Dairy Free

When Pearl turned one year old, we did the standard practice of giving her whole milk (to supplement breast milk, not to replace it). For about a month, it seemed like everything was going well, but the more milk she drank, the more tantrums we seemed to have. We had days on end where it seemed like all she did was cry and whine and destroy things. Eventually we began to notice that she had developed two rashes on her body.

So we finally made the decision to eliminate dairy from my diet and from hers. The first week the rash went away, and by week 3 she was only having 2 or 3 mild tantrums a day instead of day-long tantrums. Then JunkMale, in a sleep-deprived-brain moment, forgot himself and gave Pearl some dairy. The rest of the day was a nightmare. Pearl was hyper, aggressive, whiny, and angry. And if that wasn't enough proof, the rashes came back the next day.

Eating dairy-free for the past month has been an interesting experience for our family. We have eaten a lot more Korean food, because the Korean diet is naturally dairy-free. JunkMale has noticed significantly improved digestive health - whether from eliminating dairy or eating kimchi every day, he is not sure - and Pearl has of course had an improved disposition and less itchy skin. But as for me, I notice no difference except that I long for my dairy.

We have learned that we love almond milk and I have learned some new yummy Korean recipes (spicy mixed noodles/비빔면, crab pancakes/해물전). Korean food is, of course, less expensive than American food, but dairy substitutes like margarine, soy and coconut yogurt, and "ice cream" are much more expensive. Sometimes we are able to stay under budget, but often we have to go over.

I have learned to make my own kimchi, and unlike during our Korean food month, I'm not finding myself craving American food. I am treating myself to expensive coconut ice cream and American junk food treats, so I don't really feel deprived like I did back then. And I also have two extra years' experience both in cooking and in learning to enjoy eating Korean foods.

In subsequent weeks I will be sharing some of the new recipes and also some strategies to eating dairy-free. If you have some strategies to share with me, please leave a comment, and also if you have questions about eating dairy-free let me know and I will try to find the answer.

A History of Breastfeeding, Part 2

This is the second piece in a series on breastfeeding. The first part was introductory material. This part is the meat of the history. And part three, which is not written yet, tries to form conclusions. For a much more complete and well-researched history of breastfeeding in Renaissance Europe, please read Historical Perspectives on Breastfeeding. All page number references refer to this essay.

In medieval Europe, just about any doctor, midwife, or priest who touches on the subject urged women to nurse their own babies. And so far as I know, it used to be the normal way of things. But by the time of the Renaissance breastfeeding - and childcare in general - went out of vogue in the upper classes.

It's hard to say what, exactly, caused this. In my opinion, it was likely a result of the Plague of the mid 1300's, when so many were dying that parents either gave up caring whether their children lived or died, or they couldn't stand watching them die anymore. Whatever the reason, sometime in the 14th century wet nursing took off. Breastfeeding rates plummeted among the upper classes. Mothers sent their babies away for a year or two to be nursed by another woman, and the disconnect began.

"It was not until the late 18th century that women were permitted to take in more than one child or to nurse both their own child and that of another woman." (p34) This meant that a horribly large number of babies of the upper and lower classes were not nursed by their own mother. In fact, in Paris in 1780, a police lieutenant "declared that out of the 21,000 children who were born each year in that city, only 1,000 were nursed by their mothers and another 1,000 by live-in wet nurses; all the others were sent out to the country" (p34). And without the immediate bond between mother and baby (and often a resentment on the part of the wet nurse, who had to send away her own child in order to nurse this new one), maternal affection was sorely lacking in Europe:

"It is easy to see from experience how this natural affection, in which we invest so much authority, has superficial roots. Every day, in exchange for a small profit, we tear children from their mothers' arms and make them take ours instead; we make them abandon their offspring to some emaciated wet nurse, to whom we would never give our own child, or to some goat"
-Michel de Montaigne, late 16th century (p34)

And shockingly, many of these children were passed from wet nurse to wet nurse - at least 33% in 15th century Florence had two wet nurses, while 2% had five (p37). The children hardly saw their parents during this time, as the ideal wet nurse lived in the country and the roads were often difficult to travel:

"From the 17th century, medical writers urged parents... to visit their children at nurse.... [R]egular parental visits and close supervision were the exception rather than the rule. ... In the late 16th century, the children of John Dee were visited by their parents only once every one or two months. Two centuries earlier Lapo Mazzei, a poor notary of Prato and father of 14 children, was certainly no exception to the rule when he wrote... of his weaned son: 'Your godson, whom I have only seen once before, has come back to me from his wet nurse....'"

Obviously, the child often faced serious emotional trauma when, upon weaning, they were uprooted from their wet nurse and brought to live in the home of strangers, their parents.

In the rare cases where a woman did nurse her own child, society viewed her as something of a saint. "In fact, such was the 'superior' affection that women bore for the children they suckled that they often wrote about their greater devotion to them and even left them extra money in their wills" (p26).

One of the most interesting pieces I've read while researching this topic was The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, written in 1622 by a lady who had sent her own children out to a wet nurse, but whose daughter-in-law had changed her mind when she nursed the grandchildren. She gives the reasons why women used wet nurses, namely "that it is troublesome; that it is noysome to ones clothes; that it makes one looke old, &c." She regrets sending her own children away, especially since she believed "the death of one or two of my little Babes came by the defalt of their nurses. Of all those which I had for eighteene children, I had but two which were throughly willing, and carefull." The Countesse reasons, using Scripture, that it is a woman's duty to nurse her own children. But read the whole thing yourself.

