White Death

I came across a documentary on Netflix called "Hungry for Change" while making supper.  It is a general sort of movie, although it had some good information.  The main message was to reinterate that sugar, of any processed form, such as high fructose corn syrup, has extremely terrible effects on our bodies.  It's addictive nature and negative affect on our bodies is equated to cocaine.

Although this comparison may seem dramatic, I am entirely on board with the comparison.  There is a war on sugar going on in our household.  If I had it my way, our children would never eat sugar.  However, my far more temperate husband tries to keep one foot on planet Earth, so our children have been subjected to Halloween candy, Christmas goodies, birthday treats, Valentine's Day yummies, and so on.  I have limited our eldest daughter (our youngest isn't yet 2, so it is far easier to control what she eats) to one small candy jar to fit all of the candy she will receive over the year.  By next Halloween, she will still have some Halloween candy from this past year in the jar, which we will toss.

The fight; however, is daily.  My dad once asked me, "Why can't I spoil my granddaughter a little?  What is the problem with me giving her a little treat sometimes?"  I replied, "Dad, it isn't just you.  You give her a little, the neighbour gives her a little, daycare gives her a little, her own dad gives her a little, top that off with every holiday and celebration where other parents and family members are giving her goodies and you have a child that is eating sugary goods every single day!"  We wonder why we are hearing about children at the age of four or five being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes - the diabetes that is linked to lifestyle.  We assume that child must be eating pop and chocolate bars daily with cake for supper while they sit in front of the TV for hours on end.  That is the extreme, and sadly it does happen, but our children are being fed cookies for dessert, cupcakes at school for a classmate's birthday, a candy in their lunch for a treat, a pop with their snack on the weekend.  And that is the obvious stuff.  As a teacher, it is distressing what parents are putting in their child's lunchkits and are doing it with the best intentions.  I have seen entire classrooms where every single piece of food that is put in every child's mouth come from a package.

 If it comes from a package, there is sugar in it.  If it is processed or refined in nearly any way, it has sugar in it.

This can be quite frustrating when I grocery shop because sometimes I want to buy a convenience food in case I have one of those hectic days where I don't have a chance to cook.  Instead, I end up without because there isn't a company out there that will produce a convenience food that I would actually want to put in my body.  The irony is that all I can think of is how I can make it so much better at home.

What can one do?  How can we stop killing our bodies and our children's bodies while not spending every second in the kitchen growing sprouts and living like rabbits off of lettuce?

Step One: Get rid of the packaged food.  Read the labels.  If you don't know what the ingredient is, throw it out.  There are few exceptions to this rule, so it is a fairly good one to use.  (An exception: tocopherol.  That is just fancy talk for Vitamin E.)

Step Two: Buy a good cook book.  I recommend Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food.  He teaches you how to cook in it simply while at the same time offering recipes that can be made quickly.  It has become my standby instead of depending on convenience food for hectic days.  Also, my husband, who is pretty much ADHD, finds it refreshing because he can actually follow it.

Step Three: Buy quality food.  Farmer's markets are an obvious choice, but sometimes you don't have the time to run to one, or it isn't open when you need the food.  Grocery stores can be wonderful, plus you get to vote with your money.  A lot of stores will tell you where the food is from and whether or not it is organic.
    *Just a side note: There have been some news articles published stating that there is no nutritional difference between organic food and non-organic food.  What they fail to address is the affect of ingesting toxic chemicals from our food into our bodies.  Toxic chemicals + our bodies = bad plan.

Step Four: It is quite difficult to get away completely from the sugar in the world unless you make new friends and family, so try to control it as much as possible (without acting like a nutball).  In our house, our kids can only have a sugar based treat on the weekend.  That treat can only be eaten after lunch or supper and can only be once per day.  It explains why the Halloween candy lasts so long!!!

It is generally just a good habit to think of other foods as treats.  Fruit is generally sweeter than other foods, which makes it satisfying after supper.

Dr. Christiane Northrup points out in "Hungry for Change" that sugar is highly addictive, just like alcohol or heroine, yet it is acceptable to give it to our children and to ourselves.  Perhaps we need to starting asking why.

Carcass

As a Substitute Teacher, often I am left with seat work to give to the students or an entire day of watching "Osmosis Jones" with every junior high science class.  Ugh.  Unless the teacher has requested me directly, I am rarely left with anything interesting to actually teach the students.

However, I was requested by the teacher for today and she left me to teach a lovely lesson on "The Parts of the Carcass".

I am vegetarian.  I can tell you where the leg of an animal is, or maybe their eyeball, but the butchered carcass parts?  No.

Once upon a time, I was not vegetarian.  I loved eating meat, even finding ways to eat meat during breakfast, but my knowledge of the parts of a carcass did not go past "steak".

Fortunately, when I entered the classroom, my demo carcass was merely a marker drawing on whiteboard, rather than an actual carcass.  I assumed an actual carcass would be my demo and everyone could have fun chopping the bits of the poor animal and naming them.  I admit, I was slightly disappointed at the whiteboard drawing.  A real carcass brought nostalgic memories of when I was a child and my Dad would go hunting every autumn (he continues to do so).  One year, for whatever reason, and to my Mom's horror, he had it in his head that he was going to take the carcasses home and butcher then with a friend in our basement.  There, from the rafters in the basement ceiling, hung a deer from its front legs.  My brothers and I found the entire ordeal fascinating and would spend nearly every moment sitting on the huge freezer which was within touching distance of one of the deer carcasses.  We became bored sitting there and just staring at the thing, so I made up a game.  Nearly all of the games I made up had a dare involved and this game was along the same lines.  I challenged my brothers to a contest of who could stick their head in the ribcage of the deer without touching the sides.  I won, of course.

Despite my experience with carcasses, I still had no idea the names of the butchered parts.  So, lesson plan in my shaky hand, I approached the whiteboard.  Oh, by the way, it had now been properly labelled thanks to the Foods 30 student that helped out in that class.  Somehow, I was still convinced I would give each part the wrong name and the pathetic Foods 10 students would fail their carcass test.   Really, there was nothing to be concerned with because the students were clever enough to find ways to remember the correctly named body parts.  "Shank" quickly became "skank".  The "head", well, I will keep this on the PG side of things.

To wrap this up, I will give you a fast and yummy after school snack recipe that I made my girls today and has nothing to do with a carcass.

1 pkg Raincoast Crisps (or whatever crackers you prefer/have around the house)
1 Camembert or Brie cheese
1 jar of carrot marmalade (or any other orange-y or apricot spread)

Cut the layer of rind off of the top of the cheese.  Place cheese in a small pan and spread marmalade over the top (3 or 4 tablespoons should suffice).    Place in toaster oven (or large oven if you haven't a small one) and bake at 350 F for about 5 - 10 minutes, just enough for the cheese to soften and just start to bubble.  Serve with crackers.  YUM!