What happens when a girl from Miami and a guy from Chicago move to a 118-year old house in small-town North Carolina and care for our rescued chickens.
I was so excited to see the new study out from Uppsala University in Sweden that shows how dogs have evolved right along side humans, helping them to mesh perfectly into our lives.
The main reason for this is contributed to the fact that, as man was creating an agriculture based lifestyle planting, harvesting and eating grains more regularly, dogs were able to eat and process starchy foods and carbohydrates.
I love this because it just goes to show, again, that dogs are not obligate carnivores like cats and that they can be very healthy on a varied diet. Just like ours who are still getting (and reacting to) a veggie filled dinner each night.
Evolutionary geneticist, Erik Axelsson, states that all dogs have this genetic change and that it's thousands of years back in time.
So now when people whine about the fact that it's not natural for dogs to eat veggies (like eating kibble is?) we can say "yes, yes it is!"
As we talk about a lot on here, we are vegan. We have a pretty good diet in that we don't eat any animal based foods, we make our own vegetable stock and are working to lower oil usage. So we're not getting any external cholesterol (only animal based foods have that), we're getting good amounts of fiber and we're not adding a lot of salt.
But we know that we can improve how we eat. We're bad about planning our meals. We eat out a lot and, yeah, we end up eating the same meals out of laziness and convenience just like everyone else.
We figured we needed to get in more nutrients, especially greens. So what does that mean???
JUICE FEAST!!!
The good thing about juice feasting is that you get tons of nutrients in an easy to add way and lots of stuff I don't like to eat, like carrots or kale, I'm happy to drink. For the past week and a half, most of our calories have come via juice. Good thing they sell 25 lb bags of carrots!
Each day we're making enough juice so that each of us drinks at least 3 - 4 quarts of juice. We tend to do a mix of our favorite ingredients, including:
Carrots
Apples
Oranges
Grapefruit
Mango
Lemons
Limes
Pineapple
Celery
Ginger
Parsley
Kale
Spinach
Cucumber
Beets
1 tbl of ground flax seed added to the completed juice
It's actually really surprising how easy this can be. I find that I'm not hungry afterwards at all. My cravings for junk food goes away and I'm not dizzy or headachy or anything. Plus, I tend to be very bad about drinking enough water. This way I'm getting plenty of fluids so that helps too.
We haven't had many "detox" issues because we already eat pretty well, but if you did plan to do a juice feast, it's best to know what to expect. You are more likely to work through any icky feelings if you know they are going to pop up.
One logistic that can make things easier is to make up your juices for the day and then vacuum-seal them for transport, just shake them up before you open them. We use 1-quart mason jars and drink one for breakfast, one for lunch and then one late afternoon around 4pm or 5pm. Then I might be set for the night. We have been having a few "meals" here and there, as well as some solid snacks, so it's not a 100% thing for us.
Some people will go through some weight loss when doing a juice feast, especially if they have had a poor diet or health prior to making this change. We may have dropped a few pounds but overall our goal is to add nutrients which we definitely are doing.
Juicing can be anything from adding a juice to your meal all the way up to a 100+ day juice only program. It's always best to have a doctor's review before you make a major switch, especially if you have any health issues. If you're just supplementing your diet, then juice away! And have fun with it. Mixing up flavors is the best part. You don't know how delicious it can be until they go through the juicer and mix with the other flavors. It's like a fun surprise in a glass.
While I think eating vegan is one of the best ways to take control of and improve your health, there are many ways to eat "junk food" in the vegan world. Just because you eat vegan doesn't mean you are eating healthfully.
If you live on an endless rotation of fries, non-dairy cheese pizza and Oreos, you aren't doing your body much of a favor. You're just exchanging one type of food for another.
... As much as we want to believe that consuming the vegan version of our old favorite junk foods is healthier, it is really not that much healthier. (except of course, it is healthier for the animals).
But what message does it send to our friends, family and close circle if we as vegans start to get the very diseases that we keep saying that vegans don’t get? And what if our doctors see this in us and tell us it is the vegan diet that is making us sick?
I think as vegans, often we think that we have already given up SO much just by going vegan. And it is true, we have given up a lot. But at the same time, I don’t think we should see being vegan as a sacrifice, but more as something that set us free from a horrible industry. Giving up junk food should be seen in the same light. It is not a sacrifice, it is not a punishment, rather, something that sets us free from some pretty awful industries.
Read the rest of the article above because she makes some great points.
This post really hits home.
We are vegan as, but I would say were somewhere in the mid-way point of eating whole foods and healthfully all the time and eating junk. We go out to eat and will eat Daiya-filled calzones. Maybe once every few months I'd eat some Oreos. I don't really like Tofurkey but we will get stuff like Smart Ground for tacos. And I know I use way to much EarthBalance on my toast. Plus I bake a lot, roast veggies in oils etc.
The challenge we have is sugar and oil. The stuff we add when we cook at home. We cook a lot and eat out a fair bit (where I can't control what's in the food as easily) and I think that is where I am going to face the biggest challenge. It was easy to adapt the foods that I made before to being vegan. But we were big "gourmet foodies" and used lots of rich ingredients. Now I'm just doing that same thing with different vegan options that are possibly just as "junky" in their own way.
