Choosing what I eat every day has become a bit of a process, since my mom dropped In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan in my lap. Since letting the information in Pollan’s wonderful book (he is a genius, in my opinion) soak in I have made a conscious effort to take the time to eat meals, read what is in the “foods” I buy, and avoid being caught up in the food fads of late.
Step one: eat meals. At a table and everything, candle light optional. These once prevalent sit-down-with- the-family meals have been lost to the ever-fast, ever-easy snack food. Besides, who has the time to cook? Our lives are packed from sun up to sun down with friends, family, school, work, and kids. This may be why one-fifth of eating done by American adults now happens in their cars! Entrées that are pre-made and need only to be nuked are what more and more people are reaching for. A package that says “to-go” on the front sells a product. Try counting how many food products you see with “to-go” labels on them next time your doing some grocery shopping if you don’t believe me! You may be asking yourself, what can one do to stop all the snacking madness? The answer is simple. Cook. Get a cook book, or crack open the one your mom got you when you moved out. Make a point to try and make something at least once a day. Trust me, cooking meals is like Pringles (only far healthier), once you start, you can’t stop.
Healthier food is food that is comprised of a few identifiable ingredients. One’s that you can both pronounce and trace it’s roots. For instance, my once favorite breakfast food of all time, Malt-o-Meal, has something in it called ferric orthophosphate. I can pronounce this one, if I read it slowly, but where does it come from? What is it made out of? I think it’s safe to assume then that whatever it is, it was made in a laboratory, so is likely a chemical. And there are dozens of these unpronounceable, unidentifiable ingredients in the food products we eat. Bread, a once simple food, can be made with flour, yeast, water, and a pinch each of salt and sugar; five ingredients. While buying bread recently, the fewest ingredients I counted in one loaf of bread was 21. In 1938 there was an rule passed by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that made it so if a food product only resembled a standardized food, then that product must be labeled “imitation.” The rule was repealed by the FDA in 1973, but if it were still in effect today I think we would have very little food (and defiantly no bread) in our stores that would be without said label. Alas, even without those handy labels, we can choose our food using a simple rule: If your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, don’t buy it.
Another food guideline, if you will, is to avoid foods with health claims. These are food products that your great grandmother surely would not recognize. Fat-free, low-carb, high-fiber, low-cholestoral, sugar-free. The hyphens have taken over. As a general rule, when one thing is removed or added to a food, another thing is removed or added. For example, a food product that has been made fat-free is full of sugar, because removing the fat also removes the flavor, and so the sugar is used to give it a better taste. A second reason to avoid these health claims is that they are normally just a fad. Take margarine. A while back it was packed with trans-fats and said to be the healthier alternative to butter. Instead, it gave people heart attacks. Consider also the low-carb fad of today. Not many people know that the once popular “healthy” diet was low-fat, high-carb. Before that, sugar was the enemy. A man who lived through and followed those health fads said that after all his years of being stingy with the maple syrup on his pancakes, he was surprised to learn that he should have been worried about the butter. Now a days, however, he would be avoiding his carbohydrate loaded short-stack all together. It just goes to show that health claims do not make a food healthy.
At risk of sounding like one of those children from Reading Rainbow, if you want to know what is really going on with the “foods” in your grocery store, stop by your local library and check out Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food today.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Labor and Delivery...Sorry Boys!
A woman screams in agony. Sweat drips from her furrowed brow as she pulls her knees to her chest and obeys the nurses order that she pushes. And there is always a complication. Is it any wonder that pregnant women have anxiety about the day they go into labor? The birthing process is always portrayed as horrible experience – long, painful, and fraught with risks. But, in reality, the women out there who have this supposedly “typical” kind of birth are few and far between. Giving birth is something that has, quite literally, been happening forever. And more often than not, it is a process that goes smoothly. My own birthing experience was not entirely smooth, but I know for sure I was not screaming my head off at any point during the 29 hour process. I take you back to approximately 14 months ago…
I was, and still am, a firm believer in giving birth naturally. Not just vaginally, but naturally. Women have been doing it in my family forever, and so to me it was, no pun intended, the natural choice. I was disappointed to find that while looking for some classes on birthing, most included a detailed “menu” of drugs that were made available to the laboring mother-to-be, and little to no techniques on preparing for a natural birth. So after a lot of online research, I found and later took a class called Hypnobirthing, which is actually a course on breathing techniques and visualization for drug-free pain management. There is no hypnotizing involved. The class, along with my mother at my side as my doula (or labor coach) prepared me for the day I would give birth to my son. Let’s jump ahead to the day I checked into the hospital…
So there I was, waddling into the E.R. at 7 am, sick of being the size of a Geo Metro, thinking THIS WAS IT! After more than 10 months of being pregnant, I was finally going to get to meet my Jack Thomas! The date was 9/24/09, and I was a full two weeks overdue. My drill-sergeant doula had me walking to try and induce my labor naturally (25 miles in 4 days), but to no avail. So now I was on my way to be induced with Pitocin. I got up to my birthing suite and was hooked up to an IV, my drugs, and a monitor to watch my baby’s vitals.