As it happened, about a hundred years later, there was a brief time in the mid 1700s where many European women nursed their children. But it was short-lived, and there was a brief return to wet nursing before, sadly, hand feeding took over. Women had got used to having their babies at home with them (thankfully), but they no longer wanted to breastfeed. Obviously, the infant mortality rate remained high, mostly because of the horrible concoctions that were being passed off as infant food.

The rest of the story you likely know. Pasteur, Nestlé, and the formula industry were born in this culture, and it is only now that there has been a serious surge of breastfeeding mothers. It is the first time in two hundred years that a significant percentage of western women breastfed for any real length of time, and only the second time since the wet nursing fad took hold back in the 13th century that women have nursed their own children.

So the next time someone blames formula companies for the low breastfeeding numbers, back up for a minute and look back to the real root of the problem. Formula companies were capitalizing on an attitude towards mothering and breastfeeding that has existed for over 400 years in the West. Blaming them is missing the whole point: Western women don't like being their children's nurses, and they haven't liked it for well over 400 years. That attitude needs to change first, otherwise our efforts will only have a limited effect.

In part three: cultural attitudes towards breastfeeding, particularly as it relates to religion.

A History of Breastfeeding, Part 1

When you do a Google search for "history of breastfeeding", you get hundreds of hits that go something like this:

In ancient times all women breastfed their babies because it was the only way to feed them. Then in the mid 1800's, men like Henri Nestlé began making commercial infant formula. It wasn't long before the rates of breastfeeding began to sharply decline.

... and so on. While all of that is for the most part factual, it is in no way a complete history of breastfeeding. It implies that between ancient times and the mid 19th century, breastfeeding practices were largely uniform across cultures and across times, and what's more, it implies that the breastfeeding relationship between mother and baby was ideal and rosy until the advent of formula.

Based on the few essays and historical documents I've been able to find that deal with earlier history, this could not be further from the truth. In fact, the reason formula caught on like it did was because there already existed in Western societies a shocking disconnect between mothers and babies for centuries before formula was invented.

So let's start at the beginning. At some point in ancient history, it was certainly common for women to nurse their own children. But as early as the time of Abraham, the custom of wet nursing had apparently been invented (Gen 24:59 and Gen 35:8 refer to Rebekah's nurse). But Sarah - a very wealthy woman - nursed Isaac (Gen 21:7), and it seems likely (although finding scholarship to back this up is difficult) that the majority of women breastfed their babies. We see that Naomi was a nurse to her grandson Obed (Ruth 4:16), though it is not clear that she was a wet nurse.

While the Bible is mostly silent on the subject, Jewish tradition is full of advice on the "right way" to breastfeed:

• The Mishna (Ketubot 59b) instructs us that breastfeeding her baby is a woman’s obligation toward her husband—so much so that other household functions take lower priority during this time.
• According to the Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Deah 81:7) a child may nurse, if healthy, until four years old; a sickly or weak child, until five years old.
• Most sources point towards 24 months as the accepted minimum length of the breastfeeding relationship. Even the most lenient of authorities points to the age when a baby has six to eight teeth. This is estimated to be between the ages of ten and sixteen months.
• The Talmud (Yerushalmi, Brochot 68a) states that a Jew should be involved in Torah every hour of the day just as a baby nurses every hour of the day. Also, a baby should be allowed to nurse as often as he desires. “Even if he nurses all day long it will not harm him” (Tosefta, Sotah 4:1).

Some Orthodox Jewish women believe it is her duty to breastfeed until the baby is 24 months old and that anything less is sinful. Two years seems to be the bare minimum that most cultures recommend. I understand that the Koran also advocates at least 24 months before weaning, and even in European cultures - which have had serious problems with breastfeeding for centuries - experts believed that when the baby had all its teeth its body was ready to be weaned. In Florence in 1415, there was even a law that if a wet nurse weaned her charge before 30 months, she was subject to public whipping (page 21 here).

It would seem that most cultures had a pretty good grasp of the benefits of breastfeeding and its role in preventing infant deaths.* But this is not always the case. In Europe around the Renaissance, something went terribly wrong.....

To Be Continued

*Many cultures did seem to have a fear that colostrum was bad for the baby. Often babies were hand-fed until the mother's milk came in, a practice that surely resulted in the unnecessary deaths of many children.

NIH hearings on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

The NIH hearings were prompted by a 2009 study published in Science that linked Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with a retrovirus (XMRV), which is a virus that encorporates itself into the host's genome. Probably the most famous retrovirus is HIV, which is a similar virus, but certainly not the same as XMRV. About 2/3 of CFS patients were infected with the virus, compared to about 3% of the control population.

It is important, I think, to note that CFS has been linked with viruses in the past that were later found to be by-products of the disease (CFS causes immune dysfunction) rather than being the cause, so there needs to be more research done before we jump to any conclusions. However, one of the characteristics of CFS is a sudden onset with flu-like symptoms, and that indicates a viral cause. And the fatigue associated with CFS has been described as similar to late stage AIDS, which makes a retrovirus seem somewhat likely. I do hope this virus is the cause, because until the cause is known it will be difficult to find a cure.

