Nutrition and Gut Health: Part I
As my own journey reveals, there's a lot to know. Let's explore some of it together.
I got gut issues. Yeah, that was me, pretty much all my life. Since I was a child, I remember having embarrassing and frequent gut distress. Some of this is normal for kids as they are always putting hands in their mouths, and more in contact with pathogens, etc. I was a sensitive child, and frightened easily, so yes, that fear response led to diarrhea at times. As I got older my fear response had become more subconscious, so that it seemed to come out of left field. It took a lot of time and introspection to realize that my subconscious thoughts were having an effect on my gut and my health. But let’s take a step back and look into this issue, because I do not think my story is unique. Many of us have struggles with food, gut health, and especially for women, this can be deeply tied into our identity.
Initially, when I decided to address this problem, that was getting worse, in my twenties, my first thought was, “what am I EATING that’s causing this?” I went down a rabbit hole of elimination diets, of fad diets, and found, you guessed it, my gut was even more unhappy. I was discouraged, irritable, and more anxious about food. Things I tried over a period of a few years included eliminating dairy, eliminating gluten, eliminating meat, and even veganism (which lasted about 2 days). My “vegetarianism” also was laughingly brief. I simply could not override my body’s natural desire for animal protein.
All it took was smelling grilled chicken and, vegetarian diet over.
In general, my goal was to “eat healthy.” Whatever that meant. I knew about organic. I knew junk food was “bad.” And so, for a time, it was lots of veggies, cooked up with some curry or tomato sauce with rice or noodles, oatmeal, perhaps eggs in the morning, rice milk, or soy milk, a little yogurt, some chicken and fish. Not too bad, but not fully satisfying, and definitely not providing me with stable gut health.
In 2010 I was accepted into the Peace Corps program and sent to a mountain village in Peru. Suddenly, my food choices were no longer in my control. In Peru the diet centers around potatoes, rice, some meat, many wonderful soups, and a bit of veggie and fruit here and there. At first, I was longing for salads and greens and somewhat afraid I was not getting enough in the way of vitamins and “healthy stuff from vegetables.” however, there came an aha moment when I simply gave in to my circumstances, and loss of control. I was tired of fighting. Guess what? My tummy responded with being much more content, digesting well, and going to the bathroom regularly. What I know now that I didn’t know then, was that this diet of locally grown potatoes, plus some extras was deeply nourishing.
Cooked foods provide infinitely more nutrition that any raw food ever can, and that was what the campesinos relied on for sustenance.
These were whole foods prepared in a simple manner, and in season. Many families continued to shun the industrial foods making their way into the community. My body was happy with that. Ironically, it was usually, when I’d go into the nearby city, where I’d eat at restaurants catering to tourists, to eat foods familiar to my culture that I’d get a stomach upset, not when in the campo, prepared by the Quechua women living there.
Living in Peru cured me of most of my food foibles. In an effort to simplify and give in to my experience living there, I opened up again to foods I was wary of, like dairy, without negative results. I had made the mental hurdle of not worrying about it, and so I realized it was the “thinking that this is bad for me, going to give me diarrhea, etc,” that was causing my bad reactions. The power of the mind is very strong. This is not to say that some people may have celiac disease that is very serious and does require they cut all gluten containing grains.
In Peru, I was participating in communal meals and the butchering of animals, which was giving me a greater reverence for being part of the cycle of life instead of an isolated consumer.
The next part of my journey to fully reclaiming a diet that includes all gifts of the earth came with pregnancy. Now I was really in touch with my intuition! I would wake up with both morning sickness and hunger. What did my body want? Bacon! Eggs! Butter! Bread! I began to eat fat in the form of butter, bacon and other foods to full satisfaction. It was scary at first because I still had some residual effects of the fat-free indoctrination living in the recesses of my mind. But I quickly got over that.
I used to think fat was bad, because it makes you fat, right? No. No, it does not. High quality fats, yes animal fats, yes saturated fats, are required for a healthy brain and body. Especially for fertile age women, and children.
Indigenous cultures know this, but thanks to the development of highly processed vegetable seed oils in the US, along with shoddy science conducted by the AMA we were convinced saturated fat was the source of many rising diseases found in the wealthy nations. We were told that high cholesterol leads to heart disease. Unfortunately, this is a skewed version of the truth. While it’s true that cholesterol is a correlate to heart disease, it’s not the cause. Those worried about having a healthy heart would be better served to focus on healthy fats, rather than “low-fat. Cholesterol is critical in the brain development of young children, and a healthy substance in the body of an otherwise healthy person. In addition, it is one of the building blocks for all hormones in the body.