It was 12 noon before I felt a thing, and that apparently concerned my nurses. So after four hours of stubbornly refusing to comply (in true Osgood fashion), I agreed to let them break my water. Then it really started hit the fan. I for one would not call labor painful, but rather very, very uncomfortable. So uncomfortable in fact, that when any of my many wonderful nurses touched my huge stomach , I slapped their hands. After 20 some hours of contracting and slapping, I was begging for an epidural. The nurses called for an anesthesiologist, and I don’t know if it was the long day of laboring, but I swear it was Mr. Clean. So Mr. Clean prepared my epidural, and after a poke it was administered. Except I still felt everything, and for those who don’t know, an epidural is suppose to leave you numb from about the bottom of your rib cage down. After giving it a half an hour to kick in, Mr. Clean was called back to administer another one. Two minutes later, I was conked out. There’s a reason they call it labor- it’s work! I slept for five hours, and woke up to bad news. I had thick myconium(basically Jack pooped from all the stress of labor) in my fluid, and my temperature was rising. The doctor came in and told me that a cesarean section would be necessary if I did not deliver soon. After four more hours of contracting, I was told that if they did not get Jack out soon, both he and I could be in danger.
I was crushed to hear it, but the last thing I wanted was to put my baby in danger, so I reluctantly agreed to have the cesarean. I was wheeled in my bed to the operating room, where I was then asked to sit on the edge of my bed with my back hunched so that they could administer my spinal. My epidurals must of worn off at that point, because that is one part of my labor that I would describe as painful. After 20 minutes of being hunched the anesthesiologist had to call in another anesthesiologist, because apparently I am difficult to anesthetize. Once I was finally numbed up, I was strapped to the table, and a nurse who I swear looked like Dr. Grey from Grey’s Anatomy commented on the fact that Jack was still kicking. Apparently babies normally stop moving during labor, but not my Jack! All of the sudden I could not breath, so I told Dr. Grey and she said that my spinal had “crawled up.” That meant that instead of numbing only my lower body, my spinal had also numbed up my chest so I could not feel myself breathe. So I was put under general anesthesia.
The next thing I know, I was being told by a very excited new Grandmother “Wake up Atlanta! Meet your son!” I couldn’t believe it - I had a son. I still can’t believe it sometimes. It’s a whole wealth of emotion that no one can know until they experience it. I had made it. I had given birth. It was not the way I wanted it to go, and I still am disappointed that I did not get to see my son come out all gooey and hear him take his first breath. But I’ll say this - it was no scene out of a horror movie either. And there is always next time. But it’ll take me a few years to forget just how hard having a newborn is before I’m brave enough to go down that road!
I was, and still am, a firm believer in giving birth naturally. Not just vaginally, but naturally. Women have been doing it in my family forever, and so to me it was, no pun intended, the natural choice. I was disappointed to find that while looking for some classes on birthing, most included a detailed “menu” of drugs that were made available to the laboring mother-to-be, and little to no techniques on preparing for a natural birth. So after a lot of online research, I found and later took a class called Hypnobirthing, which is actually a course on breathing techniques and visualization for drug-free pain management. There is no hypnotizing involved. The class, along with my mother at my side as my doula (or labor coach) prepared me for the day I would give birth to my son. Let’s jump ahead to the day I checked into the hospital…
So there I was, waddling into the E.R. at 7 am, sick of being the size of a Geo Metro, thinking THIS WAS IT! After more than 10 months of being pregnant, I was finally going to get to meet my Jack Thomas! The date was 9/24/09, and I was a full two weeks overdue. My drill-sergeant doula had me walking to try and induce my labor naturally (25 miles in 4 days), but to no avail. So now I was on my way to be induced with Pitocin. I got up to my birthing suite and was hooked up to an IV, my drugs, and a monitor to watch my baby’s vitals.
It was 12 noon before I felt a thing, and that apparently concerned my nurses. So after four hours of stubbornly refusing to comply (in true Osgood fashion), I agreed to let them break my water. Then it really started hit the fan. I for one would not call labor painful, but rather very, very uncomfortable. So uncomfortable in fact, that when any of my many wonderful nurses touched my huge stomach , I slapped their hands. After 20 some hours of contracting and slapping, I was begging for an epidural. The nurses called for an anesthesiologist, and I don’t know if it was the long day of laboring, but I swear it was Mr. Clean. So Mr. Clean prepared my epidural, and after a poke it was administered. Except I still felt everything, and for those who don’t know, an epidural is suppose to leave you numb from about the bottom of your rib cage down. After giving it a half an hour to kick in, Mr. Clean was called back to administer another one. Two minutes later, I was conked out. There’s a reason they call it labor- it’s work! I slept for five hours, and woke up to bad news. I had thick myconium(basically Jack pooped from all the stress of labor) in my fluid, and my temperature was rising. The doctor came in and told me that a cesarean section would be necessary if I did not deliver soon. After four more hours of contracting, I was told that if they did not get Jack out soon, both he and I could be in danger.
