Archive for July, 2008

We had 15 minutes of fame on ABC’s show Wife Swap, where the show was quite fascinated with our discipline technique of assigning our children five-paragraph essays (with intro and conclusion) for breaking major family rules.   In Albuquerque, in the Espinosa-Marquez home, several of the “tribe” of skaters wrote essays I assigned about why using the “F” word is inappropriate.

We actually don’t do this very often.   But, we do find that our kids all ace English and don’t experience writer’s block at all, thanks to their copious home writing experience.   I keep their essays to entertain them in the future when they are adults (or to entertain all of us if they continue to not learn the lesson, by reading us all their original essay out loud).

My 14-year old son, Kincade, had a bad day on Sunday and wrote not one, but TWO, essays.   Because I thought one of them was hilarious, I share it here for your enjoyment.   Note the skilled use of lots of “filler,” which will come in handy for high school length requirements:

Are Fathers Important, and Do They Deserve Our Respect?

 Fathers are very important in a family, and so we should be respectful to them.   In my second essay of the day, I will discuss why fathers are so important to families.

In our family and in most families in our country, and the United States, and the world, and probably the universe, the fathers bring home the bacon; or, in our family, it’s more like the lettuce.   Fathers all around the world work very hard to provide the “lettuce” for the family and they work too hard for their snot-nosed kids to be disrespectful to them.   I think this is pretty much the reason why fathers are so important, but because I need to fill up this page, I guess I’ll need to make some more stuff up.

Fathers are also important because as a clinical study shows, families with fathers who take an active role are less likely to have children who become juvenile delinquents.   I think that 86% of these “clinical studies” are just made up, but fathers are important because if we didn’t have fathers, we would probably drive our mothers crazy.

Fathers are also incredible role models.   They set examples for their children like being responsible, working hard, and being a stud.   These are some of the examples that my father has showed me, even though I have picked up only on the last one.   If a father were a gang member, then the child would probably show some type of interest in joining a gang.   Fathers’ examples are the most important because every child looks up to his father.   This is why I think fathers’ examples are important.

Now I have told you why I think that fathers are so important.   I feel bad about being disrepectful to Dad last night, and I know that I should try harder to be more respectful.

By Kincade Pay

I have wondered this for years and was so interested and enlightened to learn, on a Yahoo group I belong to, what others spend on groceries in a month.   Only a handful answered the question, but the answers ranged widely, from $1,000/mo. for a family of 4, to $400/mo. for a family of 7.

Unless you’re new and not a subscriber to 12 Steps to Whole Foods, you know that part of my passion for teaching families to eat a health-promoting, plant-based diet, is helping them do so INEXPENSIVELY, within a budget, since the moms who are teaching the kids are usually in the stage of life where money is a scarce resource and must be accounted for carefully.

Maybe it’s a taboo subject, but if so, I’ll try to  pave the way  with some self-disclosure:  my family of 6 spends $800/mo. on groceries, on average (less in the summer, more in the winter).   It’s also important to note that all of  my kids are athletes and big eaters, two of them teenagers.   (Shouldn’t a teenager count as 2 people?!)

We save by gardening, participating in a CSA, buying in bulk and stocking up, and preparing meals from scratch.   We preserve and freeze food in our basement cold storage, second fridge, and upright freezer. As you probably are now aware, we eat whole foods and don’t buy meat, dairy, or boxed/canned processed foods.   All of the budget is whole plant foods except for the occasional church social, extended-family, or after-soccer-game food assignment.  We grow organic, but we don’t always buy organic.   We splurge by going to Sweet Tomatoes once a week, and I’m actually not counting that in the budget.

Please write here what you spend, and give any tips on how you save and how you splurge within that budget (and what percentage of your grocery budget is whole foods).  I think women (or the money manager in the home) will find this fascinating and helpful.   I know I will.

You saw my 5′ tall spinach plants.   Now here’s my 5′ tall gopher snake.   Actually it was in my neighbor’s garden during our party last night.   Fun, huh?   Happy 4^th of July!   (Just think, if we didn’t get our independence from England, things could be worse: we could be eating a lot of fish-n-chips . . . can you say greasy?)

Third, is the study reliable?   This is the second basic research standard, and it means is the research repeatable with consistent results? Reliability is one of the best things about Colin Campbell’s The China Study, the largest nutrition study in history, which will be referenced throughout this book.   Dr. Campbell’s animal research showing the benefits of a low-animal-protein diet were duplicated by other researchers, using various animals, all over the world.   The results were very consistent.

Finally, have a basic understanding of and consider carefully a few other things before placing much stock in what you read.   Is the study longitudinal (covering a long period of time)?   If none of 500 subjects got cancer in three years, that’s much less compelling than if none of them got cancer in 30 years, like in the Framingham study, the Harvard Nurses’ study,  or the Oxford-Cornell (China Study) Project.

Was the study double-blinded, which means that neither the researcher nor the subject knew which of multiple therapies the person was receiving?   Was it placebo-controlled, meaning that some subjects received a placebo (sugar tablet) instead of the supplement or drug?   Was the research published in peer-reviewed journals (often but not always ensuring more scientific analysis)?   How big was the sample size?   Bigger is better, and although case studies (with only a few subjects) are interesting, without further research, you shouldn’t bet the farm on findings of those kinds.

