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For many of us city dwellers it is very easy to completely forget where our food comes from. We go to the grocery store to get our food, and we have no connection to the farms that grew the plants and raised the animals. And often those farms are thousands of miles away, frequently in other countries. Think of all the fossil fuel burned in order to deliver the food to your grocery store! If we care about the planet and global warming, perhaps we can make more of an effort to search out local food by supporting farmer’s markets, for example. Local produce, even if it is not organic, will taste much better, have vastly increased nutrient value because it will be picked ripe and sold fresh within hours, and it will have a much reduced environmental impact not only because of the shorter distances traveled but also because this action supports local family farms rather than the huge multinational agri-business monopolies that have a terrible environmental record. By supporting and getting to know our local farmers, we know exactly where our food comes from, and we are encouraging biodiversity because family farmers are more likely to grow interesting, different varieties of food. For example, supermarkets that are stocked by agri-business might have only three or four varieties of apples, but if one shops locally, one may discover several-hundred other kinds. And of course, by shopping locally we are supporting our local economy.

Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon took this idea to the extreme, and for one year, only ate food that was grown or raised within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver, BC, Canada. They are challenging you to make a commitment to making sure every ingredient is from a local source for one meal, one day, one week – whatever feels right to you. Read about their food adventure at The 100 Mile Diet. What an interesting, inspirational website! Their stories, and the philosophical inquiries and ethical dilemmas that they faced while going through the year make for a fabulous read. This concept of choosing local can also give one an appreciation for the challenges our ancestors faced living through all the seasons, by making do with what the land provided for everything from food to shelter to clothing. One can see how our ancestors lived in ways that sustained themselves and the planet, and when we look at our convenience-driven lives that are completely destroying our health and our Earth, I think it is worth adopting some of the traditional ways of living.

Approximately 58% of the farms make less than $10,000 a year and must supplement their income off the farm. The mega-commercial farms only make up 7% of the number of farms but produce 70% of total farm sales, by sacrificing the wellbeing of the animals, the quality of the food, and the health of the planet, all in the name of maximizing profits. These large factory farms are not sustainable and cause huge amounts of groundwater pollution. Large numbers of animals are packed into tiny spaces for the duration of their lives, are fed "food" that fattens them up as opposed to their natural diet, so they get sick. They are fed antibiotics, which is one of the major reasons we have such a problem with resistance to antibiotic drugs . For more information on the problems with factory farms, enjoy The Meatrix about the meat and poultry industry and The Meatrix II Revolting about the dairy industry, two fun cartoons based on the movie The Matrix. Most of the meat and dairy in our supermarkets come from these factory farms, so let’s speak with our dollars! Choose the sustainable alternative by supporting local organic or biodynamic farms that produce free-range meats, eggs and dairy and grow a diversity of produce. If we stop buying the factory farm products, we can make a huge difference to the health of our bodies and the health of our world.

Related Tips:
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www.wellnesstips.ca

What you eat is only half the battle in getting the needed nutrition to your millions of cells that rely on that nourishment for everyday functioning. Despite a well-balanced diet, if, for whatever reason you are having trouble digesting your food, you may actually be malnourished.

Eating and assimilating the nutrition from the food are two different things. For this reason, doing what one can to aid the digestive process, such soaking or sprouting grains, legumes, nuts and seeds in order to eliminate the nutrition inhibitors, is a good idea.

Digestive enzymes are needed in order to initiate the break-down of the food particles – proteases for protein, amylases for carbohydrate, and lipases for fats. These enzymes are present in raw foods, and our saliva contains amylase, so digestion actually begins in the mouth with the chewing of the food.

By thoroughly mixing the food with saliva, and chewing the food until liquid, digestion is greatly aided. Cooking food above 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47 degrees Celsius) destroys the enzymes in the food, so now your pancreas must manufacture those enzymes in order to help the digestive process.

Eating a diet of exclusively cooked food puts a huge strain on the pancreas, which may lower resistance to stress. It is for this reason that avoiding pasteurized anything is a good idea, as by definition, pasteurization heats the food to the point where everything that was alive in the food is now dead.

These days, most store-bought juices, most dairy (all dairy in Canada except for some cheese), and even most jars of vegetables are pasteurized, so check labels and buy unpasteurized when possible.

Do not over-cook your food. Lightly steam vegetables and take it off the heat before the colour changes from bright to dull. Eat pasture-fed, non-medicated red meat as rare as you can tolerate it. Chicken, pork and store-bought ground beef should however, be cooked through.

