Locavore for the Day

Sunday, March 30th, 2008, 11:27 am

When I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book last summer, I yearned for the opportunity to be a locavore like her family was for a year in Virginia. The allure of the locavore, one who only eats locally grown and produced food, has become so popular that there are scores of books, websites and even diets like the “100-Mile Diet” professing that eating local can significantly protect against potentially disastrous climate change. Intuitively it makes sense – if your meat and produce doesn’t travel great distances by land, sea or air, then your carbon footprint is smaller. It also makes sense if you care about the origin of the food that fuels your body. Eating local by shopping at farmer’s markets, CSAs and raw dairy clubs enables you to get to know your local farmer, and you can look him in the eye and see that he treats his grass-fed life-stock humanely and would never use hormones on his cattle or pesticides on his land.

Locavore Cooking Class

So when I saw that ICE, my favorite local NYC cooking school, was offering a Cooking Book Club class on Kingsolver’s book, I immediately signed up and started re-reading my already dog-eared book. Here is an excerpt from the class description: The ever-growing return of interest for home cooking has created a market for an incredible amount of food writing that is both entertaining and informative. Here, join Melanie Underwood for this fun night inspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s family lived a solid year cooking only food that they or their immediate neighbors grew themselves. The book chronicles the eye opening year of abandoning industrial food with humor and honesty. And here is the class menu: Using local ingredients, you’ll prepare a meal of Herb Flan; Goat Cheese and Asparagus Tart; Warm Spinach Dip; Seared Duck Breasts with a Red Wine Sauce; Whole Roasted Chicken; Potato and Caramelized Onion Gratin; Wilted Beet Greens with Pancetta and Parmesan; Individual Rhubarb Cakes with Lemon Thyme Ice Cream; and Roasted Apples. (These wonderful recipes are now posted in my Photos block below.)

Melanie Underwood, expert locavore chef

Our chef instructor, Melanie Underwood, surely didn’t disappoint…she grew up on a farm in Virginia with chickens, turkeys, geese, guineas, pigs, cows, peacocks, and a HUGE vegetable garden. She now lives as locavore a lifestyle as possible here in NYC. She explained how eating food from local farms is even healthier for us and the planet than simply buying organic. Some organic food is shipped from all over the world and therefore is harvested before it is ripe so it doesn’t spoil en route. Melanie spoke about how as a result locally grown food tastes different and better, as food was meant to be. She talked about how she knows the small local farmers from whom she buys her food and many cannot afford to get organic accreditation so while their food isn’t labeled organic, she knows that it is and that they would never use pesticides. I’ve heard farmers explain this to inquiring consumers at farmer’s markets and watched folks walk away shaking their head saying “I’m sorry, I can only buy organic…” The farmers just smile like they have heard this before and persevere. Perhaps now that the masses are going green, we need to further educate them on the importance of digging a little deeper and going beyond the labels to understand the heart behind the local farming movement.

Melanie’s cooking style and philosophy echoed my own: she understands that cooking with good fats (as Weston Price proved) increases both health and flavor; she encourages you to taste often and feel your way through the recipe rather than be a slave to the ingredients and measurements (unless you are baking). She taught us how to improvise with the ingredients at hand – an important lesson for those in a CSA as you need to get creative when that weekly box of ever multiplying mustard greens and swiss chard arrives on your doorstep!

In fact, the only disappointment was that I was the only one in the 10 person class who had actually finished the book. Many hadn’t read it at all; several hadn’t finished it. So Melanie and I spoke about our favorite parts of the book (the Turkey mating saga!), and I think everyone enjoyed the class so much that they will now give it a read. For those curious about the book, check out their fun website for book excerpts, recipes and local food news.

Go Greener, Go Local

I’m lucky to live in New York, where schools like ICE and experts like Melanie make locally grown come alive.  But wherever you live, think locally, support your regional farms, get to know the farmers who care about their land and the food they sell, encourage them, set up your own discussion clubs or book groups or cooking soirees, to bring like minded folk together. It’s for our health and the health of the planet – plus, it all tastes mighty good.

Mary Beth Gonzalez

iVillage.com

Tags: local food, organic, locavore

Green Medicine

Sunday, March 23rd, 2008, 1:10 pm

Green Medicine

What exactly is Green Medicine?  I like to think of it in terms of stimulating the body’s own resources and extraordinary abilities to repair and rebuild itself, and help reverse even serious illness, using diet, nutrients, detoxification procedures rather than drugs, to move our bodies in a healing direction.  It also means living a clean life at home, avoiding exposures, as much as possible, to toxic synthetic chemicals, it also means working to keep the larger world around us cleaner, greener, as it was originally meant to be.