I've been a good cook and known how to cook my whole life. Now I feel I need to scrap that and start over. It feels like we made a big change and now we need to do another whole overhaul. It's kind of exhausting to think about and being a busy couple who works long long hours, its daunting. And, of course, no one likes change.
That said, I know this is more the direction we should go in. I just need to find a way and time to clear my head and preconceived notions of how and what to cook and add in some new meals that are even better for us than what we are doing now.
I get an eNewsletter from my Insurance provider at least once a week. I am always amazed at the contents, or at least one element in the newsletter, each time. Whether it's pushing a new pharmaceutical or giving insufficient food advice, I don't really feel they are telling the full truth.
In this post they (and most of the rest of the online press) have picked up the news that a compound, trans-palmitoleic acid, in full-fat dairy products may help to reduce Type 2 Diabetes risk (per the Harvard School of Public Health scientists).
I felt I had to do more research as this "news" brought up many questions.
1. Who funds the Harvard School of Public Health?
2. Was this finding because the participants had eaten a diet filled with non-fat and therefore more concentrated diary and by eating the full-fat version the risk is less?
3. Why are so many news outlets picking up the story without doing further research.
It seems as if the news and sites are not giving the full story. They position trans-palmitoleic acid as "not produced by the body" but they fail to note that there are other non-animal based ways to obtain this compound. They also don't note that this study was a single study based on a single survey.
What's needed next, says Leonid Poretsky, MD, director of the Friedman Diabetes Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, is an interventional prospective study. "In this type of study, you would give people the substance over a period of time and then observe whether there are indeed fewer cases of diabetes," he says. "This study was just an association study. It doesn't prove cause and effect."
Even Diabetes groups are coming out in opposition to how this finding is being presented:
Research reported in the 'Annals of Internal Medicine' involved 3,736 people over 20 years. They were asked once about their diet and other factors which might affect their health. Three years later they had their blood tested to measure fatty acid levels, including the amount of trans-palmitoleic acid, and after that information about their health was collected annually.
The journal draws attention to several limitations of the study. Participants were asked only once about the foods they usually eat, and dietary habits may change over time. The blood levels of trans-palmitoleic acid measured several years later may have no longer related to the types of foods the participants originally reported eating. Therefore it is not possible to conclude from this study which foods, if any, result in greater levels of trans-palmitoleic acid in the blood. In addition, this kind of study cannot say whether trans-palmitoleic acid or some other unidentified factor was the cause of the positive health effects seen.
My advice: make sure to learn more about the whole picture and not just read the headlines.
Personally, the results don't matter to me. I'm not eating dairy. Health factors are just one reason we're vegan. The other is this is a compassionate choice that I make not only for myself, but also for the environment and the animals.
I'll admit - I'm excited to see commercials getting funded to run on the air telling the truth about the animal based foods we eat. That we eat daily without thinking about ourselves, our health, the corporations and lobbies behind them, the cost to the environment and the animals that give their lives for them.
Last weekend we had the amazing opportunity to go to a screening of the documentary "Forks Over Knives" and to hear Dr. Campbell speak in person.
This movie is tremendous.
It focuses on the very real and clinically proven health benefits of eating a plant-based diet. The movie came out of the work of Dr. T. Colin Campbell, a nutritional scientist from Cornell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, a top surgeon and head of the Breast Cancer Task Force at the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic.
What is amazing about this movie - and what elicited gasps throughout from the audience - is the factual proof and connections between eating animal-based food and the major health implications they cause.
We are not talking anecdotal results, but rather proven by huge research studies, under the care of the most respected and top ranking doctors and scientists, that issues like cancer, heart disease and diabetes can be stopped and EVEN REVERSED just by switching to a plant-based diet.
This is not a movie that is showing you images of animal conditions or factory farming, although there is a bit of that, but rather it focuses on people and their evolving health and lifestyle.
For many, if not most people, in this country this is a huge concern. Their health and the health of their children are at risk from the way they are eating now. There is a lot of crappy but cheap and available food shoved at you every second of every day no matter where you go. This movie shows the connections to how this is hurting us.
Dr. Campbell spoke and answered questions after the movie. This man is in his 80s and still runs and is 110% there mentally.
He spoke to how the issue is NOT the way factory farming is done that creates the issues, because their studies were done with grass-fed animals (factory farming conditions just makes it even worse). That you can essentially "turn-on" and "turn-off" cancer production by eliminating meat, eggs, and especially dairy. That we could reduce our country's health costs by 75%-80% just by making this change.
While we switched to a vegan lifestyle for animal compassion reasons, health and environmental concerns - and benefits - were also in our minds. There is heart disease and cancer in our family backgrounds. I don't want to eat myself into a heart attack at 50-something, you know?
It was interesting to see how influenced people were by the movie. You could really tell that they were impacted by the message. I hope they were inspired to go home and really think about making a change in their lives, for their lives.
