Swine flu

I only have a minute, but wanted to respond to a question about the swine flu "pandemic." I have learned recently that the people who are contracting the swine flu are those who have been vaccinated against the regular seasonal flu religiously (and often against the swine flu as well). Those who are most at risk for having complications are the same ones who have weakened immune systems from the yearly assault of vaccinations and other shots. I would highly recommend reading the article below if you want another view from what you are hearing on the news, and especially if you want some excellent reasons for avoiding the vaccine and not giving it to your kids. In my view, and according to all I have researched and learned, it is best to let the human immune system develop natural defenses. Each time we become ill and can fight the illness naturally without suppressing our body's need to have a fever, and without using antibiotics and other drugs when they are not truly necessary, we are serving our immune system well and as a result will be stronger and in a better position to ward off more serious infections in the future.

For the article, click here.

My other common sense tips for avoiding swine flu and any seasonal illnesses are as follows:

1) take high-vitamin cod liver oil (preferably fermented) regularly for vitamins A & D (see www.drrons.com or www.greenpasture.org to order
2) avoid all sugar, white flour, and stimulants (caffeine, soda, etc.), and limit sweet foods in general
3) get plenty of rest and pay attention to your body's need for sleep and downtime
4) do your best to eat seasonally. Avoid, for example, eating tropical fruit in cold weather as this is too cooling to the body and may leave you susceptible to infection.
5) emphasize whole foods as much as possible, and avoid highly-processed foods which have the effect of pulling important nutrients from the body's stores
6) load up on lacto-fermented vegetables like sauerkraut which is enzyme-rich and contains greatly enhanced quantities of vitamin C (as compared to regular raw cabbage)
7) if you feel a cold or flu coming on, you can take the homeopathic remedy oscillococcinum which may help (available at health food stores -- you do not need to take a whole vial of pellets for each dose, a few pellets will do just fine). And even more importantly, begin taking raw garlic 2-3 times per day. Simply peel and chop one clove and swallow like pills, using water. THIS REALLY WORKS!!! Garlic has incredibly antimicrobial properties but it absolutely must be taken raw and fresh.

What Oliver eats now: an update

Thursday lunch: "juice" from roasted chicken, lacto-fermented pickles, raw goat's milk Havarti, cured sausage, baby pear

At his current age of about a year (13.5 months to be exact), Oliver still gets most of his nourishment from breastmilk. Some kids show an early interest in solid foods while others are content to continue nursing for the most part, with supplemental solids, and Oliver is one of the latter. He loves eating and trying new things, he has his favorite and his not-so-favorite foods, but for the most part he seems to still be getting a lot from breastmilk. As someone put it to me recently, "They nurse until they feel complete." I would add to this and say that in my own opinion (based on observation and study), since the quality of the mother's breastmilk depends largely on the quality of her diet (particularly whether she has enough fat-soluble vitamins available), this will affect the child's interest in solid foods. Some babies reach for food early and seem to have a huge appetite because they know they aren't getting all that they need from nursing alone. There are many people who would be up in arms at this idea, but if we acknowledge that diet does affect breastmilk quality (which has been proven), then it really does make sense.

All of Oliver's food is from small, local family farmers (or fishers) who follow sustainable, humane, and ecologically-friendly practices. So from the raw milk in his bottle to the scallops at dinner, Ollie is getting a completely nutrient-dense and natural diet. Usually he has three small meals daily and about two bottles of raw milk yogurt (which is pretty liquidy and drinkable) and/or raw milk, with some supplemental raw cream, and/or raw egg yolk added as extra fortification. He also gets about 1/2 tsp. of high-vitamin cod liver oil daily added to one of his bottles.

For his solid foods, I generally offer them mashed or pre-chewed (unless he can gum them easily, like cheese), and try to emphasize the following:
-seafood (especially mollusks and oily fish),
-meat (all kinds, but especially my creamy liver paté),
-eggs,
-mineral-rich bone broths (all homemade, usually fish, chicken, or beef),
-raw milk cheese, and
-lacto-fermented veggies.

