I had fun showing off my artisan multi-grain sourdough bread but it took three days of my visit to prepare and was gone in a few hours. Wanting mama and all to have the most nutritious bread I decided to try a more quick and dirty recipe.

I prepared a quart of my starter and then mixed it with about 6 cups of spelt flour, the recipe (from Nourishing Traditions) said to rise from 4 to 12 hours depending on the temperature. I let it go overnight, which was probably too long as it got a bit deflated. I didn’t have loaf pans, so they were kind of batard style loaves. The shap of the slice wasn’t ideal but the flavor was wonderful and went great with the raw cream cheese spread I made.

As soon as I got home I started on another batch. This time I started with spelt berries and ground the flour myself. It sounds like a job for a toiling little red hen, but it’s just an electric gadget and doesn’t take any effort, but yields the freshest flour you can get, ensuring no rancidity. Spelt is a nice grain for home grinding because its gluten level perform like an all-purpose flour, which is actually a mix of soft and hard wheat. So, unless you want to grind two different grains, spelt is a lot simpler.

In my first go at grain grinding I just followed the directions and ground the whole berries on the finest setting, which gave me two distinct layers of flour, a fibery hull and a fine powdering flour. I used it as it came for the bread, which turned out delicious and hearty. After some expert advice, on the next batch I first ground the berries on a coarse setting and then ran it through again on the smallest setting which gave me a much more even flour and more flour per cup of berries (which seems to be about 2.5 c. of flour to 1 c. berries, but it depends on your grind- I am still working out that ratio)

The recipe called for the dough to be soft and easy to work with. To knead Sally says to stretch and fold, a different kneading process that I usually use.

I have now made three batches of the bread and the best results actually came from making the dough in my Kitchen-Aid mixer with the dough hook. The pictures below are from the batch made by hand, and it turns out beautifully, but the mixer does allow a wetter dough since you dont have to add more flour to be able to handle it. This was my fist time making dough with a machine and it left me standing there watching it, sort of wondering what I should do while it worked. It was strange to not be able to feel the dough change. So, I am still a bit conflicted about the thing. I was also hesitant to do sourdoughs in metal, but apparently it makes no difference.

Cooked in a loaf pan, this bread makes a great homemade substitute for sliced sandwich bread. Not the handsomest, but probably the freshest, healthy bread you can get in your mouth.

                          

The best and worst part of the trip was eating. Walking meant we wanted and even deserved more food than ever, yet we had the constraints of what we could carry, what would keep well in packs, could be prepared easily on our one burner and two pans, and what we could afford. On top of that we still wanted to have food that was produced with fairness and health in mind for all involved. Believe me, that narrows it down and we made plenty of compromises.

The best meals were lunches. I think because they were the most nutrient dense. Foods that are ready to eat, which also has a lot to offer your body and tastebuds, are heavier than foods that take some preparation, mainly hydration and heat. Breads, meats, cheeses, snacks. So, we sacrificed some extra weight for really good and quick lunch food. Sardines in a can, a loaf of sourdough bread, a salami, aged jack cheese. Days just coming out of a town meant more fresh foods like avocado or other fruit.

We ate oatmeal every single morning (we opted to forgo soaking, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be possible) . I would be sure to put the raisins or other dried fruit (A Sunkist medley was a particular treat) into the cold water along with sea salt to make sure it was tender and plump. Once the oatmeal was ready I would add a thick pad of cultured butter, raw honey, and sometimes peanut butter for a really dense start to the day. Instead of getting sick of this same meal, it was the one consistency in our life on the trail and I looked forward to it every morning. We would take our time to fill our bellies and drink a cup of tea before starting out.

Walking and sleeping on the ground and spending a month outside connected us to the natural world in a way we hadn’t experienced before. But we still carried civilization and modern life on our backs.  The experience of nature was closer than ever but it was still more of a shelter around us than our true environment. Everything we really needed we brought in from elsewhere. We drank water from the creeks, but always filtered. We picked out good flat spots to sleep, but always with a pad. We ate outside and cooked in the sand, but never ate food from the spot we settled. We had a few breakfasts with picked blackberries, some wild mint tea, snacked on salal berries while walking,  and we could have added wild nettles to our meals, but I was too uncertain.

