More Food Talk

Since joining the Green Smoothie Challenge, I've really slacked off in drinking my green smoothies (James and Judah didn't go shopping last Saturday--something about a boy turning four). However, I guzzled down two this morning and I always wonder why on earth I haven't been drinking them every day. I guess it's a little difficult to make them without the ingredients!

Miriam loves them as much as I do, and I love that she's drinking "juice" with all the nutrients and fiber and enzymes in tact (unlike pasteurized juices that kill all the good stuff and leave you with little more than flavored sugar water).

Through the Green Smoothie Challenge, I've discovered a website that I spent some time checking out this morning: http://www.greensmoothiegirl.com/index.html. I think Green Smoothie Girl does a great job of compiling research from various sources about nutrition. She gives some excellent suggestions for helping people move toward eating "whole foods" and avoiding all the processed, refined, denatured, nutrionally-void, high fructose corn syrup-laden, partially hydrogenated oil-filled, chemically-charged, MSG-added, artificially flavored and sweetened and colored food imposters.

If you're at all interested in how we could be so blindly addicted to food products during the information age, check out this great little interview by Peter Jennings: http://happyfoody.com/?s=peter+jennings

Reading blogs and websites and books written by people who are passionate about food and health always helps to inspire and challenge me. I tend to focus on all the stuff I'd like to change about our eating habits (and all the processed stuff I'd like to eliminate) rather than celebrate the huge changes we've made gradually that have reaped dramatic benefits.

Benefit number one: The kids have never been on antibiotics, nor have they ever been to the doctor because they've been sick.
Benefit number two: I haven't taken any prescription medicine in over eight years.
Benefit number three: We haven't been to a hospital except to visit other people (aside from when I gave birth to Judah) in over eight years.

By 1999, the year I got married, I was diagnosed with clinical depression (and prescribed anti-depressants), underwent laporoscopic surgery for endometriosis (and prescribed pain medication), underwent a colonoscopy for colitis (and prescribed anti-diarrheal medicine).

The fact that we are healthy--that my children are healthy--is HUGE to me. I know what it's like to spend countless hours in hospitals or lying in bed writing in pain. I remember not having the energy to make it up a flight of stairs or the brainpower to hold a part-time job. I'm not willing to go back down that road.

I know from experience that the keys to health have everything to do with lifestyle choices that either lead us down paths of destruction or paths of rejuvenation. Our bodies are amazing. And we only get one. Every day, I try to make concious choices regarding what I put in and on and around mine. I also think a lot about how much I move, how much rest I'm getting, how stressed I am . . . all things that contribute to my overall health and well-being.

A few hours after I wrote this, I thought, "Man, people probably think I'm the juice Nazi." If I lived out everything I believe 100%, I don't think I'd drink pasteurized juice. However, I LOVE a good fruit tea (so much that I have to limit myself to having it no more than once or twice a week) and my kids drink juice if we're out. Mostly we drink hot herbal tea in the mornings, followed by my favorite green smoothie, then it's usually water for the rest of the day. So there's my little disclaimer. :0)

Ultimately, I want to be as those who " . . . wait upon the LORD [and] shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint" Isaiah 40:31.