It Started with that Funny Ice Cream
Posted By AmyD. on September 13, 2011
Recently, I came across information regarding children’s food allergies. Anyone with any notion toward curiosity has to stop and think, when we were crashing through childhood (ahem, those of us in our 30′s and up) there weren’t these kinds of allergies and antibiotic resistant infections.
When my children were little I remember there was always a cousin or classmate who had an allergy or an ear infection. As it turns out the US began putting certain additives into our food supply in the mid-90′s and since then, food allergies have been on the rise.
I had always noticed on the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream pint that in large print they refuse to use milk from cows that have been given growth hormone in order to increase milk production. It never really occurred to me to check further into it until I read that the growth hormone given to these animals caused them to have numerous and nightmarish diseases… so the industry began giving these cows antibiotics.
All the other countries on our planet refused to use the growth hormone because it hadn’t been determined safe. Our country in all it’s “protect the profit margin at all costs” wisdom elected to use it because it hadn’t been proven dangerous.
That’s terrifying. I’ve slowly been eliminating dairy from our diets around here or I replace it with an organic substitute and we eat less dairy because, obviously, it’s expensive to eat organic. We’ve also been eliminating all processed foods – slowly, because it isn’t easy going cold turkey on something you’ve been doing without thought for years and years.
As it turns out there are numerous health issues that can be resolved through overhauling your diet including but not limited to: asthma, IBS, acid reflux, acne, depression, anxiety, autism, arthritis, allergies, headaches, etc.
In short, our westernized diet is killing us and our economy isn’t exactly set up to help us remedy that easily. If this is something that concerns you, you might want to check out az food allergy testing.
If you have tips on how to get your family away from a typical processed food diet, please leave them in the comments.
About The Author
I have a beautiful giant red bowl that I keep on the end of the kitchen counter or on the kitchen table, and I keep it full of grab and go fruits. (apples, bananas, peaches, pears, etc) It really encourages the kids to eat more fresh fruit when they can see it and don’t have to look for it in the fridge. It is a great way for them to have a healthy snack with out me feeling like I badgering them to eat healthier!
[...] It Started with that Funny Ice Cream [...]
When I had my surgery, I read “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan. I figured that given the nature of Lap-Band surgery, I would naturally be eating less so I decided that I wanted to what I was eating to be as healthy for me as possible. Given what you’ve said in your post, I think you’d really find his book interesting. It agrees with most everything you are saying here. There are some good rules of thumb in there that I do try and go by such as…
1. Don’t eat anything that makes health claims. The idea being that if a food has to ADVERTISE itself as something that is healthy, it has been altered to make it able to make that claim. Everyone knows an apple is an apple and is healthy. Tomatoes? Good. Kraft mac and cheese? Bad (but excellent for hangovers). Organic dark chocolate? Good. Betty Crocker icing in a can? Bad. I also don’t buy anything that says “low-fat” or “reduced calorie” or anything like that.
2. Shop in the outer aisles of the grocery store. Produce, is, obviously a no brainer. But you’d also be surprised at how healthy (and convenient) those bags of frozen veggies are. In general, they are flash frozen so fast after being picked that there really isn’t any processing going on. I keep my freezer stocked with frozen broccoli, corn and peas. Yes, it would be better to buy them all from a local farmers market but I’m not made of money, right?
3. Don’t buy foods with more than 5-7 ingredients and don’t buy things with ingredients that you cannot pronounce or that your great grandparents wouldn’t recognize as food.
4. You are what you eat BUT you are ALSO (and stay with mere) what what you eat eats. This is kind of what you mentioned in regards to the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Try to buy meats that come from grass-fed animals. As far as fish goes, the debate of wild-caught vs. farmed is ongoing. Wild caught fish have lived in polluted oceans are and usually caught using fairly destructive techniques. However many farm-raised fish, especially salmon, are actually DYED to be a brighter color. So that’s fairly disturbing.
Those are just a few things that we’ve been doing to try and be healthier. We don’t always stick to them by any means but I’m confident that our diet is a million times healthier than it was a year ago. We actually do eat a fair amount of dairy, it’s such a good source of protein and good dietary fats but if I had a young daughter at home, I would probably be very mindful of the dairy that she ate and make it as free from hormones as possible. I don’t actually drink milk at all but I do eat cheese, have Greek yogurt for breakfast every morning and I cook with heavy cream sometimes. Yes, I slip up. There are still times that I go for convenience instead of health. But I make far better choices than I used to make.
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