Trail conversations often covered what we would eat if we hadn’t bought four days worth of food at the last town and hadn’t had full bellies from a roadside diner. Some backpackers who are out for weeks or months will use small game traps to eat fresh wild meat on the trail. I would be up for this approach and I am very excited to learn more about pack goats. Apparently a very pleasing companion, a good pack goat can carry some weight and provide fresh milk! Go out long enough and you could even have some fresh cheese. Willow-Witt Ranch knows all about it, learn more here.

We made do with what we know how to do, which is to buy the best food we can find for the money we have and make something good with it. A stay at Gospel Flat Farm in Bolinas provided us with garlic until we got to Port Orford Oregon and got more garden garlic from friends as well as some carrots for a fancier rice and beans. (Minute Brown Rice was a major winner in our book, not organic, and no Massa, but it met a need)

We had a little burner that used denatured alcohol to make a nice hot flame, but we would use a wood fire as much as we could, or sometimes as necessary when fuel got low. Every evening we would scope out a flat spot to cook, with as little wind as possible and plenty of little surfaces on which to set food and the cooking kit, and of course a rock or log on which to sit. Going up the coast meant a lot of beach camping and keeping stuff our of the sand was a big priority.

The best spots were campsites away from cars and roads that still had a nice set up for easier living, meaning really just a picnic table, and fire pit with a place for pots and a decent composting toilet. With the basics there, life on the trail was an absolute joy.

                          

Humans’ inclination to displace life’s challenges off of the body and onto a tool has shaped us from the beginning- most especially when it came to the challenge of eating.

Primatologist Richard Wrangham explains that the transition to cooking our food fundamentally shaped our bodies into what we are working with today, e.g. smaller mouths, smaller guts, punier teeth than apes. We have come to rely heavily on food processing (cooking, fermentation etc) for digestion.

So for better or for worse the human form was shaped in large part by processing our food, making digestion easier and leaving extra energy for thousands of years of other inventions, which are continuing to shape us in ways we don’t yet know. Which brings us to…the appendix!

The irony of the appendix is that it turns out to be much more functional to us than we thought, but may well be on its way out after all.

Scientists are continuing to find evidence that reveals the appendix as a useful organ, and not, as Charles Darwin assumed, just a remnant from past preference of plants. Studies from the last few years has show the appendix to be an evolved organ that houses good bacteria waiting to repopulate the gut after the system is flushed due to the presence of harmful microbes.

This use has been hidden from us since increased use of sterilization, clean drinking water and non-threatening foodstuffs has meant that survival in an industrialized world may be possible without an appendix. In fact the presence of the appendix seems to do more harm than good in clean conditions as they are finding a relationship between the inflammation of the appendix, which leads to its removal, and the fact that it is under-used.

As explained by researcher William Parker, Ph.D. (more from him here)

“Several decades ago, scientists suggested that people in industrialized societies might have such a high rate of appendicitis because of the so-called “hygiene hypothesis,”…This hypothesis posits that people in “hygienic” societies have higher rates of allergy and perhaps autoimmune disease because they — and hence their immune systems — have not been as challenged during everyday life by the host of parasites or other disease-causing organisms commonly found in the environment. So when these immune systems are challenged, they can over-react….

This over-reactive immune system may lead to the inflammation associated with appendicitis and could lead to the obstruction of the intestines that causes acute appendicitis…Thus, our modern health care and sanitation practices may account not only for the lack of a need for an appendix in our society, but also for much of the problems caused by the appendix in our society.”

So, what should we do with our vermiform organ? Use it or lose it?  “The function of the appendix could be rendered obsolete by cultural changes…” says Parker. “[Such changes have] left our immune systems with too little work and too much time their hands – a recipe for trouble.”

