So how did it end?

Oh, uh...hey?

Turns out, I'm a terrible blogger. This is no surprise, and I really make no promises to be much better at this, because well, the only readers are likely my friends and family and they can hear me yak ad nauseum whenever they like. But anyway, I realized after post after post about internship, I never really said how it ended.

'She must have failed,' you're probably thinking. 'That's why she hasn't wanted to talk about. That's rather sad.'

WRONG.

Surprised, right?

No, actually, I'm officially an RD(t) these days, which is a fancy few letters after my name that indicate I'm a TEMPORARILY registered dietitian. Temporary because I have to write an exam in November (now THAT I could potentially fail. It has a 97% pass rate, but multiple choice and I are not friends. My odds of being in that 3% are not as low as I'd like. Fortunately, said exam can be written more than once.)

The end of internship ended up segueing into my current job, so time was rather short, although I may post more about it later. I finished my community rotation in Terrace. Turns out I'm great with direct interactions, with a community but ask me something about policy and I'll give you a blank stare and mumble something like 'Blueberries.' Naturally because I'm not very good at half of the job, I'm quite determined to become a community dietitian, although more with the hands-on stuff. Ask my fellow intern, I'm terrible with details.

After that, I came back to PG for my 10 weeks of food service. Anyone who's ever worked in food service will tell you - it's all-consuming. Because I'd already been working in it for over 3 years, they basically gave me a couple projects and free rein. Which was rather smart, actually, because anyone who gets into foodservice sort of has to thrive on being a workaholic, so I came in almost every weekend. Worked out rather well for them, I think, but I loved the staff at the hospital so I had a good time. It did, however, convince me rather strongly that I don't want to be a foodservice dietitian any time soon. It really is all-consuming, you can never 'just leave'. I like it and I thrive on the busy, but it's not a lifestyle I would choose for myself long time. A mat leave? TOTES. Forevers? Non, merci. I did learn how to make a good bechamel, roasted veggie salad, and a bunch of other things since my project was basically trying to cook every item on the new menu and see how it turned out or if there were any huge goofs. I <3 cooks and chefs everywhere. They know how to do EVERYTHING. And I love having a little bit of foodservice in my life - I love the people. You may not even realize how much of a rum go food service and housekeeping staff get. They're treated like GARBAGE by so many health care staff that it makes me absolutely furious. I love it when someone comments on their lack of education too - I've worked with multiple dietary aides with degrees (even a couple with masters). Seriously, if you've got kids at home, it's a job with funny hours that might work well with your hubby's, and the pay isn't bad. What I'm really saying is, DON'T HATE ON FOODSERVICE OR FOODSERVICE STAFF. I'll punch you in the jeans, I swear. The job isn't glamorous, but it's crucial. (Besides, what's the point of being educated if you're a nose-in-the-air little snot, anyway?)

The glories of being in the north mean I was hired for a full-time job two months before internship ended, and actually had to pick between it and two others. The two jobs I didn't take were clinical - and would have been fab, don't get me wrong. I actually took a 1 year contract job putting in dietary software across Northern Health. Why, you ask? My job title is actually food service supervisor - same as my job in Fraser Health (pays the same though, and the job is generally done by dietitians, but they'd never have gotten enough of them up here.) It's actually a sweet move as far as I'm concerned - I get to travel all across northern BC - I decided all the bouncing around I did during internship was insufficient. And now I get PAID to do it - paid the same as a clinical dietitian, so hooray! I'm also a casual clinical RD at the hospital too, usually 1-2 mornings/ week over the summer. Did I mention my boss is my awesome internship coordinator and that we have flexible schedules? Don't be embarrassed at your jealousy, I'd be jealous of me too. Of course, this means I'll have to hunt for another job in a year, but considering there are 4 mat leaves coming up in January, I have a feeling something will turn up.

Now then, what's a blog post without my poor attempts at photography?

Summer in PG is  a time to be outside - we went hiking almost every weekend up until August (when it got too hot, we're talking 30 degrees every day, light out until 11:00, and unlike the lower mainland, it does NOT cool down in the evenings.)

Here are some pictures from Teapot Mountain - just a short hike, only about 1.5 km each way, but that first km is straight up. I did it wearing Skechers, which was fine until we had to come back down. Proceeded to buy my first pair of hiking shoes that same week.

