Vitamins

When we started this experiment, I actually had some concern that we might not get as many vitamins and minerals as we usually do because so much of the food that we buy is "enriched" and I don't know how to "enrich" food myself. I honestly thought food might be enriched to increase overall vitamin consumption or something, but it looks like we "enrich" are food because the processing most of our food goes through pretty much strips it of its nutrients, and so we're basically putting back in what we just took out.

Fresh food is not shelf-stable, and as our food supply gets farther & farther away from us, we have become dependent on processed foods. Even here at Chateau Sutton-Goar, even though we have been eating food from our own garden, I had to dehydrate, can, or freeze it to preserve it--all of which are types of processing (ones we allow because we did them ourselves) which probably decrease the nutritional value of our food. But, is it still better? When I can, I pick everything right before I'm going to can it, so as canning goes I think it's still pretty healthy, but should I also be buying those grainy, tasteless hothouse tomatoes that are available in stores in the winter? We do eat lots of whole grains--Andy will attest to the great "How Many Types of Hot Cereal Can We Have?" experiment (FYI - groats are great mixed in to granola, but pretty nasty by themselves as hot cereal), and we grind some of our own flour, though certainly not all. And if we get more than our recommended daily allowances of vitamins & minerals in the summer when we will be able to graze our backyard, is there a hold-over effect through the winter?

I don't think anyone really knows. The study of nutrition seems to be quite a bit of guesswork. At one time transfats were at least thought to be relatively benign, and now they are the nutritional devil incarnate. Eggs are good for us, then bad for us, then good for us, then bad for us, then good for us.....I grew up in the generation that was force-fed liver by mothers convinced that it was an amazing source of iron. Now the general thought it that eating a body's waste filter is perhaps a poor idea in general. There was once a time when a "diet plate" at a restaurant consisted of a hamburger patty, a scoop of cottage cheese, and half of a canned peach. And those are just the "experts." The fringe get even better. I spent 3 years working for the American Diabetes Association, and I think I averaged at least one or two calls a week from someone with a new diet or a secret cure for diabetes--the wackier the better. Once when I was speaking to a civic club, I was trying to make the point that any diet that restricts food intake will work in the short run, so I said something about only eating foods of a certain color, and in all earnestness, a lady actually wanted to know what diet that was!

This year we're working from the assumption that the wider variety of foods we eat, the more nutrients we are getting, and the closer to their natural state, the better.

And we're each taking a multi-vitamin just to be on the safe side, which feels like a bit of cheating, but we both generally take vitamins anyway, so it just seemed crazy to stop.

But neither of us has had a cold so far this year.......