This is an important topic for my family, as my mom and aunt both have the disease. My mom's case is mild, for which we are all grateful, but my Aunt's case is much more severe. My aunt is a leader of her local support group and was possibly one of the subjects of the study (she thinks she might have been).

The most interesting video to the layman is this one, but if you're interested in the details of the virus and transmission, watch all of the videos here. The second day hearings aren't up yet. They deal with the blood supply, whether CFS can be transmitted via blood transfusion, etc.

I also thought it was fascinating the link he made in this video between retroviruses and MS, Autism, and Fibromyalgia. Clearly there is much more work to be done in this field!

Speaking of Breakfast Burritos...

JunkMale mentioned our new, delicious breakfast in his last post. I love breakfast burritos. They are tasty, reasonably healthy, and should be filling. Unfortunately, we both were hungry 1.5 hours after eating one. Now can someone tell me why breakfast burritos - full as they are with protein, fat, and whole grains - would make us hungry when a bowl of overnight oats (with its 30+ grams of sugar!) will satisfy JunkMale for an entire morning? Yes, the oats have about a hundred calories more than the burritos, but could that really account for the huge difference? But then what about JunkMale's other favorite breakfast, two eggs and two slices of toast, which has nearly the same nutrition profile as the burrito? Why will that hold him an entire morning when the same number of calories from a burrito left our stomachs growling in church?

Comparing Butter to Other Animal Fats

Harmony recently bought a bunch of nitrite/nitrate-free bacon in order to help experiment with cheaper (yet still satisfying) breakfasts. We remembered a Common Room blog post on this subject, and I remembered reading the Wikipedia article on lard, particularly the part that said lard actually has less saturated fat and more monounsaturated fat than butter.

So I went to one of my favorite government operated sites, the USDA nutrient database, and looked up the total fat contents of the following fats: salted butter, chicken fat, bacon grease, and beef fat. As I was posting this, and for purposes of full disclosure, I decided to toss in the facts for "SMART BALANCE Regular Buttery Spread," as the entry is titled in the database. I also decided to throw in the cholesterol numbers.

All of these are per 100 g serving. Excluding Smart Balance, I have underlined the best fat for each category.

Total saturated fat, g:
Butter: 51.368
Fat, chicken: 29.800
Animal fat, bacon grease: 39.004
Fat, beef tallow: 49.8
Smart Balance: 19.510

Total monounsaturated fat, g:
Butter: 21.021
Fat, chicken: 44.700
Animal fat, bacon grease: 44.874
Fat, beef tallow: 41.800
Smart Balance: 25.640

Total polyunsaturated fat, g:
Butter: 3.043
Fat, chicken: 20.900
Animal fat, bacon grease: 11.144
Fat, beef tallow: 4.000
Smart Balance: 17.700

Cholesterol, mg:
Butter: 215
Fat, chicken: 85
Animal fat, bacon grease: 95
Fat, beef tallow: 109
Smart Balance: 0

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The fact sheet for Smart Balance also listed that it had 0.710 g of trans fat per 100 g. None of the other fats had an entry for trans fat, but since they occur naturally in the milk and body fat of cows (and other ruminants such as sheep), I would guess that butter and tallow probably have small amounts of it.

Thus, we saved all of the bacon grease from this weekend's cooking, and in the future will save the fat from every dead chicken that enters this household. I'll bring it to your attention that if you are the type to care about how processed your foods are, chicken/bacon/beef fat are the least processed of these (considering that you sort of "make" it yourself), with Smart Balance being the most processed, assuming that the bacon drippings are from bacon that you actually made and not the hydrogenated and chemically treated lard that you buy from the store.

A Mom Survey: joint pain

When I was pregnant, I would often hear about the pain of labor, the sleepless nights, the exhaustion at the end of the day, and many other of the trials of being a new mom. But no one warned me about how much my body would hurt. Prior to having Pearl, I considered myself a fairly healthy young lady with not much to complain about. Now, not yet three months later, two-thirds of the major joints in my body are bothering me, and two of them (left ankle and left wrist) are sometimes too stiff, weak or painful to use normally.

I have to wonder: is this one of the complaints all moms have but none mention, or was I so out of shape that a little baby is too much for my weak self?

Avoiding Pesticides in Produce

When you're buying produce, do you ever wonder which foods are the highest in pesticides and which are the lowest? I know I have. JunkMale and I would love to be able to afford organic everything, but it's just not possible with our budget. We have to prioritize. But how do we know which foods are OK to buy regular and which should be bought organic?

The good news is that there have been studies done that tell you which are the worst/best produce items as far as pesticides go. I am going to reproduce one of these lists for you here:

High Pesticide Foods (buy organic):

• Peaches
• Apples
• Bell Pepper
• Celery
• Nectarine
• Strawberries
• Cherries
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Grapes
• Carrots
• Pears

Lowest in Pesticides (ok to buy regular produce):

• Onion
• Avacado
• Sweet Corn
• Pineapple
• Mango
• Asparagus
• Sweet Peas
• Kiwi
• Cabbage
• Eggplant
• Papaya
• Watermelon
• Broccoli
• Tomato
• Sweet Potato

I can vouch for the strawberries and apples being high in pesticides. When I eat non-organic strawberries and unpeeled non-organic apples, my throat and tongue feel a bit thick and swollen. I used to think I was slightly allergic to apple peels and strawberries. But I have since learned that I can eat organic strawberries and organic apples (peel and all) with absolutely no throat-closing incidents. S0 apparently I'm just allergic to the pesticides. I'm surprised that broccoli and corn are so low in pesticides, but happy to hear it.