HUGE anthill.

What does one do after hiking? You go to a historical farm and eat pie. Duh. These pictures are all from the Huble Homestead.

That would be a kildeer. There were actually signs basically warning us of its ruthlessness.

Note the lack of snow in these pictures! I think this was actually back in June-ish already, and NOT A TRACE. So there, all of you who are like 'OMG POLAR BEARS AND IGLOOS.'

And no, the name of this post does not indicate this blog is over. Now that I"m not playing outside all the time, I may actually start blogging again. Or not. We'll see!

'You understand people. My people.'

I had sort of an epic day today.

My preceptor and I left Terrace this am (oh yeah, I'm in Terrace now) for Hazelton, a cute little town in the middle of nowhere, about 2 hours out of Terrace. I had a pre-diabetic client who not only was totally focused on what I was saying (Yess!) but also had suggestions of his own (YESSS!!) and was already making changes to his diet on his own (HALLELUJAH, MY SISTAHS!) I love it when people actually want to see me and didn't just show up because they were told to.

I've been going around to quite a few reserves in the last week, Kitimaat Village, Gitwonga, and a couple others and they are some of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Today, we went to yet another reserve to teach some aboriginal kids a cooking class. Sounds not particularly epic, yeah?

It was a rough start. The group was quite late, but one lovely lady met us there on time. They had just gone to a seminar on colonization, and she was almost in tears telling us about what was done to her people. She talked about her principal making advances on her while in a residential school and not knowing that her closest friends were being sexually abused. She told us how they came with a shotgun to take her from her parents. She talked about the shame of growing up thinking her people were a bunch of drunks and not knowing the reasons behind it. That's rather a controversial sentence, looking back, but she went on to explain that with so much horror and loss, how could anyone be expected to respond? Now don't get me wrong, this isn't a spiel on the evils of residential schools. I don't know enough about it, other than to say too many were horrible, evil places where children were horribly abused. On the one hand, she needed to talk about it. On the other hand, hearing the prejudice and trauma she and her family endured at the hands of 'the white man' was hard to hear. Not just the trauma of what happened, but (rather selfishly) knowing that I was included under that blanket. And yet, she bore no particular ill will towards us specifically, despite an obvious and understandable distrust of 'the white man' in general which she voiced on several occasions. Human dynamics are incredible.

So anyway, the kids came and we started cooking - google Martha Stewart Farmer's Beans and Pasta if you're curious (it's delicious). Basically, it's pasta with beans, carrots, zucchini, onion and white beans in a tomato base. Super easy and the kids loved it! (Take THAT, naysayers!) They all begged to take turns chopping and stirring and all that good stuff. Originally we thought they'd be teenagers and be far too cool to participate - this was much better. They were super stoked, and the parents who came along to watch/help got caught up in their enthusiasm. At the end, we were all sitting around chomping down our pasta and oolichans (they're running now between Terrace and Prince Rupert, I guess. Super popular with the native kids), and a guy comes up to me and says, 'Have you ever heard about auras?'

Don't get me wrong, I'm not really a believer in that sort of thing. But I'm on someone else's turf so I'll politely listen to whatever he wants to say, yeah?

Anyway, he says, 'Your aura is bright orangey yellow with a white border and your head is pink.'

I have no idea what any of this means, so I ask 'Is that a good thing or a bad thing?'

He says (this is from memory, so not word for word, but a decent recollection of it.):
'The white is because you are pure of heart. You know who you are, you accept and love yourself so you come across with confidence. Everyone can feel that. It stands out right away.
The yellow is more of that confidence coming through. You stand strong with who you are, you know where you stand, and everyone knows where they stand with you.
The orange is because everyone tries to peel their problems off on you(?), but you know what problems are yours to take and which are not. You are open to everyone, you share everything, so these problems don't bother you because you release them back out into the world. You don't hold them in your head.
The pink is because you're open. Your aura reaches out to touch mine and everyone you meet. You are one with everyone. You understand people. You understand my people.'

Now even if you're like 'sounds like a bunch of airy fairy stuff to me' (which I sort of think, let's be honest), that last bit caught me.

