Hi there! Last week was my first video session with you, and I was nervous. I shouldn’t have been, though– you were all wonderful and thoughtful, as usual.
As I looked over the questions you have sent me, a lot of them were about food. Rather than just answering individual questions, I thought I’d talk about how we eat and why, and how we got there. I have a lot more thoughts on food ethics and working against negative food attitudes. I could go on and on about this, but hopefully there is just enough here to think about and discuss in the comments below!
Let’s Talk About Food
Here are some posts related to what we talked about:
- How We Buy Our Food Without Going to the Supermarket
- Market Days in Bury St. Edmunds
- Where to Find Raw Milk (and Other Country Pleasures) in Suffolk
- A Week of Paleo Groceries
- A Week of Paleo Meals
Here’s the book I referred to, The Primal Blueprint.
Did I answer any questions that you had? Do you have more? What is your greatest challenge right now, when it comes to eating well and feeding your families?
You are just fantastic Ariana!! Truly! You have such a wonderfully relaxed yet engaging presence on camera. Watching your video makes me feel like I’m just hanging out with you right there in your home 🙂 And I find your take on food to be SO incredibly refreshing – and I couldn’t agree more. I find all the zealotry and fanaticism around different food movements to be so off-putting. And as you said, tragic. Finding what works for you and supporting others in what works for them seems to me to be a measured, reasonable – and ultimately sustainable way forward. Thanks for sharing your lovely thoughtful self with all of us out here on the Internet 🙂
Thank you, Marisa! I have to admit that I have been there, with the strict food rules. Mostly because I have a health condition and wanted to do everything I possibly could to take care of myself. Oh, the folly of youth! But I have come to see that obsession with health is very, very unhealthy. And I don’t want to do anything to encourage that, especially at the cost of people enjoying the gift of food.
Thanks for your encouraging comments! I still feel kind of weird making videos of myself talking. But I’ll keep doing it for now. 🙂
I rarely watch videos on blogs, but I do love yours! Probably because I identify with and agree with you so much.
We’ve done a very gradual switch to a healthier diet. I grew up with a much healthier diet than my husband, so I didn’t want to drop too much of a hippy bomb on him when we first started dating. However, 3+ years later, he’s lost about 40 pounds and is so happy with the way we eat. Meal planning is huge for us (https://girlnamedallyn.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/meal-plan-may-25-may-31/), and part of the reason is that I can track how we’ve eaten. This week’s plan wasn’t quite as healthy as some, but I’ll be able to look back at it and balance a bit more for next week. I’m a little jealous of the access to good food you have there. We’re in Manhattan and it’s actually pretty hard to find without spending a fortune. The farmers market in our neighborhood is small and not always very clear with their methods. Gets frustrating at times, and makes me miss our home in TN and the sweet farmers we had grown to love there.
You video last week on being an expat was really encouraging for me. This city is practically a different country than the South, and we’ve struggled a lot with finding any sort of friends. But as you said, it’s had the bonus of bringing us closer together! Nice to hear that we all face common struggles at times, no matter where we are.
So nice to hear from you, Allyn! I have often heard that moving from the South or the West Coast to the East Coast is a major cultural shift for a lot of people. And that it’s kind of similar to what I’ve experienced in England. Glad that I can encourage you a bit.
I hear you on the food from sustainable growers being hard to find or just really expensive. That is such a challenge, and was hard even in Portland, Oregon!
Having been rabidly low-carb, and then rabidly WAPF, I stopped myself from going rabidly Paleo. Those were hard lessons to learn, but you’re right, the same diet is not for everyone. I was even gluten-free for two years while dealing with some gut issues, and now I’m back to everything within moderation, and trying to eat WAPF by the 80/20 rule. That’s 80% WAPF and 20% don’t-worry-about-it. It’s so easy to get all religious over dietary choices. Have you read Lierre Keith’s “The Vegan Myth”… wow, that was a good book about how she recovered from veganism.
Here in TN we have friends who raise Jersey cows and Guinea hogs (all on pasture and non-gmo feeds) so we buy milk and pork from them. We raise chickens, and we have another friend who raises grass-fed beef. We also have a good-sized garden every year, but still have to buy a lot from the store. There are farmer’s markets here but much of it tends to be ordinary produce like you’d find in the store and not organically raised, or even local.
We can buy locally produced goat cheese at the farmer’s market, but my friend with the cows & pigs tells me that the goat cheese producers are not feeding their goats right. She knows because she used to sell milk to them. There’s another cheating raw milk & meat producer locally. I see her cows out on mud all year long. My friends would never dream of having their animals on mud. You can tell the difference in the milk too, because it tends to be snow white instead of a creamy yellow. And we see the empty (gmo) feed bags around the place. Ordinary cheap standard feed from the co-op. So even people who are doing it right outwardly, can be cutting corners.
The reason I never went whole-heartedly into Paleo is because around that time there were so many Paleo authors who claimed different things. One said you can’t eat any legumes; one said you should avoid only kidney beans; and yet another said that legumes were fine so long as you treated them properly. My BS meter went off. Also, Paleo started out being very low-fat and no dairy allowed. Paleo has evolved to being WAY more WAPF than when it first started. Things that make you go hmmmmm, right?
Hi Laurel,
I think that when people find ways of eating or living that really help them, it’s natural to assume that they will also be helpful for everyone else! I hope I was never obnoxious about veganism, but it’s possible that I was. I hope to just be enthusiastic about whatever we’re doing, but without anyone feeling like I think THEY should be living just like I am!
I am sure that some of those issues of shady practices are also going on here. It’s one of those things though… I have to just do my best with what I know, without getting obsessive about it. Organics are so hard to find here, and not everything is totally clear. Someone just told me that true pasture-raised pork is really hard to find here. I am glad I have a reasonable level of trust in my butcher (who often buys from homesteaders) to source meat ethically– but it can be so tricky!
And I agree that Paleo and WAPF have way more similarities that differences.
Great video again, we are real food eaters! I”m also a baker, and I love baking. We make two deserts a week. And we don’t feel bad on grains, but we ferment and soak things. Organic, local, or homegrown is our motto. We have five kids ranging from 8 -15 years old and a new baby on the way, so foods is a big issue at or home. We love food, but try to keep it simple for sanity 😉 lots of veg, grass fed meats etc. One thing I can say that has helped a lot, is we shared the love of good food with our kids. They love to cook good healthy food, and they are becoming amazing cooks. A good life skill, I would say! I am a bit jealous of the farms around you though 😉
Hi Abby Jo! I am very glad to also have a little one who loves food. I think it’s so much easier to help them grow to love real food when there isn’t much junk around to trick their little palates with synthetic flavors. And yes to teaching them to cook early-on! That is what it’s all about. I am imagining when you have some teens in the house, and everyone can pitch in for big, beautiful dinners together– how wonderful!
I loved this video and your post about food attitudes. I totally agree with you. Funny that I’m kind of on the opposite side of the way of eating, as I’m vegetarian. It seems that meat and dairy just don’t work well in my body (eggs are fine).
I find it kind of isolating though in the paleo community because I seem to get iced out always, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, loved the video.
So much love to you and this way of looking at eating. Eat with joy and gratitude.