According to the information compiled by the researchers, people who eat the foods highest in pesticides consume - on average - 10 different pesticides a day. Eating the foods lowest in pesticides exposes you to about 2 pesticides a day. Washing doesn't do enough to help. Peeling helps a bit more, but you lose valuable nutrients.

How do you prioritize your produce purchases? Do you buy organic all the time? None of the time? Whatever's on sale (Mom)?

I have WHAT???

I got a call from the midwife office yesterday saying I had failed my 1-hour gestational diabetes test - I had high blood glucose.

First of all, I do not fail tests. Not unless the rest of the class does too, and in those cases there is generally a substantial curve. Secondly, ever since I was 12 years old and I started getting migraine headaches when I ate sweet foods for breakfast, I have lived under the impression that I have had low blood sugar. I have had blood tests that showed that I have elevated levels of insulin after eating a meal, and in my last year of college I was specifically told by an endocrinologist that there was "zero" chance that I had pre-diabetes. Of course, he only saw me for five minutes and refused to do any testing, so he was probably basing that assessment 100% on my body type. He also said I was imagining my symptoms. Hmph.

So the next step in this process was supposed to be the 3-hour glucose tolerance test. That's when they make you go 3 days eating at least 150g of carbohydrates a day (which is almost certainly way more than I eat on a typical day - JunkMale will tell you that when there are sweets around the house, he is the one who wants to eat them, not me; I would rather eat salty and fattening foods). Then you fast overnight, go into the doctor's office, and on an empty stomach drink 100g of straight glucose water in 5 minutes. They take your blood, send you out to the waiting room, and starve you for the next 3 hours, making sure to poke and prod you each hour to take another blood sample. As my dad said, "They do that to pregnant women?"

Yes they do, and since I have a history of migraines so bad I can't see when I don't eat protein and fat for breakfast, and since I still gag each morning before I get some protein or fat into my body (Noticing a pattern here? My body obviously prefers low-carb foods - not glucose drinks), this test does not seem like a nice thing to put me through. In fact, it seems downright dangerous to have me drive myself to and from this appointment. I mentioned as much to my care provider, letting her know in no uncertain terms that the next time JM could take me to do the 3-hour test (without taking time off of work) would be 4 weeks from now. In other words, we needed to start talking about other options - and I was more than happy to work out some sort of compromise. ;-)

So after playing phone tag with a midwife who was attending a birth, I finally got permission to keep a food journal, get a glucometer and start testing my blood sugar every day. She wants me to test 3 times a day for the first week or two to get an idea of how my blood sugar runs, and then if it's normal I'm free to test 2x a day until my next appointment.

The pharmacist was really nice. She walked me through what I was supposed to do and picked out a meter she thought I would like. It's actually really cool. The meter stores all my results and can compare, for example, all of my before breakfast readings from the past 14 days. I can also record details with each reading: do I feel hypo? do I feel sick or off? am I on vacation or eating differently from usual? did I just exercise?

Is it strange that I'm actually excited about this? After 14 years of dealing with blood sugar issues (be it high or low, it was always related to what I ate), I can finally figure out what's going on with my body! Do I feel like I have low blood sugar? I can check right then! Am I feeling super tired and foggy headed? I can see if that has any relation to my blood sugar.

By the way, for the curious among our readership, I did my first test a little while ago - 2 hours after lunch: 79 mg/dL. Textbook hypoglycemia is when your blood sugar drops to 70 mg/dL. But my reading was low enough that my glucometer automatically prompted me to input a comment. Anything outside of the normal range (90 mg/dL to 130 mg/dL) automatically gets flagged for commentary. And for the really, really curious among you, you should know that my 1-hour glucose test result was 144 mg/dL. So after 1 hour it's too high and after 2 hours it's too low. In other words, my blood sugar is really messed up. I feel justified. ;-)

Was It Something We Did?

Harmony and I have wondered why we went a year without any pregnancies after having two positive tests. And we have often wondered how it was that this pregnancy "stuck."

Although both of us are scientifically inclined, we are also Christians and have no problem with the explanation that God just wanted it to happen this way. But we also do wonder if it was something that we did differently that allowed us this wonderful blessing? Here are some things that we did differently, some of which might not have made any difference in the world.

Diet
We'd signed up for the CSA and were eating a higher percentage of Certified Naturally Grown vegetables. Whether it was the vegetables themselves or the fact that they were (practically, in essence) organically grown, we don't know. Or it could've been neither.

Exercise
We were going on almost-daily walks around the neighborhood, which includes some small hills.

Water
After we got the positive test, I made sure that Harmony always had filtered water to drink. We also got a bunch of bottled water, and filtered that too. Our filter is just a Brita pitcher, which is not the best, so who knows if this made any difference.

Vitamins
Harmony had been discouraged and had pretty much stopped taking a multivitamin every day. Somewhere in there, she'd also had a conversation with her aunt, where her aunt had mentioned about herself that she didn't absorb nutrients well in certain forms. I believe Harmony got a case of Vitamin Water fairly soon after that, and fairly soon after that, we found that she was pregnant. Maybe Harmony had been vitamin deficient and did not absorb vitamins well in chewable form?