Cooking our food fundamentally changed the human body, and increased sanitation of food and drink seems to be on the way to do the same. But to just accept the obsolescence of this functional organ as a part of our ongoing evolution seems flawed. We can’t guarantee current conditions (not to mention that most of the world doesn’t experience such conditions) and we still are just discovering the power of the microbes in our gut as fighters of all sorts of disease; it seems hasty to just discount the thing entirely, though we often do since the appendectomy is the most commonly performed emergency operation in the world.

So, we should put it to use right?  Parker  posits that we should start challenging our appendix and the immune system generally with the tasks they are supposed to tackle. A completely great idea! However, I think he is looking to the problem for the solution…”If modern medicine could figure out a way to do that,” Parker says “we would see far fewer cases of allergies, autoimmune disease, and appendicitis.”

I think this dilemma provides a lovely analogy to the situation currently faced by the whole human body. We have these perfectly useful systems, well-adapted to deal with challenges of daily life for the last 499,950 years, give or take. Modern society has taken it upon itself to relieve us of these challenges, only to find out that they are entirely necessary!

In the case of the gut, we might try trusting our microbes to deal with the challenges they are capable of facing. Instead, we should rely on modern medicine to bottle up and feed us those very challenges it helped us/told us to avoid?

I say, start with what we have and use it as its meant to be used. Drink raw milk, dig in the dirt, eat fermented food, even get sick! Resist the obsolescence of the human body and challenge it to its fullest extent.

In that spirit, after the challenge of a long trek on foot (and embarking on the challenge of marriage) and a long break from the blog, I look forward to recounting the adventures and the lessons, along with continued thoughts from home kitchen. No longer the itinerant one below (for now anyway).

                          

How in the world is he going to determine which ones are “the best” for everyone?  Are these individual rules really improving people’s lives & health or are they just maxims?

(Maybe it was just the latest interview with him in Mother Jones that rubbed me the wrong way in terms of following his approach to things. When asked about reactions to they pithy subtitle of his last book he mentions that “mostly plants” got a reaction from the Weston A. Price Foundation who he describes as “fierce in their love of animal fat. And with pastured animal fat, healthy animal fat, a lot of what they say is right. But they really don’t like plants.” Sally Fallon did write an open letter to Pollan about the necessity of non-plant foods in the human diet but there is considerable use of plants in the foods supported by her and the research of Dr. Price.)

Maybe this rules project is his attempt to flesh-out that subtitle.  Attempts to distill a way of living into a few quick truths always leaves something out; that must be why we need  so many of the quick fixes- to fill in the blanks and contradictions.

What I think is funny about this whole thing is that the amount of responses seems to indicate that enough people have their own rules about eating and don’t really need books or tv shows (or blogs) to guide them. But sort of paradoxically the consumption of information about what to eat is higher than ever.

It seems that with each piece of new information the greater the number of little contradictions and conflicting guidelines with existing information, thus people feel compelled to consume more information and opinions in hopes of finally getting it right.

I read a lot of this stuff, from books to blogs to comment sections of the NY Times. Conflicting information abound and conversations about diet (As Pollan points out in the MoJo interview) has reached a level nearing religion, with certain miracles of changes in health proving that one sect of one diet or another is the ultimate truth. Why is it that we want to consume as much information about food as they want to give? Will Americans ever form a cultural diet that is sustainable (ie healthy) so we can stop trying to figure out what to eat?

(Recent tip lists include this from The Cheeseslave, which I pretty much agree with, and an increasing number of “healthy food on a budget” lists and “eating green” that I think give minimum guidance (cooking with a microwave??!!) and maximum magaziney turns of phrase)

                          

2009! Expect the unexpected

A very happy new year it seems to be already- so many possibilities and new opportunities for change. After a few weeks of vacation from the computer and lots of reading I have some major resolutions about diet and eating. I think the goals I have set forth are logical extensions of the basic Mind to Mouth premise: eat the best food even with limited resources by being creative and having high standards. There really isn’t any way around the fact that optimum food comes from your own kitchen and takes some skill and time to prepare. This is a deterrent for many and a challenge for most but I think it is important to be honest about the fact that each step towards convenience is a step away from health.