He really likes the cheese, raw fish, and broths, adores raw pasture butter from a spoon, and absolutely LOVES the lacto-fermented things I have offered so far, including sauerkraut, pickles, lacto-fermented cucumbers, American kim chee, and dilly beans. For some beverage variety, he loves my homemade lacto-fermented ginger ale, and also kombucha and kefir. And of course he also eats some cooked vegetables, beans (always properly prepared), and tiny tastes of fruit. I make it a point to offer a variety of foods that he is currently able to digest (so no grains yet), and emphasize foods rich in enzymes and beneficial bacteria (thus the lacto-fermentation, raw dairy of all kinds, raw egg yolk, and raw fish (marinated 7 hrs. in whey or lime juice to make it safe).

As of right now, we don't really offer Oliver much by way of sweet foods. I feel very strongly that it is critical that he not get used to eating sweet things on a regular basis. We don't eat much by way of sweets in our house anymore (which has been a huge benefit for all of us!), and I hope to keep it this way as Oliver gets older, with sweets for special occasions and as natural as possible. We will see how it goes! Already of course if he sees Hugo eating corn chips or a piece of bread or something else that we don't want him to have yet, he will want some and cry if he doesn't get it. So it's actually of benefit to us, too, because we have to eat more or less the way we want Oliver to eat.

Of course, when it comes to his predilection for gnawing on bones (a great source of minerals!), I'm not sure where he picked that up...it certainly wasn't something we had to teach him!

Oliver update

Feeding the Popper solids got off to a very slow start, but he is at last showing marked interest in our food. (On a side note, I have noticed a big increase in my own milk production over the past couple of months since he has been getting 90% of his nourishment from me and is growing so big, and since I have been eating so well!). We tried the pureeing thing, and freezing mashed food in little ice cube trays and then thawing them out, etc. The food really doesn't taste good like this, a little sawdusty no matter how good it tasted fresh, and I can't blame Ollie for not being too into it.

The newest thing, though, (which seems to work really well) is to chew a bite of food for Oliver and then put it in a special little bowl for him and feed it to him with a baby spoon while I eat my own meal. This is not the most elegant dinner-table practice, but it does allow for easy preparation of an appropriately-small quantity of food and also provides a digestive boost in the form of enzymes from the parental saliva. Oliver shows a marked preference for animal protein at this point, and has recently enjoyed pork breakfast sausage links, smoked venison sausage, breaded water buffalo cutlets, and artisanal raw milk cheeses (all from our local Greenmarkets or Abner Lapp's farm). He also likes soft egg yolks which I share with him when I make poached or fried eggs, and various fermented & cultured foods like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, olives, and kim chee. He enjoys cooked apple with cream on occasion, and sometimes mashed potato with butter or gravy or some other orange veggie with butter (carrots, yams, etc.). He will also eagerly eat sour cream from a spoon all by itself! Hugo and I attended Nina Planck's talk this week on 'Real Food for Mother & Baby' where we learned about an interesting experiment done several decades ago where older babies were allowed to feed themselves anything they wanted, as much as they wanted. The babies seemed to know intuitively what they needed: one drank cod liver oil until he was cured of rickets; another ate large quantities of sea salt and then stopped when he no longer needed it. It was quite interesting to learn this. Of course babies also have natural appetites for unhealthy sweet foods which we can't really indulge in this way since they don't realize these foods are bad for them (they were not available in the experiment), but since Oliver shows a preference for certain healthy foods I am allowing him to eat them. He enjoyed asparagus-ramp-spinach quiche this week, and some asparagus-white bean soup; he always likes having a little raw milk ice cream occasionally, and of course he still has the daily high-vitamin cod liver oil in raw milk.

At our 9-month-old checkup on Friday we found out that Mr. Popper now weighs 19 lbs. 6 oz. and is 28.2" long! He has also never been sick (one episode of teething fevers aside) and is a strong, happy, and hearty little boy. We are very proud. :) And also very glad that our efforts to keep him healthy and well are paying off so far...

Shouldn't we be fat by now?