Houseplants
I don't know how it came about, but Harmony e-mailed me one day talking about how certain houseplants can filter toxins. So I authorized the purchase of several houseplants for each room of the house. We have pothos, philodendron, English ivy, spider plants, and snake plants, and more scattered throughout the house.

Accepting Our Lot In Life?
After going almost a year from our then-last pregnancy, we had been very discouraged. We tried to accept the fact that maybe we are just not meant to have biological children, so we decided to try to channel our grief into something positive. Thus foster parent training. (we actually are still in contact with the agency and will probably have our 2nd home study soon, even though we are not planning on accepting any children for the near future)

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Again, who knows if any of these had any smidgen of influence on getting pregnant or staying pregnant. It is possible that one or more of them did have a small influence, but fairly impossible to tell which one it was. So we just made sure to do all of them; we wanted to do everything in our own power to ensure a viable pregnancy.

I Don't Not Trust Doctors...

...it's just the obstetricians that I am a bit leery of.

Last week we started a childbirth class given by another doula in our doula's group (our doula happens to be a loooong time family friend of Harmony's family and the owner of that group). Our homework assignment for yesterday was to find someone in our grandparents' generation and ask her for any birth memories or stories. From what we heard from class members, many grandmothers apparently shared many negatives memories from their births. Not coincidentally, many of those women were of the era when twilight sleep was "the cool thing to do" in labor and delivery.

As the title says, it's not that I am distrustful of all doctors. I'm not even distrustful of all obstetricians. There is a time and place for their role, and may they be blessed in times when they are absolutely necessary. But you know, women have been giving birth for a long time without OBs.

I think comparing OBs and other flavors of doctor is in order. Consider: the "field" of human childbirth is almost as old Adam and Eve themselves. Other specialized fields of medicine like cardiology, oncology, and neurosurgery have only been made possible through modern technology. Before the modern era, no one ever did brain surgery with folk medicine. No shaman ever did surgery to remove nasopharyngeal tumors. Before the modern era (whenever that began, anyways), no doctors ever said anything like "well, judging by your test results, your H2 receptors are malfunctioning and causing malabsorption of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors this and that and btw your deoxyribonucleic acid is all whack and that's why your kids are ugly. ttyl kthxbye." But before OBs, women still had babies.

Much of my distrust comes from the fact that obstetricians have been wrong many times in the past, where if they had simply stepped back, things would have progressed just fine. Twilight sleep, knock-em-out-drag-em-out childbirths, the thought that formula is healthier than breast milk - those are a few examples. They have said "well, these are the best ways, and better than your body can do." Well, no, in fact, we find that they are not. They have been quite wrong in the past; what's to say that they are right to have cesarean rates of 39.6% (Piedmont Hospital, Atlanta, July 2006 - June 2007)!

(the hospital we chose had a rate of 22.8% - the lowest among Atlanta area hospitals, and not coincidentally, the one most friendly towards natural methods and the one recommended to us by our doula)

So I guess my problem is interference where interference is not necessary (and by not necessary, I mean "really" not necessary, whatever you take that to mean). Judging by various videos I have watched and the ramblings of at least one expert doula, I personally do not believe that the number of cesarean births need to be as high as 40% in some cases.* But I'm not the expert by any measure. Don't trust a thing I say unless you yourself know it to be true. Do your own research, find what you want for yourself, and trust in God and your own body, unless you are an untrustworthy person.

* - Insert "they are really really necessary sometimes and you are not wrong to elect for one if that's what you want" disclaimer here.

My New Diet

Longtime readers might remember that JunkMale and I consider ourselves to be on a permanent diet. We don't like the idea of fad health trends, and our idea of a healthy diet is one that consists entirely of ingredients we recognize. That isn't changing. But the past two weeks or so have led to two separate doctors admonishing me to pay closer attention to what I eat.

So what is this new diet my doctors want me to go on? More fruits? More vegetables? Lower fat? Um, no. According to my doctors, I should be eating: meat, whole fat milk, butter, and nuts. Protein and fat. That's what they kept telling me: "More protein. More fat. Don't try to cut out your fats, embrace them! Cook with butter instead of oil. You do eat meat, right? Make sure to eat a lot of it! Eat every hour and be sure to load up on fats and protein - like pizza - right before bed."

So what led to this non-standard advice from my doctors? Well, to begin with, I haven't been gaining much weight. Halfway through my pregnancy, I have gained a sum total of 3.5 pounds. That alone wouldn't be a cause for concern, I don't think. Some women only gain 15 or 20 pounds during the whole pregnancy. But I am already on the small side, and I have troubles with low blood sugar.

And yesterday, I came very close to fainting at the post office. Full, blacked-out vision, a rushing sound in my ears drowning out any of the sounds around me, etc. Luckily I was leaning against the counter at the time, so no harm done, but it was kind of scary. It might have been caused by low blood sugar, or standing in line, or just because I have a cold. So the doctors want me to cover all the bases: keep off my feet, take it really easy until my cold is past, try to avoid standing in long lines, drink lots of fluids, and eat fat.

