For some reason, especially in Souther California, our natural foods are more expensive than our processed foods, especially since water supplies are being throttled up in our agricultural regions. At the grocery store, it can cost you more than two dollars for a head of lettuce. Eating healthy is very difficult on a budget (especially when it’s out of necessity, as we’ve all gone low-carb to support my diabetic father and the economy crashed). I think the nearest source of buffalo is a good 500 miles away, but I will definitely investigate it and other meats further. And we have given up finding sweetener replacements after I realized that my tummy does not care for Stevia *at all*. All hail the sugar cane! We just eat much less of the sweeter things than we used to. No one feels deprived, we just have one cookie instead of the irresistible five (especially when they are fresh from the oven).

I envy your experiences out on the Navajo Reservation. As an inner-city kid, I would love to spend a day wandering uninhabited land, breathing all that wonderful clean air.

Best to you and yours,

Luney

One of the things about cooking your own food with fresh natural ingredients is that you can be pretty sure as to what you are ingesting.

I had no idea about the palm oil. I actually thought it was a good thing. I was reading your post and the link with my mouth agape!

Keep sharing the info.

Thanks Marie! I know, I am heartbroken over the Nutella! I don’t blame you for getting sucked in by Splenda. Lots of people do because they are trying to be healthy and the TV and Magazine ads all say that Splenda aids in this! That os what is so evil about it! Hope you have since quit the “yellow stuff”.

Regarding your food facts:

I was in the supermarket this evening and looked at the ingredient list on a jar of Nutella. I was surprised to see that “hydrogenated oil” had been replaced by “modified palm oil.” Shame on the (American) makers of Nutella! Really, they must believe that most people will not recognize palm oil for what it is. In his book “Spontaneous Healing,” Andrew Weil draws a distinction between palm fruit oil and palm kernel oil. From a health standpoint, he writes, the former is significantly less unhealthy than the latter–but, indeed, both should be avoided. He doesn’t mention the socioeconomic and environmental aspects, however; thank you bringing them up.

I wonder why so many vegetarians rely so heavily on soy. There are so many other great non-animal sources of protein available–just among the legumes, to begin with. These days, I get most of my protein from lentils, dulse (and other seaweeds), yoghurt (and other cultured dairy products), and whole grains (such as quinoa, which is technically a pseudocereal). Aside from being genetically-modified (as you pointed out), soy should also be eaten sparingly because (like the other major GMO crop, corn) its production is taking an enormous toll on the planet. Mainly, soy and corn are also grown to feed many of the cattle, chickens, and other creatures destined for human consumption. Barbara Kingsolver writes about this in her latest book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”–and she’s not the first to point out that this type of agriculture is certainly not “sustainable” in the long term. The supercrops are destroying the ecological diversity of this planet!

I agree that sugar is preferable to all artificial sweeteners. Surprisingly, the last few times I’ve been in Europe, all of the major-brand yoghurt I came across (Dannon, mostly) was nonfat and sweetened with aspartame. That was a shock. Aspartame rarely appears in yoghurt in the U.S.

Olive oil seems to be the best fat for the human diet, but lately, as a committed locavore, I’ve been wondering if there’s an equally healthy oil that can be produced a little closer to home. Olive trees don’t grow in New England, after all. Butter is really not a healthy alternative. Rapeseed, the plant from which canola oil comes, can be grown in this part of the world–Canada is one of its biggest producers–but I’ve recently read that it is a crop sprayed with a lot of pesticides. So what does that leave? Safflower and pumpkin seed oil? Nut oils are prohibitively expensive and don’t have a high “flash” point, alas.

I agree with what you have written about buffalo/bison meat–though it doesn’t mean much to those of us abstaining from the flesh of four-legged creatures.

As for the pomegranate, I’m sure it’s got plenty of beneficial properties, but I would caution against regularly drinking the juice of it or any of the other so-called (and now very popular) superfruits–that is, too much of a good thing is NOT a good thing. Juice (from any fruit, really) is too concentrated: a single glass of it contains the equivalent of three or more pieces of fruit–an immoderate amount to consume in one go, I think. It’s always better to just eat a piece of fruit, and I daresay the pomegranate’s healthful properties are probably most present in the fresh, unprocessed fruit.