The rest of my talk

This week, I had the neat opportunity to give a little 15 minute talk about our change to processed foods. It was for a small group of lovely ladies at my church. I tried my best to whittle it down and keep it to the biggest and most important stuff we learned, but it was sure hard to do that in only 15 minutes.

I told the class very important things health wise about eating white flour, white sugar, and processed vegetable oils. I wanted so badly to tell them the huge stuff that we discovered, and that it’s given us the most amazing health and wellness we have ever experienced in our lives.

After it was over, I had a lot of self doubts. I thought to myself', ‘ Oh, no. What did I just do? I just told these good ladies with honest hearts and good desires what their beloved sweets and flour products are doing to their long term health. I told them specific facts, about heart disease, what free radicals do from the cooking oils, and cancer. What if they just don’t want to hear that? What if they still love their brownies and pasta, and know about the damage it is doing to their health, and just don’t want to do anything about it? I just came in and rained on their parade. Maybe I should just stop sharing everything I keep learning. Maybe it would be better if shut my mouth, and hopefully not offend anyone who still wants to eat the way they have been.’

These thoughts were with me as I put the kids to bed, and collapsed into bed myself that night. Then, I got a sweet text from a friend who was at my class, thanking me for the info. It sure helped. I thought, ‘Oh, thank goodness. If it was to help at least one person, then it was worth it’. I then was able to go to bed with a rested soul.

People everywhere have their agency; the gift to make choices in their lives. What a blessing Heavenly Father gave us agency, and we are not forced to do anything. Just like sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone, they can choose to either accept it or not. The same goes with this food topic. I only want to help others. I’ve been on this food/holistic journey since July last year, and I keep learning amazing things that I never knew. I wish so badly at times that I could pick up the phone and call my Mom to tell her about it, but I’m sure she’s watching from heaven above. I keep seeing the results when the knowledge is put to the test, and it has been so wonderful, physically and emotionally. Once you learn something incredible, you can’t go back to your old ways and unlearn it, you know?

Here’s a few things that I didn’t have time to mention in the 15 minutes that I wanted to say:

• Even though we’ve made all these changes and eat different, we don’t do it 100% of the time. We still eat out at restaurants here and there, order Little Ceasers Pizza (because some days you just need a break from chaos and meal preparation! :), and I let the kids eat sweets and stuff at church activities and friend’s homes. Shaun still drinks his Gatorade. I believe its not good to be extreme in anything, but to just do your best. I almost always seem to indulge on the sweets offered at other places, but here’s the thing. When I do, I notice the change in my body fast. I feel everything slowing down. I get a headache. It stinks. So, even though I will eat white sugar stuff here and there, I keep getting that reaffirmation that really don’t want to.
• Shaun and I both experienced this change together. How wonderful it has been to be on the same page with my beloved hubby. He recognized how his body felt when he got off processed foods, and loved it. He witnessed the weight loss first and increased energy, which gave me the desire to start exercising consistently. He’s been totally on board with our eating, and I’m so grateful. At first, it was funny. I gave away so much of our food, and our pantry was pretty bare. He said to me “What are we going to eat?” to which I would reply “I’m working on it”. I knew I had to find new recipes, and learn how to tweak my old ones. I found new food blogs, and learned about new ways to prepare food. The ‘Aunt Jemima’ syrup was a hard thing to get rid of. Now, we melt butter and maple syrup together for pancake syrup. It tastes infinitely better than any store bought syrup.
• I touched on this lightly in the talk, but last year I experienced something amazing. I was by myself going to the library. I got out of the car, and thought to myself ‘I’m going to jog to the front door of the library.’ I began jogging, and couldn’t believe how weightless I felt. I looked at my legs wondering ‘Am I even moving??’ I was but it felt incredible. It seriously felt like I was flying, and that I weighed as light as a feather.’ I stopped at the door, looked back, and thought ‘What just happened?’. It was all in a matter of 12 seconds. This is what happens when you stop putting damaging food into your body. Your body can perform like no other. You’re not weighed down and sluggish. Now, when I walk it feels like I’m floating, and when I run it feels like I’m flying. No exaggeration. It took some getting used to. Makes me think of that article about the basketball star Kobe Bryant. He recently changed his eating to whole foods, and cut out fructose, and refined food. He’s performing better than ever, in an age way past his prime. You can check out the article here.