It all sounds delightful to me. Now if only my house could clean itself while I was resting in bed eating my homemade trail mix.... ;-)

Homemade Convenience Foods

A post at The Common Room (which is not exactly related to this and is totally worth the read) got me thinking about homemade convenience foods. No, I'm not talking about homemade versions of store-bought convenience foods. Though they are more frugal, they are often not very convenient to make. I am talking about real food that is convenient to make.

Most people know that store-bought convenience foods are not only expensive, but they have almost no nutritional value. But many people these days think themselves too busy to make an actual meal.* So I started to think about what real foods, made from real, healthy ingredients could be turned into good food in roughly the same time as a convenience meal like "blue box" macaroni and cheese (about 15 minutes) or instant mashed potatoes (about 5).

For example, a microwaved "baked" potato. Wash the potato, prick it with a fork a few times, and microwave it for about 5 minutes (the one I had for lunch today only took 4 minutes). Fruit is obviously a convenience food. You do have to wash it, and sometimes you even have to cut it up, but I can't think of a fruit that takes longer than a couple of minutes to prepare. Salads are another good choice. A salad consisting of vegetables that aren't pre-washed or pre-chopped takes about 10 minutes to prepare. Another convenience food is eggs. Scrambled or fried, they take less time to make than a microwave dinner. Boiled, they take 10 to 15 minutes (I prefer 10), but then they make a perfect travel food.

So what else am I missing? What real foods take less than 15 minutes to prepare from start to finish?

*Whether or not people are actually too busy to cook is an entirely different blog post. Suffice it to say that I think most people aren't too busy, they're just either too lazy or know too little about how to cook.

Potatoes = Broccoli

This past weekend, Harmony and I made french fries in the oven. I guess we should call them "french bakes" then. One thing led to another and eventually Harmony found these interesting facts on World's Healthiest Foods:

A new analytical method developed by Agricultural Research Service plant geneticist Roy Navarre has identified 60 different kinds of phytochemicals and vitamins in the skins and flesh of 100 wild and commercially grown potatoes. Analysis of Red and Norkotah potatoes revealed that these spuds' phenolic content rivals that of broccoli, spinach and Brussels sprouts, and includes flavonoids with protective activity against cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems and certain cancers. Navarre's team also identified potatoes with high levels of vitamin C, folic acid, quercetin and kukoamines. These last compounds, which have blood pressure lowering potential, have only been found in one other plant, Lycium chinense (a.k.a., wolfberry/gogi berry). How much kukoamine is needed for a blood pressure lowering effect in humans must be assessed before it can be determined whether an average portion of potatoes delivers enough to impact cardiovascular health. Still, potatoes' phytochemical profiles show it's time to shed their starch-only image; spuds-baked, steamed or healthy sautéed but not fried-deserve a place in your healthy way of eating

Now, there are some considerations to be taken here. This study only examined certain varieties of potatoes, so perhaps not all varieties have such healthful content. And most common preparations of potato involve peeling the skin (more on that just below). But in the end, a potato is a potato, and I imagine there can't be THAT much difference in nutritional profiles among potato varieties.

Here's what the Washington State Potato Commission has to say about the notion that most of a potato's nutrients are in the skin:

Despite the popular notion, the majority of nutrients are not found in the skin, but in the potato itself. Nonetheless, leaving the skin on the potatoes retains all the nutrients, the fiber in the skin and makes potatoes easier to prepare.

I believe that organic potatoes are not too much more expensive than their conventially grown counterparts, so go that route if you're so inclined and able. Or better yet, grow your own, like we are planning to do.

So next time you have an option to eat potatoes, throw out that old line of thinking that says "potatoes = bad" or "potatoes = starchy = bad." (unless your doctor has specifically told you to stay away from potatoes) Instead, replace it with "potatoes = broccoli" or "potatoes = spinach."

(just don't use this to justify an increase in fast food french fry intake)

Misdiagnosed Miscarriages

This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently. I remember at the ultrasound where they told me the baby no longer had a heartbeat, and that I was going to miscarry - the first thing the doctor asked me was whether I would like to take medication to help the miscarriage happen faster. The drug he was offering me was the same one they use to induce abortions. I refused, opting to wait until my body decided to miscarry on its own.

In my case, there was no question that the diagnosis was correct, as I miscarried naturally about a week later. But the diagnosis of miscarriage is not 100% correct, as this website so clearly shows. These days, I think doctors are too quick to believe the internal ultrasounds, which can in some cases detect the baby's heartbeat before 6 weeks. The technology is really amazing, but it's not infallible. Sometimes there's a twin hiding behind the miscarried baby. Sometimes the woman has a uterus that is tilted such that the ultrasound machine can't quite see the baby. Sometimes the pregnancy hasn't been properly dated, so an ultrasound in another week or two would show what's missing.

As I read through some of the stories, I was amazed at just how many times the woman's doctor insisted he had "never seen this happen before". Perhaps the doctors have never seen it before because they are so quick to offer drugs and surgery after a diagnosis of miscarriage?

I have seen many women go through painful and emotional losses, whether via natural miscarriage, medication, or a D&C (surgery). I wonder how many of those women suffered needlessly? How many of those miscarriages were simply a misdiagnosis that could have ended in a healthy baby? I'm sure the number is very low - most of the time the doctors are probably right - but to me, even one woman needlessly losing a baby she loves because of a misdiagnosis is too many.

Puzzling Weight Gain

(I solicit your input at the end of the post, so read on!)

