"The Food Babe Way" by Vani Hari

February 2015


I have read many food books (In Defense of Food Micheal Pollan, Foodopoly by Wenonah Hauter, The China Study by Collin Campbell, The Optimum Nutrition Bible by Patrick Holford) and right now I am reading The Food Babe Way by Vani Hari, which just came out in stores on February 10. It is an incredible book. I admire and look up to Hari from having followed her blog for the last few months, foodbabe.com. She is a food activist, investigating how the food industry dupes consumers about what's in their food, how our food is processed, and what is actually good for us. Not only is she extremely wise and knowledgeable about her field, but her book is easy to follow and includes a 21-Day Guide that lays out all the steps to take to transform your life and make lasting, healthy habits.

There is no doubt that trying to navigate the health world is overwhelming. Hari takes all this information and presents it in a simple, straightforward way. She makes it substantially easier, especially for a beginner. EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS BOOK.

As you would imagine, this book's success will influence the market. The more people who follow the guide in this book, the less money the major food corporations are going to make. That is why, right now, The Food Babe Way is under attack on Amazon.com because people are creating multiple accounts to deliberately write as many one-star reviews as they can. These are people who have never read the book and who work for the corporations. They don't want people knowing what is in their food. Please, if anyone is reading this, do the world a favor and go to Amazon, get this book, read it, and post an honest review. The important information presented in this amazing book NEEDS to get out.

http://smile.amazon.com/The-Food-Babe-Way-Younger/product-reviews/0316376469/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R4AI7Q0QVWYGW

The Value of the Liberal Arts

January 2015

Lately I have been working on an essay for a scholarship contest about the value of the liberal arts. I have invested more time on it than I thought I would, learning the history of liberal arts, how it traces back to Ancient Greece when Plato outlined the basics of the liberal arts curriculum and how it's purpose was to make democracy plausible. I've read last year's winning essays to see what they are looking for. As a writer, I need to find balance between what I want to say and what people what to hear. I also read my best friend's essay on the value of the liberal arts, which he is not going to submit because he is not going to a liberal arts school (and his essay is ten pages--the word limit is five hundred--but that's Mikaele for you). I also read an essay by Todd Gitlin that he referenced heavily in Mikaele's essay, and it was so inspirational I read the entire thing. But more on that later. I've also emailed my Grandma for help, who, before she retired, was a college professor of the classics and Greek language. I emailed her the rough draft today so she can review it. And I made an appointment at Peninsula College with the Writing Lab so it can be reviewed there by a professor. I spent approximately three hours working on it today, as the deadline is two days from now. Here is my draft as of now:

There are three potential purposes for education: preparation for professional life, civic life, and personal life. The former increasingly takes precedence in our society over the two latter; most students are conditioned to believe that the single object of matriculating is to eventually secure decent employment. However, until climbing the socioeconomic ladder became the ultimate goal, education meant much more. In the case of liberal arts, the purpose of education is to allow a free person to actively participate in government; produce a well-rounded, cultured citizen capable of complex thinking; and live a meaningful and productive life.

Our current education system contrasts that of the Ancient Greeks, where the liberal arts originated—not surprising considering Ancient Greece produced the greatest thinkers of all time and is the only society with a government comparable to the great American democracy. Plato outlined this curriculum: the seven liberal arts, in classical antiquity, worked together to create a basis for education. Essentially, one learns how to learn.

The original intent of a liberal arts education is to create a population that would make democracy plausible. Each individual shall to be an informed, virtuous citizen capable of actively participating in public debate, serving on juries, defending oneself in court, and electing qualified representatives. We, as members of a free nation, are obligated to contribute to our country through public forum. Intelligence is worthless without the ability to exercise it. Without articulation and rhetoric, ideas remain quiescent. Society is propelled by the minds who communicate effectively. Moreover, not only do the leaders of society require the ability to think on a higher plane of thought, but—perhaps even more importantly—a free person needs to effectively govern himself. Otherwise, power may be corrupted when individuals cannot keep their politicians in check.

With this in mind, the liberal arts are now perhaps more relevant than ever. The world today is, in the words of Todd Gitlin, a glut of saturated information and images, much of it meaningless and redundant in the form of cheap culture from television or other media. American lifestyle is high-velocity, constantly in flux when the human condition prescribes a more stationary existence.