The more you read and study, the more confidence you can have that the very important decisions you make about how to fuel your body are sound.   12 Steps to Whole Foods undertakes to synthesize the research and best practices from around the world, leading to dietary practice that is simple and achievable and customizable for your personal dietary needs—a direct route to optimal health.

This is an excerpt from the intro of 12 Steps to Whole Foods.

Advances in the field of nutrition are taking place faster than ever in history.   For example, just this decade, the “master hormone” leptin has been discovered, which governs the other hormones.   New data calls into question the popular counsel of the past decade to eat 4-6 small meals daily: leptin research suggests that we should eat three meals daily and allow our bodies much rest from digestion.   In just 2004, a class of glyconutrients (sugars) have been found to have powerful healing properties, which disputes a decade of anti-carb “experts.”   Many people become frustrated by all the new information and competing voices telling us what to eat, what not to eat, and why.   So that you don’t give up and “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” I have a bit of common-sense advice that super-simplifies the essence of a statistics class.

The main way to push through the inevitable cognitive dissonance is to read and learn all you can:  12 Steps to Whole Foods  is a good start, and you may also consider the reading list on www.greensmoothiegirl.com (I am adding to it shortly). When you encounter contradictions, consider several things.

First, what is the funding behind the research?   You don’t have to become paranoid to examine whether research was undertaken to objectively examine an issue, or to promote an agenda.   It’s simply a part of being a savvy consumer of information in an age when we are all bombarded with thousands of voices.

For instance, if a study tells you that drinking wine daily prevents heart disease, use your critical thinking skills.   Why did researchers study wine instead of grape juice—or better yet, grapes?   Before you go out and stock up on a year’s supply of wine, ascertain if you can who paid for the study.   Was it the wine growers of Sonoma Valley?   Often studies in the modern age are funded, second-level, by an industry wanting to promote a product (often one that is under fire), even if the legitimate-sounding researchers named in the media, such as a university, are not directly linked to a motive.   When that is the case, researchers know they are to publish whatever they can that is favorable to a product or industry, and publish nothing they find that is unfavorable.

Second, is the study valid?   This is the highest standard in statistics and research, and it means does the study measure what it purports to measure?   This seems simple enough, but it is in fact a difficult thing for researchers to achieve.   If wine drinkers have much less cancer than beer drinkers, wine must be preventing cancer, right?   Not necessarily.   Maybe wine drinkers are a higher socioeconomic class than beer drinkers, in the aggregate, and beer drinkers also eat more fast food and smoke at higher rates.

Third, in tomorrow’s post.

We have some strange logical fallacies that cause us to NOT learn what health and nutrition really are.   (That, and lots of voices compete in the world of nutrition, so the field truly can be confusing.)

First, let’s say Sue hears from her neighbor that eating caterpillars will straighten her baby’s bow legs.   So she collects a bunch of caterpillars and feeds them to the baby, who gags, refuses to eat most of the mashed caterpillar even though Sue hides them in Twinkies, gets diarrhea . . . and still has bow legs.   Sue says, “These ‘natural’ things don’t work—I’m going back to the M.D. who is a true SCIENTIST.”

Second, I have sister-in-law who writes off all the natural-healing folks as crazy because she has a sister-in-law who believes anything she hears and buys every supplement, product, gadget.   And said sister-in-law is none the healthier for it.   (This reminds me of someone who doesn’t believe in marriage because her ex-spouse was a jerk.)

Third, I have a family member who has basically discarded all information.   “They told us oatmeal would cure heart disease.   Then they told us it didn’t,” she says.   Her conclusion?   “I don’t listen to them anymore.”   She’s tuned “them” out.   (“Them” being all science, all studies, all media—essentially all new information.)  

So many things are wrong with these conclusions.   We have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water, like in the oatmeal example.   Or, we just don’t go down the path far enough to differentiate those with a true and deep knowledge base (Bernard Jensen, Joel Fuhrman, Robert O. Young, etc.) from the snake-oil, quack, purveyors of priestcraft—or, more innocuous, those who really believe in their product that is rather unproven.

I’m as skeptical of (while friendlier toward) natural cure claims as I am of Big Pharma and the medical institution.   (I do think the “cures” of the former are more innocuous than the “cures” of the latter, and some of them can be effective.)   You can find a lot of voodoo under the banner of “alternative healing.”  

The good thing about nutritional healing is that the evidence is beyond substantial—it’s an avalanche—that plant foods heal and prevent disease and create healthy populations.   Notice that I stay away from promoting this or that vitamin supplement (scientific efficacy being far from proven, and IMO sketchy at best whether they help us at ALL).  

Notice that I don’t promote all the concentrated, pasteurized juices whose “evidence” is always just anecdotal.   Note that I don’t promote miracle cures for cancer, which I think might be worth your time and money if you have money to burn and you’re sure trying it won’t hurt you—but they should be supplementary to a GreenSmoothieGirl diet, not in lieu of!  

Tomorrow, an excerpt from the 12 Steps to Whole Foods introduction, a crash course on how to evaluate the deluge of nutrition and health data you read in the news.