Junebug on a String

I mentioned yesterday that I’d decided to give my body a break and gave up coffee, at least for a while.  On purpose.

Oddly enough, five days in, I’ve got every bit as much energy as before, and possibly more, which I totally blame on that whole sleeping thing.  I’m actually SLEEPING now.  (Well, not RIGHT now, but you know what I mean.)  I still only konk out for about six hours at a time, and tend to get up at or before six a.m., just because that’s the way my body’s built, but I feel a TON better than I used to.  A girl could get used to this.

One of the things I didn’t mention yesterday, except in passing, is that I also cut out fake food, avoiding, in particular, high fructose corn syrup.  People have been asking me if I’m on some kind of Plan, or what I’m doing, so I thought I’d explain it here for the interested.  (Or the unwitting, who just happened upon this post expecting to see pretty pictures.  Sorry.  Call it a Blogjack for a second.)

On the way to Purl Jam this past weekend, I threw in an audiobook that I’ve had sitting here for a while now, and never did get around to “reading”.  (I do a lot of ear-reading when I drive.  Keeps me awake.)  Michael Pollan’s  In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto came on after the book I’d chosen had ended, and by the end of the first chapter, I was scared.  And pissed off.  But mostly, a little nervous.

See, the whole premise of the thing is that we’ve become a society of orthorexics, focusing so much on the components of food (various nutrients the scientists have identified) that we’re failing to realize that it’s making us sick.  Which, I know, makes the book sound like a preachy snooze of a read, about as much fun as watching paint dry.  But it’s not.  It’s well-written and manages to be fairly entertaining, even while it’s making you want to drive on over to the nearest “food” factory and light it on fire.

There’s a part that discusses, for instance, how most of what we see in supermarkets isn’t actually FOOD at all.  It’s “food products”.  It’s faux food.  It’s wannabe food.  It’s chemical lab experiments like Frankenstein’s monster masquerading as food, and boasting all kinds of GOOD FOR YOU messages on the packaging, as if by sheer label real-estate, the manufacturers can somehow WILL the slop into being actual food.  But it’s not.

And, in fact, he goes into great detail about how those labels are made to be confusing, right down to the FDA “qualified claims” nonsense, which just about ANY crappy thing can be said to be “good for you”, as long as, in very tiny print, it says that a scientist, somewhere, under very controlled conditions, was able to make, say, Twinkies more healthy than, say, bashing in one’s own head with a hammer.  It’s complete crap, and infuriating that the very agency that’s supposed to oversee this kind of thing is not only allowing it to happen, but endorsing it.  ARGH.  How hard is it to feed a family these days?!

::deep breaths being taken by the peeved blogger…one moment please::

At one point, Pollan mentions the ingredients in a loaf of bread.  Flour, water, yeast, and a pinch of salt.  That’s it.  That’s all bread’s made of, folks.  I know this because I MAKE IT.  That’s all it is.

Then Pollan reads off the ingredients of a particular brand of “smart” whole-grain white bread.

There were thirty-two ingredients.  THIRTY. TWO.  Most of which, incidentally, were unpronounceable.  And if you could, by twist of fate, pronounce them by sounding them out, you’d have no idea what they are.  Or how to identify them in a police lineup.  But they’re there, being EATEN BY YOU, in a loaf of BREAD that’s supposed to be “healthier” than other bread.

It takes thirty two chemicals to make something “healthy”?  Really?  Really?!

::facepalm::

Oh, hell no.  I’ll take my dumb four-ingredient bread over a test-tube full of faux bread anyday.

By the time I got back to Greensboro, I was done.  No convenience is worth eating a literal barrel-load of chemicals every month (no, seriously — that’s about how many chemically-enhanced foods the average person eats every few months or so.).

The next day, I hit the local Farmers Market and a local butcher.  The Market’s in height of peach season, and there were tons of vendors there.  (It’s in three HUGE buildings, two of them open-air, comprising a few ACRES of vendors on the weekends.  Seriously.  I’m blessed to be in a good area for this.)    I stopped at the store for flour and sugar (beware, even of THOSE common staples — if there isn’t just one ingredient listed, be it “flour” or “sugar”, skip it.) and it’s been five days now of OH HELL NO eating around here.

And despite my clearly inferior four-ingredient bread (::eyeroll::) and the lack of little pouches and cellophane, it’s actually been a thousand times better than before.  Fresh cantaloupe for breakfast vs. a crappy over/underdone toaster streudel or pop-tart. Green stuff for lunch, with homemade dressing and local chevre.  Balsamic-roasted salmon with roasted baby potatoes and broccoli.  Mustard-basted chicken breasts stuffed with local cream cheese and tiny slivers of ham for flavor, served with three kinds of summer squash over brown rice.

I’m clearly suffering here.  (/end sarcasm)

I won’t lie — it’s more work.  There’s cooking and dishes and having to think about more than just what take-out menu to pick from.  Wild rice takes longer to cook than the little pouches of faux-rice.  Making your own bread takes about an hour (including baking time and rising time).  It takes a little longer to go through the entire farmers market than it does to pick up a flash-frozen bag of stuff from the store.  And you run the risk of looking like a granola-crunching, birkie-wearing hippie if you’re not careful.  (Especially if you knit your own cotton market bags to take with you.  Ahem.  Not that I’ve done that.  ::shifty eyes::)

But if my own experience is any indication, I can tell you that in less than a week, I’m already feeling better.  I don’t have mid-morning sugar crashes (which was likely the caramel macchiatos, since I never really ate anything in the morning before…).  I don’t get sick every time I eat (which was happening with alarming frequency — eating literally made me nauseous sometimes).  I don’t even know what other kinds of benefits could come from it, though I can say that not spending $5 a day on coffee’s been nice, and that farmers market food is way cheaper than all the pre-processed garbage, so I’m thinking the wallet’s going to be a nice side-effect.

Pollan gave several “rules” for kicking what he calls the Western Diet, and while you should totally pick up the book if you’re interested, the couple that worked for me are:

• If your grandmother wouldn’t recognize something as food, don’t buy it.  My grandmother would have probably sneered at GoGurt or “smart” bread, for example.  And she probably would have whipped my butt with the wooden spoon if she thought I was spending five bucks a day on coffee.  Just sayin’.
• If it lists more than five ingredients, don’t eat it/use it/buy it.
• If any of those five are anything you can’t pronounce or can’t recognize, don’t eat it.

It’s easier than it sounds.

A couple folks asked for this recipe, so here ’tis.  It’s freakin’ awesome over oven-baked french toast, made with day-old home-baked (inferior, four-ingredient) bread, too.

Put everything into a pan and heat it up to boiling.  Simmer until the liquid looks thick and syrupy.  The peaches’ll soften and turn brown, but taste like heaven on a plate.

(p.s.  And there’s no high fructose corn syrup, aka Liquid Death, in it, the way there is in most syrups from the store.  Go figure.)

It’ll keep for several days in the fridge, too.  Just reheat it before using.  (It’s also unwholesomely good on pork chops, which I hesitate to mention, since according to Cassie’s mom, I’m obsessed with pork.  Will explain later.)