This is where the liberal arts come in: productive citizens needn’t be fed even more information only so they can merely regurgitate it back to their successors; they need the tools with which to process this information. Even if a student has a superior ability to recall facts, the need to do so becomes obsolete when the phenomenon “The Google Effect” lets the internet do that with far greater speed and accuracy. In a culture concentrated with information, the ability to think critically is threatened because an unhealthy reliance on outside thinking is imposed. Knowledge is only the first tier of Bloom’s Taxonomy: information alone does not make us more intelligent as intelligence is not measured by the amount known but rather the extent to which we are able to comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate this information.

A liberal arts education can even—contrary to popular belief—be the right choice in regard to the assumed main purpose of higher education: to get a good job. Indeed, employers now look for communication, analytical, management, and problem solving skills—all of which are found in a liberal arts degree. The average American has six to ten jobs in her life; a liberal arts education is the most adaptable. In addition—though we seem to somehow place seriousness on the STEM subjects and careers in those areas, deeming them “real” jobs—we don’t know what kind of jobs will be the highest paying or in the highest demand in the future; the job market is constantly adapting to new inventions, technologies and lifestyles.

Finally, politics and careers aside, on a personal level, education can help one achieve a better sense of self. A liberal arts degree is the most effective in this regard because it teaches the student to find the material’s relevance to their own life, and by exposing her to different subjects and points of view, makes her a more well-rounded being. Many people with a degree don’t end up applying it to a job, but it helped them in the long run because it exposed them to new environments and challenged them. 

 So yeah, I hate word limits. The word limit is five hundred and mine is over seven hundred. This essay is comparable to my personal statement. That was the most challenging piece of writing I've ever been faced with, as I have seventeen years of content to condense into a little over a single-spaced page. 

My favorite concept in this subject is the theory Gitlin proposes about the liberal arts being increasingly important in an age of "info glut." In writing this essay, I noticed myself looking around more at the world around me as I did normal day-to-day things. I recalled that I am living in a upon watching television and questioned this practice; likewise, I realized that some of my research I did on this topic led me to petty entertainment-based magazine-style websites. "As a student of the liberal arts," I declared, "I have the ability to process information and distinguish between reliable sources and otherwise." Then I promptly went to Peninsula College's research database to look for more credible, scholarly articles. I haven't even started my liberal arts post-secondary education and I'm already benefiting from it!

One thing that may be a stretch is my analysis of the relevance and worth of recipes. Yes, cooking recipes, like from cookbooks and pinterest. In essence, recipes are a ready-made formula for preparing food that is supposed to make the lives of cooks easier. I venture to argue that recipes do not make life easier, and even hamper the process of truly learning how to cook. Following a recipe does not mean you know how to cook; it means you know how to follow a list of directions. First of all, most "recipes" are just a combination of different foods arranged in a certain way, and anyone could have thought to put avocados and tomatoes on a slab of bread or to put cabbage and carrots on some greens in a salad.  Also, many recipes include ingredients that are not in season at the same times of the year, and often times will contain ingredients that either the cook does not like to eat or currently have in the kitchen. Often, the cook will have to go to the grocery store and buy ingredients for something they saw in a magazine instead of creating something of her own out of the ingredients already in her fridge. Recipes, in fact, are inconvenient and irrelevant.  They ignore the enormous complexity of the question "what do I eat?" The true process of cooking involves chemistry to some extent: learning what makes the bread rise, or what combination of ingredients make a cake qualify as a cake, or how to boil something without burning it are examples of the kinds of things cooks need to know but aren't included in recipes. If they know these basic essentials, though, they can make all their own "recipes." Same could be said for DIY projects: they rely on outside thinking instead of being creative and resourceful with what one already has. I looked up vegan cake the other day and found a normal cake recipe only with vegan butter, presented by The Minimalist Baker. I could have thought of that! What I was really looking for was a different definition of cake: how to imitate the texture, taste and chemistry in a completely alternative way. After all, what makes a cake, a cake? You know, after going through a baking phase when I was thirteen where I made a different cake every weekend, I still don't know the answer to that. A lot of the ingredients and processes are a blur in my mind because I was blindly following a recipe, not completely engaged and aware of the process. 

This phenomenon is new to our generation: when my dad taught me how to make oatmeal, I would insist on writing down the "recipe" because I wanted to be completely organized. He said there was no recipe; he throws in the spices and sweeteners he has on hand and adjusts the amounts to how many servings he's making. He seldom uses measuring cups. My mother says using measuring tools is imperative only when baking because amounts need to be exact lest they disrupt the chemistry of the product. That's the information I need to know. 