In order to improve digestion and assimilation, we need to eat more foods that are rich in enzymes. Adding raw foods to each meal helps, as well as consuming fermented foods.

Lacto-fermentation was one of the methods used to preserve food before refrigeration, and the fermentation process greatly increases those valuable enzymes needed for digestion, as well as increases the vitamins in the food.

Basically, the sugars in the food are converted to lactic acid by the sugar-eating bacteria or lactobacilli. Consuming fermented vegetables, dairy, grains and meat also promotes healthy flora in the intestine, which also aids in the assimilation of the food.

Many common foods are fermented, such as cheese, yogurt, buttermilk, whey, saurkraut, pickles, pickled ginger that comes with sushi, miso, kefir, corned beef, and marinated fish. Fermenting is easy to do, and the results are delicious.

Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions cookbook has a whole chapter on fermenting vegetables, as well as many other recipes for fermenting dairy and grain.

To start you off, here is a fabulous recipe for breakfast porridgefrom Judy Chambers, RNCP, CPT of Dynamic by Nature, who helps people regain their health through her Living Whole Foods system.

Related Tips:
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Maintain your bone mass by preparing grains, nuts and seeds properly

www.wellnesstips.ca

I’ve had back pain before. I had an annoying little SI joint problem that made my back ache. Nothing severe – more an annoyance that I was happy to eliminate by learning how to connect properly to my deep stabilizing muscles. Particularly my right multifidus wasn’t working. I had a hole where I should have had a muscle. Once I got that one working my back pain disappeared, and I haven’t had a problem in about 8 years. I then went on to teach others about the magic of the local stabilizer muscles and help others eliminate their pain too.

However, last week I severely strained my SI joint in the gym picking up a weight wrong. (I know better!) I actually heard something tear which scared the daylights out of me, and instantly my back hurt a lot! Then after being very sore all day, to my astonishment, I woke up completely fine the next day. I counted myself very lucky.

Then yesterday we had a fabulous day skiing at Whistler, but I’m not too good at using my legs as springs when I go over those moguls, and so the forces just carried on right up into my injured joint. My back was sore again by the end of the day.

Today I couldn’t get out of a chair. I’m walking around like an old woman, and practicing everything that I’ve been preaching. I’m connecting to my transversus, multifidus and pelvic floor. I’m straddling things I have to pick up from the floor, and keeping my spine in neutral as I use my legs. I seem to be dropping everything from keys to pencils today – annoying – so I’ve had a lot of practice! I’ve taped my back. I’ve done superman and horse stance exercises. I am now really understanding the desperation people with back pain must feel. I can’t imagine living with this for a long time. One day at a time. I’m hoping I’ll be able to manage work tomorrow.

www.wellnesstips.ca

Well, today was Easter Monday – I didn’t take appointments today, although I did catch up on paperwork at home. It was sort of sunny, and it crossed my mind that I should go out for a run. Break up the time I spend at the computer. Get the blood flowing. It would be good for me.

But you know, I really hate running. Every April I say “this year I’m going to learn to like running”, and I drag myself outside, and for 15 or 20 minutes I torture myself and with every breath I ask myself how soon can I stop. And then I keep it up three times a week for about a month, and then sometime in May I drop it.

I don’t understand how runners find that activity fun. I really admire people that love to run, and I really want to be like them. Running whips one into shape so quickly. And it is a natural movement. Remember when we were kids how much fun we had running around? What happened? Now I’d rather bike 100km than run 5.

So, did I go out running today? No. I sat outside on the porch and felt guilty that I didn’t. Tomorrow the mental battle begins again.

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Have you been going for physiotherapy or chiropractic for months or even years to deal with chronic low back, hip or pelvic pain? Or do you have arthritis-like joint pain? Or sinus trouble? Skin problems?

Or do you suffer from digestive problems like Crohns disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, excessive gas, abdominal bloating and pain?

Or no matter how frequently you exercise and how well you eat, you can’t get rid of the lower belly pooch?

Food sensitivities may be at the root of your problem as they can affect every system in the body. Symptoms can be as mild as a runny nose or as life-threatening as anaphylactic shock.

I frequently had stomach aches after eating, even as a child, and over my adult life I had every medical test in the book to find the cause of the problem. Everything always came back normal. It wasn’t until I was tested for food sensitivities and eliminated those foods that I felt better.

Food sensitivity and allergy cause an immune response in the body. The body treats the allergen as if it were an invading bacteria or virus rather than nourishing food, and damages the hair-like villi in the intestine critical for absorbing the nutrients, which can lead malnutrition.

