to the amount of cortisone creams we were using and I was at my wits end... This appointment resulted the switch to elidel and my demand* for the rast. So, I get this phone call with the results. To summarize he's allergic to pet dander, which we knew. He's allergic to several different types of grass and mold, and just about every tree in the area. Most shocking, or not as I"ll explain, was the food allergies. He is allergic to Wheat, Eggs, and pork. I have never even heard of being allergic to pork and how on earth were we going to avoid wheat and eggs? I have to say that I wasn't as much surprised about the food allergies as the specific foods he was allergic too. I had the feeling that this eczema was being caused by something he was eating but obviously having something as prevalent as wheat is in our diet makes it hard to pinpoint. So, that's the background info and the reason for this blog. It's about Caleb's health and me learning how to cook, not just wheat free but in general!

*Dr. Lions is so easy going I did have to ask for it and although he warned me that it may tell us nothing he was more than willing to humor me.