Likewise, older cookbooks have a different approach than newer ones. My grandmother's cookbook has a simple lay out of all the recipes: the dry ingredients are grouped together and the wet ingredients are grouped together, and then you add the two groups. This is essentially what baking is, finding that out after weeks of experience with a more modern, unnecessarily complicated cookbook that contains long lists of ingredients and blurbs of instructions that occupy large amounts of space on the page. In addition, this cookbook includes pages on different ways to make cake (the Double-Quick Method or the Simplified Creaming Method?) which truly teaches HOW to cook. It also has a different way of presenting recipes: for some, there is a "Key" recipe that serves as the basic version, and then there are instructions for modifying it for variations on that recipe. For example, there is a basic Chiffon cake, and then a chocolate chip, maple pecan, butterscotch, spice, orange, holiday fruit, peppermint chip, cherry-nut, bit o' walnut, mahogany, and banana variation that uses the same recipe using added special ingredients, and changing certain things like omitting or decreasing certain other ingredients, using a different pan, adjusting bake time or temperature, etc. The older way takes into account the big picture of the process, and newer doesn't distinguish between the main ingredients like pasta and the minuscule ones like salt. The reader doesn't understand that what she is making is essentially pasta with spices, until she makes it: what she sees is several ingredients that include pasta and spices listed on a page in front of her. Now if only she had a liberal arts education, she could make sense of it....

A truth I've learned through this process of writing my essay about the liberal arts is that much of the information we receive is not asked for. We didn't know we needed it until it was glittered in our faces. I looked up vegan lunch ideas today and some of them were things like an avocado on toast. I've already been doing that! But it looks so glamorous in the photo in the "Oh She Glows" blog article... and yet so simple and normal in real life. This stirs two responses in me: one, condemnation of the media and disdain for its deceitfulness; and two, a newly awoken appreciation for how beautiful real life is. 

A Tribute to Red Rooster Grocery

November 2014

I spent the better part of my morning today outlining Mary Jane's Farm magazines (yes, I do that. It helps me organize, understand and appreciate. Don't judge) after I did the Sisterhood Issues and Raising Jane Blog yesterday. Burying myself in the Mary Jane Lifestyle for a few hours helps me gain a renewed appreciation for life and puts me in a good mood.

By the time afternoon rolled around, I was feeling serene and peaceful. I walked to Pan d'Amore, a small local bakery that's run by a cute little old man who makes you feel like you walked into the 1940s when you walk into the two-by-four of a store. I was in the mood for something carb-y and sweet, like a soft chocolate cookie. But I saw something else: thick pizza, with artichoke hearts, whole olives, pesto, and I think sun-dried tomatoes. I asked if I could have just one half of a square, and the cute old man said "we don't usually do that, but I'll do that for you." Then I ate it outside of Hurricane Coffee, the local coffee shop on the other side of the street. I saw a huge, intimidating red truck drive by that had rows of Coca-Cola bottles printed on the side. I cringed at the sight.

Then I realized I never satisfied my cookie craving, so I walked over to Red Rooster Grocery. I discovered this little shop that's tucked behind a scrapbooking shop downtown a few years ago and fell in love with it. I have patronized this organic food shop ever since. In fact, last year when I didn't have any friends to sit with at lunch I would drive down the road to Red Rooster Grocery alone and buy lunch and eat in my car. It was just me, my silver Camry, and my vegan sandwich made with sprouted-grain bread. Now my car smells like junior year: loneliness, the salads and dried fruit my mom packed in my lunch, and soups and chocolate from Red Rooster Grocery. I go to Red Rooster at least once a week; after school, during lunch, when I'm downtown. It is conveniently right down the road from the high school. I have brought so many people there who never knew it existed. I have had many conversations with the husband-and-wife owners and their employees who know me by name.

But when I bought my cookie (and peanut butter cup... I really wanted chocolate in that moment. Don't judge.) the woman asked me if I was on their email list, and I said no. She looked sad and mournful. She said she had some news. They are closing the store soon. Like, closing forever. They are shutting down. They won't be in business anymore. I asked why, and she said "lots of reasons." The news hit me like the news that someone had died. It was so sudden. This little store had been my companion in the midst of solitude. She and the man who was ringing me up thanked me multiple times for my patronage over the years, and I thanked them back.