So, I hope I can be helpful to anyone who wants to learn about their health. I have learned so much, but it’s a continual journey. There still is so much more to learn, and I feel I’ve only scratched the surface. I get so darn excited about it. I love how I feel. I love my hair, and my new legs. It’s just stinking fantastic, it’s happened to plenty other people out there besides me, and can happen to you, if you have the desire. Thank for putting up with me, and please feel free to email me and ask as many questions as you’d like. It never is a bother to me:)

My food journey: MSG

Ok, I must get these posts done for you all! The food journey post, containing important nutrition things I learned last year. They are so good:)

Today’s topic is on Monosodium Glutamate, also known as MSG. Horrible stuff. Below are excerpts from Dee Mcaffrey’s  book, “The Science of Skinny”.

“It has been called the nicotine of food additives because, in addition to its harmful effects on the body, it is highly addictive. Comprised of sodium and glutamic acid, MSG is a flavor enhancer that triggers our taste buds and makes us eat more and eat faster. Nearly every fast food and chain restaurant uses MSG in some form, and it is added to thousands of prepared and processed foods. The foods that contain the most MSG are processed fat free and sugar free, mainly because when fat and sugar are absent, the food is nearly flavorless, so MSG is added to enhance its flavor.

Use of MSG has doubled every decade since it was first introduced to the United States in the 1940s and, and in 2001, 3 billion pounds were manufactured.

Most sauces, dressings, canned soups, and seasoning products such as bouillon and broth contain MSG. It is the main ingredient in additives clumped under the term seasonings on food labels.

Specifically, it affects the normal appetite mechanism that controls how much we eat. It excites and stimulates our taste buds, fooling our brain to think the food tastes better than it actually does. This allows food manufacturers to use cheaper ingredients while helping the lower-quality food seem to taste good. Because MSG affects the mechanism in our brain that tells us to stop eating, we eat far beyond our normal stopping point. The substance is also known to be toxic.

Another common MSG-related symptom is a headache that feels like a tight band around the head. But the most alarming effect of MSG is its link to obesity. Scientists have observed that animals fed glutamic acid become grotesquely obese.

When the rats eat foods containing MSG, they eat more than they need to. If the lab rats are getting grotesquely obese from eating MSG, doesn’t it make sense that humans are too?

The real scary thing about MSG is that it can be hidden in nearly forty other food additives Following is a list of other additives that contain plenty of MSG:

• “Anything” hydrolyzed
• Autolyzed yeast
• Bouillon, stocks, and broths
• Calcium caseinate
• Gelatin
• Hydrolozed soy protein
• Hydrolyzed yeast
• Isolated soy protein
• Maltodextrin
• Natural Flavorings
• Seasonings
• Sodium Caseinate
• Textured soy protein
• Yeast extract

It’s important to point out here that there is no strict regulation on the word natural, and food manufacturers use it liberally, especially on patented ingredients such as ‘natural flavorings’.”

Pages 136-138

Whew! Yup, MSG is not good. The part I found most interesting is that it tricks your mind to think that the food tastes better than it really is, and that it doesn’t tell our brain that ‘I’m full’, and we over eat. Isn’t that crazy?

So, that’s the food learning for today. Thanks for stopping by to read:)

Banana Chocolate Coconut Cookies

Update: I fixed the broken link:)

I’ve been having some fun updating this good old blog of ours. To your right, I added a ‘categories’ section, as I’ll be addressing more great topics in the future. I already started labeling past posts for easy finding.