Anyone who's worked on the reserves knows it can be hard to establish a rapport. The amount of tragedies experienced by so many of the people there; not just in the past, with residential schools and general oppression, but with current levels of abuse, be it domestic or drug abuse, prejudice, and the fallout from generations of kids snatched from their parents, raised by sadistic institutions and coming back without knowing or understanding why this happened. Again, I'm not saying this is how it always is, nor am I an expert in any way so forgive me if I'm on the wrong track, but that's sort of how it has been explained to me so far. Why should someone trust a bunch of other people who tormented and repressed them? To have even one person say I might have an inkling of understanding was one of the best moments I've had so far. I've always been interested in marginalized populations (hence volunteering in the DTES and so on), and originally wanted to come to Northern Health for internship because its scope includes more mental health and aboriginal health than the others. The job I'm shadowing now is one I could do forever, if I ever find the opportunity.

You see why today was a hell of a day.

If I hear '[food] is TOXIC! GET YOUR PITCHFORKS!' one more time...

...I will rearrange that person's face. For reals. I may be only 5'6 and 150 lbs, but I'm scrappy, homeslice. TRY ME.

If you can't rant on your own blog, where can you rant, really?

What is the deal with everyone trying to say one food is evil? Goodness knows it changes every day, depending who you ask. This internet nutritionist says wheatgrass will cure cancer, this one says milk will give you cancer, and this one says we should all be vegetarian.

Let's get one thing straight, first. What's the diff between a dietitian and a nutritionist? Surely it's the same thing, you say? WRONG. Why? Dietitian is a protected term - you have to have completed a full degree and an accredited internship. You need to know your stuff! This is not to say all nutritionists are full of rubbish - I know multiple people with nutrition degrees without the dietitian designation who know mountains of good info. However, if you're chatting up a 'nutritionist', for all you know, they could just be someone with their foodsafe certificate. There are quite a few (QUITE a few) who took some sort of 3-6 month holistic nutrition course, or perhaps even 2 years, if you'd really like to stretch it out. After 7 years of school, and a bunch of people telling me how smart I am, I still cannot fathom so many things about the human body and nutrition and how they relate. I'm learning every day, but you just can't know it all in that time.

Six months, you say? Please. Again, not to say said nutritionist couldn't have some good stuff to say, even after only 6 months. It's amazing what exposure can do and inspire in people! But a lot of people like to give advice that sells.

Know what sells? (*cue eyeroll* 'Yes, April, fine, go ahead.")

Insta-solutions. What's easier than picking one or ten evil foods and cutting it out in your diet? If you're cutting out, say, eggs, you have the glorious knowledge that you can go eat McDonald's till your liver croaks - because it won't croak right? It's only EGGS that are evil. All that processed stuff? No dairy! I'm good!

And for all you gluten-nuts out there (and no,. I don't mean you, gluten-intolerant folks, or even people just giving gluten-free living a try *nods to my sister-in law*), butter is gluten-free, generally. Does that mean you're going to fill up on that?

Now, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm slightly opinionated. I may be proved wrong about the whole gluten thing one day. But nothing gets my back up more than people trying to share their opinions without a solid scientific basis. And no, I DON'T mean a news release from CBS or the Vancouver Sun or whatever the hell. I want articles from PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS. Just because a doctor on the internet (credentials, please!) says that acai will add 20 years to your life, think about it! Aren't doctors just as susceptible to fads as any other human? And aren't we all really amazing at extrapolating data that applies to us personally (e.g. I'm allergic to hamsters) and using it on other people ('Hey, don't eat hamsters, pretty sure they're toxic.)

I recently scampered away from a debate on facebook (Hah, I know right? Someone is WRONG on FACEBOOK. How can this be?) about whether or not milk is evil. The person who disagreed with my saying that milk is NOT evil said they had looked and looked and looked for info that milk isn't evil and couldn't find it ANYwhere. I scarpared, because I'm starting to learn that stubborn people is stubborn (I would know, I'm one of them.) One of the sad things is, they may have a point. It's HARD to find info, especially if you aren't a university student. Being in my last year, I still get access to every flipping journal index and database that UBC has to offer. (LOVE!) But I wouldn't be able to even see half of these things if I didn't have said access. Ovid, EBSCO, Pubmed - where would I be without you?