This approach differs considerably from the more conventional medicine we know so well, the slash and burn treatment of illness that uses primarily drugs, invariably with long lists of toxic side effects, to blast away at the illness- be it bacterial or cancer.  Of course no one denies the benefits of technological, pharmaceutical based modern medicine but it has serious limitations, and often doesn’t work very well – witness the recent reports revealing that antidepressants, long considered one of the great victories of modern medicine, may overall work no better than placebo.

But, nice as it may sound, gentle as it might seem in theory, can green medicine really work, say against a terrible disease like cancer?  Well, my colleague Dr. Isaacs and I, certainly believe so, and our experience over the past 20 years in the trenches with at times the sickest of the sick has helped confirm that done properly and intensively, our brand of medicine can work.

Others think so too. Over the years, we’ve received some significant recognition in the form of funding by major corporations such as Nestle and Procter & Gamble, even the US National Cancer Institute. We’ve published results confirming the benefit of the treatment against the worst of cancers, and continue working hard toward its wider acceptance.

Though those who know of our work see it as a medical treatment, in fact, it really is, at its core, “Green Medicine,” an entire green lifestyle, that uses food and nutrients and enzymes to change our vital chemistry for the better, but that also requires patients lead a clean and green lifestyle.  We think of our therapy at three levels, personal green, the basics of good, wholesome nutrition, local green, the environment in our homes and offices, and global green – protecting the soils, the forests, the air and the earth.

Personal Green

In terms of personal green, our therapy, in its essence, consists of three basic components, individualized diets, individualized supplement protocols, and detoxification routines, such as juice fasts and colon cleanses, but it most certainly is not “one size fits all.”  We don’t prescribe just one magical diet, suitable for all sizes and shapes of humans, but a variety ranging from near pure vegetarian near raw nuts and seeds to fatty red meat three times a day, akin to an Atkins’ approach.  Our supplement programs are equally as varied, involving precisely designed combinations of vitamins, minerals, trace elements, again depending on the patient’s specific needs, and for our cancer patients, large doses of enzymes we believe fight the disease effectively.  The detoxification routines we believe help patients mobilize and excrete the myriad of toxic chemicals we take in daily from our food, water and air, and that we synthesize daily during our routine minute to minute metabolism.

In addition to whatever specific diet, supplements or detox procedures I might prescribe, since I started in practice, we have insisted our patients eat primarily, if not exclusively, organically.  We’ve long believed that organic food, whether of plant or animal in origin, not only lacks the many the toxic chemicals found in conventional selections, but provides more nutritional benefit.  For example, organically raised carrots yield higher quantities of essential antioxidants such as beta carotene, and grass fed beef can contain ten times the amount of the essential omega-3 fatty acids than cattle raised on grain in the feedlot.

(please see next blog posting for part 2)

Tags: diet, medicine, alternative medicine, detox

Green Medicine (continued)

Sunday, March 23rd, 2008, 1:08 pm

Easy Being Green

Twenty years ago, organic wasn’t as easy to come by as it is today, now with every supermarket in the country providing naturally grown food.  In the good old days, even into the 1990’s, my patients often had to rely on limited selections of produce from small mom and pop health food stores, or turn to mail order suppliers that shipped overnight.  Today, fortunately, organic is everywhere – when over Christmas my wife and I stayed on Sanibel Island in Florida, I was pleased to see even there, the local Island supermarket had an extensive section of organic produce, as well as grass fed meat.  Organic is always best, but locally grown organic is the very best, since food, even if grown cleanly, loses some value in transport.

We believe that the cleaner the food, the better our patients do, but we believe everyone – or at least, everyone interested in optimal health – should eat organically, or at least as much as feasible, given the cost issue. I have eaten this way myself for the better part of 25 years, and my wife and I run an “organic kitchen.”  I’ve been eating cleanly for so long, that when I travel and must rely on non-organic restaurant food, I can feel the difference. I don’t sleep as well. I’m just not as sharp mentally.  Those chemicals do indeed make a difference.

Green Water

Of course, water is as important as food, lots of it, since, we’re mostly made of H2O. But only clean water, the cleaner the better.  Don’t believe that tap water is ok, chlorine has been shown to be mutagenic, that is, it disrupts our very DNA, and the debate about the safety of fluoride continues unabated.  As my wife Mary Beth wrote in her “Green” blog about water recently, evidence now shows millions of Americans ingest all manner of drugs that have contaminated our water supply.  Who needs such stuff, even if the amounts are small.  Clean water is key, always, and for our supply, we rely on reverse osmosis filtration.  Put ten water experts in a room together and you will get 20 opinions, but until someone comes up with a better way, I believe reverse osmosis still the best.

Green Home and Office

We run an organic kitchen, but we also run a non toxic home.  All our cleaning products are “green,” purchased from companies such as Seventh Generation and Shaklee, both with extensive selections of home products. When we had our apartment painted several years ago, we used non-toxic non-fuming paint that left no irritating, noxious odor.  All our rugs consist of natural fibers, untainted by any number of chemical treatments commercial carpet manufacturers traditionally apply, such as formaldehyde, even pesticides – that’s right, some commercial carpets have traces of pesticides, so when your kids are crawling over them playfully, the stuff will rub onto their skin.  