I was crushed to hear it, but the last thing I wanted was to put my baby in danger, so I reluctantly agreed to have the cesarean. I was wheeled in my bed to the operating room, where I was then asked to sit on the edge of my bed with my back hunched so that they could administer my spinal. My epidurals must of worn off at that point, because that is one part of my labor that I would describe as painful. After 20 minutes of being hunched the anesthesiologist had to call in another anesthesiologist, because apparently I am difficult to anesthetize. Once I was finally numbed up, I was strapped to the table, and a nurse who I swear looked like Dr. Grey from Grey’s Anatomy commented on the fact that Jack was still kicking. Apparently babies normally stop moving during labor, but not my Jack! All of the sudden I could not breath, so I told Dr. Grey and she said that my spinal had “crawled up.” That meant that instead of numbing only my lower body, my spinal had also numbed up my chest so I could not feel myself breathe. So I was put under general anesthesia.
The next thing I know, I was being told by a very excited new Grandmother “Wake up Atlanta! Meet your son!” I couldn’t believe it - I had a son. I still can’t believe it sometimes. It’s a whole wealth of emotion that no one can know until they experience it. I had made it. I had given birth. It was not the way I wanted it to go, and I still am disappointed that I did not get to see my son come out all gooey and hear him take his first breath. But I’ll say this - it was no scene out of a horror movie either. And there is always next time. But it’ll take me a few years to forget just how hard having a newborn is before I’m brave enough to go down that road!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
My thoughts on Tinker School, having just watched Finding Nemo
“You think you can do these things but you just can’t Nemo.”
-Marlin, Finding Nemo
-Marlin, Finding Nemo
The notion that children are less capable than adults is an understandable one. Children are smaller, not as strong, and less experienced than us older and wiser folks. They have a lot to learn, and as such are rarely given responsibility. However, how are our children supposed to grow without these opportunities? I’m not talking about arithmetic, or grammar, or how to play an instrument; these are skills taught in school. Responsibility and independent thinking; these are skills less commonly taught, and even less commonly exercised. In order to grow into well rounded and happy individuals, children need to be respected and given the opportunity to be freely creative.
Adults have the tendency to be hypocritical towards children; they demand to be respected and trusted, but in turn do not respect and trust their young ones. For example, when my six year old sister was given a toy shopping cart for her birthday, she was insistent on assembling it herself. Her mother, assuming that a six year old could not be trusted complete such a complicated task, would not let her. The six year old responded by throwing a hissy fit, until her mom gave in and let her help. And wouldn’t you now it, that little girl was a great help, and even attached the wheels all on her lonesome. Having witnessed this exchange, I could not help but think about how my little sister was initially not given the respect and trust that she showed, in the end, she deserved. I have since been careful not to underestimate children, and to give them every chance to show me just how much they can do.
Children also astound me with what they can cook up in those little heads of theirs. When my darling sister was learning about space in her second grade class, she asked me what the atmosphere was. I told her that it was a layer of clouds that held all the air in so we could breath. She asked, “Like a big balloon?”. I was impressed (and, admittedly, a bit jealous) that she came up with a more creative analogy than I. Children have minds that positively overflow with creativity, and as such should be given every opportunity to let that creativity flow. As a creative individual, and someone who feels just plain rotten if not allowed to express myself, I understand how important this is. Creativity is the ultimate outlet for anyone. If a child is frustrated, a chance to get their creative juices flowing is all they need to put their world into perspective. A child who is able to think for himself is a more confident child, and grows up knowing that anything really is possible with a bit of elbow grease. When given the respect and trust that they deserve and every opportunity to be creative, children can prove that they are, in fact, very capable.
“Let us see what Squirt does flying solo.”
-Crush, Finding Nemo
Adults have the tendency to be hypocritical towards children; they demand to be respected and trusted, but in turn do not respect and trust their young ones. For example, when my six year old sister was given a toy shopping cart for her birthday, she was insistent on assembling it herself. Her mother, assuming that a six year old could not be trusted complete such a complicated task, would not let her. The six year old responded by throwing a hissy fit, until her mom gave in and let her help. And wouldn’t you now it, that little girl was a great help, and even attached the wheels all on her lonesome. Having witnessed this exchange, I could not help but think about how my little sister was initially not given the respect and trust that she showed, in the end, she deserved. I have since been careful not to underestimate children, and to give them every chance to show me just how much they can do.
Children also astound me with what they can cook up in those little heads of theirs. When my darling sister was learning about space in her second grade class, she asked me what the atmosphere was. I told her that it was a layer of clouds that held all the air in so we could breath. She asked, “Like a big balloon?”. I was impressed (and, admittedly, a bit jealous) that she came up with a more creative analogy than I. Children have minds that positively overflow with creativity, and as such should be given every opportunity to let that creativity flow. As a creative individual, and someone who feels just plain rotten if not allowed to express myself, I understand how important this is. Creativity is the ultimate outlet for anyone. If a child is frustrated, a chance to get their creative juices flowing is all they need to put their world into perspective. A child who is able to think for himself is a more confident child, and grows up knowing that anything really is possible with a bit of elbow grease. When given the respect and trust that they deserve and every opportunity to be creative, children can prove that they are, in fact, very capable.
“Let us see what Squirt does flying solo.”
-Crush, Finding Nemo
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