But here's a few:

'A dietary pattern that incorporates higher low-fat dairy products may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes in middle-aged or older women'
Liu et al, 2006. A Prospective Study of Dairy Intake and the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Women. Diabetes Care, 29 (7).

'Dairy consumption is inversely associated with the risk of having metabolic syndrome.'

Azadbakht et al, 2005. 

Dairy consumption is inversely associated with the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in Tehranian adults. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 82 (3).

'Dietary patterns characterized by higher dairy intake, especially low-fat dairy intake, may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes in men.'

Choi et al, 2005. Dairy Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Men. Archives of Internal Medicine, 165 (9).

Now what does this prove, you ask? (or in some people's cases, ARGUE VORACIOUSLY.) Nothing. It's a bunch of correlations, not causation. This may all be proved wrong later. There are SO many confounding factors. I could also find a bunch of articles saying how milk ISN'T great. Or a whole bunch with no conclusive results! All I'm asking is, STOP with the preaching about how this food and that food is wrong and 'OH, you still eat THAT?' I may have no actual concrete proof that whatever food is good for you, but you have only likely an equal amount of proof to say it's evil. So stop pushing the message as if we already know for sure! 

And what about real-life confounding factors? Are you going to tell some lovely old thing with osteoporosis to stop drinking milk and pop a bunch of vitamin D? (Think it through. If her diet is poor because she doesn't have much appetite but likes milk, she'll maybe slowly starve to death but have healthy bones? How is this helpful? What if the person is vegetarian but hates tofu and beans? Where do you recommend they get their protein? Protein supplements or dairy?)

Ok, so the end of this rant really comes down to - eat how you like! If it makes you feel good to be vegan or gluten free or whatever, sweet. Do it. Tell everyone how much you like it! But DON'T go around making false claims or listening to other people's false claims that such and such is toxic. Ask for their credentials. Better yet, ask for their sources! It's amazing what people take out of context. Read this review of Wheat Belly. A couple of my fellow interns spent months looking up his sources. Turns out, this dude is really good at picking and choosing what info he'd like to highlight. 

We all know this info changes like mad. Just think about the butter/margarine debate. Pretty sure it's gone both ways twice each in the last 10 years :P. By eating a balanced diet with a bit of everything (except the really obvious stuff - nitrate-packed processed meat burned to charcoal, anyone?), you won't be stuck with a fridge and belly full of rice cakes when they decide they're the latest carcinogens in a few years.

If you actually made it through this whole post, you've earned this bit of hilarity:

What NOT to look for in your nutritionist :-)

(Just a note, one of the somewhat ironic things about this point is I'm quite lactose-intolerant and grew up with an allergy to the milk protein. I drink soy milk and generally limit dairy, or it gets ugly. I argue heatedly in defence of milk mostly because I hate to hear any poor defenceless food attacked without good reason.)

The best way to be healthy? Have money.

Oh hey, you say. BEEN a while, you say.

GET OFF MY BACK, I say.

Nah, I'm just kidding, but honestly, I just either didn't have time to gather my thoughts or may have simply not had any interesting thoughts for the last couple months. Would you really want me to make up a blog post where I ramble on about nothing in particular? Of COURSE not. (We have Facebook for that, amirite?)

Fortunately, nothing inspires me quite like Weighty Matters (the blog by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff). He posted a a couple days ago this article, Why Doctors Should Screen for Poverty. This is a big sore point for me. Not because I'm well, poor, although I am like every student in that there have been times where your dinner consists of rice with a bit of seasoning. I was even incredibly lucky in that my parents paid for my first degree - I had it SO good in comparison to most. That said, I've worked with a lot of people in the downtown eastside in Vancouver, and even here in PG where a lot of people aren't so lucky.

Here are a few of the main points from the article:

• Cardiovascular disease: there is a 17% higher rate of circulatory conditions among the lowest income quintile versus the average
• Diabetes: prevalence among the lowest income quintile is more than double the rate in the highest income quintile
• Mental Illness: the suicide-attempt rate of those living on social assistanceis 18 times higher than higher-income individuals
• Cancer: low-income women are less likely to access screening interventions like mammograms or Pap Smears
• Development: infant mortality is 60% higher in the lowest income quintile neighborhoods

Now, a lot of my chums who work in healthcare would agree with this, at least to some extent. Look at your lower income, less educated populations and there is a definite trend toward major health problems.

