What are we feeding our kids?

Today we have a guest post by my wonderful step-mother, Cathy Finnesgard.

Trick or Treat

Here’s a little gem I picked up from the trick-or-treat basket at work—Halloween fruit snacks. Yum! What do you suppose is in them? Fruit, do you think?

Maybe…
Would you consider them a healthy treat for your kids?
Let’s see…

I see fruit juice as the first ingredient (apple, pear). Then corn syrup AND sugar. What’s that at the bottom? White mineral oil? MINERAL OIL? Is that food? And what’s that next ingredient? Wax? But, there’s an asterisk pointing to a possible concern… it adds just a trivial amount of fat. Oh, I feel much better now. I was really worried my child might get too much fat, because fat is so dangerous, you know. But no, only mineral oil and wax – probably not enough to hurt anyone…provided, of course, the child eats only one little packet. What about two packets? What about two packets every other day? But don’t worry, there’s essentially NO fat, and that’s the biggest thing, after all. And they promise “freshness and quality.” Whew! I was worried there for a minute.

Let’s look at mineral oil just for kicks. It’s used in the candy to keep the pieces from sticking together. You can actually feel the oil on the surface of the pieces. Mineral oil is liquid petroleum. It is a byproduct of the distillation of petroleum in the process of making gasoline and other products from crude oil. It is not a food; it is considered a drug when taken internally. Mineral oil is used to treat constipation. It coats the intestinal surface so that water isn’t absorbed into the body. Due to this property it also interferes with the body’s ability to absorb vitamins and other nutrients from food. So, how much of that vitamin C they infuse into this product do you think your child will actually absorb?

Now what about the carnauba wax? Not to worry, it’s made from a plant. That makes it okay, I suppose, right? From About.com, “Carnauba wax consists of fatty acid esters (80-85%), fatty alcohols (10-16%), acids (3-6%) and hydrocarbons (1-3%). It is around 20% esterified fatty diols, 10% methoxylated or hydroxylated cinnamic acid, and 6% hydroxylated fatty acids. Carnauba wax has a very high melting point of …180-187 °F. It is harder than concrete and nearly insoluble in water and ethanol.” (Did you follow all that? Even the spell-checker had trouble with half those words.) But, don’t worry—it’s non-toxic and hypoallergenic—and you can eat it, apparently. Here are some of its uses: furniture and car wax, cosmetics, the coating on dental floss, and the coating on candy (helps with that hard shiny coat, like you find on M&Ms). I’m not sure what it’s doing in gummy-chewy “treats” like these, but we can be 100% sure of its freshness and quality.

What’s the lesson in all this? There are 17 (at least) ingredients in this little 80-calorie bag of mysterious processed chemicals masquerading as food.

Why not just eat the apple? Your body knows what to do with the apple.

Cathy Finnesgard
November 8, 2011

Thanksgiving Menu

Today I’ll be working on our Thanksgiving menu.  I think I’ll be doing things a bit simpler this year because I want to spend time with my family not in the kitchen.  I’ll also be making as much as I can ahead of time.  We’re not having any guests, just my husband and the 4 kids.  So I started looking through my menu last year, remember how good everything was, and thought I would share that with you.

• Turkey:  I made a simple Spice Butter from Martha Stewart rubbed on the turkey and roasted at 325F until thermometer reads 180F.  It was amazing!
• Green Beans:  Instead of a green bean casserole, I made Balsamic Green Beans with Roasted Red Peppers.  This year I plan on making this with my lacto-fermented red peppers added at the end so the probiotic yumminess isn’t destroyed by too much heat.
• Pumpkin:  Instead of pumpkin pie, this Pumpkin Custard from the Nourished Kitchen was great.  
• Mashed Potatoes:  Another goodie from the Nourished Kitchen, Herbed Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes.
• Stuffing:  Beef, Celery, Walnut and Apple “Stuffing”.  This grain free paleo recipe rocked my socks!  I was so surprised at how delicious it was.  A-ma-zing.
• Cranberry Relish:  I can’t find the original recipe I used last year but it was very similar to this Cranberry Relish, subbing honey for sugar and real mandarin oranges for canned ones.