Here’s why that is: The best food for you is higher in nutrients than energy, so you can get your daily load of vitamins, minerals, digestive enzymes without going over the limit of calories we need everyday (which isn’t much compared to the opportunities we have to consume them) So a variety of high nutrient and relatively low energy food is the right balance. High energy foods are those that are more active and alive or at their peak of freshness, this all equals a relatively fragile food. Fully ripe fruits and veggies, sprouted seeds and grains, fresh oils, sourdough breads, fermented drinks, fresh meat, fish and eggs. These are optimal foods and don’t tolerate much processing, storage on shelves, or travel time. (Well stored fats (without exposure to light and heat) and highly stable fats (saturated, like lard or coconut oil), properly stored raw but un-sprouted seeds and grains,  properly stored  root and winter veggies all are good foods that last and good foods can last longer via freezing and home canning methods.)

Why are active and alive foods best? Because food should be pulling its own weight when you eat it and adding to your body’s store of the vitamins and minerals you need to live. Foods that are not active don’t bring along with them the enzymes and nutrients your body needs to function and to process food. If food is not adding these things then the body has to use its stored up enzymes and nutrients to make up for it. Intuitively we can see how this depletes our health over time. Refined wheat and sugar have no vitamins and minerals to contribute so they pull from our bones and teeth and other sources. A diet of only cooked food adds no enzymes needed for digestion so our body has to provide those as well overworking our pancreas and under-nourishing our other organs. Whole fats have a lot more going for them then we have been led to believe and are crucial in our body’s ability to absorb vitamins and minerals. So you can understand what a mess we are in if we are giving our bodies food that deplete its stores of vitamins and minerals and additionally not eating the fats necessary to provide more. As we look at where we are generally this new year it is easy to see parallels between how we behave economically as a nation and how we eat; we want to spend resources we don’t have and don’t want to be responsible for adding to the savings.

But like with the economy our body’s balance sheets eventually catch up with us and we realize we must change.

The great thing is that we do know how to prepare foods to be active and to provide us with the right balance of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes without getting too many calories to do so. It takes the right balance of raw, naturally processed (fermenting and soaking), and cooked foods. To boot humans have been eating food optimally prepared for much longer than we haven’t. So the right diet is out there, we just have to reallocate our resources (time and money) to get to it.

I’m looking forward to sharing the strategies and practices I am learning to make sure I get the most bang for my buck in the foods I eat; not paying for food that is going to deplete me, and taking the time to get my food to the point where it can give me its full potential and of course be the most delicious! A taste of what’s brewing so far:

A half gallon of raw milk sitting with a sealed lid on my counter (!) to sour and separate into whey (used for future fermenting and activating of other food) and “cream” cheese (really the starting point for any cheese, but a little funny with nothing done to it). I’ll post that process in the next week.

A kombucha mother waiting for the right sized jar to start making fermented tea

Oats soaked overnight (and longer for tomorrow) in a water and yogurt mixture for an activated breakfast porridge.

I purchased lard from the farmer’s market and have it in the fridge for a whole fat option for frying and baking

My kitchen has seen the end of bottled salad dressing which pretty much uses exclusively soy or canola oil which are both highly processed and fall into the category of asking too much of the body rather than contributing good stuff as it goes down. Homemade salad dressing is too easy- just put olive oil and vinegar with sea salt and pepper in a jar and shake, only get fancier if you’d like. The money saved is noticeable.

That’s a pretty good start for 2009 so far I think. Stay posted and share thoughts. And for the source of my kitchen revolution start here.

                          

The extent of the global economic crisis has understandably taken the majority of media attention in the last few months, and will likely continue to with the implications of the presidential election and the various decisions coming from the fed, but only in a few cases has the media brought up that everyday people have been having household level economic crises for the last few years. High debt, stagnant wages, more and more uncertainty. So I think its fair to say that while there has been more talk about thrift many of us have been at it for a while. And as more people pay more attention to their spending, and clearly they are cutting back, I think it is crucial that we not get tunnel vision when thinking about our personal economic situation. Now more than ever to we need to prioritize our spending so it supports workers, the environment, and health. These are investments. So while we need to personally cut back we need to be ever more aware of the impact of our consumer choices. Are the choices we make allowing other families to weather the economic issues. Or are we saving personally by undercutting others’ wages? (*cough* *cough* Wal-Mart).

