The Wheel 2.0 -Bringing Back the Basics

2002 through 2009

Well, I have been at this for several years now and have managed to add muscle and keep almost all of the unwanted fat off my body. I say almost all the fat because I am a victim of the female mindset–as well as a former fat person so I will most likely be destined to see fat on my body that other people do not see.  To be honest, some days I am very OK with where I am at and other days I am frustrated with it. However, when I began losing weight my goal was to no longer be obese and to fit nicely in clothing not in the plus size section of the stores. I wanted to not be at risk for the diseases afflicting my obese family members and to feel comfortable walking the food isles at the market without people shaking their head and thinking about the food choices I was making. I am still not sure if, as an obese woman, I was judged in the market place but it is hard to not project your own self loathing onto others. Fake it till you make it holds true no matter what it is you are projecting–similar to the way dogs can pick up if you are scared or not.

So, at this point in my health journey I am considering food a lot more. Of course being the author of a healthy cookbook it is also an occupational hazard. It is dawning on me that the food industry, the diet world as a whole, is trying to reinvent the wheel for people.  However, the wheel was working fine when it was first invented–people just wanted it to be more fashion forward. OK–the analogy is getting lost here so I will just type it right out. The more the diet industry and the food companies stray from real food, basic food the less beneficial it will be for the body. Wheels get recalled for mistakes that were over looked (oh analogy back on–think e-coli) Obesity and diseases like cancer are becoming more prevalent vs declining even though the science of food is becoming more complex. However, the more things change the harder it is on our body to adapt. Why haven’t we evolved into obesity being the normal human state of living–so we can be obese and not die from it. Like the movie Wall-E depicted. Of course, modern meddling from medications and treatments prevent the death of people from obesity so we can’t really evolve away or into a healthier state of human existence. So–here we sit–modern science and food growing new, ground breaking wonder foods without actually ever breaking ground. Real ground that is, nutrient rich soil from the earth, you know, the same ground that provides beast of the fields and fish of the sea to be free from obesity and cancers. In fact, I would wager a lot of the anomalies of illness found in the wild are a result of chemicals in the air or ground leached out by man made factories and chemistry.  How do we find a better place then?

My suggestion is bring back the damn wagon wheel. Yes, OK we need medicine to prevent disease and we have come a long way in saving the lives of the sick and all–but come on–why do we need package after package of prepared products of fake food on the shelves with new ones being worked on daily in labs? What is wrong with a snack of cheese and fruit? Why can’t we just eat some nuts and seeds instead of the diet foods presented to us to be low calorie, low fat with 100 different ingredients and pathways to the grocery store shelf? Bring back the damn wheel we started with! Yes, we have figured out how to prevent food born bacteria from killing us, let’s accept that as good information. Yes, we have figured out that cooking foods to a certain degree offers us a safer dining experience than just wrestling the meat in the jungle and taking a bite out of it. However, do we really need to be eating food that is altered right down to it’s very DNA and expect this to not have a significant impact on our over all health?

A lot of my thought process lately has stemmed from reading things like The Omnivore’s Dilemma– an excellent resource for everyone to read. Another food for thought book (budump bump) is the Food Inc Companion Guide. Reading these books and understanding where today’s food comes from and applying that to my holistic education and mindset has really given me a lot to ponder. I also love to watch shows like Bizarre Foods and my newest favorite is Anthony Bourdain’s-No Reservations. You can see some clips here on Hulu.com if you have not seen his show.  He travels the planet and dines on local foods and tries to really experience the life of the locals instead of entrenching himself in the tourist areas. Watching these shows I look for the obese people, the morbidly obese people and even the plump people. Few and far between, my friend, they are few and far between.  They are also not reaching into the cornucopia of prepackaged foods and adding water, microwaving and dining while driving at 20 mph above the posted speed limit. They are sitting on a chair by a roadside, under a roof in a hut, on the ground by a fire and they are enjoying their foods. Cheese, flat breads, sweet rice, nut butters, freshly slaughtered beef–all prepared without enriched flour, hydrogenated by products and nothing had to be sold with the label specifically stating it is a”food product” so you would know for sure what it is you are buying.

See? Food Product!

(Picture those orange jello brinks of Velveeta..is it plastic? Is it a toy? Oh, no the label says food product, OK, glad they clarified to me what it is–explains why it keeps falling apart when I put it under the broken leg of the bed to keep it even)

Now, at home we are trying out the Gluten Free fad with my daughter for personal and hereditary reasons and this has also left me pointing towards real whole foods. Much like the recipes I already have in Squeaky Gourmet (product plug x2) My kitchen is where I am creating the wheel–however the pattern to build it is old school–free from as much chemical additives, lab engineering and meddling from mankind. Much the way people in the countries Bourdain visits–only I have the benefit of knowing how to wash the foods and cook them to prevent disease found in the foods themselves. So, really, it is the same wheel but out of the beta version–The Wheel 2.0 -Bringing Back the Basics™

Lately my experiments have been with dairy–raw milk precisely. I have made butter, yogurt, yogurt cheese and last night I made Paneer. It is very exciting in my kitchen right now *wink*

I encourage you to consider the foods you eat–how many ingredients in each meal? How far away from the earth is the food you are ingesting? How will this food taste as well as how beneficial is it to the body?  Are you OK eating a “reasonable facsimile” or do you feel it is far more beneficial to eat the actual food the facsimile is based off of? Do you want the wheel or the Firestone recalls?

Oh and here is the Paneer recipe for you!

Squeaky Gourmet Paneer

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