Come to think of it, I may just do this menu again.  It was awesome…why reinvent the wheel?

Our Journey with Autism

Reblogging from my old personal blog:

I’ve had quite a few people asking me about autism, ADHD and diet recently so I thought a blog post would be appropriate.
This is one of the main reasons I’m as obsessed with nutrition as I am.  I’ve seen first hand the drastic effect diet can have on behavior.  (This is the only digital picture I could find near the time of his diagnosis)
 
Almost 8 years ago, our oldest son (referred to as A#1 in all my posts), was diagnosed with autism shortly before he turned 3.  We were noticing signs from the time he was a small baby but being first time parents, we didn’t realize they were signs.  The first sign was lack of eye contact.  We just thought it was funny how he would do everything in his power to not look at us when we were holding him.  My mom said we should mention it to the doctor but I didn’t see why.  I had no idea that lack of eye contact was a sign for anything.  He was slow to talk, but I’m not a big talker myself so I just thought I didn’t talk to him enough.  By the time he was 2 with only a couple words and lots of jibberish, we were getting concerned.  I was especially concerned because he seemed to not understand us at all either.  I knew babies comprehension was usually larger than their expressive language.  My mom again told us we should mention it to the doctor, but I still didn’t didn’t believe something was wrong.
And the obsessions!  When people would tell me their child was obsessed with something like cars, I would laugh and say they had no idea what obsession was.  My child was obsessed.  Fans, wheels, washing machines (basically anything that spun), electrical outlets and phones.  Oy the phones!  We actually had to lock our phone in a kitchen cabinet out of his reach to keep him from calling people at age 2.  We had “time and temp” programmed into the phone so he could “talk” to someone when no one else was available.
The breaking point was a conversation my sister had with my uncle’s sister, a special ed teacher who worked mostly with autistic children.  We had been to a birthday party at my aunt and uncle’s house where Barb was able to interact with A#1.  She spotted the signs right away.  God bless her for saying something to my sister.  My sister very gently let me know what Barb had said so I finally had the kick in the butt to make some phone calls.  I had no idea that autism had many different faces, not just the face of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.
So now we’ll jump forward a few months after confirming with a child clinical psychologist and early childhood experts with the school, high functioning autism.  Here I need to thank my mom and Uncle Munch for instilling basic nutrition facts in me from the start.  My mom used the Feingold diet with us kids when we were small so I was well aware of the fact that diet can affect behavior.  The first thing I did with Alex was start researching diet and autism.  I was already aware of the gluten/casein connection but knew there had to be more.
I stumbled upon the SCD (specific carbohydrate diet) and it seemed to be the answer.  I purchased the book, “Breaking the Vicious Cycle” and immediately changed his diet.  Basically you remove anything that takes effort for you body to digest.  Protein and monosaccharides are what you can eat.  Meat, nuts, properly cultured dairy only, cooked fruits and veggies, that’s it.  No grains, no startches.  The key to a diet like this is to focus on what you can have and not what you can’t.  While it may seem restrictive, it’s incredibly healthy.  To make it easier on Alex, the whole family ate this way for the most part (we’d sneak forbidden foods when he was sleeping).  For 2 years he ate this way.  We noticed within months of starting the diet, his vocabulary increased exponentially.  His activity level was more on the level of other boys his age, he could handle change better and better, hand flapping disappeared, obsessions… well, that’s about the only thing we still deal with.  He’s spinning my salad spinner right now as I’m writting this.  But salad spinners are pretty cool…
We were on the strict SCD for 2 years and slowly worked over to a modified gluten free/casein free diet.  Sugar is very strictly limited, no soy and limited grains as well.  He seems to do totally fine on unpasteurized cow milk (it’s interesting that we tolerate unpasteurized but not pasteurized).  We also follow the Weston Price Foundation guidelines of eating real foods: Meats, eggs and milk fed on pasture; cod liver oil and sunlight; lots of fresh veggies; bone broths; lacto-fermented foods, yogurt and all sorts of probiotics.  We’ve gotten to the point where if he gets wheat on accident, he’s fine but I still won’t add it back into our diet as a regular guest.  Maybe at some point I’ll be ready to try soaked/sprouted wheat or true sourdough bread, but I’m still scared of gluten.