What kills me? SO many of them are related to food.

As a university student, what do we live off of? Kraft DInner, McDonalds, Mr. Noodles, etc. Why? It's cheap and easy. What a lot of us don't realize is plain unprocessed foods aren't actually all that expensive!! Why oh WHY do we pay $4 for a cheeseburger and fries when that could buy a bunch of lettuce ($0.99/bunch), a tomato ($0.50?), a carrot ($0.25?), and a bag of dried beans from the bulk section ($0.32/100g, so say $0.50) and a whole wheat bun ($0.50)? Obviously, these are ballpark prices, but there we have a meal with all the nutrients with a grand total of $3.75. 

You could save the rest of that and buy a chocolate bar, if you really want. 

Even as university students, some of us grow out of this and start making real food. But even of university students, not all of us figure it out. Eating healthy is more work, admittedly, than eating convenience food. And if you're a bit less educated, you may not know the bazillion benefits, including lower chances of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and just generally feeling better. I can't totally fathom this even now, but I have extolled the virtues of vegetables to many a person whose response was, 'So?' What if you don't know salt isn't so good for your heart? What if you don't know pop is THAT full of sugar? What if you think juice is a pretty healthy way to go so you drink a litre of fruit punch every day because 'It's healthy!'? Especially in our lovely western world we have some skewed ideas on vegetables. I read somewhere (if I find the article I'll attach it) saying even healthy-eaters in North America will generally respond to psychological testing indicating that healthy food is 'gross' and junk food is 'yummy'. We all start out this way as kidlets, but somehow in France, that idea gets reversed as adults so junk food becomes 'gross.' 

However, that little meal idea I rattled off was only one example. A lot of healthy foods ARE more expensive. Brown rice? Defs more expensive than white. Omega 3 supplemented eggs or even free range? Like, DOUBLE. And if you're struggling financially, we tend to go for things we associate with satiety. A cheeseburger sounds a lot more filling than my tasty salad.  If you don't know how far your food budget is going to stretch, you want to be FULL. I know this to be true from the various places I volunteered in the DTES. I volunteered last January at a women's centre, and there were people crying because they came late for the waffle breakfast and were going to have to wait 10 minutes for us to pack up food in take home packages. One lady threw an absolute tantrum. It's understandable if you think about it; when you're hungry, it's hard to think about something else. If your whole life revolves around getting access to food, you're going to be RIGHT PUT OUT if it disappears in front of you. 

One of the places I volunteered, the Neighbourhood House, only served vegetarian meals because A) they wanted to make sure everyone could have some, and B) they went by what was donated - know what's cheap to donate? VEG! and C) people need to see how to make simple healthy foods tasty and easy. It didn't cater to homeless people so much during the hours that I was there, simply to people who were struggling. A lot of people in that situation may have the desire to eat healthily, but what do you do if you don't have transportation to go get it? And if you do, what if you can't afford the equipment to cook it?

THAT sort of blew my mind. Working with dual-diagnosis patients who were moving out form a treatment centre: this lady has no teeth. What if she can't afford a blender? Some people are working with a spoon and a hot plate. Or if you've got 6 kids and a limited budget? You might be going for the peppers in that bag under the counter that need some, ahem, doctoring. In that case, those peppers probably don't taste so sweet, and while you're doing the best you can, your kidlets may grow up thinking peppers are gross. People with less money also tend to be less educated people who are potentially more easily swayed by whatever advertising/people telling you useless nonsense/I swear this pizza is GOOD for you, etc, because you're not always taught to think critically.

UGH. It's so damn HARD.

Obviously, this is only a small part of why you need money to be healthy. If you're sick and you can't afford to take time off, you go to work anyway. If you're lucky, you'll shake it off. If you're not, you're not getting any time to rest, and you get sicker, until you HAVE to be off work. Then you lose money because you're too sick to work, and by the time you're well enough to work you're completely in the hole so you make yourself sick by working overtime or simply from stress. THEN you can't afford the medication, and so on and so on. It's bad, folks. I'm just hitting the tip of the iceberg, here. And this is not the case with everyone, of course. But which populations do YOU correlate with obesity? Think about it.

