Too bad we can't just stop needing to eat

I found myself ruminating today on one of the biggest changes society's advancement has brought to our daily lives. It has to do with food.

For most of us in wealthy countries today, we no longer have to spend nearly every moment thinking about food. For much of history, and still in much of the world today, people have had to spend most of their time and energy eking out food--either growing it or foraging and hunting for their next meal.

Once they had the ingredients, they had to prepare it completely from scratch. Food preparation, before modern equipment and the advent of pre-prepared foods, was much more difficult and time-consuming.

The familiar story AJ was reading to MM and Baby E today is a great illustration. The Little Red Hen searched and scratched in the dust until she found a grain of wheat. Then she planted and cared for it while it grew, harvested it, threshed it, and ground it into flour before she could bake it into bread. All the other ingredients would have been obtained almost as laboriously.

If people have to spend nearly every waking moment getting and preparing food, there is very little time and energy left for anything else. Things like art, music, technological advances, and leisure activities aren't going to happen much if at all in a culture where each person's very survival depends on expending all their time and energy obtaining food.

With our new dietary restrictions, I feel like I've been catapulted back in time.

My naturopath recommended that in addition to cutting out all soy, peanuts, chocolate, caffeine, avacados, refined sugars, most refined grains and most dairy products, we also need to cut out all dairy products for the whole family (especially MM, who practically lives for milk), all wheat products and perhaps eggs as well.

#######################

The good news: we can cautiously add some tree nuts into our diet.

But avoiding wheat and rotating the other grains is hard. Have you ever tried cooking for a day or two using only one or two obscure grains, none of them wheat, for all meals and snacks? For instance: Monday oats and millet. Tuesday amaranth and corn. Wednesday buckwheat, rice and lentils. Thursday barley and quinoa. That's been our week so far.

I don't really know how to cook with most of these grains. So far, my family likes maybe 1/3 of the things I've tried making with them. Buckwheat and lentils were the least-liked (non)grains we've tried, so next time I think I'll split up buckwheat and legumes.

A total rotation diet would involve rotating all foods, but we're only doing grains, possibly nightshade vegetables, and (sort of) nuts. I haven't worked it all out for sure yet.

The basic idea of a grain rotation, for example, is that you eat various grains on a rotating schedule. This involves grouping them into families and eating closely-related grains during the same time period, and then not at all for at least 4 days. You can be a little more lenient by eating related grains with a 2-day break, but being careful not to eat the same grain twice within a 4- or 5-day period. The rotation is supposed to minimize allergies and food sensitivities, and help prevent the formation of new sensitivities.

The 4-day thing is because that's supposedly how long it takes for your body to completely eliminate a food and resolve any resulting issues. The book DH got me for Christmas, "The Complete Allergy Cookbook," talks a lot about rotation diets too, so I'd already been looking into it when the naturopath suggested it.

Why are we doing this, you ask? Two reasons: we aren't feeling well (we've all been struggling with mood, energy, and recurrent illness issues for months now), and we have an extended family history of many food allergies and sensitivities. Plus, of course, Baby E's extreme sensitivity to various foods ingested through nursing--especially soy.

Current recommendations from most sources are to avoid eating any food an immediate family member is allergic to when nursing and when feeding young children.
If I were to list all the food allergies and intolerances in my immediate family (parents, siblings, self, children) it would be a very, very long list. It's easier to rotate foods than to completely avoid all those foods.

Also, there's a distinct pattern of developing intolerances to frequently-eaten grains in my family. We'd like to try to avoid that. We also have a family member (on DH's side this time) with celiac disease (a severe gluten intolerance).

We have all been not feeling well, but MM seems particularly unwell in a nondescript sort of way. She's been unusually whiny and grouchy for most of a few months now. She complains of odd random aches and pains almost daily, and is constantly tired. Yet she can't sleep well at night. Very disconcerting.

Since almost everyone else in the family has problems with dairy, and I get an increase of symptoms similar to what she's experiencing it when I ingest dairy products, eliminating dairy seemed a logical first thing to try. But she's having a really hard time with that. She keeps begging for milk. She hates rice and nut milks. It's so hard to tell her no, especially when it's her comfort food that she's used to for morning and nap time.

My naturopath and her partner seem to be of the opinion that refined sugars, refined flours, wheat and cow's milk are all innocuous-looking forms of poison. If we weren't having issues with the whole family not feeling well and getting sick a lot, plus a family history of allergies to many of those foods, I might just laugh at it. As it is, it at least seems worth a try.

It's just harder than I thought it would be.

I'm hoping it will get a little easier once I get used to using these grains and develop a repertoire of recipes we like. But we can use almost nothing that's pre-prepared. So I've ended up spending most of my day (when I'm not nursing the baby) trying to figure out what to cook, and preparing it. Almost as soon as we finish one meal it's time to think about the next. That is quickly getting frustrating.

I did decide today that it's definitely not worthwhile to start with unshelled nuts to make my own nut milks from scratch. Especially with brazil nuts. It's much easier to crack and blanch almonds (by boiling them briefly) and then peel off the skins and grind them up. But I'm not going to try that again when I can just buy organic, ready-made almond milk at a reasonable price. My hour or two of time is worth more than the $1 or so I save by making it myself.

Chichimama shared a website that looks like a great resource for finding recipes that avoid particular allergens; that might be helpful.

I'm giving the grain rotation a week or two. If it still seems too overwhelming and difficult after that, I think I'll just concentrate on getting a good variety of foods without worrying about how many days it's been since we last ate a particular grain.

I guess I'm not really convinced that the food rotation thing is really necessary. As DH pointed out, it's much more normal for people to eat a few foods for an extended period of time than to eat a food once every 4 days. In most time periods and cultures, people eat what happens to be in season or what they find a source for. If they find or grow a field of wheat, that's going to be mostly what they eat for a time. If they live near a marsh that grows rice, they'll eat a lot of rice. If they kill a bear, they're going to be eating large quantitites of bear meat for quite some time. On the other hand, I do know that people commonly develop allergies to foods they are frequently exposed to.

I don't really know what I think of the whole rotation diet issue. If any of my readers have any input or experience to share either way, I'd like to hear it.

Phantom Scribbler pointed out some articles on PubMed suggesting that it's hard to make sure you're getting adequate amounts of all nutrients with a "rotary diversified diet", but I think that's with rotating all foods and not just grains. I think we're probably getting better nutrition than before by substituting a variety of other (whole) grains for the refined wheat and white rice products most people eat.

Of course, I could always go with Dr. Mercola's suggestion (does anyone know anything about him? I'm curious) and eat few or no grains at all . . . but that would really be a lifestyle change for us. Besides, I don't find his arguments that convincing. (People didn't start using grain or other carbohydrates [such as potatoes and fruit] as a staple in their diets until modern agricultural practices developed in very recent times? Huh?) All these various people promote eating lots of whole grains, or strictly limiting all carbohydrates, or eating according to your blood type, or whatever. It's so confusing.

My inclination tends to be that the more fresh, whole, unprocessed and varied our diet is, the better. I want to avoid foods we're allergic or intolerant to, of course, and do what I can to prevent us forming new intolerances.

I want to feed my family healthy food that will optimize our bodies' ability to fight disease and produce energy and health.

But I also want to have a life outside the kitchen.

I'm not exactly sure how to do that.