Harmony and I have experienced a very slow and fairly miniscule weight gain over the past 6 months or so. This is somewhat puzzling to us, especially since we joined a CSA back in June, and have since been eating many more (in quantity and variety) vegetables.

We weigh ourselves almost daily. So this is not a case of "I weighed myself once back in March, and now I step on in September and have gone up two pounds." ...Two pounds being how much my average weight seems to have shifted upwards. Our scale also does a (very rough?) measurement of body fat percentage, of which mine has, interestingly enough, remained fairly constant in the entire time we've had this scale. We got it maybe July 2007 or so, and my percentage has consistently been between 16% - 19%.

Now on to the subject of food. I have a short memory when it comes to food, so I'm not quite sure how differently we ate before joining the CSA. I'm pretty certain that since then, we've had many more vegetable-based meals though. One would think that eating more vegetables would cause body weight to decrease, but one might be wrong. The CSA takes a good chunk of our weekly food budget, so we are eating less meat these days. Again, you'd think this would cause weight loss, but one might be wrong. Maybe the decrease in protein consumption has us consuming more calories over all?

Another factor to consider is breakfast foods. Within the breakfast category, there are two sub-factors to consider: quantity and carbohydrates. I used to have breakfast cereal every day, and I had it with lots of milk (protein). When we started buying organic milk, I couldn't maintain the daily consumption rate (or else we'd go broke), so we looked for alternatives. Pancakes come to mind, as do blueberry muffins. Pancakes have somewhat gone out of style, as they are fairly expensive for us (3 to 4 cups of milk!). Overall, I think I am eating less for breakfast, and what I am eating has a higher percentage of carbohydrates and lower percentage of protein than Frosted Mini Wheats and milk did.

Current breakfasts at work consist of one piece of buttered-and-honeyed toast and one hard-boiled egg.

In the past, I never bought into the low-carb craze too much, but maybe the carbs have something to do with this mysterious weight gain? But remember that Harmony too has experienced a similar gain, but does not consume as many carbs as I do.

I know that the Internet has probably decreased all of our attention spans, so here's a quick bullet list of possible factors and other contextual things-to-know:

• Less meat/protein


• More carbohydrates (for me)


• Decreased size of breakfast (for me)


• Metabolism beginning to slow?


• (Activity levels have been steady in this period, so I don't think they're a factor)


• I drink plenty of water during the day

If you have either 1) more brains, or 2) more experience in this area, we'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter, whether it's suggestions or further speculation.

Trying Community-Supported Agriculture

...or as it's commonly abbreviated, CSA. For anyone that doesn't know, this basically means we are getting our produce directly from a local farmer (there are a few more details).

Yesterday, Harmony watched a documentary called "The World According to Monsanto." It's available for viewing on YouTube. I am going to watch it after I finish and publish this post. But I can tell you that while watching it, Harmony e-mailed me to say that it made her determined never to buy something that was sprayed with pesticides or treated with growth hormones.

When I got home, we discussed our options. What to do? We already eat mostly homemade foods. Most store-bought organic produce is too expensive for us. Although we are trying to grow our own vegetables, what we currently have is not nearly enough to even halfway sustain our needs.

Way back when, we discussed the virtues and un-virtues of a CSA. We were not too fond of the idea that we were slaves to the seasons. At the time, we had no plans or goals to become self-sufficient, produce-wise. But now that we do have goals to eventually be self-sufficient, the slaves-to-the-seasons idea isn't so bad. (Read more about this in my previous post titled "God and Gardening: Lessons in Submission.")

Blah blah blah, skip a few details. We went on Local Harvest and found a farmer that has just about everything and more. This operation is Certified Naturally Grown, year-round, and seems willing to work with people on missed pickups. We have signed up for a 12 week period of vegetables and fruits. The pictures on this farm's website are tantalizing, and we hope the real-life orders are as good as the pictures.

Although Harmony was crunching numbers last night, I don't quite remember how it will match up to our current grocery budget. It is at least competitive with what we spend now, and on top of that, it is local and naturally grown. Probably much less expensive than if we bought organic produce at grocery stores. Definitely less expensive than if we bought organic produce at health food stores.

I believe our first pickup will be next Wednesday. I don't want to give them free advertising yet, but if the produce meets expectations, I will post more about the farm itself at a later time.

Is anyone else a member of a CSA group? Care to share your experiences?

June 2008 Raw Diet Update

I have sort of slacked off in doing the raw diet updates, because there isn't really that much to report. That's probably a good thing.

Raw feeding tip of the month: If you ever find yourself in a dire situation and find that you have no dog/cat food, eggs are your lifesaver! Eggs are extremely convenient pet food, both for the preparer and the devourer. They're almost like fast food for dogs, except much healthier. Bonus if your dog will eat the shell, which Luna usually doesn't (she just plays with it and leaves pieces all over the place). Extra bonus if the eggs are from vegetarian hens and/or organic and/or farm fresh. I suppose cooked eggs would be easy as well, if that's all you have or if that's what you're comfortable with.

Luna continues to be quite a healthy dog. Ever since we switched her to raw meats, she has been much more enthusiastic about eating. This is probably a good thing, but it doesn't feel so great when she's waking me up at 5:30AM because she wants to eat. Up until this morning, she had not done an empty-stomach-foamy barf in a long time.