Their are screenings currently being held around the country. You can go to the site to see if there is one in your area or how to have a showing in your area. The movie is coming out in March 2011. I've very excited and hopeful to see a wave of people taking control of their health and wanting to make this positive change.
I just watched Super Size Me, again, and it compelled me to go and look at some of the actual nutritional information online. I never eat in fast food places like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's or Taco Bell, etc., so I wasn't really sure what they even served any more.
I started by looking at the ingredients for fries. It should be potatoes, oil and salt. Maybe some spices, right?
Nope. It was:
Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*, citric acid [preservative]), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.
Yikes!
Then I thought about all the kids eating this crap. But they have "healthy options" now, right? Like Apple Dippers with Caramel Dip. But what is possibly in that...
Well the so-called low fat caramel dip is made of:Corn syrup, sweetened condensed milk (milk, sugar), high fructose corn syrup, water, butter (cream, salt), sugar, salt, disodium phosphate, artificial flavors (vanillin, ethyl vanillin), caramel color, pectin, potassium sorbate (preservative).
That's a lot of sugar.
In looking at the two "meals" featured and targeted at kids, they seem pretty crappy.
If you feed your kid the McNuggets/Milk/Apple dippers option they are eating:
390 Calories, 15g of Fat & ZERO fiber
If you feed them the double cheeseburger/Milk/Apple dippers option they get:
640 Calories, 26g of Fat & only 2g of fiber
That is appalling. And I don't just mean the food and lack of anything decent nutrion-wise. I mean the fact that parents feed this garbage to their kids on a regular basis. I know plenty of parents, some stay-at-home moms, that choose to get this for their kids for lunch at least once a week. And this is in spite of the fact that nutritionists say you should never eat this stuff. Not to mention that the flesh of 100+ animals can be in your 1 burger patty. (um, gross!)
Sorry it's been kind of quiet. Work has me swamped.
In other news, we just found out our Grimmy cat has diabetes. We're trying to learn everything we can and today are going to the vet to be taught how to take her glucose levels and give her insulin shots. This will require lots of changes in the house and even for the other pets as it relates to food and feeding time so we'll see how it goes.
In some cases, cats can balance how and go into remission. We hope this will be the case for Grimmy and that a few months down the road she better.
Not a lot of people nowadays get to see live chickens at all, but especially not in a natural environment, so I wanted to share these videos I just took of my girls. When the weather is warm and dry, the girls love to find a coop patch of clean dirt and have a lovely dust bath. Think of it like using a dry shampoo. Many animals use dust baths to absorb oils and keep away itchiness or parasites.
But I think the girls also just like to kick up the dirt and sand, roll around and take a nap in the sun.
Gertie especially loves napping. She lays on her side, spreads her legs out like a kitten and closes her eyes.
This is just one of the many natural behaviors that factory farmed chickens are not allowed to engage in. Something so basic and simple is denied them, just like roaming in the grass, seeing the sun, living a normal lifespan.
It's a horrible life I'm so glad I don't contribute to. And I'm glad that my girls will never be subjected to it.
Napoleon is hanging in there. He's being very good on the porch and seems to like sleeping in the cat crate in the dog carrier.
He's even eaten some of his feed and been drinking water. We've been cutting down on the pain shots just to try and help space them out a bit but he's been getting his antibiotics regularly.
He's walking around and crowing although we are keeping an eye on his left leg because it seems a bit wonky. We're not really sure what's up - if it's just sore or if it is hurt more than we can tell.
Last night we zipped him into his crate when he had gone to sleep and left him on the porch. We probably won't do that again because the light wakes him up far too early.
His back is scabbed over, which I think is good. It helps to heel and keeps out any dirt, dust or buggies. Not that we are really getting many since the porch is screened in.
Napoleon is outside my window crowing right now. We did not give him pain meds this morning so we'll see how he does today. I'm going to go into work but may have to come home early if he starts having trouble.
On a warm sunny day one of the favorite activities of the girls is a nice dust bath. The girls find patch of fine loose dirt and kick it up to their hearts content. Luckily there are a few nice patches in our yard that are ideal for a relaxing "bath". Their favorite spot is at the base of one of the juniper trees which gives them shade and keeps them from having to worry about hawks.
Once they get started rolling around and kick the dirt up and all around, it's pretty hard to get them moving until they are finished. Yesterday I wanted to move Meg into the coop with the other two, who were in their feasting on bird seed, but she was not at all interested.
Typically I let them hang out until they are done. Sometimes Napoleon will get in on the action but most of the time he just stands guard. The best part is when they get tired of kicking the dirt up and they get drowsy and start to purr.
Chickens definitely have a level of communication and there is no mistaking the fact that they are happy and content.
So just a brief update to let you know that Gertie is feeling much better. The limp is mostly gone so I guess the sprain is healing. She'll be happy to get out into the yard tomorrow and over the weekend for lots of yummy bugs, worms and grass.
For all of you who thought we were crazy to take a chicken to the vet, just hope I'm not responsible for your health care in the future.
