There is a movement taking the nation by storm: the slow food movement. With the release of several foodie films over the last decade, including the 2009 documentary “Food, Inc.,” coupled with a growing genre of foodie books such as Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” and Marion Nestle’s “Food Politics,” people are paying attention – finally! – to the food they eat. So what exactly is slow food and how you can you begin to embrace it?
Slow Family I grew up in a small Connecticut town where my family gave little thought to the food we ate. It’s not that we didn’t care about food – quite the opposite, in fact – but we never had to wonder where our food came from or how it was produced. This was because most of the food we ate we grew or bought locally.
Summers in the northeast meant planting and harvesting produce in our nearly quarter-acre garden, which was abundant with tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, squash and other edibles. On those hot and lazy days of summer, my sister and I would pick what was ripe for my mother to serve at dinner. Summer also meant raspberry and blueberry picking and frequent pit stops at roadside farm stands for fresh veggies. Winter was not favorable for growing our own food, so while supermarket trips became more frequent, we also enjoyed the leftover bounty of summer with canned tomatoes and pears, pickled eggplant and peppers, and frozen berries.
While mealtimes growing up were pretty great, they were not perfect. It was the 1970s after all, and I do recall a few short-lived experiments with Shake N Bake and frozen dinners. You can thank the food industry whose commercials have always lured us toward “fast food,” telling us that there is an easier and cheaper way to feed our families without mentioning the cost to our health and well-being. But for the most part, our family was a slow food family without realizing it. We grew our own food, bought local, cooked from scratch, and sat down at the table together for meals – something rarely experienced by families today.
Fast Forward to Fast Food In the late 1990s I became vegetarian, then vegan. I prided myself on my newfound way of eating. My skin glowed, the extra five pounds I had been carrying dropped effortlessly, and my allergies completely cleared up (buh-bye anti-histamines and inhaler!). In fact, I completely shunned the diet I was raised on. While full of homegrown fruits and vegetables, it was also heavy on the meat and dairy. But in the process of leaving behind the diet of my youth, I also left behind the slow food way of eating I was raised on.
Living in the city, I would now pass the neighborhood farmers market and head straight to the supermarket to pick up organic fruits and veggies (grown half-way around the world) and a selection of packaged vegan dishes (from frozen burritos to canned soups) that I could whip up in the galley kitchen of my studio apartment. Though my diet was a far cry from fast food, and certainly healthier than the meat- and dairy-centric diet I had been raised on, I had abandoned slow food and become what I call a fast-food vegan.
And Back to Slow Again Sometime in the mid-2000s I began to find my way back to slow food. I am still working toward merging slow food with veganism, both of which benefit our health, the environment and the economy. And to my surprise, I am finding it quite easy! While I have yet to grow a garden (perhaps a resolution for 2011?), there are ways that my family and I have brought slow food into our home. Frequenting local farmers markets, joining a community-supported agriculture (CSA) group, and making trips to local farms have all been important in embracing slow. Mealtimes at home are based primarily upon made-from-scratch dishes using seasonal and local fare.
Keeping it Real Does going slow mean you have to eliminate foods that aren’t local or seasonal? Of course not! If you looked in my kitchen today, among the locally grown squash and hydroponically-grown greens and sprouts, you will also find superfoods of the Amazon (acai and maca, anyone?). And I will certainly not tell my 4-year-old that she can’t pop a straw in her young Thai coconut when she is thirsty. It’s the ultimate juice box! So while we fill up on local foods, we also keep it real and include some of our exotic favorites! In the end it is about finding balance. In your quest for slow, remember to keep it real!
