food
Morning Sickness: A Rant
I try to make healthy, balanced and sustainable food choices. That is always my goal in shopping and cooking and selecting restaurants. And one would think, wouldn’t one, that during pregnancy, this goal would only be that much more important? One would. Think.
But here is a sampling of a typical pre-pregnancy menu in this household: Pot Roast of locally raised beef and garden veggies, local greens salad with homemade bread. Or lamb chops with a balsamic reduction and local blue potato wedges with garden squash pie.
Now, during the worst phase of the first trimester: Pizza and cookies. Fast food hamburger and fries. Major-chain restaurant spaghetti and meatballs. Velveeta Shells and Cheese. Seriously, the best (healthy balanced and/or sustainable) that I can do for a satisfying meal is a loaded baked potato, fruit and a green salad, but preferably prepared by someone else. And then I’ll need a cupcake in a couple of hours, and another before bed.
The culprit here: morning sickness. The very mechanism that is designed to help me make safe food choices is the stick in my culinary spokes. Before I was ever pregnant, I envisioned morning sickness as passing waves of nausea, punctuated by some vomiting. The version that I’ve gotten, though, is the constant seasickness that has changed my entire relationship with food. I know that it is temporary, but I am appalled at my food choices lately.
I realize that the biological point of morning sickness and the weird cravings/aversions is also to help my body gain excess fat to store, as well as to keep a safe distance from potentially hazardous things like raw meat. But the things that I’m craving have their definite downsides: The processed food with the preservatives and additives and high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils and food coloring and…….ech……just making myself feel ill. I’m sure you get my point: When you rely on food that someone else has made for you, and that relationship is a distant one, you tend to ingest a lot of crap that is not beneficial to your own body, let alone a tiny vulnerable bean growing inside you.
When I first found out about my first pregnancy, I quickly ordered the book “Eating for Pregnancy” to make sure that my nutritional i’s would be dotted and t’s would be crossed. I never made a single recipe from the book, though – as soon as morning sickness kicked in, I couldn’t even look at a recipe, let alone shop productively in a grocery store. I lamented to my OB, who assured me that my former pre-pregnancy diet would be enough to sustain my body through the first trimester. “If you ate well before you were pregnant”, she said, “you’ll be fine”. I hope to heck she’s right.
Pregnancy: a new category at CIE
If I could choose one event in my life that, more than any other, furthered my awareness of product ingredients and how they affect the human body, it would have been my pregnancy in 2007. Most newly pregnant women are pummelled with the basic information on what to avoid during pregnancy, and in most cases, these things were no surprise: raw/undercooked meat, smoking, illicit drugs, unpasteurized cheese, cat litter……….but aside from the pamphlet list that you get from the doctor, there are actually very many more products and drugs and airborne things to know about; something that I learned slowly over the course of the nine months before the Little One’s birth.
Just this morning, MSNBC ran a bit about the rise in autism rates; it was 1 in 150 during my last pregnancy. Now, just 2 1/2 years later, it is 1 in 91. Although no one can or wants to say definitively what is causing this rise, I think most of the scientific community agrees that, in addition to the genetic factor, it is a result of multiple toxic exposure during pregnancy. Therefore, limiting such exposure when we are trying to conceive and when we are pregnant is the goal here. But how to go about doing that? That standard doctor’s list is a good place to start. I will do my best to continue it here in this category over the coming months; and I am now invested in the subject as well — we are expecting our next little bundle in May.
A Less Toxic Tomorrow?
If you’re like me, you were caught pretty off-guard over the big headlines the last few years regarding toxins in our everyday lives: Melamine in pet food, Bisphenol-A in our plastics, lead paint on our toys………and because I was caught off-guard, I was furious. Prior to our pets dying, I had heard not even a whisper of the potential for my cat’s food to contain a life-threatening toxic chemical, and plastics…….well, we live in a plastic society, for chrissakes, even a good recycler/reuser such as myself was not aware of the dangers of releasing toxic chemicals into whatever the plastic’s contents if it was heated, or gasp……reused too often.
And these were things that I and my family and my pets had previously taken into our bodies without the slightest sense of the havoc that they could wreak. Infuriating. All the more infuriating because I know that for every big headline/melamine/BPA/lead paint story, there are a hundred more that we still don’t know about. And manufacturers who knowingly use such toxic chemicals have not been adequately regulated by a looooong shot. Just taken to task after the fact, which is really not a help to us at all. In fact, I really don’t understand why people, en masse, aren’t far more outraged than they are.
