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Plants & Animals & The China Study

12 Aug 2011 -

Grow Your Dinner

I have almost finished reading The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, PhD & Thomas M. Campbell II. In it, the then 13-year old Thomas Campbell (son of Dr. T. Collin) was asked by a friend’s sister, “You don’t eat meat?”

Now young Tom was pretty used to not eating meat. It was just the normal state of affairs for their family so he hadn’t really heard all the lingo we have now with lacto-vegans, lacto-ovo-vegetarians, flexitarians, pesce-vegetarian…it was just his life.

“So, what do you eat?”  she asked. He apparently shrugged and said, “I guess just…plants.”

There is a lot to digest in this book (Ha!) but the upshot is that the studies are rather astounding to support a plant-based diet over a meat-based one; the prevention of heart disease, cancer and  diabetes alone is enough to make me reach for my broccoli.

But this is all stuff we mostly know right?

Well sort of. There is a lot of conflicting latest-greatest info flying at me. I keep reading that as I age I’m supposed to be dumping tons of protein into my body. Or take handfuls of supplements. Or stand on my head and say, “OHM”. (No wait, that’s something else…)

Dr. Colin Campbell is considered to have conducted the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition with this study. He is a Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University and this study was the culmination of a twenty-year partnership with Cornell, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine.

In other words, this is not some feel-good-animals-have-faces-book, but a solid medically-backed compilation of decades of research. The overarching pattern that emerged from one cancer study was that, “animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumor development.”

It is not a ‘diet’ like a South Beach or cabbage-soup or Zone or Eating for your Type or whatever those silly things are…instead, it’s pretty serious stats to suggest that you will feel better if you eat less meat. OK. He takes it further.

He says. No animals. Just plants.

I am not declaring myself to reside in one of these new categories of Vegan or Pesce-Vegetarian or Whatevers. I am merely musing aloud at this point and eating a heckuva lot more greens from our garden.

I think this journey really started when I went to the Fresh Start retreat last November which got me going on green smoothies for most of my breakfasts ever since. But I am not interested in doing anything from a sense of fear or deprivation or any of those reasons that are so often used.

I am going to eat lots of greens and fruits for lunch today because it tastes good and I don’t feel stuffed when I leave the table. I am eating my piles of veggies with my homemade dressing because I feel healthy when I’m finished and I LOVE feeling healthy.

But will there still be a cappuccino at 3 pm made with cow’s milk? Yup.

And tonight? I might do something completely different. Just trying some new ideas on for size. I like the idea of choosing each moment of my life as it presents itself.

This much I know for sure. I highly recommend the book. If nothing else – in really clear terms – it has expanded my view of the possible.

 

 

 

 

 

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Zippy & Sister Crazy with a Glass Castle

12 Jan 2011 -

Everyone’s read [amazon_link id="074324754X" target="_blank" ]The Glass Castle [/amazon_link]right? I loved this book, completely and totally. I’m not sure, but I think I’ve read it more than once. But yesterday, I checked it out of the library again. It’s time to read it for a different reason.

My plan with it this time is to read it very closely and try to see if I can use it as a model for my own novel/memoir.

I’m also using [amazon_link id="0767915054" target="_blank" ]Zippy[/amazon_link] by Haven Kimmel for the same purposes.  In contrast to the Glass Castle, which seems to follow a time line with a start-to-finish approach, Zippy has no particular narrative arc.

Instead, it is a series of stories about growing up in Indiana, and of course, so much more. Somehow by the time the book is over, I swear I grew up with Zippy. I just love how she pulls it off but I’m still trying to dissect what exactly she does that works so well.  

I have a third book I’m using as a guide,  [amazon_link id="0385720890" target="_blank" ]Sister Crazy [/amazon_link]by Emma Richler. This has a different approach altogether and I still haven’t quite figured out what it is.

As I write this, I realize I’m setting myself up (again) for a bit of a disaster.

Three books, all apparently about growing up.

But all, quite different in their approach and framework to how they get from there to here. And yet, I’m using them to model for structure. Hmmm….

I’m sure a clever person would pick just one of them to work with…I’m sure that’s exactly what a clever person would do.

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Summer Reading

04 Aug 2010 -

I’m on a bit of a summer reading rampage. As usual, my reading is indiscriminate and runs the gamut from the great, the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

Well, no. I haven’t found anything really bad at all. All of these books are ones that were either recommendations from friends, whose opinions I value, or titles that have been referred to within other books I’ve liked.

Currently, this combination of borrowed, owned and library-loaned books, are piled in various strategic spots; on the throw rug by the bed, heaped on the coffee table in front of the futon on the deck, on the kitchen table and on the little stand by the big red reclining chair – my morning  cocooning spot  - where I drink my first cappuccino while writing my morning pages.