Ready to embrace the slow food movement? Here are a few tips to help you go slow without going crazy:
· Grow a garden. There is no better way to connect with your food than to grow it yourself. Grow your own sprouts, create a windowsill herb garden, or plant a full acre of green goodness. Get your hands dirty! · Support your local farmer. Check out LocalHarvest for local farms, farmers markets (including winter markets!), and CSA groups in your area. And be sure to talk with growers about their farming methods. Many growers may not be certified organic, but still practice sustainable and organic farming methods. This means you can get local and organic, too! · Buy local and organic at your supermarket. Every time you make a purchase, you are casting a vote for the food you want. Buy more local and organic options and you will begin to see those options grow! · Eat meals together with family and friends. There is no better way to feed your soul than to sit down with others while enjoying a home-cooked meal and conversation! · Forget perfection! Feeling guilty for buying an organic apple from New Zealand or fixing a frozen vegan meal rather than whipping one up from scratch? Don’t! Eating slow is also about the pleasure of food, so no stressing as you go slow!
Lauri Boone, RD, is a registered dietitian and certified raw food chef and instructor. She practices nutrition at Breathe Yoga in Pittsford, New York and blogs about food at her website, The Eclectic Kitchen.
Are you navigating cancer? What is your map toward wellness? Diagnostic tests, research, doctor’s appointments and evaluating cancer treatments are key components to optimize survival and quality of life. Anyone moving through a cancer journey needs the best conventional cancer care available, but that is only part of the equation.
Providing Whole Body Care
Research studies have shown for many years that cancer grows in “fertile soil” or a hospitable environment in the body that supports cancerous cells. The internal environment of the body strongly impacts whether or not cancer grows in each person. For many, cancer is a symptom of an altered, unbalanced system. Along with receiving treatment for the diagnosis and symptoms, people affected by cancer need whole person health care. This model is called integrative cancer care.
Defining Integrative Cancer Care
So, what is integrative cancer care for the whole person? Integrative cancer care addresses the totality of body, mind and spirit, including the social and environmental health of the individual. All of these aspects of your health and life are constantly interacting together, influencing one another, and interdependently shaping who you are.
Think about integrative cancer care using the example of diet. While what you eat impacts your physical body, food also strongly affects your thinking, your emotions, aspects of your spirituality, your relationship with yourself and other people, and the internal environment of your body. No separation exists between these elements. As a living system, your body and life are comprised of various networks constantly communicating with one another.
Understanding the other dimensions of integrative cancer care provides further insights for people living with cancer and advancing whole person health care.
Supporting Your Mind-Body Connection
What is the state of your mental and emotional wellness? The state of the mind and emotions affects health due to the mind-body connection. No separation exists between the mind and body. The body feeds the mind; the mind feeds the body. Thoughts and feelings, as well as beliefs and attitudes, impact and literally shape aspects of biological functioning. Mind-body approaches strengthen the mental and emotional inner life supporting health and healing.
Tending to Your Spirit
What is your relationship with spirit and your spirituality? Most people understand that they are connected to something larger than themselves and engage contact with spirit. There is a sense of being whole when spirit is united with the body. Since healing is about wholeness, spirituality is an essential component of an integrative cancer care plan addressing the whole person.
Caring for Your Social Wellness
How do you engage social support through cancer? For everyone, cancer is a social issue impacting their entire community. New perceptions and social experiences emerge. People dealing with cancer – patients, family members, friends – endure a range of social challenges and opportunities. Social issues that existed before cancer may also intensify during and after cancer. Learning about and providing support for social issues is a part of quality cancer care.
Addressing Your Environmental Health
How do you support your health through your environment? Today’s world contains high levels of carcinogens. Each person must take steps to safeguard against toxic chemicals associated with diseases such as cancer. The National Cancer Institute even refers to studies as far back as the 1960s concluding that the majority of cancers could be prevented by acting on what was known about the environmental causes of the disease. Addressing the link between cancer and the environment is central to advances in cancer risk reduction and for anyone already living with cancer.
Improving Cancer Care
Both women and men have the capacity to understand that health is about more than one part of their body or lifestyle and instead encompasses the many dimensions of self. This wisdom must be applied to cancer care especially as studies show that integrative cancer care reduces cancer risk, improves cancer survival and quality of life.
Now is the time for more widespread innovation in supporting people with cancer. Integrative cancer care is that model. You can play a key role in improving lives and advancing integrative cancer care for the whole person. What will you do for your health and the health of those you love?