I finally updated the header! After spending a ridiculous amount of time searching for a template that I liked, I finally just went with simple, and it works.

Ok, I want to share this great cookie recipe. Since going processed free, one of my favorite things is to find good sweet recipes that taste great, and don’t damage the body. It’s quite the quest, but we’ve found a few good knockout winners along the road. Here’s one of them.

These cookies get their sweetness from the bananas and the maple syrup. I think they taste even better the next day, as I put them in the fridge, and their flavors really sink in. I usually have doubled the recipe, and it makes a great amount to feed the kids and throw in Shaun’s work lunch.

I typed up the recipe in a handy Google document. I must say I’m in love with the font of the recipe title. I am a lover of fonts! They are so darn delightful to me.

So, if you’d like to try a wonderful, processed free cookie recipe, and see what the madness is all about, click HERE, print off, and enjoy:)

What I’ve learned: White sugar

Ok, here we go! Quiet time now, so let’s see how much I can write down. The food posts are starting today, and I’ll attempt to hit the big one; refined white sugar.

Before July of this year, I had no idea about the ‘poisonous effects’ of this stuff below, this stuff that we all love to eat, including me, especially at lots of activities at my church. You guys remember all the sweet recipes I would post on FB. Now, I’m going back to some of my white sugar recipes, and tweaking them to be processed free.

I studied about refined sugar from a lot of health sites, Livestrong, organic food blogs, but the most detailed and accurate source of knowledge I found came from Dee Mcaffrey, and organic chemist and nutritionist, who lost 100 pounds from eating processed free foods, and kept if off for 20 years. She is a former sugar addict, and went back to school to learn about the body’s chemistry relating to food. She has a great website, Processed Free America. 

I'm going to share some tidbits from her book, ‘The Science of Skinny. Start understanding your body’s chemistry, and stop dieting forever.’ I like that last line. It seems we live in a nation that is full of dieting, all sorts of diets. Wouldn’t it be nice to not diet to lose weight and be healthier? Totally possible.

Chapter 4 is a super chapter of information! Here goes:

“Seductive and sweet, refined sugar is more a drug than it is a food, it is a poison. Aside from quickly adding pounds of fat to our belly, butt, and thighs, sugar interferes with many body functions and slowly and deleteriously robs us of important nutrients. The result is a myriad of complications and degenerative diseases such as allergies, arthritis, gallstones, colitis, depression, gout, diabetes, hypoglycemia, heart disease, osteoporosis, obesity, and cancer (particularly breast cancer and colon cancer) to name just a few!” Page 49

How sugar starts out:

Before sugar becomes the white sugar we all know, it starts out as Sugarcane, a plant similar to bamboo.

“Sugarcane is brimming with vitamins, minerals, fibers, enzymes, and phytonutrients. If you walked into a field of sugarcane and cut off a piece to chew on, not only would you experience a yummy, sweet, yet dark flavored treat, but you would also get nourished. Sugarcane is rich in the minerals calcium, copper, and zinc. In addition to vitamins and minerals, sugarcane contains a high concentration of phytonutrients, antioxidants, and numerous other health-supportive compounds. The refinement of sugarcane removes all of these wonderful nutrients, leaving a nutritionally empty substance.” P. 49

Dee then goes into great detail of the steps of refining the sugar. I’ll let you read the book on that, because it’s a lot to write down.

