The Low Down

The human body is a metabolic marvel comprised of dozens of little systems connecting to create one complex system. Food is the fuel, the input, for the systems. Our metabolic machinery evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to function optimally on select fuels. These fuels were the original, Primal foods of the human organism. Over these hundreds of thousands of years our Big Game Hunting, small prey capturing, scavenging, foraging, gathering, opportunistic ancestors accumulated experience and wisdom about nourishing themselves. The learned to preserve and predigest foods to maximize the quality of their metabolic fuel. Eventually they learned to cook foods without destroying the important nourishing properties of the food, and then they learned to heal the human body with food. Only recently in the human evolutionary experience, have we abandoned all these hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated epicurean genius. Now we fuel our marvelous, complex metabolic machinery with crap invented to create profits for agribusiness. We have become dumb eaters. As we regain our eating intelligence it doesn't make sense to move back to the savannah and put out our fires or climb into our cave and pretend there is a glacier next door. It makes sense to fuel our bodies with all the primal human foodstuffs, prepared and preserved with accumulated ancestral wisdom and served up for the undeniable desires of the human taste buds. Primal, paleolithic food choices, handled according to ancient food ways resulting in outrageously good food.
PRIMAL. SMART. DELECTABLE.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Silas: wheat-eating monster to Paleo Sweetie



Imagine yourselves invited to a New Year's Eve party in your small New England town by the one other family in town that might have something in common with you. Imagine you go to this family-friendly evening where the lovely Shannon and Andy have cooked the most delicious feast. Then imagine your 5 yr old son looking around at all the food and saying loudly, "There isn't any of MY kind of food here!!" Shannon is now a good friend of mine, but that wasn't a very auspicious beginning. Being Shannon, she laughed and asked him, "Silas, what is your kind of food?" At that moment in time the only things Silas ate were peanuts, crackers, toast, frozen blueberries, apples and cereal. In all seriousness, nothing is missing from the list. I have total familiarity with the situation of a "picky" eater. My oldest son came into the world with sensory integration issues. Food and eating was a total nightmare and his behavior was a total nightmare as well. He was super jolly and happy, but like a whirling dervish or perhaps like a small Barbarian. He could not control himself and I could not control him. If we went to a social gathering of any sort, Silas would race himself, sweaty and red-faced, around until he often actually threw up from the intensity and exhaustion. Those of you who now know my oldest son as someone who prefers not to shift himself at all until the book he is reading is finished, might find this hard to believe, but it was true. All the accompanying issues plagued our family-was I a bad parent? I tried everything. I was too strict, not strict enough, blah blah blah. Everyone had a solution that usually involved something I was doing wrong. Mothers get so used to taking the blame! Finally, a very wise woman said, "Feed him meat for breakfast and no more wheat." I knew instinctively she was onto something, but the idea of Silas eating meat for breakfast was hilarious. Thus began my experimentation with changing the eating of my child. However, I had one advantage that many parents do not. I did not ever "feel sorry for" or "feel badly" for my son. I notice that so many parents turn to jelly when their child is unhappy or struggling. Perhaps I am inherently hard-hearted, but when I know something will benefit my child I do not feel "guilty" or "sorry" for them during their struggle. When I began to change my son's food choices and he flipped out I was not distraught or immobilized with uncertainty. I do not believe my job is to create a situation where my child has their every whim met. I believe it is my job to raise up my kid as strong and healthy-physically and mentally- as is reasonable. If you are confident in your actions do not let a small tantruming person throw you off. The photo is of my son today-relaxed, mellow and totally suitable for bringing to New Year's Eve parties, with his lunch: fish, frozen blueberries, banana slices and baby lettuces with sea salt.

2 comments:

  1. Go Silas! I wanna see the rest of that haircut too!

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  2. What is it abut frozen blueberries? I have never met a kid that didn't like them.
    I am working on Pancho's diet. Sometimes I have moments of clarity and think "if I wouldn't eat a donut why should I let him?" Thankfully those moments are getting closer together.

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