If you've been following this blog at all you know how much I love cooking with butter and eating things like eggs, cheese, and ice cream. So you may be wondering by now why we aren't fat. We have all been told that fats in food (particularly animal fats) are what make people sick and overweight. However, while we won't touch trans fats at our house with a ten-foot pole, we are eating plenty of animal fats and some natural plant fats as well (such as those in things like nuts and olives) -- AND enjoying excellent health. Oliver and I also take daily high-vitamin cod liver oil (from Radiant Life) which provides excellent amounts of vitamins A and D, as well as the all-important omega 3 fats. [I take 2 tsp. daily, or 2500 IUs of D and 25,000 IUs of A, plus 1.6 grams omega 3 fatty acids in the form of EPA and DHA; Oliver receives about 1/2 tsp. which is important for his health since vitamin D does not come through in breastmilk. We both drink it mixed with raw milk - Oliver relishes his but I gulp mine quickly while holding my breath. Vitamins A and D are crucial for pretty much all types of development and for healthy immune function.]

It is my firm belief that refined carbs and processed foods (which are largely made of refined carbs) are what cause weight gain and innumerable health problems. At our house we try to avoid processed foods as much as possible. The most processed we get is occasional organic whole wheat pasta, Amy's canned refried beans (the black-bean version is eat-from-the-can delicious!), blue-corn taco shells from Whole Foods, and my favorite whole-grain Kavli crackers. And yes, now and then we eat things like potato chips or shortbread cookies, but these are few and far between and always the best quality (which are usually better for you). All these great high-quality fats are curing my hypothyroidism and long-time hypoglycemia, and making me even-tempered and consistently happy for the first time in my life. Plus they make for incredibly rich breastmilk and a happy, well-behaved baby. I have also noticed that since eating this nutrient-dense, high-fat diet I have totally stopped craving sweets and carbs.

When people look askance (or even shocked) at my suggestion that they eat things like (gasp!) butter or whole milk, I like to mention the Masai of Africa, who are reported to consume up to 400 grams of fat on a daily basis, mainly from meat and raw cultured milk. Granted these people are living a more or less traditional existence with plenty of daily exercise, but they are effortlessly slim and healthy - something most Americans cannot claim to be. Until the past century, in this country we ate plentiful amounts of butter, lard, eggs, raw full-fat dairy, liver, and fatty meats and enjoyed far better health, high fertility rates, and much smaller waistlines than the average American does today -- as well as enviably low rates of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

All this is to say, as long as we keep seeing positive effects of our new way of eating at our house, we will continue! Of course, I also believe firmly that we should buy the best quality we can possibly afford, and limit consumption of conventionally-produced animal foods and fats. Farmers' markets and local buying clubs are the best way to do this.

Baby Food Extravaganza

Here Oliver is enjoying some mashed d'Anjou pears with raw milk yogurt this morning. He seems to forget he likes them at first, then gradually becomes accustomed. At this point he can eat about 1/8th of a pear -- an incredibly tiny amount! I core and peel the sliver of pear of course, then mash it in a little bowl with a baby spoonful of yogurt. The rest of the pear waits in the fridge for following days.

Today has been a day of many foods for the Popper: he started with 3 oz. of raw milk mixed with 1/2 tsp. high-vitamin cod liver oil (from Radiant Life) in his little bottle. I like to give him this while I'm preparing my breakfast - he can hold the bottle on his own and is quite content, despite the fishy taste, which never ceases to amaze me (I still have to take mine while holding my breath). Later he had the pears, and then he filched some of my carrots at lunch time (mashed of course). Dark orange veggies seem to be a big favorite of his - he opens his mouth wide for sweet potatoes and carrots (always mixed with butter, of course, so that he can absorb all the vitamins). This evening he had his first "square" meal: pureed turkey from last night with mashed potatoes and carrots - all mixed together into an enticing orange-ish...mush I guess, is the only way to describe it really. Hugo put the remaining blended food into an ice cube tray for freezing (covered with plastic wrap). Other parents claim it is easy as pie to defrost one cube for dinner any time! We will see how that goes.

To top it all off he tried some lacto-fermented sauerkraut, which I was enjoying before dinner (because it's tasty and to guarantee good digestion). I was shocked that he actually seemed to really like this! He even seemed to eat it with some relish - after making lots of dubious faces first of course.