And now, to end this post on a funnier and less aggravating note, here are some pictures of my first attempt to make macarons. Not macaROONS, macaRONS, those aggravatingly cute little French cookies. I have since made another batch that came out much better - this one I WAY overwhipped the egg whites after completely misreading the directions, but even now I seem to either get the cute little feet at the bottom OR a smooth top. I have yet to manage both. Sigh. Stil dericious with raspberry jam or nutella in the middle. For all you other would-be-macaron-bakers out there, learn from my failures. It gets better, I promise.

FEET!!

The slightly better ones from the first batch. They had
said feet, but are terribly cracked. More recent ones are less
cracked, but no feet (these were WAY overbeaten, though.)

Poor sad overbeatn macaron.

This is what happens when April gets hasty and takes them
out of the oven way too early, then tries to pick them up.

Bad idea. These were chucked.

Also, a boss picture of my walk to work. My first time seeing hoar frost, it
was absolutely beautiful!

Give up every food you've ever liked and you'll lose weight, right?

Well, maybe. Some of us have mad willpower and could totally be like 'I WILL NEVER EAT ANOTHER FRENCH FRY OR REESE PEANUT BUTTER CUP EVER AGAIN. EVER.'

The vast majority of us, though? Yeah right. The most I've personally ever been able to do is give up chocolate for Lent (I'm not religious, but some of my friends were. I thought I'd keep them company and give myself a challenge. I did it, too!), and to occasionally have a couple of sugar-free days when I've noticed my intakes have been amping up to the point where I have dessert after breakfast. Bit over the top, if you know what I mean.

The best way for me to break the habit is the cut it out for the couple of days. Key word: habit.

I do think breaking the habit is a massive part of the whole weight-loss, starting-healthy-eating thing. If you're used to drinking a Coke with each meal and fast food for lunch every day, sometimes...ya gotta start small. It's pretty overwhelming to stop doing everything you do all at once; why do so many people wait until next week? To mentally freaking prepare themselves for doing a complete dietary overhaul! I say, give yourself a freaking break. Is that what you'd recommend to your friends and family? Actually, maybe that's a bad question  to ask; a lot of women especially are pretty hardcore when it comes to dieting and the like.

The funny thing? Look at France. Naturally, obesity rates are rising, but generally a slimmer population. Are they cutting out all saturated fat and sugar? NON, merci beaucoup. They've just figured out portion control. And looking at Quebec (what's with all the skinny francophones?). According to this article Desserts - Why Quebec is Skinny, the reason they manage to stay skinny is because they don't restrict foods.

An example: You haven't had chocolate for 2 weeks and go to a party where you're offered a plate of chocolate mousse (I'm actually not a fan of mousse, but I know it's a popular one.) Odds are, um YEAH you're going to have some - and it'll be a lot harder to stop because you've been aching for it. Same if you go to a grocery store when you're hungry, right? You buy all kinds of things that you don't need because you're hungry! (This may include a box of crappy store-bought cookies which don't even taste that great but are down the hatch in 3.4 seconds.) We have much better control if we allow ourselves to take foods off the forbidden list and let ourselves have them once in a while. I'm not saying eat a pain au chocolat daily (although I've done it), but you know what? There's nothing wrong with really enjoying a treat. On a regular basis, even! *cue fainting*

A really good post from one of my favourite blogs, Weighty Matters, is What's Your Best Worse Choice? This guy is a doc with a really interesting take on weight loss, which is very reasonable. In this post, he touches on the idea that just because you had a Blizzard, doesn't mean you 'fell off the wagon'. Was it delicious? Was it satisfying? Is that really such a bad thing, then? Sometimes making healthy choices just means getting a small fries instead of a large, or maybe getting the large fries less often. Healthy eating doesn't have to be all or nothing - we all need a little wiggle room.

So if we're not cutting out all delicious things, we're trying some ridiculous fad diet. Don't even get me started. I absolutely LOVED this article How I Lost 40 lbs Doing Everything Wrong. This guy talks about some of the current fads with dieting, and how he didn't follow any of them?