The damaged intestine becomes inflamed, causing a distended belly and abdominal discomfort, which may disrupt the nerve communication to the local muscles needed to stabilize the pelvis and lumbar spine, leading to low back and pelvic pain.

The damaged intestine may then leak, allowing partially digested food particles to leave the digestive tract and enter the bloodstream, which causes a full-fledged immune response.

Once the immune system is activated, the antigens (the particles that causes the immune response) can spread to any tissue in the body that is accessible via the circulatory or receptor/ligand system.

Often these antigens wind up in the joints causing inflammation and swelling when the body’s antibodies attack them.

Dairy allergies, specifically to lactose and/or casein, are extremely common. Often choosing organic raw dairy resolves the problem, as the milk then contains the enzymes that aid in its digestion. Pasteurization kills those beneficial enzymes.

One in 133 people is sensitive to gluten, the elastic-like protein found wheat and rye that make them the grains of choice for baking. Gluten is in all grains except for rice, buckwheat, millet and corn.

Celiac disease is a genetic disorder of extreme gluten intolerance, and those that have it must stay off gluten for life, but even a mild gluten intolerance and the immune response it causes can lead to a huge variety of seemingly unrelated problems.

Those suffering from arthritis are usually sensitive to nightshade vegetables, like tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, and green and red peppers and when those foods are eliminated, the arthritis symptoms are greatly reduced or disappear.

Many people have no idea that they have food sensitivities, and do not relate their various aches and pains to food, as often it takes more than a day after eating the offending food for the immune response to be activated.

Others, who eat foods they are sensitive to on a daily basis, simply have no idea that they are feeling badly until the go off the offending foods and discover what it is like to feel good.

Although gluten, milk, soy, wheat, seafood, peanuts, eggs, sesame, chocolate, and corn are the most common food sensitivities, one can develop a sensitivity to any food, and if you have any of the above symptoms, it is worth being tested.

Blood tests can be done for common food sensitivities, or if you prefer a non-invasive method, vega testing can be done. (I fully admit I haven’t the foggiest idea how vega testing works, but it seems to, as I have personally benefited as have many of my clients.)

It is also worth noting that in some cases, you will not be sensitive to the organic, least processed version of the same food, so choosing quality is always a good idea.

Related Tips:
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GMO – Crossing the Species Barrier
Maintain bone mass by preparing grains, nuts and seeds properly

www.wellnesstips.ca

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I find it completely maddening that in this wonderful country called Canada, I cannot purchase organic, pasture-fed, raw dairy. I can buy cigarettes; I can buy alcohol; and for a while there it was looking like I would even be able to buy pot legally, but quality milk is strictly illegal unless I own a cow or am part of a cow-share program. How stupid is that?

I’m not suggesting that they make pasteurized milk illegal so that everyone is forced to choose raw – all I want is the choice to be able to buy the healthful, enzyme and nutrition-rich raw dairy. Currently I am forced to choose the pasteurized stuff, where all the enzymes, vitamins and minerals have been destroyed.

Sure, they say that this is for my own health, and that the bacteria in raw dairy is dangerous. Maybe in another time when the milking barns were less clean. But when one looks at the incidences of sickness from milk, just as many people get sick from pasteurized milk as raw.

Even Louis Pasteur, the person that told the world that heating up food will kill the bacteria in the food, admitted late in life that the problem is not the germ, but rather the terrain. Just like you can’t light a fire with soaking wet wood, it is difficult to get sick if your immune system is strong and healthy.

It is crazy that we as consumers have to wade through the garbage that is being sold to us as food to find the quality food that will nourish us. So, let’s help each other! Our dollars are powerful! Use this blog to post the brands that manufacture quality dairy.

Criteria? Best is certified organic, pasture-fed, raw dairy. (If you live in the Vancouver area and legally want access to raw dairy, use the contact form on www.wellnesstips.ca to contact me.)

2nd best is certified organic, non-homogenized dairy (homogenization is the other form of destruction that milk undergoes before it hits the supermarket shelves, where the milk is passed through a microfilter so that the fat globules are broken down into tiny little bits and stay suspended in the milk. Unfortunately our body no longer recognizes those particles as food.)

Third best is certified organic. Stay away from the ultrapasteurized stuff!

So what brands to buy? If you happen to live in California, you can walk into your supermarket and buy organic, raw, pasture-fed milk, cream, yogurt, butter and even colostrum. The brand is Organic Pastures. Support them!

