2018 was a year that allowed me to check off one remaining place on my "bucket list" that I had longed to visit. As I'm typing this blog, I'm still amazed at how God worked all of that out for me to travel to Guatemala last June. I didn't have the opportunity to meet the young man (David) that our family began sponsoring a number of years before, but instead I was incredibly blessed to have my new son-in-law, Jonathan, as our "tour guide" on the mission trip. Guatemala is Jonathan's homeland although he's now a US citizen and bi-lingual. God generously gave me so much more on that trip than I had ever hoped for!
One of the beautiful memories I have of Guatemala is a mental picture of the feet of an old man sitting in a wheelchair. He was in his 90s and had worked the fields his entire life and had only quit going to work about 4 months before we arrived when he was overwhelmed with grief from the deaths of his children. (There's no such thing as retirement, Social Security benefits, or a pension plan in Guatemala.)
The Guatemalan people are beautiful and the culture and land are rich. As we were shuttled by bus every day to the orphanage where we worked, we could look out and see crops planted on every tiny parcel of available land. My son, David, was with me one day as we stood on the side of a small road looking out at a beautiful field of cabbage. David pointed out that there were no rows, but instead the cabbage had been planted as closely together as possible to utilize every inch of rich soil. Since David has worked on a farm and has harvested tons of cabbage, he saw the field in a way that I didn't. There's no need for rows because they don't use machinery to plant and harvest. Before planting, the land is tilled using an ox, so as it's tilled, the land is fertilized with manure. This was our country's way of farming long ago. The feet of that old man who was in his 90s were golden brown from the sun and weathered from working the land God had entrusted to him. He cared for the land and animals, and they cared for him.
At this point, you might want to pull out your air popper, make some popcorn, get comfy and watch a documentary about food in our country. It's an opportunity to peer through the veil for "an unflattering look inside America's corporate controlled food industry". In 2009, Robert Kenner directed the Food, Inc. documentary which you can view on Netflix or rent on Amazon. It's a 93 minute look at a story many companies don't want told. If you can't invest 93 minutes to watch the entire documentary, then please spend 2 minutes viewing the free trailer on Amazon. You'll get a glimpse into some of what's behind the veil. Many American companies that are producing "food", don't want farmers talking. It's the farmers, food manufacturing plant workers, and the American consumers that have paid a very heavy price. As consumers, the greatest price we've paid is in unseen changes made to our food which have surely contributed to the many illnesses and diseases we're experiencing. By filling our diet with lots of refined sugars instead of good healthy fats and whole foods, our bodies have suffered. Thankfully, I now know what a nutrient dense diet looks like and where to buy food that is steadily healing my body. My prayer is that you'll discover places to buy nutrient dense food, too!
The Food, Inc. documentary says there are over 47,000 products available in a supermarket. These products fit in one of two categories: food or junk. Food looks, tastes, and is digestible by our bodies as God created it. Junk is...something else! On a video titled, "The Truth About Cancer", one of the doctors said, "If God made it, it's good. If man made it, it's madness!" The food industry is now engineering and marketing products under the label of "food" but our bodies don't recognize it and aren't equipped to digest it. Food gives the body nutrients for energy and healing. Junk gives the body NO real nutrients along with added work to move that junk through the digestive tract. When I open my mouth to eat, will my body receive food or junk?
This major change with our food really started in the 1930s with the invention of carhop drive-in restaurants. By the 1950s, McDonald's was established and they brought big changes to our food when they introduced the factory idea to the restaurant business. Having traveled to Asia in the late 1980s, it amazed me when I ate a hamburger at a McDonald's in Hong Kong that tasted exactly the same as a McDonald's hamburger in southern Indiana. It's the processing steps that ensure that this "food" tastes exactly the same everywhere in the world. I'm confident that the beef and chicken sold in fast food restaurants (and probably most other restaurants and groceries) is NOT coming from the beautiful farm picture we have stored in our minds where the cows are grazing in an open field and the chickens are scavenging for worms and bugs. Instead, those cows are probably being fed in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) where they are confined and probably never eat a single blade of grass and the chickens never have the opportunity to see sunlight or have a chance to forage for food. Much has changed with our food in recent decades but as consumers, our dollars speak! Farmers will deliver what consumers demand.
Last year, I went on a field trip to visit a local farm that's less than an hour's drive from my home. I had been buying from them at the Farmers Market but I had questions regarding their raw dairy and they were interested in answering my questions. On the farm's website (www.grasscorp.net), their Mission is stated, "Our passion is building soil fertility through intense pasture management. We believe that where there is life in the soil there will be high quality pastures able to produce healthy animals that result in nutritious meat, dairy, and eggs." When animals are fed the food they are designed to eat, their products are ideally suited for our needs as well. On the Grass Corp farm, the animals are in the pastures eating, being cared for, and being fed on healthy, nutrient dense soil.
Please consider a trip to a Farmers Market, find a farm in your area, or find a "health food store" so you can buy more nutrient dense meat, eggs, and dairy (if you choose to include it in your diet). When I was visiting Grass Corp, they mentioned how thankful they are for refrigerators and freezers today. I'm sure we all agree on the convenience a freezer provides. When I reflect back to my childhood, I remember when our deep freeze would be filled to the top with a quarter of a beef that came from a local farm. I grew up eating beef from pasture raised animals. That meat came from a cow that was pasture raised....not fed large amounts of grain in a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). Many of the largest organic producers today also raise their animals in these CAFOs and feed them grain, just like ordinary commercial producers. (The only difference is that grain is organic.)
As I wrote in a previous blog (He fed them fish), fish should be eaten regularly to get the much needed omega-3 fatty acids. By eating some fatty fish (eg. salmon, mackerel, sardines, anchovies) along with pasture raised meat and eggs, your body will be getting much needed nutrients for great health and healing. Most of my eggs come from Grass Corp. The eggs I buy are pasture raised meaning the chickens roam in pastures, allowing them to both forage for food on their own and eat supplemental feed.
Thankfully, Grass Corp brings their nutrient dense food to the New Albany, Indiana Farmers Market on Saturday mornings so it's less than a 15 minute drive for me to pick up my order. Just this week, I received an exciting email from Grass Corp announcing new delivery locations at Rainbow Blossom stores in Louisville, Kentucky and another store in Owensboro, Kentucky. Ordering on-line by Wednesday at midnight means they'll have all my products bagged and ready for me when I get there on Saturday morning. Most farms have similar arrangements. They make getting nutritious food convenient!
Below are two breakfast casseroles that I frequently make. One is gluten-free. Along with eggs, these casseroles are loaded with veggies which our bodies need plenty of every day. Eating lots of cooked & raw vegetables each day is an important part of a nutrient dense diet. Eggs are fabulous because they are a complete protein meaning they contain all nine of the essential amino acids in roughly equal amounts. The yolk is filled with wonderful oils for our body and the white is loaded with protein. Both parts of an egg together make it a super nutritious food!
You might want to enjoy some of the breakfast casserole now and freeze some pieces individually so you have a speedy breakfast another day. God continues to provide a wonderful bounty of nutritious foods for our health, healing, and enjoyment!
