The blur that is the supermarket...

I have come to realise that supermarket shopping for me has become a blur - I honestly couldn't tell you everything that you can find on those shelves anymore. I used to enter and go straight for the cheese, 1st straight aisle right, which is no longer necessary now that I get our own Fairview and Daleview selections, see website. And I use my own kefir instead of cottage cheese and I'm planning to progress to making our own mozarella and feta (as soon as I have grown more arms). Next stop is fruit and veg. Or shall I just say fruit, because I don't have to buy veg. Then I head for the far left corner, oblivious to whatever else I'm passing, in order to get to the meat counter. Then straight across for milk if I run short of the unpasteurised I get on a Thursday and because it doesn't last long enough. No more yogurt and butter purchases for me now that I make my own, then to the far right hand side of the shop for cleaning stuff and up the second-last aisle from where it is easy to spot the shortest till line. While traversing the front I can grab some tea, coffee or toiletries if needed. And that's me done!

So why am I telling you this mundane personal anecdote? It is because I am so happy I am free to allow the rest of the supermarket to pass by me in a blur of nothingness. I just watched a documentary this week called 'Fed Up', and the conversation is headed up by Bill Clinton at the behest of a live-wire lady whose name I forget, and its about the obesity epidemic that has hit the USA. The information I gleaned from this doccie is too much to include in one volcanic effort to you, but the supermarket is a good start. Produce is preferably not sold in its original form any longer, because if it has been value-added (read deconstructed, processed, and sugar added) it sells for so much more. And if one can claim 'just add' something or another and sit down and eat, your overworked mother/housewife/working lady is happy to grab and go, if it means she doesn't have to peel veg and slave to put dinner on the table. It's just that if anyone took the time to tell her the price she is paying is her health and the health of her family, with medical bills added, I bet more than 90% would be just too happy to rather go to the farmer's market and cook their own darn dinner!

Just a few stats which raised the alarm bells for me once again: Of 600,000 items available on supermarket shelves in the USA 80% have sugar added. They tell you 'with half the fat' or 'half the calories' (compared to what?) and while making the comparison, they don't tell you they never reduced the sugar as well, because the sugar barons have succeeded in labelling to simply contain 'sugar' in the list of ingredients, without stating how much, which is mandatory for everything else. And then they furthermore disguise the s-word by calling it fructose, glucose, lactose, dextrose and a myriad others which I can't even remember. Research furthermore shows that all the fake-sugar sweeteners have exactly the same effect on the endocrine system as if it was refined sugar you are ingesting!

The second alarm bell raised for me is what they've done to grains. Everything is sugar coated, the cereal boxes have action men and popular tv characters on and in and efforts to stop them advertising to children have been met with cries of interference with freedom of speech... but what I didn't know is that the metabolic effect of a processed grain is exactly the same on the body as when ingesting refined sugar. Even if you astutely eat your sugar-free kelloggs with just milk, there's no health benefit. In the words of the nutritionist-doctor interviewed: "Whether you eat your weetbix or whatever it was he called it, without sugar or you eat a bowl of sugar without the weetbix the effect to your metabolism is identical and the metabolic diseases resulting from the intake of processed foods and sugar are Diabetes, Heart disease, Lipid problems, Strokes and Cancer (there were more) because they all cause an overproduction of insulin.

The overproduction of insulin makes you think you're hungry because it blocks the brain from receiving the 'full' impulse. And most notably diabetes caused by an overindulgence of sugar and fine processed carbs is no longer called 'Adult onset' diabetes, it is now just referred to as Type 2 diabetes, because it is ocurring in teenagers and even in children as young as 9 years of age.

This is the one doctor's mantra, which I shall repeat in the weeks to come, while I write more about nutrition and the scourge of our age which is processed food:

Detox on food which looks like it came from nature as opposed to a box or a can with a list of ingredients printed on the outside.

The thing about nutrition ...

I am having a total mindshift, over a period of years and counting, about what constitutes proper nutrition. I can't help but remember our ancient forebears who didn't have the knowledge and access to the variety of foods we eat, yet they lived, farmed, married, had children and fought wars ... with their bare hands so to speak.

I am becoming more and more convinced that what one can get from the land around or near you, as fresh and as little travelled as possible, without the involvement of chemicals of any description, is good and satisfying and nutritious enough to keep one in good health. It isn't the variety that's available to eat that feeds us better - proteins, sugars, vitamins and minerals are widely present in all manner of produce. The crux is whether the produce is fresh, not through treatment and refrigeration, but rather through recent removal from its position of growth, and whether the meat is from an animal that lived well and was treated with kindness and respect. That's a big mouthful and begs reams of articles I know....

But take the Christmas lima beans of which I only have a precious few packets on offer this week... I can be far from home in the lands and feeling woozy and hungry, and if I shell two of those pods and eat the 4 or 5 beans inside, I feel fed and satisfied and can keep going for hours again, sometimes all the way to dinnertime. At other times it may be ordinary green beans or peas, or a carrot pulled from the ground, the effect is always satisfaction, and hunger that stays away for hours. That's got to tell you something about nutritional density. We have become so used to eating heaps of food before feeling well fed, and we confuse the full feeling with a fed feeling. That is because manufacturers have to be so careful what they supply us with especially when it comes to fast foods, that the bulk of the food has little or no nutritional value so even if we eat our fill, our bodies are still telling us it needs something more.

Its no wonder people from ages past could go on long journeys with just their sourdough bread in a sack, which although it gets hard it doesn't grow mould, and cheese which was possibly quite hard and strong, and then they lived off the land, foraging along the way, because a little handful goes a very long way... By the way there's a few bunches of heirloom carrots the monkeys have spared us so far... they are more earthy in taste, and pretty on your plate!

I am starting to spend less time cooking and more time foraging... and thinking of how I can help my customers have the same benefits I have - bringing the farm and farmhouse kitchen to you through www.farminabox.co.za! Just click to see what is on offer this week.

And I am grateful for technology which allows me to write this on a laptop sitting in the kitchen watching many litres of cream churning to become fresh butter - I had to tell my kids last week to buy their own because I had sold everything I had. They were not so miffed about having to buy, as about not being able to enjoy the fresh farm taste of the farm butter! Mindful of baking and babies, I have added unsalted butter to the list, and some with garden-fresh herbs added.