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Finally, another male in the Face-Off! Today we pair a fermented foods-loving guy with a gal whose diet probably saved her life. I’m pretty sure they both know a bunch more than I do about traditional foods and modern dangers.
Visit the Real Food Face-Off Introduction page for a full list of all the participants and the complete list of possible questions. Each week, only a handful of the contenders’ answers will be posted here.
Week 7: Alex vs. Raine
| I miss you, Twitter! I met Alex (@lactoferment) during the first #realfood Twitter chat back in November, and he’s been an interesting and intriguing character to watch since then. He teaches fermentation workshops, so clearly he is an expert and has helped me with some sour apple cider and my scary kombucha mushroom. | Raine has also been active in the #realfood chats, and her depth of knowledge shows in the comments she shared at KS. Her story of real food as a cure for physical ailments is absolutely awe-inspiring. |
Below are the answers to some real food questions, in the bloggers’ own words:
How do you describe the way you eat when someone asks you to define your food?
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One big decision for 2009, and again for 2010, has been to eat only Meat Of Known Origin (see here and here). If it’s a chicken, turkey, cow, or pig, I want to know the name of the farm or coop it’s from before I eat it. I do this for my health, and I do this to vote with my dollars for a food system that I think is ethical and sustainable. Beyond that: I live alone, and when I’m at home, I often eat simply…raw milk from my cow share, Meat Of Known Origin, etc… When I go out, or have friends over, or eat at friends’ houses, I eat most things, but I won’t eat meat unless I know where it’s from. |
I tell people I eat whole foods that are unprocessed. Sometimes I mention that I eat traditionally prepared foods as well, but this sometimes loses people. Here’s a link to my story. |
What was/is your major incentive for living a real food lifestyle? (How did you come to eat the way you do?)
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My father never took control over his own relationship to food, health, and healing. He died of heart disease when he was relatively young. Even before he died, I decided that I wanted to be the master of my own fate. I’ve been thinking about health for 15 years now, and when I figured out to join this interest with my interest in food, it became a mighty combination. |
When I changed my diet, it was entirely because I had been sick for many years with various problems – gallbladder disease, ruptured appendix, blood sugar problems, fatigue, panic attacks, general malaise, and others. I was afraid that soon I would no longer be able to take care of my family, or worse, that I might not be around at all. I went to see a nutritional therapist because I wasn’t getting help from medical doctors and she told me she was puzzled how a person my age (35 at the time) could have done as much damage to my body as I had. She said if I continued down the same path, I could easily wind up with cancer or some other fatal disease. |
If you only had energy for ONE make-from-scratch food, what would it be? Is your preference for taste or health?
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Soup. Good home-made soups are much better what you can get in most restaurants. Here’s a great recipe for Vietnamese soup. The better your broth, the better the soup. |
I love food and I love to savor tastes in food, but there are often times I eat foods even if I’m not in the mood for them because I know it will keep me healthy and feeling good. I would say anything with grass-fed beef and some type of green vegetable. |
What food was your favorite that you no longer eat (or shouldn’t eat)?
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Store-bought ice-cream! |
Fish and chips. Although I make homemade french fries with coconut oil now (beef tallow is next!), and I haven’t even thought about how to make the fish yet, but I think that’s something I could do with a little research. I haven’t eaten fish and chips since probably 2001. |
What’s your favorite real/traditional food?
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At the moment, lactofermented turnips and beets. Delicious! And beautiful, too. Oh, and I could eat raw oysters all day. And good soup. |
I love grass-fed beef prepared in a variety of ways. It’s by far my favorite. I find this interesting because I spent a good portion of my life hating red meat and avoiding it – in part due to what I heard about it from health “experts” |
What was the hardest transition to make to real food?
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Hunting down good sources of meat has taken some time. I miss ordering freely in Chinese restaurants, too. |
I didn’t have trouble eating healthy foods, because I was so tired of feeling bad. |
What’s next on your list of changes to make?
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I’m thinking of trying the GAPS diet for a month, just to see what happens. |
Learning about cooking from scratch in more detail and trying more new things. |
List your top 3 baby steps to move from a Standard American Diet to Real Food.
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1) No deep-fried food unless you make it yourself. This will transform your relationship with potato chips, french fries, chicken nuggets, and so on. They take work! (While you’re at it, limit yourself to healthy oils: animal fats, butter, coconut oil, sesame oil, and perhaps peanut oil.) |
• Remove refined sugars • Industrial oils/fats • Commercial meats and dairy Replace with healthy counterparts – maple syrup or stevia, coconut oil/olive oil/palm oil/butter, grass-fed or pasture-raised meats/game/lamb/pork/poultry |
What is the worst food (or “food”) a person could possibly put into their systems?
