Guest guest Posted September 19, 2010 Report Share Posted September 19, 2010 Marilyn, I found this very refreshing to read and it really makes so much sense. I think I remember reading this perspective in the Nourishing Traditions Cookbook.Thanks for the reminder...it is so easy to succumb to what you are daily bombarded with in the health and fitness media!EileenMother of 19 yo son with UC Balance Over Time One thing to be aware of: while vegetables are a good and worthy thing, and a variety of vegetables can ultimately contribute to good health, they are NOT utterly critical as part of the daily diet. Hope you'll forgive me for dragging my Dachshund Duo in here, but they ARE my furkids! Over the Christmas Shopping Frenzy Season in 2002, I was working two extra days a week and flat forgot to grind enough vegetables for the bratlings to last the season. (It happened again in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, when I was working full time and our electricity service was, to say the least, dicey.) Dogs don't have the flat grinding surfaces we humans do for mashing and breaking up vegetables so the nutrients can be extracted; wild canids normally get their veggies pre-digested from the stomachs of their prey. To simulate this, I grind/puree various vegetables, and pack them into ice cube trays, freeze and store the cubes, and then they get two cubes of veggies and one cube of red meat (bison if I can get it, venison, ground round, sometimes liver) for their breakfast. We ran out of veggies the second week of December, so Harry just gave them extra meat for their breakfast. (They get raw, meaty bones for dinner, and get their minerals from the bones.) By the time the Shopping Frenzy was over (after New Year's) and I was back on a normal schedule and ground the veggies, my crew was delighted to see them. In fact, they begged a small bowl of them right there as I was preparing them. BUT -- my point is that they didn't suffer any ill health from going a month or so without fresh vegetables. (Long term is another matter -- like, a year or so.) We are so conditioned by modern agro-business that we absolutely have to have every meal properly balanced (because they want us to buy their products!) that we sometimes forget that for many hundreds of years our food came in cycles dictated by the seasons of the year -- which could include no green vegetables for up to five months at a time, since if you couldn't grow it and store it, you couldn't eat it. We are also conditioned by modern agro-business that we must have variety. Our ancestors couldn't import food from all over the globe, although all of theirs WAS organic and free-range! <grin> Before panicking about variety and so forth, give poor guts a chance to heal a bit more -- and for the new SCDer to detox from their starch and sugar addictions. When I started SCD, I could not tolerate carrots at all. They tasted nasty to me. (Peas still taste nasty.) They also came through my system in big, undigested lumps if I forced myself to eat them. After 16 months on SCD, carrots no longer tasted nasty -- and they no longer came through undigested. The key to this is not a balanced meal every meal, not even a DAILY balanced diet, but BALANCE OVER TIME. For my Dachshund Duo, the four weeks they went without veggies was about the equivalent of going four months without them in a human. (Dogs' pregnancies are 9 weeks, not 9 months.) And they were just FINE. In fact, they were so delighted to have veggies back as part of the menu that I was able to sneak a couple of new veggies in on them -- they're a finicky, spoiled rotten pair of bratlings who want certain foods at certain times of the day! <grin> And I am a very indulgent Dachshund Mom, although THEY are convinced I am abusing them when I don't let them have grain-filled commercial dog treats. Something to think about.... — Marilyn New Orleans, Louisiana, USA Undiagnosed IBS since 1976, SCD since 2001 Darn Good SCD Cook No Human Children Shadow & Sunny Longhair Dachshund Babette the Foundling Beagle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 29, 2010 Report Share Posted September 29, 2010 At 12:44 PM 9/19/2010, you wrote: Marilyn, I found this very refreshing to read and it really makes so much sense. I think I remember reading this perspective in the Nourishing Traditions Cookbook. Thanks for the reminder...it is so easy to succumb to what you are daily bombarded with in the health and fitness media! Glad you found this helpful... although I actually wrote it before I acquired a copy of Nourishing Traditions. JUst shows it's a universally good idea! — Marilyn New Orleans, Louisiana, USA Undiagnosed IBS since 1976, SCD since 2001 Darn Good SCD Cook No Human Children Shadow & Sunny Longhair Dachshund Babette the Foundling Beagle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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