This made me so frustrated. Earlier that day I had seen a Coca-Cola truck transporting hundreds of bottles of the soda. We live in a world where soda companies are so powerful, and adorable organic groceries cannot stay open?? Reading Mary Jane's Farm so much lately has committed me to the special, unique things in life, like small businesses. If anyone happens to come across this little corner of the internet and has read this far, I want them to walk away from this and go give love, appreciation, patronage and support for your local merchants, especially organic farmers. In honor of Red Rooster Grocery, I have vowed to only patronize small enterprises from now on. I will continue to patronize Pan d'Amore, Rainshadow Coffee around the corner, Good to Go Grocery in Port Angeles, and Nash's Farm Store. They need me now more than ever. I will promise to make all of my purchases meaningful. I think I shall write the owners a handwritten letter disclosing my appreciation and best wishes.

"Healthy:" a Dynamic, Deeper Definition

October 2014

The other day I was at a Sequim Irrigation Festival Royalty function where a six-year-old birthday girl offered me apple cider topped with whipped cream. The "royalty mom" Mary (disguised name) laughed and said, "She gives Kristina the sugary whipped cream!" I didn't know what to say, so I just sat there with a confused look on my face. "Cause you're the healthy one. She gave you the sugary whipped cream. It's a joke." All the other royals stared at me staring at Mary. All I could manage to squeak out was "Sugar...?"

At times like these, there are so many contradictions racing through my mind (not to mention emotions) that I end up saying nothing. "Confusion" is what sums up my disposition at times like these. But yet, this is anything but the truth. Mary is the confused one. I understand so much more than she does.

I chose to give a presentation to sixth graders for my community service platform as part of royalty duties. It was about how what we eat effects the consumer, environment, economy, and farmer. Not once did I say anything about sugar. Did Mary hear any of it? Sugar exclusively concerns the weight of the consumer, which is unfortunately what health means to the public. This is foolishly ignorant of the real problems. Once one develops this false, superficial perception of health, it is near impossible to brake that.

Our society has a very isolationist mindset. There are so many reasons not to eat that canned whipped cream, and its sugar content is not one of them. It is irrelevant, and even selfish to think about. What about the preservatives? Artificial colors and flavors? What about the fact that you're supporting a monopoly of a corporation? What about how the production of that product impacted the environment? What about the cows from which that whipped cream came? What about their health? "Healthy" eating is seldom actually about our health.

I realized in that moment that I didn't exclusively want healthy eating. I want to live sustainably and meaningfully, and then I will have health. Health comes with that. Healthy eating is not my goal. My goal is something greater than that. When I started gaining an interest in this, my starting point was healthy eating. The further I got into it, I realized that one has to rearrange their whole lifestyle in order to eat well. Now, healthy eating is my ending point. My Point A is now a quest for a rich, meaningful lifestyle. In the middle is gardening, cooking, experiencing, tasting, caring and loving. I seldom think about this as "healthy" anymore because health is just a natural byproduct of this lifestyle. But how do I explain this to someone like Mary? That's why I still label my lifestyle as "healthy eating" and I say I want to be a "holistic nutritionist."

One time, at one of our parades, I was bullied by the other royals about my lifestyle and beliefs. I knew it was because they didn't understand, but that wasn't enough to stop me from feeling sad the whole weekend. They were offended by my belief that everyone should be healthy.

Once, I overheard one of the other Princesses say "I don't like that he smokes cigarettes. If he smokes, he is not beautiful." Everyone knows smoking is not healthy. People who smoke do it because they like it. It is a false joy, however, because it is a result of addiction. It is the same way with unhealthy eating habits. Dietary diseases kill millions of people every day and yet we still believe that we shouldn't intervene because it is "their choice." This is the same Princess who defended her "right" to eat unhealthily because that's "her choice" and she "likes food." (It is no surprise that she is on the Military Diet to lose weight before wrestling season; she is the type of person who has the "diet" mindset.) Unhealthy eating is taken so lightly now. It is so sad that I am abnormal for eating well and eating unhealthily is normal. We do not look down upon the obese for eating unhealthily, but we look down upon smokers for smoking. You would never see her saying "I don't like that he eats McDonald's five days a week and drinks 32 oz of soda each day. If he is fat, he is not beautiful." Both habits are equally dangerous and are done for a lot of the same reasons, and yet there is such a double standard.

Lest I conclude: we live within a system that - dare I say it - almost pressures us to be unhealthy. It is seen as being "confident," "strong," and "comfortable in their body" to be overweight. Just look at Meghan Trainor's All About That Base, which, though a very catchy and fun song, justifies obesity - and that is not okay. The media is now blaming other media for "pressuring" viewers into "settling" for salads so they could be skinny. It is all part of a complex, cleverly designed system that favors unhealthiness.