A Little Family Experiment

I was in a local second hand book store when I came across a book called The Maker's Diet.  I had actually heard of it before about 6 or so years ago. Chris had an aunt that lost about 50 lbs. and was feeling amazing by following the principles in it.  The bookstore was closing and everything was super cheap, so I brought it home and started reading.

And it is totally fascinating.

Some things you already know, like avoiding milk with hormones in it, something I know I should be doing, but don't because of cost.  But it goes into all sorts of things like how as a society we are over clean and germaphobic and how he believes it's leading to a whole population that is only getting sicker because of it.  A line of thinking I happen to agree with both in my background in Microbiology, as well as watching my kids, especially Moyz and Kembia, who didn't get such a pampered start to life as the rest of my kids, and now watching them get by far less sickness then my other kids.

There's all sorts of things that are interesting from our need to have yogurt and fermented foods in our lives for good bacteria, to the avoidance of shellfish, lobster, mussels etc., due to the fact that they are basically bottom feeders that soak up all the nastiness in the oceans.  A fact which makes me considerably sad given that those are some of my favorite things to eat.

Anyway, long story short, Chris and I have decided to run a little experiment with our tribe for the month of March after we get back from the Boundary Waters.  We are going to eat only things that are unprocessed and naturally occurring.  If it comes pre-packaged we won't be eating it.  We will also be following the food laws in the Book of Leviticus, mostly because that is essentially where the book gets its information from.  Interestingly enough, the Old Testament specifically told the Jewish people to avoid all fish that do not have scales and are smooth sided, for examples, clams, mussles, lobster and eels.  They didn't understand that they would be used in the future to determine how much mercury is in the water and other nastiness.

This is not some legalistic experiment that we are running all for the sake of Christianity, but are looking at it in terms of why would God tell us not to eat certain things, and if we take them out of our diet, how does it make us feel?

Good bye bacon, I will totally miss you.

Here are some other things we won't be eating:

Pork in any form, soy, ostritch and emu, and just when I was having a hankering for those two items...., no lunch meat or any meat breaded, all dairy products with the exception of some goat cheese and milk, which less face it, we probably won't be eating either, beans, corn, potatoes, margarine, shortening, nuts, any spices with added sugars, all fruits with the exceptions of berries, grapefruits, limes and lemons, no alcoholic beverages, fruit juice, pop, pre-ground coffee, all grains, including oatmeal, sugar, heated honey, and any other artificial sweetners plus other things that I was too lazy to type .

Good grief.  It should be interesting, but I feel like we're halfway there because we have a whole freezer full of venison from this fall, and our own chickens we butchered last summer.  I am most interested in seeing how anyone in our family feels in terms of getting out grains.  Actually, we will have grains again after the first two weeks, but it will pretty much be limited to sprouted wheat berries (good thing I have some of those laying around!), which I can pound into flour if I really want to make bread, or we can just eat the sprouted berries kind of like oatmeal, and barley.

I am also interested in seeing how everything goes when we take out all forms of caffeine that Chris and I are used to- my two cups of tea in the morning with sugar, and Chris' ginormous cups on the weekends.  Herbal teas are allowed but just without sweetner, so if I am getting exceptionally crabby one day, I may just have to have a plain cup or two....

We will be making one giant exception, and that is for Ava's 10th birthday which falls in March, she will still get to pick out the meal she wants to eat and the type of cake, we can't take away all the fun for such an important birthday!

PS: I also drank my first kefir yesterday.  I'll admit it was a little hard to drink milk from a cup that sat on my counter for two days.  It just goes against everything that I am paranoid about leaving food out.  But I liked it, and will continue. Here's hoping for a wildly successful gut improvement in me.