Read the full post on this here

                          

She asked me about essential foods I keep on hand and how to deal with the eating at the rushed times during the day at breakfast and lunch.

Here’s something I know about my friend; she is a good cook. The problems she is having are not ultimately about a lack of skill, but a lack of inspiration from what she has on hand and feeling drained with the rest of life to take the time to cook. It seems like she is in a difficult cycle where her lack of time limits her creativity and ability to think through recipes so she goes out for more expensive food which limits her ability to spend a bit more at the store or market to get inspiring and easy foods to cook. I also know that she doesn’t really enjoy her job, so it’s even more frustrating that by giving so much of her energy to joylessly earning money she doesn’t have the time to live how she should like to live.

Given that many of us are in work that is not ultimately fulfilling it is even more important to make sure those hours we have outside of work are used wisely and towards meaningful, uplifting things. It is crucial to look at what those hours at work are paying for and whether or not the fruits are worth the labor, so to speak. Most of us see the majority of our paycheck go to housing. So unless you are living in a place beyond your means, that cost is going to be constant. There are other constants like insurance and debt payments. But much of our spending is up to us. The category of “non-essentials” can really be expanded to most of our living expenses. Particularly when you frame your expenses as hours working. Are the things we own and use worth this time?

Audit your spending, the things you own, what you do with your time and make sure you’re really getting what you want.

Then you can think about your grocery list. Where is your money going in the products that you buy? On a personal level does the food you buy make you feel good? Are you getting a balanced diet? What did you pay for in that food- packaging, processing, sugar, plastic, advertising? How did that purchase help or hinder a just and healthy community. Did your hard earned dollars go to an international corporation, or stay in your area? Did you help a family make a living?

While it’s easy to get overwhelmed by these questions what you are actually doing is narrowing down your choices and ultimately making choosing food much easier. There are only so many products that get positive answers to these questions of how the food makes us feel, are we being good local consumers by buying it? When I walk into a store I no longer feel bombarded with the infinite choices provided, I know that there are limits to what I will spend my scarce dollars on and I decide between only the products that meet those requirements.

Not only are there limits on the products I will buy, but there is also a clear limit on the money I will spend. Often, but not always, the products I will purchase are going to be more expensive than those I prefer not to support.

You are paying for different things with either choice. For conventional vegetables you pay for long distance transport, with packaged and/or processed foods you are paying for the marketing, transportation, labor.
For local and or organic food you support a family’s livelihood and way of life, clean air and water and soil, happy animals, living wages, healthcare.

Where I save with conventional we all pay eventually elsewhere. Where I spend with organic my community reaps the benefits in a cooler planet, healthier body (cheaper to care for), smaller landfills, a more stable and equal economy. Seems like a bargain now doesn’t it?

Additionally, assess your waste and buy less: waste in packaging, uncooked or un eaten food, how much of what you buy gets thrown away? (If you reflect the national average, that would about 14% of what you buy) and also waste in excess eating (how much of what you eat gets wasted trying to burn it off?)

Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than people in any other country. We have seen food prices rise recently but are paying an historically low amount of what we make on food. In personal budgeting advice you will read that most people underestimate the amount of money they will or do spend on food. People end up overspending their budget because they were not realistic about how much they buy. This is only compounded by the recent increases in the price of food.

Here is how it plays out for us:

We have simplified our budgeting process by laying out the set expenses, the food and other shared items, and then the rest is up to us to spend or save. We have “personal cash” that goes to choices like clothing, getting lunch or dinner out or other treats, yoga, etc. Basically it comes down to those priorities and while we set them as a couple, we have a certain amount of free reign with the non-essentials. You can see we have a lot of our monthly income going to debt, and we didn’t stay exactly on target. It’s a learning process every month

While most Americans spend just under 10% of their income on food, we spend closer to 15%. So in many ways, when I discuss eating well on a tight budget it means looking at your overall spending in a new way.

