2007-2008 check in

[Guest guest]

This is Kate from the Eau area in Wisconsin. We are relatively

new to the group. My husband and I have 2 children (ages 3 and 7). We

own our own business and home school our children.

For 2007, we incorporated more organic veggies into our daily diet. We

belong to a CSA in the area and continue to enjoy fresh organic

veggies daily. We also learned more about GMOs and would love to find

some good seeds and start saving them and growing our own herbs and

veggies using a grow light in winter and on our 40 acres in the summer.

We also started making Kombucha - we were inspired when we tasted

Will's Kombucha one day at Castle Rock Organic Dairy where we heard

him speak.

For 2008, we would like to learn more about growing our own veggies

(gardening in not my strength), saving seeds and I'd like to get back

to making cultured veggies.

We also hope to utilize our 20 open acres this year as they just came

off CRP, growing sunflowers or something that we can press for oil. My

husband manufactures oil presses and multi-oil heating systems. (We

get to heat our home for next to nothing each year.) We hope to get

our vehicle(s) running on the oil and eventually use it to generate

electricity too.

So, that's a start. There are so many more things we'd like to do but

more at a later date.

[Guest guest]

Hey, everybody, here is a fantastic way to start your 2008.....

IN DEFENSE OF FOOD

An Eater's Manifesto

By Pollan

244 pages. The Penguin Press. $21.95.

Not all scientific study of Mars is about extraterrestrial exploration. Some of

it is about

chocolate. Scientists at Mars Corporation have found evidence that the flavanols

in cocoa

have beneficial effects on the heart, thus allowing Mars to market products like

its health-

minded Rich Chocolate Indulgence Beverage.

In the same spirit, nutritionism has lately helped to justify vitamin-enriched

Diet Coke,

bread bolstered with the Omega-3 fatty acids more readily found in fish oil, and

many

other new improvements on what

<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/michael_pollan/ind\

ex.ht

ml?inline=nyt-per> Pollan calls " the tangible material formerly known as

food. "

Goaded by " the silence of the yams, " Mr. Pollan wants to help old-fashioned

edibles fight

back. So he has written " In Defense of Food, " a tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to

the

proposition that food can be reduced to its nutritional components without the

loss of

something essential. " We know how to break down a kernel of corn or grain of

wheat into

its chemical parts, but we have no idea how to put it back together again, " he

writes.

In this lively, invaluable book - which grew out of an essay Mr. Pollan wrote

for The New

York Times Magazine, for which he is a contributing writer - he assails some of

the most

fundamental tenets of nutritionism: that food is simply the sum of its parts,

that the

effects of individual nutrients can be scientifically measured, that the primary

purpose of

eating is to maintain health, and that eating requires expert advice. Experts,

he says, often

do a better job of muddying these issues than of shedding light on them. And it

serves

their own purposes to create confusion. In his opinion the industry-financed

branch of

nutritional science is " remarkably reliable in its ability to find a health

benefit in whatever

food it has been commissioned to study. "

Some of this reasoning turned up in Mr. Pollan's best-selling " Omnivore's

Dilemma. " But

" In Defense of Food " is a simpler, blunter and more pragmatic book, one that

really lives

up to the " manifesto " in its subtitle. Although he is not in the business of

dispensing self-

help rules, he incorporates a few McNuggets of plain-spoken advice: Don't eat

things that

your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize. Avoid anything that trumpets the word

" healthy. " Be as vitamin-conscious as the person who takes supplements, but

don't

actually take them. And in the soon to be exhaustively quoted words on the

book's cover:

" Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. " An inspiring head of lettuce is the

poster image

for this mantra.

Do we really need such elementary advice? Well, two-thirds of the way through

his

argument Mr. Pollan points out something irrefutable. " You would not have bought

this

book and read this far into it if your food culture was intact and healthy, " he

says. Nor

would you eat substances like Go-Gurt, eat them on the run or eat them at

mealtimes that

are so out of sync with friends and relatives that the real family dinner is an

endangered

ritual. Other writers on food, from

<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/barbara_kingsolver\

/inde

x.html?inline=nyt-per>Barbara Kingsolver to n Nestle, have expressed the

same

alarm, but " In Defense of Food " is an especially succinct and helpful summary.

Among the historical details that underscore a sense of food's downhill slide:

the way a

Senate Select Committee led by

<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/george_s_mcgovern/\

in

dex.html?inline=nyt-per> McGovern was pressured in 1977 to reword a

dietary

recommendation. Its warning to " reduce consumption of meat " turned into " choose

meats,

poultry and fish that will reduce saturated fat intake. "

When Mr. McGovern lost his seat three years later, Mr. Pollan says, the beef

lobby

" succeeded in rusticating the three-term senator, sending an unmistakable

warning to

anyone who would challenge the American diet, and in particular the big chunk of

animal

protein squatting in the middle of its plate. "

Mr. Pollan shows how the story of nutritionism is " a history of macronutrients

at war. " If

the conventional scientific wisdom has moved from demon (saturated fat) to demon

(carbohydrates), creating irreconcilably different theories about the health

benefits of

various foods, it has also created an up-and-coming eating disorder: orthorexia.

" We are, " he underscores, " people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy

eating. " This

book is biliously entertaining about orthorexia's crazy extremes. A recent

" qualified "

F.D.A.-approved health claim for corn oil makes sense, Mr. Pollan says, " as long

as it

replaces a comparable amount of, say, poison in your diet and doesn't increase

the total

number of calories you eat in a day. "

Since a Western diet conducive to diabetes has led us not to improved eating

habits but to

a growing diabetes industry, complete with its own magazine (Diabetic Living),

Mr. Pollan

finds little wisdom from the medical establishment about food and its

ramifications. " We'll

know this has changed when doctors have kicked the fast-food franchises out of

the

hospitals, " he says.

Until then he recommends that we pay more attention to the reductive effects of

food

science, recognize the fallibility of research studies (because to replicate the

healthy

effects of, say, the Mediterranean diet completely, you need to live like a

villager on Crete)

and dial back the clock. Mr. Pollan advocates a return to the local and the

basic, even at

the risk of elitism. He recommends that Americans spend more on food: not only

more

money but also more time. Eat less, and maybe you make up the financial

difference.

Trade fast food for cooking, and maybe you restore some civility to the

traditional idea of

the meal.

" No, a desk is not a table, " he points out. Though he shouldn't have to tell us

that, readers

of " In Defense of Food " will be glad he did.

[Guest guest]

Hello and Happy New Year~

This is the first time that I have written to the group, though as others

have said, I appreciate all of your knowledge

My name is Trish and I live in a duplex in North Minneapolis with my husband

, our little boy Nico who is 2 years old, my sister . We have 3

hens that provide us with fresh eggs and several raised beds for growing

veggies. We use as much of our Minneapolis city lot for growing food as

possible. We love farmers markets, food co-ops, buying clubs and cooking

with our friends and family.

In 2008 we are committed to:

learning to make kombucha, kefir and other fermented foods

making sourdough bread regularly

freezing and canning more food than in 2007

buying more local and sustainably raised ingredients than in 2007

expanding our flock of chickens

expanding our vegetable gardens

attending more gatherings at farms

We wish the best for all of you during the coming year. We are proud to be a

part of a group of people who are carrying on the traditions of real food.

Best,

trish, paul and nico

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