'What?' you gasp. 'He ate CARBS. And not just any carbs, he ate WHEAT.'

I know, right?

This carb thing makes me crazy. You know, in some parts of Africa, their diet is 80% carbohydrate. And yet, we're not fundraising for the millions of obese African children? Our brain RUNS off of carbs. 'But it raises blood sugar!' Um, yeah, it's supposed to. That's how the human body rolls. Carbs are awesome. We just tend to emphasize the wrong ones (refined grains as opposed to whole grains, and simple sugars in sweets as compared to fruit, etc. ) And if anyone, ANYONE, tries to tell me they haven't eaten carbs since 1999, I will probably wallop them. And then attempt to educate them; carbs are in grains, dairy products, fruits and vegetables, any flavoured drink, everything. So what you're saying is, you only eat meat? And rocks?

And wheat - wheat is just awesome. I really don't buy into the Wheat Belly thing. We've been eating wheat for thousands of years. If you're celiac, or intolerant to wheat, then yeah, wheat is not for you. Maybe even if for some reason wheat makes you feel yucky. But for the rest of us - since when did bread become toxic?

'He didn't eat pomegranate or acai every day for breakfast!' you shriek in dismay. 'And what about supplements? SUPPLEMENTS, I say!'

Just a word about superfoods. Don't get me wrong, I love pomegranate and acai, but I love them because they're delicious and pretty nutritious, not because they're 'super'. I wrote an article on wheatgrass once. You know, the 1 oz green shots of juice that are supposedly equal to 2 lbs of veggies? So not true. 1 oz equals 1 oz of veggies. And all these supposed magical health benefits? These, my friend, are based on a scientist in the 1930s giving wheatgrass to his sick chickens. They lived, and the crazy started. I did some pretty extensive research into any scholarly article I could find on wheatgrass. There's no proof of this magic, dear ones. I emailed all the wheatgrass producers in Canada and got VERY few replies, but the ones I did get said 'Yeah...there's no proof. But people want it, and at least it's a vegetable.' True dat, I say, if it takes a bit of crazy to get people to get 1 oz of vegetables, and Booster Juice (delicious!) and the like profit, awesome. That said, I have been known to have a fit when I see the wheatgrass posters saying the 1 oz=2 lbs thing. I have irritated a store into taking them down in past. False advertising is bad, yo.

I won't go into the sugar sub thing here; that's a personal choice, as far as I'm concerned. That said, do they make you GAIN weight? Erm, no. I mean, Splenda does technically have some calories, but less than plain sugar and it's something like 60x as sweet, so if you manage to eat enough Splenda to put on weight, you maybe have some other issues that need talking about. I'm a real sugar person myself, I'd rather just eat less, but it's easy for me to say that when I'm 25 and work out every day and am not concerned about overindulging in sugar for the sake of, say, diabetes.

Ugh, I'm a bad blogger for making you read all this without any pictures. And I still haven't really taken any from around PG. It's for the same reason I'm blogging a lot less - it's amazing how much less time you have when someone isn't doing the cooking and grocery shopping for you. Not that I don't love doing that, I really do, but now I'm a bit more scatterbrained so I forget my camera and have a lot less time to tramp around and find something to take pictures of.  SOON. Maybe. Hopefully.

Since when do kids need 'kid' food?

I read this interesting article the other day: Kids Don't Need Kid Food by Marion Nestle. Marion Nestle, as it turns out, is a prof in the nutrition department at NYU. She seems like an interesting lady, and in this article/interview, she brings up the idea that if adults are eating healthily, shouldn't their kids eat the same way?

Before I really launch into this, I should say: I don't have kids. We're thinking 3-4 years from now if everything goes as planned, because I am so not ready yet. That said, I was a nanny for years - we're talking from 8 am to 6 pm at times, up to 7 days/week during the summers, as well as being a regular babysitter. Do I know what it's like to fight with your kids to eat every day? Absolutely not, so take this all with a grain of salt.