That said, the one thing about a grocery bill is that most people buy much more at the store than food. So some of what you see in our grocery budget includes paper towels, toothpaste, shampoo etc. So our actual food spending is somewhat less.

Here is an illustration of other ways that we save:

Okay, so now I am at the store, with specific products I will and won’t buy, and a set budget to spend. What do I buy? I start with vegetables. In fact I don’t start at the store at all but the farmer’s market. We bring $20 to the market and we get what we can for the week. This means no meat, cheese, or prepared food just fruits and vegetables. The month of September (and October even more so) required less spending at the market due to the produce from the garden.

I start with in season vegetables and base the meals for the week on what I get. This is a great source of inspiration. I try to make sure these meals will provide enough leftovers to two of us to eat lunch after two have eaten dinner. Examples aplenty.

After the foundation of vegetables I shop in terms of meals. Beans, pasta, rice, other grains, eggs, ingredients for baking, oils and fats, some meats and dairy (yogurt, quart of milk, some cheese), spices and some sauces and broth. Then we get a few things that make life easier like snacks- popcorn, a bag of chips, salsa, rice cakes, peanut butter and jam. So its a progression to make sure the healthiest and most useful items for full meals are bought first and in the most abundance and then up from there until you’re at the set budget.

So, that is our process and what I can share. I think it’s wonderful to be inspired by food, prioritize the process and a way to spend time together. Learn new things, making it easier and easier each time. It’s hard to go wrong with simple and fresh ingredients. It seems to me that the economic situation will make the idea of people thinking of cooking a hobby sort of an absurdity, since we all eat we should all learn to manage that need in a way that is fun, engaging, and within our means.

And Delicious!

                          

No lettuce required for this purely garden salad. Tomatoes and cucumbers have been our most reliable (and hard to keep up with) producers this month. This salad gets through one cuke per person and a handful of cherry tomatoes. Our bigger sized tomatoes haven’t been ripening quickly and coming out mealy so these small guys are a welcome standby. I just dash some olive oil, balsamic, salt and pepper on this and crunch away.

Straight from the source:

Second:

When lettuce is desired. We get our lettuce mostly from the farmer’s market- our garden can’t quite keep up with demand and our greens suffered a dog trample early on. We get one huge head for $1.25. When we get home I chop off the bottom wash the leaves and cut the large ones in half. Then I layer them in a paper-towel lined tupperware. It lasts over a week. No more soggy bags of slimy greens. Cutting down on waste is number one in saving money on food.

                          

I’d love your insight into our current scenario:

A peek into our kitchen would render a million spices and nothing to put them into, frozen chicken, strawberries and TJ’s frozen pasta dinners. Fridge with soymilk, condiments, an ancient bag of carrots and some miso. Cupboards of pasta, some soup, ramen and crackers.

The dinner bell rings and we balk and head out to dinner or opt for a quick fast food meal (painful).

WHEN DOES THE COLLEGE LIFESTYLE END??

I run into a wall I think because 1) I’m tired before and after work (who isn’t-moan) 2) IM THE ONLY COOK 3) We max ourselves out so quickly with eating out too often that it is RIDICULOUS that we balk at the grocery store 4) tendency ESPECIALLY to eat out for lunch daily/coffee/snacks..dios mio, right?

I’m curious what you feel like are the ABSOLUTE necessary at all time fresh ingredients to have on hand, what you like for quick breakfasts and convenient lunches.

I’m all for the planning of dinners and hope to utilize our local farmer’s market more along with aspirations of a garden of my own as soon as we’re out of this apartment (expect weekly HELP! calls on that one I’m convinced I have a black thumb).

I decided to address these questions here since I think her situation is largely universal and perfectly speaks to the idea of living mind to mouth.

To me her situation brings up some big issues about the state of our domestic life. I want to take this post to address the larger context we are in as workers (particularly women workers) trying to live well. In another post I will address the actual budgeting and pantry/menu lessons I have been trying to have in our own kitchen/life that may be helpful in hers (or yours! so stay tuned).

