Nutrition

Last week, I signed up to take a nutrition class.  It was recommended by a friend.  It's a 6 week course meeting once a week.

I've been interested in improving my nutritional intake ever since I did a three month "experiment" to clean out and heal my body.  I went to a holistic doctor who taught me quite a bit about how what we eat affects all of our body health, not just the parts that get fat!  During the three months I honestly ate the foods he recommended, I felt wonderful.

The constant migraines that had plagued me for many years were completely gone.  The neck and shoulder pain that I attributed to tension was gone.  The subtle aches and pains that I rarely notice because they are always there were also gone.  I'd never felt so good.

However, eating nutritiously takes a lot of time and sacrifice, and I wasn't able to sustain it.

Because of this, I wasn't expecting a whole lot from this class, but I am always willing to hear about how I SHOULD be eating.

But the instructor, Amanda (www.eatyourroots.org), said something that struck me and was super simple to understand:  we need to eat like people ate 100 years ago.

It seems that around 80 years ago, there was a butter shortage in this country.  This instigated a government push for an artificial substitute, which started a whole series of artificial additives and  preservatives being created.  I know that might be a bit simplistic, but that was the gist of the lesson.  The point is, in the last century we've been morphing our food into something so very far from it's natural state that our bodies have a really hard time dealing with this foreign matter.

However, this instructor's focus is attainability!  Which is good.  Because the hardest part about eating healthy is the time it takes.  A lot of time is required in planning, purchasing, soaking, thawing, and cooking naturally.

But on the bright side, she did take us to the farmer's market and gave us good examples of the questions to ask farmers about their farming practices.  Ok, so I'm not quite to the attainability part, but maybe soon?  We're only a week into the class.......