I also run a green office.  When we had the place constructed 16 years ago, we insisted everything in the office – the wooden floors, walls, even the furniture, be constructed of non-toxic materials only, no synthetic dyes, no formaldehyde, only natural woods, natural oils, and natural paints.  A company with a factory in Vermont and a New York showroom, Pompanoosac Mills, made all our office furniture out of natural, untainted woods and finishes, and 16 years later, all of it has held up to wear and tear beautifully, without exposing us to one milligram of synthetic toxic junk.

Global Green

Of course, when you live green personally, at home, and if possible, at the office, you are living green globally.  When you choose organic, you support farms that don’t apply the load of toxic chemicals that degrade soil, penetrate into water supplies, and eventually leech in our rivers and oceans, then into the fish that swim in these waters.  When you chose local organic, you reduce the carbon footprint, the costs of transport, and reduce, as well nutrient loss.  When each of us lives green in our home, we’re keeping a host of toxic chemicals out of the greater environment at large.

I’m encouraged by the growing acceptance of adopting a green lifestyle, and the change in attitude toward concepts such as organic I’ve witnessed over the past 20 years.  With the growing interest in all things green, I believe more and more of us will turn to greener medicine, the gentler, less toxic interventions that can work, again, if done properly.

Nicholas Gonzalez, MD

www.dr-gonzalez.com

Time to Make the Water...

Sunday, March 9th, 2008, 2:32 pm

Time to Make the Water

Remember that Dunkin Donuts commercial where the guy would stumble into the bakery in the wee hours to start making the donuts so they would be fresh for the morning rush? It was time to make the donuts…Now picture me in my bathrobe, hair askew, teeth unbrushed, moving zombie like on weekend mornings because it was time to make the water…

“Best Tasting” Does Not Equal “Healthy”

I know folks claim that NYC’s water is the “best tasting” water in the nation. Maybe by some standards it is but that does not mean that it is healthy for you. I’m not a water expert, but 7 years ago we had our NYC water tested in a lab and found it that our water sample, collected directly from our kitchen tap, contained fecal contamination. Yes, we were drinking, cooking and brushing our teeth with poop. Plus, our NYC city water contains chlorine which, sorry, has been shown to be carcinogenic, and fluoride which still generates serious controversy over its safety. Furthermore, today, an AP investigation announced that a small amount but a “vast array of pharmaceuticals - including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans”.

Water Torture

So, we set up a powerful water filter in our back kitchen and every weekend we would hook up the filter hose to an empty glass gallon jug and make water. Making water this way is a slow process that reminds me of old movies about Chinese Water Torture. The filtered water drips drop by drop into the gallon jug. On a good day, we could make a gallon in 2-3 hours. On a day with low water pressure and when the water needs more filtering, it could take 6 hours to make a gallon. Since we would use this water for all our personal and cooking needs, we needed 12 gallons of water to get through the week so our weekends revolved around watching the water and being ready to switch in the next gallon jug just before the first one overflows.

Sure, we could have just purchased gallons of spring water every week but even when you recycle, all that packaging is still wasteful and plastic bottles leech chemicals into the water. I tried ordering glass gallon bottled water from Mountain Valley Water service who would deliver weekly, but then I couldn’t handle the carbon offset guilt of personally trucking in my water. So making my own water was the greenest and best solution.

When you work that hard at something day in and day out, you can grow attached to it and so there was born my little water obsession. By Sunday night, I would have 6 gallons ready to drink above the refrigerator, 2 gallons in glass water pitchers keeping cold in the fridge, 6 gallons stored in a special portable kitchen cabinet I bought at Bed, Bath and Beyond just for this purpose, and in case of an emergency, I had 12 half gallons in 2 crates in the hall closet left over from our Mountain Valley Water days.

Old Habits Die Hard

Is this all worth it? I asked that question a lot as my water adventures started to flood my brain. The no-brainer was that I only wanted to cook and drink with clean water in the greenest way possible. But surely there was a better way. So last summer we invested in a reverse osmosis water filter that is built into the kitchen sink and has its own separate faucet. It lives under the sink, constantly makes water and can theoretically produce up to 35 gallons in a single day. Voila! Somebody took my weekend job!

Now 6 months later, I still marvel at how I can simply walk up to the kitchen sink with a glass in hand and pour myself a fresh glass of water. It takes me back in time to the days of yesteryear before we knew that virtually everything around us is toxic and damaging the environment. It brings me hope for the future that we can find more ways to live green without having to change our lifestyle radically. Yet old habits die hard…this weekend, I was cleaning out the guest room closet and found another 24 gallons of crated water that I must have been saving, just in case…

Mary Beth Gonzalez

Tags: water, toxic, recycling