I saw that eating fat (pregnant or not), did not “make me fat.” My health increased. I felt strong as my body changed and my baby began to grow. My craving for sweet empty calories went way down. The false narrative around saturated fats has been dispelled thoroughly in the last few decades thanks to people like Sally Fallon and the Weston Price Foundation, and Joel Selatin with the small farm’s movement. Now we understand the importance of grass fed, small scale, organic, high-quality meats and dairy products, that have a much more favorable omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio than their industrial counterparts.
The internet is full of blogs of former vegans that now eat beef liver on the regular, nose to tail eating, and a general reverence for traditional food ways. And yet…green drinks, veganism, juicing, grain free, liver cleanses, etc, etc, prevail in the collective food foibled unconscious. Diets and practices like this are unsustainable, damaging to our health (especially women), and just plain wacky, especially for indigenous populations.
In my view, it’s a consequence of over-abundance of cheap food, processed food, and time. Yup, we have too much extra energy and time to spend fretting over what to eat, not eat, when for most of human history the question was will I eat?
To summarize on what a healthy diet in alignment with the Wise Woman Tradition looks like, here are a few simple guidelines:
Eat whole foods. That means your food is being bought in bulk, or if packaged, the ingredients include one, or possibly two or three items. When you see a long list of ingredients, know that you are probably eating, drugs (in the form of supplements), poor quality processed food like substances, dyes, fillers, thickeners, carcinogenic seed oils, and sugar.
Eat a broad diet. Our ancestors ate hundreds of different foods over the course of a year. Average Americans eat very few different foods. All gifts of the earth are valuable. Eliminating any food group leads to health problems. If milk doesn’t sit well, try keeping yogurt in your diet. Women especially, need high quality dairy products for bone health. Fish is an amazing addition to any diet. Focus on SMASH fish (sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon, and herring are all cold water, oily fish, and can often be bought inexpensively canned). Red meat, while vilified, is essential for building heme in the body for healthy, well oxygenated blood. Red meat once a month is enough, but make sure its grass fed.
Cook your food! Well cooked vegetables are easily assimilated into the body. Want all those minerals and vitamins from your dark leafy greens? Cook them at least for an hour. When making kale I buy three bunches, strip the leaves from the stalk, cut it all up and put it in a big pot with about 1 1/2” of water. I simmer these greens, checking on the water level throughout for 1-3 hours. They are tender, delicious, and highly nutritious. You can always freeze the excess. Squash goes in the oven over an hour. Same with sweet potatoes. I buy frozen veggies as well for quicker cooking times as well. Raw greens give your body nothing other than a difficult digestion process.
If you make a salad, pour plenty of oil on it to break down some of those tough cell walls.
Eat wild foods. Wild foods offer our bodies an ancestral pathway of nourishment. In her book, “Abundantly Well the Seven Medicines”, Susun Weed explains how wild foods offer out bodies the original “original keys,” to nourishment. Wild mushrooms, wild fish, game, seaweed, wild seeds and plants all offer our bodies these remembrances. Get them in your body regularly, even in tiny amounts. I’m a big fan of wild salads, not only for their wildness, but for getting healthy soil bacteria (severely lacking in developed nations) into our guts. Just pour oil on it!
Focus your food spending on high quality fat. Buy organic butter, oil, nuts, dairy, beans, and meats. While there are some produce items that carry higher levels of agricultural chemicals and it’s wise to know which these are, the items with high fat content will have infinitely higher levels of pollutants if not grown organically.
Make bone broth a regular part of your diet. High in healing collagen, and deeply nourishing, bone broth is essential for any new mother, anyone recovering from an injury, and just plain yummy and good for you. You can use it as a base for tomato sauce and other dishes as well. Try the bone broth challenge: see how long you can keep a pot of broth going. My record is three weeks!
Eat local and in season when possible. Keep a lookout for local farms that offer CSA’s. Get a small garden going or visit your local farmer’s market. If you are worried about cost, look for veggie stands on country roads. While the produce may not be organic, most likely it will be grown locally and sold at better prices.
Drink nourishing herbal infusions! I did a post on this previously and you can find everything you need to know there.
Eat lots of fermented foods. In part two of this post, I will focus on increasing gut health with herbs and go into depth about fermentation and why it’s important.
One final note. In modern life, these guidelines are exactly that. Guidelines, not rules. If you opened my cupboard right now, you’d find some of those highly processed foods in the form of box cereal (my husband’s treat), a bit of candy, leftover crackers from a recent trip. In our fridge we have some leftover takeout, along with our homemade soup, and infusion, cheeses and organic milk and yogurt. With three children, two of which are in school, these foods do creep in. Don’t despair.
When we have the knowledge of what nourishment means we can keep moving towards that, and make this way of eating our foundation, so that when we veer off the path here and there, we know where to come back to.