From anywhere in the States you can go to their website and order from them and get raw dairy delivered to your door.

Because in Canada raw dairy is illegal, many would suggest that no dairy should be consumed at all. In Ontario, however, one can find organic non-homogenized milk from the Harmony Dairy in Bornholm Ontario, in stores across the province.

In the Vancouver B.C. area, Avalon Dairy just started selling an organic non-homogenized milk – yeah! It’s the glass bottle with the white cap and the red lettering. All lower-fat milks are homogenized so don’t drink them. And besides, you need the fat to absorb any of the nutrition that may be left after the pasteurization process.

Whipping cream is pretty much always non-homogenized, so go for it – just make sure you choose organic.

Yogurt – only get the plain, full fat, organic, non-homogenized. Flavoured yogurts are essentially pots of sugar, and they are even worse if they are low fat. Your insulin will go through the roof. See my tip on Blood-Sugar Regulation for more on that.

Brands? My favourite by far is Jerseyland, and they sell in western Canada. Not sure if it can be found in the States – maybe someone can let us know. 2nd is Saugeen – it says non-homogenized on the lid. I think it is an Ontario company so it is probably available across the country.

Cheese – raw is easy to find. Even organic. Jerseyland has nice quality cheeses, and L’Ancetre Cheese Factory sells organic raw cheeses across Canada, and many of the cheeses imported from Europe are raw organic.

If the label does not specify that the milk is raw, assume it is pasteurized and make another choice.

I can’t speak for Eastern Canada, US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America etc, so please help me get this info out there and write about your favourite healthy brands of dairy.

www.wellnesstips.ca

Just like the soy beans I spoke of last week, all grains, nuts, seeds and legumes have phytic acid in the outer or bran layer, as well as enzyme inhibitors to prevent them from sprouting when conditions are not suitable.

This is nature’s brilliant way of preserving genetic plant material until it has a viable chance of producing a plant.

Nuts, grains and legumes are all seeds, and as such, can be stored for fairly long periods of time without them going bad, unlike most other unprocessed, quality food like vegetables, dairy, and meat products.

When they do go bad, it is the polyunsaturated oils in them that tend to go rancid, especially in nuts and seeds.

The phytates act as a barrier preventing absorption of the nutrition in the seed. In particular, they bind to calcium,magnesium, copper, iron and zinc in the intestinal tract, and block their absorption.

This has implications for those that are losing bone mass, as diets high in improperly prepared grains can lead to mineral deficiencies. Those that are sensitive to grains often do much better if the grains have been soaked or fermented first.

As Sally Fallon points out in her wonderful cookbook Nourishing Traditions our ancestors from all over the world soaked or fermented their grain before consuming them.

Indians ferment rice and lentils before making dosas Ethiopians ferment the grain teff before making their distinctive sour flat bread called injere; in Mexico, corn is fermented before making pazol corn cakes.

In Europe grains were soaked sometimes for many days in sour milk or water before porridge was made. These practices "predigested" the grains and made the B vitamins, vitamin E, and all the minerals available for assimilation in the digestive tract.

This is a far cry from what we tend to eat today – quick-rise breads, quick rice, quick oats, etc. The other great thing about soaking is that it vastly increases the protein content of the grains, as the seed thinks it is time to sprout, so the enzymes are activated starting the germination process. Sprouted seeds have almost double the protein content of unsprouted seeds.

So what do you do? With whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes, soak them in filtered water with a bit of unpasteurized apple cidre vinegar (Omega Nutrition is a good brand) or organic lemon juice for 7 or 8 hours, pour off the soak water, rinse and cook. Usually this will reduce the cooking time considerably.

With steel cut or rolled oats, soak as before, but cook in the soak water. With nuts and seeds such as walnuts, sunflower or sesame, spread them on a cookie sheet after soaking, and put them in the oven under the very LOWEST bake setting, and dry them.

Baking at high temperatures will cause the rancidity of the polyunsaturated oils in the nuts so keep the temperature low. When you store the nuts or seeds, I suggest you do not put a lid on the jar, because if all the moisture has not been removed they will go moldy very quickly. I wasted a few batches before figuring this out! Then they should probably be stored in the fridge, as those polyunsaturated fats are delicate.

Pre-soaked grains, nuts, seeds and legumes do not exist on supermarket shelves, so it is up to you. You are probably thinking I’m completely crazy, and that you don’t have time for this kind of thing. I thought so too for a long time, and didn’t bother.