At least help is on the way, in the form of a plan designed to actually regulate the manufacturer’s use of toxins in those products that many of use freely and willfully every day without question: “The Obama administration last night unveiled the broad outlines of a proposal to overhaul the regulation of thousands of chemicals used in consumer products and the workplace, calling for more testing and greater authority to restrict toxic products. The plan, which would require legislation, would replace an existing system that is widely seen as ineffective – so much so that it did not allow the government to ban asbestos, a known carcinogen, decades ago”.
Thank you, Obama administration. This is a gift to my family, my pets, and all of us here in the US. This is exactly how the government needs to take care of its people. Thank you.
Fisher Paykel Dish Drawer: A Review
Because the repairman will be here this afternoon, and not, as I was told yesterday, this morning; I find myself with a little time to burn in which I’d like to write about my experience with the dishwasher that warranted the aforementioned repair call: The Fisher Paykel Double Dish Drawer.
We bought it in 2004, in the midst of our whole house renovation, for our newly constructed kitchen. We chose it because it was not only innovative and beautiful, but liked the idea of being able to run two loads of dishes simultaneously. We entertain a lot, and because of our renovation project, we had been without a dishwasher for long enough that two loads at once sounded like heaven. At the outset, we loved it. It looks great in our kitchen and is nearly quiet as a mouse. For a three year stretch, we would have had only positive things to say about it. Then came 2007, and our troubles began. Sadly enough, by this time our two-year service warranty had expired.
The plastic brackets holding up the top drawer broke, causing the drawer to stick and rendered the top unit unuseable. We had them replaced. Within a month, they broke again. We had them replaced again. But this time, the weight of the top drawer on the bottom had caused some leakage, and the resulting water spill resulted in the frying of the sensor and control panel underneath both units. We had it replaced. The following year, the motor on the top unit broke. We had it replaced.
This time, this year, today, the plastic brackets have broken again. In fact, they broke two weeks ago, and though I called for the repairman immediately, the parts have been agonizingly slow to arrive. I understand the brackets are now made of metal, which, fingers crossed, will offset this pesky problem from happening in the future. But in the meantime, we have invested at least twice the purchase price of the Dish Drawer in its repair, and I find myself fantasizing about an alternate reality in which we just chose another make of dishwasher back in 2004.
In my experience, in this case, sometimes expensive is expensive, too.
09/24: edited to add: According to the serviceman last night, the brackets (though he called them “actuators”) are not now being made from metal. We get the same plastic ones. Again. And we were his second F-P Dish Drawer repair of the day. That might not be a big whoop in, say, Chicago, but we are very much downstate. According to him there are only about 25 Dish Drawer owners in his service area. Doesn’t bode well.
02/16/10, edited to add: a few weeks ago, the actuators broke again. Yep, the same ones that we had replaced in September. Guess how long the warranty on the new parts lasted? 90 days. How long did it take for them to break on us? Just over 90 days.
07/30/10, edited to add: The last straw: last week, the actuators broke again. Rather than call our repairman, we went dishwasher shopping, and adopted a brand new Whirlpool Tall Tub. No bells or whistles, just a good, inexpensive, well rated dishwasher. Our journey with Fisher Paykel is over. Well, almost. It’s currently sitting all alone in our garage, and we’re thinking about creative ways of getting rid of it and venting our frustrations at the same time. Target practice, maybe? See if it’ll catch on fire? Any suggestions?
Smart Choices?
Advertisers are very keen on making consumers feel good about their purchases: smart, beautiful, trendy, healthy, knowledgeable. Problem is, for us consumers, that the market is flooded with choices, and actually making well-considered choices from among our options would be at least a full time job. And who among us can take on another full time job? So advertisers operate in the business of shorthand, assuring us that we don’t really need to look into our options, because what they’re offering is the best choice anyway.
I can’t begrudge advertisers for this. I can, however, begrudge the food industry for this; for teaming up with nonprofits in the so-called “Smart Choices” program, wherein certain food items receive a big green check mark on their labeling, leading the consumer to believe that by purchasing the product that bears the check mark, they are making a smart choice (and the implication is: smarter choice than the products that don’t bear the green check). I can understand that food choices, in large part, do govern our health, and agree that measures taken to nudge the consumer towards healthier options are well worth the effort. But the criteria for selection of the “smart choices” foods is simply wrongheaded.
As reported in the New York Times, the following paragraph alone ought to illustrate just how wrongheaded the standards are: “Froot Loops qualifies for the label because it meets standards set by the Smart Choices Program for fiber and Vitamins A and C, and because it does not exceed limits on fat, sodium and sugar. It contains the maximum amount of sugar allowed under the program for cereals, 12 grams per serving, which in the case of Froot Loops is 41 percent of the product, measured by weight. That is more sugar than in many popular brands of cookies.” Hmmm…..is it that Froot Loops naturally contains those ingredients that help it to meet the Smart Choices standard? Nope. They are additives.
