There are worse things than having too many cookbooks. I am sure. Which is just as well.
In fact what you see here are not all as I have several scattered throughout the house constantly, by my bed, under my bed, on little tables, by the computer.... and all usually with turned pages and various bookmarks or scraps of paper hanging out (all calling me to hurry, get back and notice their little gems of wisdom) and even quite a few out on loan to various people....
Two of my very favourite food related books are
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and
Pottengers Cats, A study in Nutrition, both of which I have loaned to my SIL for a bit. I'd highly recommend them, or even if you find the £££ of the Weston Price book too eye watering to consider (I have to say though that the photographs alone are worth the purchase) then Sally Fallon's
Nourishing Traditions book has some great information on food based around Weston Prices work that is easy to read. In fact when I bought this book about five years ago I'd go as far as to say it changed my life. I have not eaten packaged 'Western' foods since. If you have never heard of Weston Price here's the jist:
He was an American Dentist who went travelling with his wife in the 1930's (and his trusty new camera) to remote pockets of civilisation all over the globe to study what they ate. His initial reason for journeying was in trying to understand why in the last 20 years his patients were coming to see him (for the first time ever) with crooked palates, not enough space in their mouths for all of their teeth, cavities from a younger and younger age and related health problems; mouth breathing rather than nose, narrow faces, pinched noses (flat footedness, club foot and difficulty in childbirth - relating to the continued narrowing of bones including the pelvis also featured).... he was sure he'd find the answer in FOOD. He did. What he found was that regardless of differences in diet, those with diets high in fat soluble vitamins A and D did not suffer from the dental maladies of the Modern West (consuming their pasteurised and nutrient deficient tinned and packaged foods, white flours and refined sugar). Diets ranged from high meat and organ and fish (Eskimos) to pork and coconuts (Philippine) to dense rye and raw dairy (Swiss Alps)... but in common the superior health of these isolate peoples could not be doubted. Mouths filled with straight teeth, wide spacious jaws, ease in birthing.... These people ate no 'white-man's' devitalised food stuff that we were putting away by the crateful, weekly. They walked a hundred miles to gather fish eggs and other sea food for children and pregnant women, such was their wisdom in recognising the importance of these precious foods. Price found their levels of A and D to be at least 10 times that of his counterparts in the USA, and directly related to how they birthed, and the health of the next generation; layed down in utero, they were the literally built of what they ate: Good Stuff.
This is echoed in my previous post where Mercola talks about a chronic deficiency in Vitamin D amongst most of us, the implications (that longer video is sooooo sooo good, I am so glad I watched it) and the fact that we can measure levels accurately now (25 Hydroxy D blood test) and then supplement accordingly or/and get more sunlight.
Here is the Weston Price Foundation. His Buddy Pottenger wrote the Pottengers Cat book where experiments were carried out via cats and the foods they ate. It was noted that the cats fed ultra pasteurised or evaporated milk and cooked meat, after three generations died in childbirth such were the skeletal deformities, or gave birth to stillborn kittens, or rejected their offspring, were bad tempered and suffered wide ranges of illness from cancers to deformities - and thus died out. The cats fed raw milk and raw organ meats, thrived generation after generation.
So suiting foods to individual mammals seems to be what counts. And if optimal nutrition provides a normalised skeletal system then it seems rational to expect that the rest of the body would be in good health. Yes? I think so.
Traditional Foods are Your best Medicine is an interesting book along these lines, I liked this alot.
Katz's
Wild Fermentation is fab for delving into the forgotten art of fermenting foods to increase their nutritional profile, and taste (plus the fermentation must be THE frugal art of storing fresh food while it is in season for the winter months to come - a Traditional task :) )
I have dipped into Kombucha and Kefir making over the years with varying success (mostly after a while my cultures died from neglect! I am BAD). I LOVE my bone broths. I do. I make them bi-weekly. Ever since reading Sally's book (and seeing how nutrient deprived kids fed on the stuff managed to halt dental decay and start developing better bones (as seen in the photographic evidence of continuous study). There is great article
here about making a good stock for your sauces and soups and such. Bone broths are high in the fat soluble vitamins, hence the notion of their being dubbed as 'Jewish penicillin'.
I eat coconut oil daily. It is the only other 'food' aside form breast milk which is high in lauric acid. It is anti bacterial, anti microbial, it balances the metabolism, it has a high smoking and so remains stable under heat.... oh, there is too much to list here, but
Bruce Fife's book is packed full of info on the stuff. But any site selling the oil also has masses of info. Just be sure you are buying the virgin, cold pressed organic stuff.
Yeah. So I am reading and re-reading and awaiting my food supplements and sticking to my no grain/sugar/dairy thing. I am liking it. I am feeling better. Twinges of aches and pains still, I am not sure why. But I am still having testing, amazing they take so long to schedule. Or not, we
are talking about the NHS here.
If nothing here in this post grabs you or you are time and cash short them just watch the
Mercola film. Seriously. I can't believe I am plugging a guy who often plugs his own products (he does not in this film tho!), but I am, it is GREAT.
I am still hungry for information and advice and opinions.... I am still wanting to tweak my diet (too heavy on agave nectar for my liking :) ) and hope to start some sort of proper exercise program (as opposed to being in the garden or taking snail-slow walks with my children). Of course what I really mean is a quick power walk on my own as soon as my dh gets home, something like that... but it's a start... taking up Yoga again? Committing to practicing at night again?
One of the things that grabs me constantly as I read is the beneficial act of eating nutrient dense foods, quality, organic and ultimatley
expensive. It is, there is no denying it. We can cut costs of course by not buying any packaged foods or juices and other beverages. By shopping at local producers etc etc. But my food bill is huge. My dh will confirm it. But this is how I look at it (and I am stealing this from something I read in Mercola's book), ask yourself what can I not live without? My car? My great flat screen TV? A tropical holiday each year? New clothes every season? My body?
Well. Yes. So how come most people are just desperate to buy the cheapest nastiest foods ever? The 3 for 2 deals, the cheap cuts of factory farmed misery-meat, or trans fat loaded sugar junk that is so so cheap - we pretend this stuff is food. In reality I wonder if most of it (esp. the packaged stuff) is even recognised by the body as 'food' - something to nourish and feed us?
Well, it's a nice soap box to be on. But I'd best hop off. I am not rich alas, and I can't even remember when I last bought an item of clothing (I am shabby but probably not in a chic way). BUT I do have lovely laid-today eggs in my kitchen and some wonderful barley grass powder in my cupboard that makes me feel so good when I drink it, and some chard looking so excitingly green that I hop about when I visit my little veg patch. It's the spending on the stuff that is gone, literally with each mouthful. But it's a better investment than the TV. I'd bet my money on it - and do :)