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The icing that comes on supermarket cakes. It contains exactly two things: Crisco (trans-fat) and sugar. Oh, okay, one more thing: artificial coloring. |
Industrial oils or fats. |
What does “eating healthy” mean to you?
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Getting the usable nutrients that you need. Avoiding toxins where possible. Eating enough so that you have energy, and not so much that you feel tired and heavy. |
Eating healthy means eating organic, sustainable, and the most natural foods available – so no hormones, pesticides, antibiotics, steroids, preservatives, or added chemicals. |
What’s the most creative thing you do to make life easier in the kitchen?
| Always have some fermented vegetables around, and put them on/in everything possible. Bland food banished forever |
I try to get the most out of every meal either by making enough for leftovers or using as much of the food as I can – for example, making chicken stock out of a chicken carcass, making yogurt out of milk, etc. |
How important is organic food?
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For meat: Meat Of Known Origin is the way to go. Organic is a step in the right direction, but is also a distraction from the real issues. For vegetables and fruits: some hold pesticides much more than others. For instance, peaches and apples soak up pesticides, so organic is quite important, but onions and avocados don’t. Regardless, organic practices are generally more sustainable than "conventional" ones, and are thus preferable. Having said all of that, the USDA Organic standard is not everything that it could be, so it’s all a matter of degree. |
I think organic food is really important. Although no food we eat is completely harmless nor perfectly “clean”, at least organic food is grown using traditional farming methods, and in theory should contain no added chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, additives, or pesticides. Conventional food, in so many aspects, is dangerous because of all the above-mentioned items. |
Best book recommendations?
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The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, by Sandor Ellix Katz. It will blow your mind. Of course, Nourishing Traditions is a must-have, too. Best 70 pages of nutrition writing of any book I’ve ever come across. And if you are patient, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is awesome and inspiring. I have a lot of book recommendations and mini-reviews in the right-hand sidebar of my blog. |
The Crazy Makers by Carol Simontacchi The Hundred Year Lie by Randall Fitzgerald The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved by Sandor Ellix Katz |
Number one tip you tell your blog readers about eating healthy foods:
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Eat animal fat. |
Buy sustainable! |
Follow Alex on Twitter @lactoferment. Follow Raine @AgriSociety.
Now it’s your turn! I’d highly recommend honoring my real food guests with a visit over to their blogs, Alex at Feed Me Like You Mean It and Raine at Agriculture Society. If you have any questions or thoughts about their answers here, get a little discussion going by leaving a comment.
Be sure to come back on Tuesday for the next installment of the Real Food Face-Off, Shelley at MAHM vs. Lisa at Mama Says. Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed to make sure you catch them all. You can also follow me on Twitter.
Special thanks to Jo-Lynne from DCR Design for the fabulous Face-Off logos. Please visit her if you are a blogger looking for design improvements!
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Hungry for more? Related posts:
On the eve of my birthday, when I get to indulge like a little child in my favourite store bought birthday cake, I was crushed to read: “What is the worst food (or “food”) a person could possibly put into their systems?
The icing that comes on supermarket cakes. It contains exactly two things: Crisco (trans-fat) and sugar. Oh, okay, one more thing: artificial coloring.”
OK, it’s my last one! From now on, I bake my own and make my other great indulgence: butter and cream cheese icing! I know, the sugar part is evil, but butter! And cream cheese!
Leanne´s last blog ..The Dough Is Sour
[Reply to this comment]
Alex Lewin Reply:
February 24th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Hahaha! One more cake won’t kill you!
And I’m sure you can make a better one yourself, next time, anyway. Butter and cream cheese icing sounds great. Real buttercream icing is great, too: Butter, egg yolks, and sugar is basically all you need. At least two of those things are good for you.
Use turbinado sugar if you can.
Alex Lewin´s last blog ..Real Food Face-Off
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Katie, thanks for interviewing me for the Face-Off! I love this format–it’s a great way to get to know people, and your questions were great.
Alex Lewin´s last blog ..Real Food Face-Off
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Real Food Face-Off 12: Alex at Feed Me Like You Mean It vs. Raine at Agriculture Society | Hallee The Homemaker // Feb 23, 2010 at 11:10 am
[...] Real Food Face-off twelve: Alex at Feed Me Like You Mean It vs. Raine at Agriculture Society [...]
Hi Katie! Thanks much for having Alex and I today, and all the other food bloggers on your site. This has been such a great way to become introduced to a lot of knowledgeable, wonderful people and the contributions they are making to becoming healthier. Happy Tuesday to you!
Raine Saunders´s last blog ..The Face-Off Continues With Kitchen Stewardship!
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Love this series Katie! I am learning so much!!
Two more awesome interviews!