Sugar depletes calcium:

“Although most people don’t understand their body’s nutritional or digestive requirements, our body knows what it needs. That’s why raw sugar cane is brimming with enzymes and nutrients. By contrast, refined sugar is devoid of nutrients and the built in enzyme systems that exist in raw sugarcane. So when you eat a cookie made with refined sugar, your body freaks out. It knows that to properly digest the sugar, it needs these missing nutrients and the corresponding enzymes. Therefore, your body is forced to adapt by pulling stored nutrients (especially calcium) from your bones, tissues, and teeth, just to digest the sugar you just ate. This is called leaching. The depletion of calcium leads to a whole host of health problems, including obesity.” p. 58

Sugar and cancer:

Dee talks a lot about insulin and the job it does in your body, fructose that goes directly to your liver to be stored as fat, and about insulin resistance leading to the development of heart disease. Lots of details to read, but here’s a snippet:

“In his April 13, 2011 New York Times article, “Is Sugar Toxic?”, Gary Taubes writes, ‘One of the diseases that increases with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome is cancer. The connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first reported in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is not controversial. What is means is that your are more likely to get cancer if you’re obese or diabetic than if you’re not, and you’re more likely to get cancer if you have metabolic syndrome than if you don’t.. Cancer researchers now consider that the problem with insulin resistance is that it leads us to secrete more insulin, and insulin (as well as a related hormone known as insulin-like growth factor) actually promotes tumor growth.’”

“In 1920, Otto Warburg, a German biochemist and Nobel Prize winning doctor, discovered that normal cells get their energy for reproduction from oxygen, while cancer cells reproduce by fermenting glucose (sugar). In other words, cancer cells require sugar to perpetuate their growth. When you eat sugar, you are actually feeding cancer cells. Additionally, if your don’t eat enough Life Force Energy foods loaded with cancer-fighting phytochemicals, it is almost certain that the stage is being set for cancer to develop in your body.” p 61

Learning this really made me go ‘wow.’ I don’t want cancer in my life. No one does. It’s a heartbreaking, horrible way to die. My mom had it, Shaun’s mom passed away from it, and just about everyone has a loved one who has had cancer. It’s awful. I thought to myself, “I don’t want to see Shaun getting chemo some day, or me. I just don’t want that. Let’s see if I can reduce the cancer buildup in our eating.” So, I challenged myself to see how we could eat sweets that wouldn’t damage our bodies, these wonderful bodies that Heavenly Father gave us that we only get once.

How to get the sugar out of your life:

I became a food label detective, constantly checking the ingredients for sugar. Sadly, it’s in nearly all processed foods. Here’s a list of other types of sugar on ingredient labels to watch out for:

• Agave
• Barley malt
• Beet sugar
• Maltodextrin
• Brown sugar
• Cane sugar
• Cornstarch
• Corn Syrup
• Corn Syrup solids
• Crystalline fructose
• Dextrose
• Fructose
• Glucose
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Maltose
• Organic Cane Sugar

P.64

To name a few!

Once I learned the damaging effects of refined sugar, I wondered “What can I use for sweeteners?” I still love sweets, but no longer had the desire to eat refined sweets. Here’s good alternatives:

• Stevia
• Raw honey
• Pure Maple Syrup
• Unsulfured Blackstrap Molasses
• Brown Rice Syrup
• Organic Whole Cane Sugar
• Coconut Nectar and Coconut Crystals

p. 65-71

We’ve been happily using Grade B maple syrup from Fresh and Easy and Trader Joes, Raw honey, and my main straight swap for white sugar is this:

I get it from Fresh and Easy, but go to Azure Standards online to see bulk deals on ‘safe’ sugar such as this, Sucanet, Rapudura, and more. I need to do that.

So now, I have fun finding good sweet recipes that don’t damage. I’ve found 2 great cookie recipes, some wonderful pancake recipes, and at the moment, an awesome BBQ sauce. Darn refined sugar is in nearly all the condiments I used, so I’ve been making things from scratch. Ketchup is awesome. I post pictures on Instagram of my food quests. Look me up as ‘erinhatch’, and ask to follow me. It’s fun.

There’s always two parts to eating processed free; Part 1, what you do at home, and Part 2, eating out of the home. We hardly ever eat fast food anymore. We do occasionally eat at restaurants, (still love BJs:), but we notice more how we feel after we eat processed junk. It’s harder for your body to digest the food.

Ok, kids are up. Look how much I wrote, woo! Enjoy the food posts:)