I recently stayed with a lovely family with 2 gorgeous and adorable kidlets. (Seriously, they made me actually want children, how cool is that?) These guys are pretty starch-fixed; the younger will eat beans and some vegetables and meat, but the other one lives off of noodles and fruit. They regularly get offered other foods, which they sometimes accept but like most kids, spit it out if they aren't into it. Some may say 'GASP! HORROR! COMMUNISM!'. But really, this is going by Ellyn Satter's principles of 'Feeding with Love and Good Sense.' I won't go into too much detail, but you can go here: How to Feed Children by Ellen Satter. This lady's pretty fab in my opinion; she's a registered dietitian who also has a few other sweet credentials, including a master's degree and a social work designation. A lot of what she says makes sense, including 'if you take the joy out of eating, nutrition suffers.' Making your kids eat something they don't want, even if they're just being stubborn, isn't really helping. 'Yes April, that's easy to say when you don't have kids.'  How many of us, though, don't like a particular food because it's associated with feelings of pressure or resentment? I was lucky, we were never forced to finish our plate, and while we had to try everything we didn't have to eat it all. Ergo, I'd say my sister and I have a pretty good relationship with food. However, I know quite a few people who were made to eat brussel sprouts, for example, as a kid, and who have vowed never to touch them again. Creating that situation of pressure at the table seems like it would be detrimental to the whole experience of eating.

Ok, so I've basically said 'Don't make your kids eat large amounts of stuff they don't want to eat.' The second part of that sentence though, is not 'So give them kid food!' Somewhere along the line (oh hey, corporate marketing), someone came up with brilliant idea of marketing to kids. Look at the commercials! Go to your average restaurant and there's likely a kids menu. What's on that menu? Is it smaller, maybe a little blander versions of the 'adult' menu?

Often not.

A lot of times it's: mac and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiched, cheeseburger, spaghetti, or something a lot like that. Since when did kids need to eat something different than adults? I'm not saying go out and feed your kids the spiciest curry available, but how about introducing new foods early? It seems to me that by encouraging a separate menu, it's like we're reinforcing the idea that kids need different foods than adults. This my friends, in my opinion, is crap. Did kids 50-100 years ago grow up eating chicken nuggets while mum and dad ate cabbage? Not likely. Odds are, whatever the regular adult meal, there will be something the kid will eat - even if it's just the coconut rice with a piece of chicken you sucked the sauce off of. Maybe they can try a little sauce if it's mild. Kids often need to be offered food 5-20 times (per Ellyn) before they'll start to like it. If we give up trying and pass the grilled cheese, how is this going to happen?

The idea behind feeding kids is that we as adults decide what to serve and when, and the child decides what to eat and how much. It's probably good to provide something Junior is familiar with - even if they want to fill up on bread, which may some counter-intuitive. It's a balancing act, for sure, and I've seen how frustrating it can be. Even my very smart and lovely boyfriend has said things along the lines of 'Kids won't eat that stuff.' How do you know unless you try once in a while? What's so wrong with a food, say lentils, that kids won't eat it? Maybe it's not appealing; maybe they'll never like it. But maybe they will. Naturally, sometimes you're going to be out and about and not feel like a fight. Fair enough, I say, I have enough experience to say sometimes, you need deserve the freedom to have a bit of fun and not worry about getting your kid to eat fried okra. Get the mac and cheese and enjoy your night out. Sometimes, though, maybe get an appetizer and share your entrée with your kid. The idea that kids consistently need a different menu than adults seems counter productive.

I understand, and fully expect this post to be brought to my attention in 5 years or so when I have a 2 year old who won't eat anything but chicken nuggets. Fair is fair.

Now for something more fun: Gingerbread houses!! My friend came to visit and we made her first gingerbread house (and two more for us) from scratch. BOY is that time consuming, but infinitely tastier than the cardboard-tasting gingerbread house kits. Better icing, too.

S's first gingerbread house!

We're starting a village.

My pretzel roof with 'skylight'

Eeeee!

Had to work in the Terry's Chocolate Orange
to rationalize getting it. Naturally.

You can tell we have similar idea in regards to front windows
and doors.

Boyfriend's got a bit...torched. We were mixing icing (crucial!)
and couldn't hear the buzzer. Maybe shan't eat this one.

The candy post-scourge. Keep in mind those bags were all
VERY full prior to decorating. So...much...candy.

Just a small portion of the mess.

Leftover dough? NO WORRIES.