I just finished William Styron’s Memoir of Madness. It’s a short personal essay and an interesting book to follow-up from Noon-Day Demon by Andrew Solomon.

I finished Roopa Farooki’s book, The Way Things Look to Me, just after midnight last night.  If you’re not familiar with Aspergers Syndrome, this piece of fast fiction is a great way in.

I’m enjoying Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, sort of an Australian Grapes of Wrath-ish novel, and have been rereading bits and pieces of one of my favourite memoirs,  A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel.  

The other memoirs that beckon are, The Woman Who Watches Over the World by Linda Hogan and The Sum of our Days by Isabelle Allende.

For a tried and true how-to book, I’m reviewing – yet again – Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington.

I’ve started The Stranger by Albert Camus, and think I might have to try again with The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng. It feels like it might be a book that requires more concentration and a slower pace than the speed read I did through the Farooki book last night.

My girlfriend recommended An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark and though I’m halfway through, it’s starting to feel like an obligatory read more than anything. Not sure if that one’s going to make the cut.

The days have been hazy and hot, the sea is calm and I’m pretending that I’m working on a self-directed (albeit random) reading program instead of just being a summertime slug.

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Living Well – Writing Often

14 Jun 2010 -

It’s almost 6 pm. I really should figure something out for dinner. It’s a solo dinner tonight. I’m alone. Kevin has gone to Vancouver to see his brother who’s in Vancouver for this week and Sean is at work.

I’ve noticed that as soon as there’s no obligation/responsibility to make a meal or to join in with a dinner that Kevin has made, I just drift in to it as an afterthought. I’ve been puttering on this blog, working on some editing on my memoir, and generally lost in my keyboard. That being said, the afterthought is moving to the forefront of my thinking as I get hungrier and feel more hollow.

I think it will be a big bunch of our garden’s prolific arugula with some garlic, olive oil and a bit of cheese. Maybe toss it all on some brown rice and chop up some of that salami for a protein fix. Sounds reasonable and comes with an easy clean-up plan.  

Speaking of bountiful food, I just finished reading City of Thieves by David Benioff and quite literally laughed and cried when I read the last sentences. Was that ending too neatly bracketed? I don’t care. It worked for me.

The book is set in Russia during the seige by the Nazis and the starving citizens are left to eat the horse-glue of book bindings, sweet dirt from the floor of a defunct sugar factory and some of the citizenry is making meat patties of the endless dead. Some of the scenes are not particularly pleasant, especially when I know that most of this fiction is based on the harsh facts of that time.

It’s a sweeping story that doesn’t always create the emotional connection I’d want, but is certainly one of the more riveting a tales I’ve paged through in the last while. But it reminded me again of how much food and material luxury we enjoy. 

And tomorrow we’re going to add to that bounty when we pick up our brand-new chickens.  Stay tuned for ‘breaking’ news.

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Hiking Through

08 Jun 2010 -

I recently received an email from a literary publicist. In a perfect world she would have been writing to beg me to write a book so she could promote it worldwide, but funnily enough, she was writing to ask me to review a book that was written by someone else.

After I got over my initial disappointment, I thought why not? Soon enough a large package came in the mail. I love getting packages in the mail, so that in itself was fun. Inside was a lovely big hardcover book called, Hiking Through by Paul Stutzman.

I’m not sure how she decided I should be one of the people reviewing this book, but maybe she did some homework. Stutzman, like me, was raised Mennonite. The difference was that he was first born into an Amish family in Ohio, who then switched to the Mennonite world. Actually, the real difference was that his religion mostly stuck with him, though this book is in part about his struggle with his beliefs.

His story is about walking the 2, 176 miles of the Appalachian Trail. But the concurrent story is that he’s doing this after his wife of 32 years dies of breast cancer, he quits his restaurant manager job and decides he wants to examine the rules he’s been following all his life. As well, he wants to warn other men out there not to take their wives and families for granted. 

There is probably more of a Christian message than I would normally be interested in, but he does it with such humbleness and honesty and with none of the usual proselytizing, that it just makes it easier to connect to his very human struggle to come to some sort of truth that works for him. 

I enjoyed following Paul through those mountain passes, over rocky trails and chowing down on huge cheeseburgers whenever he  deked off the trail for a little civilizing comforts.  

At one hot and dusty section of the trail, he indulges in the first beer of his life. I loved his honest struggle with all that he had held so dear, up until that moment, as the ‘proper rules of conduct’. 

 By the end of the book, I knew that he’d be a great guy to sit and talk to, though I’m pretty sure that it would still be over a coffee.  But I’m good with that…it seems we do share a few things… I never really became a big fan of beer either.

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