Jeannine Walston is co-founder and executive director of EmbodiWorks, a non-profit organization offering integrative cancer care resources. Jeannine has extensive experience in cancer education and advocacy, health care policy, and both conventional and integrative cancer care.
In June 2010, the Environmental Defense Fund and its partners in the campaign to reform U.S. law to regulate chemicals made an impassioned plea for American consumers not to be treated like “guinea pigs.” I’d like to remind our friends and colleagues in the environmental and consumer protection communities that advocates for animal protection – while respecting the interests of all animals and believing that none of them should be treated like disposable lab equipment – also care about protecting human health and the environment, and that we all must work together to achieve a future that is both safer and more humane.
It goes without saying that informed decisions regarding chemical safety cannot be made without adequate information (including testing to detect hazardous properties, and information concerning the levels to which humans and wildlife may be exposed). However, simply calling for more data is not the answer; it is also vital that the inadequacies of the current testing paradigm be acknowledged and overcome.
Today’s chemical testing entails animal poisoning studies, most of which were designed decades ago, and which tell us a lot about how large doses of single chemicals affect small animals with short life spans, but very little about how mixtures of chemicals at typically low exposure levels affect larger, longer-living human beings. A rat force fed a chemical for his or her three-year life – often causing painful symptoms such as tumors and organ failure – cannot reliably predict the effects of a human lifetime’s worth of low-level exposure to a “cocktail” of environmental chemicals, which is the situation we’re faced with in the real world.
Animal tests are expensive and time consuming, and their relevance is often questioned by stakeholders on one side or the other. This leads to disputes over which chemicals represent a real threat, and a seemingly bottomless pit of animal testing to “prove” that a chemical is harmful or safe. (Remember the decades-long battle over whether cigarette smoking causes cancer? Today, history is repeating itself with Bisphenol A and other chemicals.) Even in optimum conditions, regulating chemicals on the basis of animal data takes years, and relies heavily on guesswork and unproven assumptions. And at the end of all that, the results can still – rightly – be called into question.
So instead of dealing with chemical safety and animal suffering as two separate issues, The Human Society of the United States (HSUS) and its affiliates are addressing the “guinea pig” problem with one ambitious project.
In 2007, the National Academy of Sciences published a report titled “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy.” In it, a team of eminent scientists (including HSUS staff member Martin Stephens, PhD) established two guiding principles: first, animal testing is of limited value in predicting real-life human health effects of chemicals or for dealing with the current backlog of tens of thousands of chemicals that are being inadequately regulated; and second, a new approach – a paradigm shift – is needed. The Academy advocates moving away from conventional animal test requirements toward a combination of modern computer-based and human-relevant systems biology approaches that can deliver results in days rather than years, and at a small fraction of the cost of animal testing. In fact, many of the participating scientists envision the complete replacement of animal tests, and see this work as prompting a long overdue, and desperately needed, revolution in the regulation of chemicals.
The Human Toxicology Project we are promoting in the United States and globally is, like the Human Genome Project before it, a solution-oriented scientific program that will overhaul the current antiquated testing paradigm so we are no longer treated as guinea pigs – and neither are guinea pigs. It will prevent the horrible effects of testing toxic chemicals on millions of animals, greatly advance our understanding of the effects of chemicals on human biology, and lead to more reliable risk assessment decisions.
On days like today, it seems actually possible that we can make the world a safer and healthier place. Or at least, we’re going to have a lot of fun trying!
On that note, I invite you to watch and share Annie Leonard’s awesome new 7-minute film that reveals the toxic truth about the products we put on our bodies – and shows us what we can do about it. As Annie explains in The Story of Cosmetics, it’s not the choices we make at the store, but the choices made behind the scenes – by industry and the government – that will determine the health of our families and the planet.
And that brings me to the really good news. This week, we are also celebrating the introduction of the federal Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 — the first attempt in more than 70 years to overhaul cosmetics regulations to eliminate the use of cancer-causing chemicals and other harmful ingredients.
This legislation is a major step toward the day when baby shampoos don’t contain cancer-causing chemicals, and teenagers don’t have a dozen hormone-altering cosmetic chemicals in their bodies – and toward the day when we can walk into any store and buy non-toxic products that are safe for our health.