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Fantastic Post! I love hearing about other food bloggers like this. Keep em coming!
Zeke´s last blog ..Eat Natto Now!
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I do think your on the right track of teaching people to eat real food and having every meal out of a box. I still think grain fed beef is great, but if people want grass fed then more power to them.
I am having a hard time understanding how organic, at least the way it is now being practiced, is sustainable. With all the fuel that it require for tillage and the soil Carbon that is released with each tillage operation. Rodale Institute is doing some great things with organic, Dakota Lakes Research is also doing great things for modern farmers to reduce need of pesticides and fertilizers.
[Reply to this comment]
Alex Lewin Reply:
February 24th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Hi Tom,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! You raise some important points.
As far as grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef: Grass-fed seems to be better for the health of the animals. Cows digest grains too quickly, and their rumens get really acidic, which causes infections, necessitating antibiotics, and so on.
Also the meat and milk from pastured cows have a better nutritional profile than the meat and milk from grass-fed cows. Also the antibiotics issue.
Here’s a good quick summary of some of the points of grass vs. grain:
http://eatsleepfast.blogspot.com/2010/02/grass-fed-vs-grain-fed-beef.html
As far as organic goes, there are definitely times when organic is not a win in the carbon department. “Organic” and “conventional”, as you indicate, are HUGE categories, and there are so many different growing techniques within each category that it’s hard to generalize. Also, in some cases and from some points of view, some local-conventional might be better than some nonlocal-organic. From a nutrition and health point of view, however, I’ll take organic every time.
Complicating the issue is that “Certified USDA Organic” does not always correspond to exactly what we might think of, intuitively, as “organic”.
Alex Lewin´s last blog ..Real Food Face-Off
[Reply to this comment]
Katie Reply:
February 25th, 2010 at 5:33 am
Tom,
You are right, there are many ways to grow “organic” vegetables, some better or worse for the earth overall. “Sustainable” will probably be the next “organic”, don’t you think?
I usually choose “local” or even “affordable” when it comes right down to it!
Katie
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Seeing the “microwaved” book mentioned, I saw in this month’s Better Homes and Gardens that microwaving is the “best way to cook vegetables” because it’s faster and uses less water to leech out nutrients… Not so sure about that!
Lenetta @ Nettacow´s last blog ..Link Roundup – Poker Party Edition
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Katie Reply:
February 25th, 2010 at 5:38 am
Gaaaah. You can find someone to say the opposite of pretty much everything. Ditching our microwave was one of many, many changes we’ve made in the past year, but we’ve hardly been sick since then. I really think you get more nutrients w/o it, but that’s just my opinion!
Katie
[Reply to this comment]
I forgot to say how happy I was to see that _The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved_ was on Raine’s list, too!
The book actually doesn’t talk very much about microwaves being bad…although I’m fairly sure that they are, and it’s vaguely depressing that the mainstream aren’t waking up to that fact, or even wondering about it.
Here’s what I say about the book on my blog page:
The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements, by Sandor Ellix Katz: “The personal is political”, in the context of food. A sobering and inspiring book about food movements, infused lovingly throughout with the author’s feelings about food. This is one of the most powerful books I’ve read on any subject. It’s a great book for anyone saying, “Who cares what we eat,” and it’s just as good a book for folks who know that they care intensely.
Alex Lewin´s last blog ..Real Food Face-Off
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Alex – I’m glad you like The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved – I totally agree with you. I think it’s one of the most important books around as well, and I like that it integrates the dirty tales of the food industry along with great little niche groups that are working toward bringing our food system back to its roots of our ancestors. I highly, highly recommend this book to everyone. It’s surely an eye-opener!
Something about this book I really appreciated was the chart Katz includes showing the web of control had by the major food corporations in the world – Cargill, Kraft, ConAgra, Coca Cola, Unilever, General Mills, Campbell’s Soup, etc. and all the subsidiaries under them that you might mistakenly think are “good, healthy, organic” companies.
Raine Saunders´s last blog ..The Face-Off Continues With Kitchen Stewardship!
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Raine, I know just the chart you mean…and here is the latest version of it: http://www.certifiedorganic.bc.ca/rcbtoa/services/corporate-acquisitions.html
I think the most influential food books I’ve read, in the order I read them, were probably Natural Health Natural Medicine (the Andrew Weil book that got me interested in health), Fast Food Nation, Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, and Nourishing Traditions.
Alex Lewin´s last blog ..Real Food Face-Off
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Suma Reply:
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:06 am
Wow, that is an enlightening chart. I knew some of the connections but some were surprising. Thanks for the link.
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Raine, sister just fill that Fry Daddy up with beef tallow and you can make the best tasting fish and chips that you ever ate!
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