My friend’s situation speaks well to the difficulties facing modern Americans’ domestic life. These difficulties seem attributable to 1) that women’s transition into the workplace did not mean that skill sets necessary for “home economics” became shared across the household, they are often either still in the hands of the full-time working woman/mother or lost generally. 2) Even if these skills were had by all in the household, most Americans are no longer in a situation where one partner can work less than full time.

That womens’ role in the world has moved beyond the domestic realm is crucial for equality and to address “the problem that has no name“.

Domestic work as the entirety of ones life and responsibility became menial and even depressing with the societal assumption that you are essentially unable to contribute anything but domestic skills. So there is no question, the fact that America’s domestic life isn’t being upheld solely by women at home is a positive development for valuing women beyond the home and for women who want other options.

The issue though is that needs on the domestic front have not gone away, and managing the domestic realm in a thoughtful and efficient way has HUGE impact on the world. So how is this being taken care of? When and by whom?

Technological developments- electrical appliances, chemicals, disposable products, pre-made food etc- in their attempt to free us from domestic responsibilities has instead required us to work harder than ever to buy these products of convenience which create more waste and still don’t fully meet the need. And as people grow up in this context, our communities are more and more dependent on these things and are losing the skills to function without them.

Skills aside, when do Americans have time to buy healthy food and cook meals with their household? Steven Greenhouse in “The Big Squeeze” provides this sobering analysis of how much we work and how little it gets us:

Since 1979 hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers (those in private sector, nonsupervisory jobs) have risen by just 1 percent after inflation…worker productivity, meanwhile, has climbed 60 percent. If wages has kept pace with productivity,the average full-time worker would be earning $58,000 a year; $36,000 was the average in 2007. The nation’s economic pie is growing, but corporations by and large have not given their workers a bigger piece… Millions of households have not slipped further behind only because Americans are working far harder than before…Viewed another way, the American worker’s financial squeeze has translated into a time squeeze…The typical American worker toils 1,804 hours a year, 135 hours more per year than the typical British workers, 240 hours more than the average French worker, and 370 hours (or nine full-time weeks) more than the average German worker.

(Suffice to say Greenhouse’s book is highly recommended, the ways in which America’s economic growth has been largely a “spectator sport” for most families are sort of endless, I’m in the middle of the book currently, it is more than timely)

(The end of this movie where they make all the family/life friendly policies like flex hours and job shares and they paint the office the put in plants seriously moved me to tears. But here’s something, who even just works 9 to 5 anymore?)

I think that this context is extremely important when addressing others’ questions about how to eat well. Trying to identify how to eat well on a tight budget with no time does seem to make healthy eating a rarefied experience.

But it can be done, and I think since I cannot personally address the national economic situation or make business to provide workers more time for life and decent pay (except on Nov. 4th!), which may address my friend’s first point, I will see what I can say about the others.

Next Posts on this:

Out of the Kitchen and into the Rat Race (and then into the kitchen again?): Eating well should be a shared task and working should only be paying for the things are really worth it- what are the trade-offs of time spent eating poorly but quickly, setting these priorities and responsibilities as a household.

Go Ask Alice: A shopping list and a budget from my own attempt at Living Mind to Mouth.

                          

Why does the A.H.A. continue to insist that saturated fat should be avoided, if these trials repeatedly show that high saturated fat diets lead to better cholesterol profiles than low-saturated fat diets? And how many of these trials have to be done before the National Institutes of Health or some other august institution in this business re-assesses this question? After all, the reason the food guide pyramid suggests we eat things like butter and lard and meats sparingly (and puts them high up in the pyramid) is that they contain saturated fat. This is also the reason that the A.H.A. wants to lower even further what’s considered the safe limit for saturated fats in the diet.

Is Mr. Taubes right? If eating more saturated fat improved the dieters’ cholesterol profile (while also enabling them to lose weight even though their calories were not restricted), should the federal government and the American Heart Association stop warning people about saturated fats?

Hm, Eat whole foods and eat less. Sounds familiar. I nominate Michael Pollan for head of the FDA.