Sometimes, it feels like change is not possible. But then there are days like today – when mainstream media from Parents magazine to Pittsburgh Post Gazette run major stories about protecting our health from toxic chemicals; and we are launching a new film with the fabulous Annie Leonard (who was just featured on the front page of LA Times); and we are finally about to see the introduction of safe cosmetics legislation that has been in the works for almost a decade.
Please join us in celebrating today by doing two things right now:
Blog, Facebook, Tweet and tell all your friends about The Story of Cosmetics with Annie Leonard: www.storyofcosmetics.org
And take action to support the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics website: www.safecosmetics.org.
Together, we can give the beauty industry a makeover and create a healthy, more beautiful future for us all!
This month has been both a special time for our ocean planet and a time of great distress. June 7th kicked off a week full of celebratory events: Capitol Hill Ocean Week, World Ocean Day (June 8th), and my grandfather’s 100th birthday commemoration dive. Throughout the week, the beauty, majesty and fragility of our water world were centerpieces of discussion and reverie.
During our June 11th dive on the “Grand Canglouer” off Marseille (the location of my grandfather’s first expedition in the early 50s), my father Jean-Michel, sister Celine and I were honored to be submerged with some of the original crew of Calypso, such as our dear friend Albert Falco. Not only was this an extraordinary moment for us as a family, but also one that was an intimate communion with the “undersea world.”
Churning in the water column, resembling a giant ink cloud from a gigantic octopus, a dark shroud has enveloped our aquatic arena since April 20th, 2010. The sight has grown all too familiar, thanks to hundreds of websites and blogs broadcasting a live feed. The Gulf oil spill, a catastrophe of epic proportions, has commanded the world’s attention for 62+ straight days now. Not only has the disaster not been halted, the current flow estimates are up to an inconceivable 65,000 barrels of crude spewing freely into the Gulf every 24 hours. That is roughly equivalent to an Exxon Valdez spill every four days… Now that’s daunting!
People are frightened, angry, frustrated, and feeling helpless in the face of such a monstrous disaster. In reaction to such stress, mudslinging and finger pointing abound. Although there is a significant list of people who should be held accountable, there is danger in becoming so distracted that we do not actually fix the problem. The longer we stumble over ourselves and argue, the worse the long-term impact on our environment and our future will be.
Aside from actually “plugging the hole,” a major long-term cleanup effort is mandatory. And no, chemical dispersants are not the answer. We must roll up our sleeves and mop up the mess before it suffocates and poisons not just the Gulf Coast, but the Caribbean, the North American Atlantic Coast and eventually Western European shores. There are representatives from government, NGOs, the private sector, and the public pitching in to help with the cleanup effort. While their significant efforts are definitely helping, the scale of the spill requires a tenfold increase if we are to fathom a brighter future. Adoption of new technologies such as EcoSphere’s filtration units can be a great asset to help eliminate the oil from the water column with the least negative impact. Documenting the effects of BP crude on aquatic and avian wildlife (the Ocean Futures team has been filming in the Gulf since April) is also of paramount importance, both to inform the public about progress and to serve as a basis for future restoration efforts (such as the Plant A Fish initiative). And while there are many people willing to volunteer and help with the animals and beaches, unfortunately we lack the training facilities necessary to enlist all of these potential responders.
With almost 9000 oil and gas platforms surrounding U.S. coastal waters, it’s not a matter of IF this happens again but WHEN. We must end our 100-year-old addiction to fossil fuels. One thing is for sure, we will be dealing with the consequences of the BP Gulf oil spill for decades to come. How long we will be dealing with those consequences is dependent on what we can accomplish now, not what we will do tomorrow. Nature will recover from our abuse eventually. It is up to us if we want to recover with her or be relegated to a footnote in history.
Even though the environmental and economic challenges we face are of monumental proportions, human beings are capable of creating miracles when pressed by necessity. We know what we need to do. Now, it’s a matter of learning to live with the planet rather than living on it.