But really, it doesn’t take any time to fill a jar with water. It’s just remembering to do it. I soak my millet, quinoi, buckwheat or whole oats before going to bed, and they cook in 15 minutes or less in the morning.

Soak your brown rice or any other whole grain before leaving for the day’s work. And if you forget, even a half-hour of soaking before cooking is better than nothing.

If you want yummy recipes that walk you through soaking, fermenting and cooking grains, I would highly recommend Sally Fallon’s cookbook Nourishing Traditions. The nutrition information is worth its weight in gold, the recipes are delicious, and the anecdotes about world peoples and food along the margins of the book make it a fabulous read even if you don’t like to cook.

Related Tips:
Vegetable Oils – Friend or foe?
Customized Nutrition
Blood-sugar regulation

www.wellnesstips.ca

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The soy industry has managed to market a waste product as a health food, and gullible consumers are eating their way to health problems.

Soy is often touted as healthy, and it can be if you pick your soy products carefully, but most of the soy that is on the market is actually very hard on our systems.

I was completely fooled by the propaganda on soy and bought into this one hook, line and sinker, feeling virtuous switching to soy milk when I found out I was sensitive to poor quality dairy.

Now I realize that pretty much all soy that is not organic is genetically modified. And GMO soy is in almost all non-organic packaged food and processed food.

Like all grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, soybeans – GMO or not, have a phytate layer to stop the beans from sprouting unless there is adequate moisture and warmth.

The phytate layer in soybeans is much thicker than in other grains and legumes and cannot be eliminated with soaking, sprouting or long slow cooking. This means that soybeans are very difficult to digest, and the phytic acid reduces assimilation of calcium, magnesium copper, iron and zinc.

Soy interferes with protein digestion, and the soy estrogens are endocrine disruptors, (by binding with estrogen receptors) potentially creating fertility problems and breast or uterine cancer in women, and reducing testosterone in men.

These soy phytoestrogens also are anti-thyroid agents, causing sluggish thyroids, possibly thyroid cancer, and weight gain.

Soy increases the body’s requirement for B12 and Vitamin D. Soy food processing results in the formation of MSG, which is a well known neurotoxin (nerve poison), and soy contains high levels of aluminum which is known to be toxic to the nervous system and the kidneys. Unless labeled organic, assume that all soybean products are genetically modified.

It is worth noting that in January 2006, the American Heart Association reversed its position recommending the consumption of soy to lower the chance of heart disease, after reviewing 22 recent studies, and noted that the FDA's original recommendation was based on a single study funded by the soy industry.

The soy that should be avoided are soy isolate products like:

• Soy milk
• Soy protein powder/bars
• Soy nuts
• Soy cheese
• Soy burgers
• Soy yogurt
• Soy ice cream
• Soy baby formula

By avoiding packaged food, one can avoid soy disguised on food labels as:

• Textured vegetable protein (TVP)
• Textured plant protein
• Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP)
• Vegetable protein concentrate
• Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
• Lecithin (usually from soy)
• Vegetable oil (usually from soy)
• Vegetable broth (usually from soy)
• Bouillon (usually from soy)
• Natural flavour (usually from soy)
• Mono-diglyceride(usually from soy)

Soy infant formula is a very bad idea, as the baby gets far too much phytoestrogen for its bodyweight, which messes with the baby’s hormones even more than in adults.

The estrogenic effects of soy on infants can be irreversible, resulting in delayed or absent sexual maturation in males, and extremely accelerated sexual maturation in females. Soy formula predisposes females to breast cancer and fertility problems later in life.

For those of you that are dairy intolerant and want a milky substitute for your whole-grain cereal, you may be able to tolerate a non-homogenized organic plain yogurt (raw is better if you can get it), or look for a rice milk or almond milk that does not have a vegetable oil listed in the ingredient list, or try organic full-fat coconut milk. Yummy!

(No, the fat in coconut milk will not make us fat – lauric acid is a medium-chain fatty-acid that is metabolized immediately by the liver, and is very healthful for the body due to its antibacterial and antiviral factors.)

If you are a soy fan, naturally fermented and/or cultured ORGANIC soy (to avoid GMO) is very healthful, so look for foods like:

• miso – try to find it with unrefined sea salt
• Tamari – wheat free
• Natto
• Tempeh
• Extra-firm tofu with nigari
• Organic Edamame, cooked
• Organic soybean sprouts

For more information on the problems with soy, read, The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food by Kaayla Daniel.

Related Tips
GMO – Crossing the Species Barrier
Vegetable Oils – Friend or Foe?

www.wellnesstips.ca