Sacred Living

By David Corson-Knowles

When I was a kid, I would try to get up early, run to the freezer and eat as much ice cream as I could before someone noticed and stopped me. My backup breakfast was only slightly less sweet, toast with butter or margarine and tons of cinnamon sugar.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do have food memories that wouldn’t make a typical parent or health-conscious person cringe. I remember sitting on the porch in summer and eating watermelons with my brothers. Spitting the seeds out into our yard and seeing them grow into vines which made more melons for us the next year.

This is the story of how I learned to eat well, and enjoy every meal I have just as much as I used to like having ice cream for breakfast. It’s also the story of why I’d want to change my habits to eat lots more fruits and vegetables.

We’ve learned a lot regarding nutrition and toxins since the time I was a kid, and the information continues to get better every year.  For instance - remember the margarine on my sugary home-made toast? …Well now we know that the Trans Fats and Hydrogenated Oils used to make margarine are toxic to the heart and the endocrine system. We know that every cell wall in our body is made up of fats, and that the ones produced in this chemical process don’t work properly in our bodies. Basically we’ve learned that eating butter or any kind of natural vegetable oil is far, far better for us. 40 years too late we’ve discovered that the move to replace saturated fats with chemical processes like hydrogenation has been nothing but a disaster. It makes me really sad to think about the heart break and heart attacks that resulted.

My motivation to learn about how food works all started one day when I walked into the kitchen as a teenager to ask about dinner. My mom was preparing Hunter’s Chicken, a dish made with tomato and green olives served over pasta. She had to go pick up my younger brother from soccer practice and asked me to take over cooking the meal, carrying on where she left off removing the fat from the chicken breasts.  I protested: not only was this a waste of time, but growing boys like me could use those extra calories.

My mom, who is a doctor, explained that the way chickens are grown and processed on industrial farms leads to a build up and concentration of pollutants in the fatty tissue. The body pushes toxins out to the fat in the skin, to store them there as a defensive measure.

When companies do things like grind up chicken “processing scraps” (aka left over body parts) and feed them back to other chickens, toxins such as arsenic accumulate generation after generation as the chickens are raised. The arsenic gets there from low level antibiotics added to animal feed. “Oh.” I said.

I trimmed off the fat. I finished cooking. I ate my chicken. I thought about it a lot. A few weeks later, I stopped eating chicken. Actually, that’s not true. I resolved not to eat animals that weren’t raised on a family or organic farm. But, this was 1996 in northern Indiana. I had no idea where to find meat like that. I became a vegetarian for a while… this meant I had to find new things to eat.

I soon discovered that South Bend, Indiana had a health food store. It was called The Garden Patch, and a lot of the things they sold were cheaper than our typical grocery store. Some of them weren’t. But eating safer, more nutritious food had wholly crept onto my radar, so now even the small price increases seemed worth it.

I also found that South Bend boasts “the largest indoor year-round farmer’s market in the country” (a fact I learned only after I’d left home for college). The shopping experience there was unlike any grocery store I was used to, and about 1000% better. The farmers were so nice, it often felt like buying food from old friends. They sold really fresh fruits and vegetables, often they’d picked them early that morning. Walking among the stalls there were seasonal delicacies, like cherries, raspberries, peaches: each had their time of abundance, which often meant free samples. One of the mushroom vendors started bringing a grill, sauteing them so he could give out samples too. There was a polish baker who had a stall in the corner; with her sugary pastries, I could indulge that sweet tooth that hadn’t changed too much from when I was 6 and rushing the freezer in the morning.  Needless to say, I was hooked - I have tried to buy only local and sustainable food since then.

But it was learning that first fact about chicken, and realizing there was something slightly wrong with the food system, that catapulted me to become a conscious consumer. And walking among the farmer’s market stalls, chatting with the people who had grown my food, helped me find a sense of community and connect to a food system that wasn’t tinged by a hint of madness.

"The Local" a volunteer farmers market at UC Berkeley

Through my research and passion for food, I learned that fruits and vegetables are a potent antidote to environmental toxins. If you think about it, we evolved eating plants and using their chemistry to regulate and rebuild our cells. There are over 10,000 natural compounds in an apple, and Vitamin C is only one of them. They all work in concert to nourish our bodies. That’s why the American Cancer Society recommends that we “eat 5 or more servings of fresh fruits and vegetables each day to help prevent cancer.” Get fresh fruit in a bowl on your counter and pick up the kind of vegetables that you find at the farmers market at least once a month. Suddenly eating 5 or more servings a day becomes not a chore, but one of life’s simple pleasures.

If you don’t have a farmer’s market in your town or in the neighboring town, you still have options! First of all, keep looking. With over 4,600 of them across the US, chances are good that there is a market some day of the week not that far from you. If the internet isn’t turning up the info you need, call your state’s department of agriculture. They can point you in the right direction, and they’ll also hear your desire to connect with and support your local farmers. Even Wasilla, AK has a farmers market.

Community supported agriculture programs (CSAs) give farmers another way to deliver produce straight to consumers. They’ll bring you a box with a share of everything their farm has produced that week, often tailored to your request if you particularly like or don’t like certain veggies. In a new area, you might need to go in with a few of your neighbors in order to make it affordable for your farm to deliver. In the Bay Area, CSAs like Terra Firma Farm and Fully Belly Farms will start a new drop point at your house if there are 25 subscribers in your area. As the host site, you can get a free box!

You can also join a co-op, or start your own. Cooperative grocers operate in 500 towns and cities around the country. They tend to develop personal relationships with the farms who supply them, and as a member and co-owner you’re invited to participate in that connection.

On the UC Berkeley campus, volunteer students have set up their own farmer’s market every Wednesday for the past 2 years. They buy at wholesale and pass the savings on at their stand on campus to make good food more accessible. In January, Berkeley students will be opening up a cooperative deli and grocery, so they can do this 7 days a week and turn this farm fresh food into ready-to-eat soups, salads, and sandwiches. In a world where you really have to look to find food that nourishes you, that’s inspiring!

David Corson-Knowles now lives in Berkeley, CA where he is a marketing rep for Juice Plus+, and he encourages you to get involved in or contribute to the Berkeley Student Food Cooperative. His neighbors raise chickens in their back yard and sometimes share their extra eggs. David is a guest blogger on his brother’s site: www.healthandwellnessnewsnow.com