In fact, this type of program only incentivizes the food industry to add synthetic vitamins and fiber to processed foods that have been stripped of any nutritional value, a practice that has long made my head spin. Conversely, there seem to be no guidelines for the questionable additives that are placed in store bought food: preservatives, sugar substitutes, flavor enhancers, GMOs, food coloring, and the like. Wonder if Morgan Spurlock would do 30 Days on a Smart Choices Program diet and monitor his results?
Read all about the Smart Choices program on their website. And for added fun, do a search among the product categories. This is the telling part — how very few products are listed, represented by even fewer corporations that manufacture almost exclusively processed food. Among the few that are in my pantry at the moment: Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Quaker Instant Oatmeal (maple and brown sugar). Not exactly shining beacons of healthy food choices.
The only true shorthand I can think of that might be worthy of such labeling practice is this: Don’t eat anything with ingredients that your grandmother wouldn’t recognize. But the food industry wouldn’t be very gung-ho on that one, would they?
Updated 10/26: Success! Kudos to the news media for staying on top of this story, and to Gaga for the link: Food Label Program to Suspend Operations
Top Chef Masters Finale
Yes, this post is late; I’ve only just watched the finale last night, almost a week after it first aired………..but it compelled me to post anyway. Spoiler alerts abound for anyone out there who hasn’t watched the episode…..
For me, watching it was agony and ecstasy — Ecstasy at the perfect challenge for the final three chefs: An autobiographical meal. Wow. For these chefs, this was truly the perfect device for them to tell the story of their lives and careers and relationship with food. Watching all three meet this challenge was better tv than an entire season of Top Chef. I was positively glued to it. The courses to be prepared were as follows:
- First course: First food memory
- The second: The dish that made you want to become a chef
- The third: A dish related to the opening of your first restaurant
- The fourth: The future, and where it is/you are going
Now, the usual element in Top Chef challenges is to take a chef out of his/her comfort zone in some way; as if to say “yeah, you’re good, but what about with one hand tied behind your back“? (insert evil laugh). This was entirely different. So geared was it towards actually allowing these professionals to naturally shine, they actually delivered each contenstant’s personal sous chef to the set to help prepare the meals.
Here’s the agony: how the hell do you judge this thing? The panel of food critics were the same as the entire season, but no matter how well developed your palette is or how well you can articulate your critiques of food, there is just no clear way to judge the meals that the chefs created. Seriously, these weren’t just standalone dishes, these were exceptionally well told stories. I’m not sure the judges handled the food-as-narrative approach as best they could. The teacher in me wanted a rubric. In any case, I’m fairly certain that in this finale, the chefs outperformed the critics. I could not listen to anything that James Oseland had to say about the food without breaking out into laughter. His singular ability to pick apart dishes was utterly contrary to the mood that the challenge had set, and he had to go to such ridiculous lengths to criticize the food that it was truly comical. “Beautiful presentation, but the individual dishes were a little further apart from each other on the plate than I would have liked….”. (not actually said, but offered to illustrate my point).
So one guy walked away a winner, which meant that his designated charity received a 100k donation. But it felt all wrong this time, liking picking the best scientist from a lineup of Newton, Einstein, and Curie. This is where the show stumbled big for the first time. As an avid watcher of the show, my vote rests squarely on more time devoted to the stories behind the dishes in this challenge, making it less about who wins, because in this case, each chef was truly a winner.
An unexpected cure for headaches?
Like many women, I have chronic headaches. I know my triggers: bright sunlight, squinting, certain smells…….but really the nasty ones come on when my hormones are in flux, and as this happens monthly, I’ve just come to accept it as inevitable. They’re pretty mean, and even ibuprofen doesn’t seem to help. In fact, I had never really encountered anything that offered lasting relief. Until……..
I keep trail mix in my car. It’s great to have as a snack so that I’m not forced into the emergency bag of Doritos at the gas station. It’s filling and, given that it’s good quality stuff, nutritious. I usually just buy it bulk at the natural food store, but I’ve grown a little tired of their offerings, so tried something totally new: Navitas Naturals Trail Power
I don’t know which ingredient is responsible for this, or whether it’s in the combination, but I have tested this effect several times, so I know that it’s definitely something in this mix. After trying everything (ok, everything save for the stuff from Big Pharma) for most of my adult life, I completely stumbled on this by accident. Maybe it will do the same for you!
11/09/09 Edited to add: A fellow blogger who suffers from debilitating migraines gave the trail mix a shot; unfortunately to no avail. Still holding out hope that it works for someone! Please drop me a line if you’ve given it a try: esnieto(at)earthlink(dot)net