There were a few days that Luna did not get her usual raw meats. That was when we were visiting grandmother-that-does-not-oppose-the-raw-diet. Of course, we didn't know that at the time, so we brought along some high quality canned food in case there was going to be a squabble. Luna seemed to be much more yappy and finished the canned food much more quickly. It could be that the yappiness has nothing to do with the fact that she practically inhaled the canned food, but I thought it might have been involved somehow. Of course, she usually is a bit more yappy in new environments too, so I could be wrong. We brought along the dehydrated raw organ meats and still fed her those at night.

We noticed no change in health from the few days that she was on high quality canned food. As we only fed her this food for a few days, I don't know whether she would continue to be this healthy on a consistent canned diet. It would be more expensive though, since we are not willing to feed her cheaper canned food made from dead/dying/diseased/disabled roadkill carcasses (slight exaggeration).

We will be visiting the other grandmother at the end of this month. This one is not a fan of the raw diet and there is probably not much that will change her mind on that. We will be bringing canned food, but will also be bringing dehydrated raw organ meats to give her at night (liver and kidney) or as treats (heart).

March Raw Diet Update

Here's a comprehensive list of the variety of animal meat and organs that Luna has had:

• Chicken leg quarters


• Chicken giblets


• Whole cornish hens, including giblets (but without feathers, head, feet, guts, etc)


• Turkey neck and giblets


• Beef shank


• Beef organs: liver, kidney, spleen, heart


• Various fish: mackerel pike, sardines, weakfish


• Lamb shank


• Duck, including giblets


• Ox lips


• Rabbit


• Frog legs


• One small lizard at my parents' house


• One small moth that got into our house a few months ago

Luna's health has been maintained at the status quo, which is fine. Every now and then she has black-ish poop, but then it goes away. The vet says it could indicate upper digestive system bleeding or upset. We give her one half of a Pepcid AC (per vet orders) and it goes away.

Breath is not much of an issue, unless she is panting right in our face. Purportedly, raw fed dogs do not have bad breath, but this certainly is not the case with our pup.

While we were in Florida, she had fish for three meals within the span of a week (twice more than usual). Whatever the cause (we postulate that it was the increased fish intake), her fur seemed to be even softer than usual. We do try not to go too crazy with fish feeding, since some fish are known to be a source of thiaminase, an enzyme which metabolizes the essential vitamin B1, or thiamin. Thiamin itself is mostly found in vegetable sources, which we don't feed Luna much at all. Thus the restriction on weekly fish intake.

The USDA Nutrient Database has become one of my favorite nutrient references for Luna, since it even has nutrition information on raw meats and organs. It even has information regarding amino acid amounts, which are not listed on food labels. However, it's a bit cumbersome to try to compare two separate products. So I put together a simple comparison spreadsheet, listing nutrients for beef organs.

Owing to the findings from the database and the spreadsheet, spleen has a found a role as a special niche item in Luna's diet. Although liver is, hands down, the overall best multivitamin foodstuff for raw fed animals, spleen trumps liver in the categories of vitamin C and iron. The vitamin C content is notable because many raw feeders feel the need to supplement it. It is mostly found in fruits and vegetables, which couldn't even be called an insignificant part of Luna's diet. The iron content in the spleen would probably be helpful for a pet who's had recent blood loss. The high iron content of spleen makes sense, considering the spleen is a repository for extra red blood cells, and also creates red blood cells.

Judging by the fact that spleen has high iron content probably because of its hematopoietic role, I deduce that red bone marrow also has comparatively high iron content, since marrow is the primary producer of red blood cells. I have not been able to find much information on the actual nutritional content of bone marrow, which is why I had to take such leaps in logic.

Okay, let's see a show of hands (or comments) for anyone who actually read through all that. I don't blame any of you for skipping it, especially if you don't have pets or are not especially concerned with their nutrition. For anyone who raw feeds, your show of hand only counts half. And anyone who might come to this post looking for raw feeding info only counts half too.

Korean Food Experiment

Inquiring minds want to know: is eating Korean food cheaper long-term than American food? Will eating Korean food - which tends to be lower in meats and fats but higher in vegetables and carbs than American food - be better for our health? JunkMale and I intend to find out. For the next 4 weeks or so, we will attempt to go on a Korean diet.

The picture above is from after our dinner tonight and right before our dessert of fruit. At the bottom of the picture is 잡채 (japchae), which JM's mom sent home with us yesterday. Since I am not able to go to the Korean market until tomorrow, the side dishes were a bit lacking. From the left around clock-wise is mixed rice, potatoes, and seaweed. Dessert will be mangoes and oranges, again courtesy of JM's mom. :-D

Our weekly grocery budget is $50. So, for this 4-week experiment, the goal budget is $200. Everything we ate tonight was either given to us for free, or we already had around the house. I made a trip to the good old American grocery store earlier today to buy 2 gallons of organic milk (on sale!!), 18 Eggland's Best eggs, soy milk, cereal (OK, so we're still having American breakfasts... but in our defense, that's what we ate at the in-law's), and a few non-food items. The total spent so far is $20.

Tomorrow is the big spending day, as I make a trip to the Korean market. Unlike with American food, I will probably not be able to make a weekly shopping trip there, so I will have to buy just as much food as I think we will eat before it spoils.

I will keep you posted on how things go!