Last week I participated in a conference call organized with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who wants to get the word out about the upcoming reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act and to help promote the First Lady’s new Let’s Move Initiative to combat childhood obesity. The call was organized and moderated by Alix of Silicon…
nutrition
Public conference call with Agriculture Secretary Vilsack
“This is a different USDA,” announced Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week on a conference call with members of the public to share information about the agency’s response to First Lady Michelle Obama’s new Let’s Move initiative to combat childhood obesity. The call was a great opportunity to hear about high-up efforts to address the…
Mama gets the sniffles
Here is a health-focused piece cross-posted from my main blog, Crunchy-Chewy Mama. I had been putting more health-focused pieces here and more snippets from life on the alternative mainstream divide over there, but I now that I am writing for The Washington Times Communities at “Reading Ingredients: Tales of a Health-Conscious Mom,” I’m re-evaluating my…
Why I’m Not a Vegetarian Anymore
In preparation for writing a piece for my column at the Washington Times Communities, “Reading Ingredients: Tales from a Health-Conscious Mom,” I realized that I could stand to write a background post on why I eat the way I do when it’s so different from how I used to eat. I’ve written some about my…
GFCF rolls with hazelnut flour
I wanted to share a photo of the GFCF rolls I made for Thanksgiving this year and an update on the recipe. The bulk of the flour this time was Hazelnut flour from Bob’s Red Mill with some sorghum, rice, and tapioca. Also, I got away with using hardly any sugar and a little more…
Review of new PBS show on “healthy” living
Watch out parents: there’s a new show in town trying to convince your kids that it knows something about healthy eating. Before I share my concerns about PBS’s new show, “Fizzy’s Lunch Lab,” I’d like to describe the kind of show about healthy eating I would actually consider allowing my son to watch. There would…
Heavier than air
After attending a screening of the new film Fresh and seeing Joel Salatin and Sally Fallon speak as part of an amazing panel discussion to a standing-room only crowd at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax, I never want to eat anonymous meat again. Fresh gives just enough insight into factory farming to help the…
The kind of health coverage I want
“This is why health care costs are so high,” hissed my endocrinologist when she looked at the results of the labwork my holistic physician had ordered. To her, the additional blood tests were a waste of time and money. But the information – a full, more complete picture of my thyroid levels and antibody levels–…
Traditional, GFCF, and Low-Carb Eating 101
I just attended a local hospital’s women’s health expo and spoke to a diabetes nutrition educator who was horrified that I would pursue a low carb diet. “Why would you do that?” she asked. I dropped a lot of names, none of which she was familiar with. I just wrote her an email and decided…
More evidence about gluten’s potential harm
It took me three hours to get out of 20 miles worth of DC traffic and the rest of the 70 miles to Richmond, but I am so glad I made it to see the West End Gluten Intolerance Group’s evening presentation with two doctors and important researchers on the effect of gluten on the…
Fighting the flu naturally
I haven’t been pro-vaccine for a long time, since I got the flu vaccine in my 20s and felt terrible. Now that we’re facing a potentially bad flu year, there is a lot of talk about vaccines for flu and specifically for H1N1/Swine Flu. I’m hoping that the alternative folks are right that the best…
What did the boy inherit?
A few months back, I finally did a cheek swab test on my son to see if he did in fact inherit gluten sensitivity from me. I’d ordered the test from Enterolab almost a year earlier on the advice of Melissa Diane Smith, author of the fabulous book, Going Against the Grain. For some reason,…
Ionic foot soak
So, now that my son has weaned, I’m ready to do some detox. I tried an ionic foot bath twice the year I got pregnant. The water turned very yellow both times — like egg yolk. I heard at the time that this was connected to hormone issues. Last week I tried it again, and…
Dropping some silver on supplements
I just spent $132 at the Vitamin Shoppe. Wow. My husband has an eardrum that has been ruptured for over 48 hours and still hurts a lot. I bought some tea, colloidal silver supplement and nasal spray, grapefruit seed extract ear drops and nasal spray, some probiotic (on sale), calendula tincture (seemed like a good…
Gluten-Free (Low)Sugar Cookies
My camera battery died before the cookies came out of the oven, but here are a few of our successful baking experience making cookies to take to our Waldorf school tomorrow, where the class will be be baking Valentine cookies with whole wheat. We always bring our own gluten-free alternative to our Parent-Child class. I…
Body Ecology Diet’s List of 29 Healthy Things to Do
I get e-newsletters from the Body Ecology Diet from time to time. The most recent one contained a list called “29 Most Important Things You Can Do to Improve Your Health in 2009“. There are, as you would expect, several specific nutrition recommendations, like adding in fermented foods and eliminating sugar, but I like that…
The belly is back
“Sugar is a bigger deal for you than gluten,” concluded my doctor as she perfomed muscle-testing on me. A chiropractic neurologist, she was very happy with my progress since my first visit back in October, 10 months ago. At that appointment, I was weepy and not very hopeful. Plus my son was clingy and grabby,…
Who wears short shorts?
It’s time to show my knees again. A year ago, last July 4th, a trip to a friend’s pool pushed my skin irritation over the edge. The dermatologist had called it likely psoriasis, and my knees were red, itchy and flaky. It was getting bad on its own, and I was already embarrassed to wear…
Drinkin’ and a-Runnin’
Who knew that May 31st was the day before June 1st? When my friend’s husband asked if I was available to come to a surprise birthday party for her, I didn’t put it together that the half-marathon I’d just registered for was the following morning, Sunday, at 7:00 a.m. – a hour away. We talked…