Recently I came across and new diet called GAPS (gut and psychology syndrome) diet.  From what I understand, it’s like a mix of the SCD and the Weston A. Price Foundation principles.  This is the diet I point people to now.  http://www.gapsdiet.com
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After having A#1 on the diet for a few years, I noticed that I too have a gluten intolerance.  I was in denial for the longest time, but when I realized my morning sickness symptoms were exactly the same as my sister’s gluten intolerant symptoms (yes, it runs in the family) I was finally convinced.  Apparently it hits me much harder while pregnant.  I was able to enjoy my last pregnancy almost completely morning sickness free!
Back to A#1, now he’s 10 1/2 and doing superbly awesome!  His pediatrician a few years back told us to just forget the diagnosis.  Aside from a few quirks (salad spinner, driving us nuts with computers and lawn mowers), he’s a perfectly normal boy.  Well behaved, social, loving, intelligent, all around awesome kid.

I love talking nutrition and kids so if anyone has any questions, please ask.  Email me or comment below.  I’d love to hear from you.

Meet Effie

Meet Effie, my new pet.  Effie is water kefir grains from Cultures for Health and yes, she most definitely is alive.  Effie consists of lactic acid bacteria and yeast living happily together.  She eats sugar and makes a yummy fizzy beverage very similar in benefits to milk kefir.  The only reason I keep white sugar in the house is to feed Effie.  Effie is actually my 3rd water kefir pet.  The first accidentally got cooked in the oven (that’s where I kept her warm but I forgot to take her out when I turned the oven on).  The second died as a result of neglect. After our house flooded I just forgot about her and after about 6 weeks, she was gone.  So our new Effie came in the mail today and is sitting happily on our counter rehydrating and in a few days we’ll be able to enjoy this natural soda again.  By the way Effie is short for Effervescent.  

How to feed Effie

1/4 cup sugar (white or rapadura)

1 quart water

You might need to warm the water up a bit to get the sugar to dissolve.  Allow to cool to room temperature.  Add 1-2 tbsp worth of kefir to the sugar/water mixture.  Effie likes minerals so if you want to add a dab of molasses or a few pieces of egg shell, that would make her happy.  We have well-water so she gets plenty here.  

Let Effie set loosely covered (I use a coffee filter) for 24-48 hrs.  The longer she sets, the more sugar she consumes and the less sweet your kefir will be.  You should notice bubbles rising to the surface.  Strain Effie from the sugar water and you can either start another batch or put her in a jar of water and store in the fridge for up to about a week.  She needs to be fed after a week.

Now you can either consume the water kefir as is or turn it into a fizzy “soda”.

To make her really fizzy and tasty, we’ll add juice and let set overnight, tightly contained.

I usually add about 1 part juice to 4 parts kefir but you can adjust the ratio to taste.  Orange juice is my favorite. Until I can get my hands on some Grolsch Flip Top Bottles, I just use old apple cider vinegar bottles and screw the cap on tight.  

Don’t forget your juice kefir!  If you let it set too long during the second fermentation, you might get an eruption.

Why Drink Water Kefir?
It’s filled with all sorts of good bacteria that your tummy needs for good digestion and health.  Way more bugs than yogurt!  For a list of what’s in it check it out here, http://www.culturesforhealth.com/water-kefir-grains-composition-bacteria-yeast

For the love of all things pickled!

I have loved pickles since I was a small girl. I only recently discovered that pickles can actually be good for you, when made the old fashioned way. Before canning, there was lacto-fermentation using just salt or salt and whey (hence the lacto part). Pickling foods this way not only helps preserve them, it improves their digestion, boosts their vitamin content, and is full of life! Good life. The kind of life you want living in your guts. Probiotic yumminess!

So a blog about pickles? Yeah, why not.