Food as Poison — Janet Szabo

I’ve talked a bit about food as nutrition, and now I want to go in the other direction and talk about food as poison. And no, I don’t think that “poison” is too strong a word, because it’s clear that the standard American diet is killing a lot of people.

Many people view the MTHFR mutation—especially in people who have two copies of the mutation—as an inability to detox harmful substances from the body. What might be fairly benign in someone else could cause a lot of problems for someone like me. I have eliminated a lot of stuff from my diet, including the Big Three:

High fructose corn syrup
Wheat/gluten
Soy

I started with high fructose corn syrup because it provides empty calories and because it’s getting harder and harder to find corn products that are non-GMO. HFCS seems to be in everything—I have found it in commercial canned beans, which is part of why I can my own now. The simple act of cutting out foods containing HFCS can help a lot of people.

[If you really want an eye-opening look at the food industry, I recommend reading The Dorito Effect, by Mark Schatzker. We are being programmed to ingest way more calories than we need.]

Wheat was the next thing to go. Am I truly gluten intolerant? I’m not sure. I suspect that my true intolerance is to glyphosate—RoundUp—that gets used on crops as an herbicide but is also used as a desiccant on grains and legumes to dry them before storage. However, I still have problems with organic wheat and even ancient grains like einkorn, so there is something else going on. I get both inflammatory and digestive symptoms. They don’t manifest immediately, which makes it hard to judge my tolerance level, but I’ve gotten better at that over time. I’ve also experienced some cross-reactivity with foods like brown rice, which produce a similar inflammatory effect. And there are some wheat by-products that cause problems for me; maltodextrin is one.

I did not replace wheat with “gluten-free” foods, or at least very few of them. Foods that have been labelled “gluten free” often have lots of junk carbs and sugar in them to make them palatable. If you’re looking for substitutes, choose items with almond or coconut flour as a base. Bob’s Red Mill, for example, makes a paleo almond flour pancake mix that got rave reviews when I used it during wedding week to feed guests. That mix and 100% maple syrup are my guilt-free way to enjoy pancakes on the weekends. I found it hard to give up pasta, but there are some brown rice and other kinds of alternative pasta products that work just as well.

Soy is a huge no-no, for two reasons. One is that most soy is GMO and/or grown with liberal applications of glyphosate. The other is that soy is estrogenic. I have plenty of estrogen and don’t need or want any more—I’ve been on bioidentical progesterone for many years to counteract it—so I avoid soy like the plague. As I mentioned before, though, soy is highly prevalent in products sold in “health food” stores. And it’s in most oils and oil-containing products, like mayonnaise (even when they are labelled as being made with olive oil).

Getting these things out of one’s diet takes work, but it becomes second nature after a while. I had to stop and think about how I shop and what I buy because I do it automatically now.

Buy organic, although with the understanding that “organic” is a term that has been co-opted by large food manufacturers and has been rendered meaningless in some situations.
Choose minimally-processed food. If the label has a bunch of unfamiliar, chemical-sounding ingredients, it’s probably not good for you.
Keep a food journal, identify triggers, and avoid them.
Get into the habit of reading labels.
Go heavy on the vegetables and less so on the fruits. Grow your own if possible.
Shop the outside perimeter of the grocery store and stay away from convenience foods.
Cook from scratch. This is the big one, which is why this is so hard for most people. I understand that cooking from scratch takes time. I spend 20-30 minutes making a salad for dinner—just the salad!
Don’t try to do it all at once. And don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. I’ve been wheat-free for almost 10 years now and don’t even notice it being gone, but it took a few years to get to that point. Accept that there will be trade-offs. Our animals don’t eat 100% organic feed other than what they find in the pasture—commercial organic feed is hard to find and ridiculously expensive. I’m aware that some residues may trickle down into what we eat, but I know how the animals were raised otherwise and that tips the balance.

I’m also finding a lot of good alternatives these days—Costco, for example, has started carrying an avocado oil mayonnaise that is quite good. Also check out local suppliers. When I do buy milk or cream, I get it from Kalispell Kreamery.

For me, growing my own food is a form of self-care. I want to feel as good as I possibly can and be active for a long time. The best way to do that is to control what I put into my body. (Gardening is also great exercise.)

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I managed to find some heavier-weight embroidery thread in town yesterday. I started at one of the quilt stores, which offers quite a few classes on Sue Spargo patterns. They had many of the thinner threads, but not the thicker thread I needed for this technique.

I knew that the local yarn store also carried embroidery supplies, although they just moved to a new location. When I stopped in, none of the embroidery supplies were on display. I asked the owner (I presumed), and she said, “Come back here,” and led me to a back room where all of the embroidery threads were still in boxes and bags. She left me there (this is how you know you’re in a small town) and said I could pick out whatever I wanted and bring it up to the register. I bought quite a few hanks. I’ll go back when I need more.

The heavier thread is for a technique called “couching.” The thread is laid on the surface and held in place by a thinner thread. I couched the outline of the spaghetti squash last evening and started the other surface details:

Having to source alternative materials adds another layer of creativity to projects like this. I am aware that my interpretation may not be what the designer had in mind, but I am happy with how my Squash Squad blocks have started out.

I’ve got a phone checkup with my naturopath this morning—we touch base twice a year—and the last of the tomatoes are cooking down. I will be so happy to have that done. The canning supplies will go back into storage until next year and I can delve into my sewing projects with abandon.