Drifting Ever Further Out Of The Mainstream

I have had a couple of opportunities recently to eat with — or in the vicinity of — a friend who has joined the "raw food" diet or movement or whatever you want to call it.

Not too long ago, I would’ve considered her choice extreme to say the least. Her diet, quite literally, consists only of raw — and preferably organic — fruits and vegetables. No meat, of course, but no cooked beans, no popcorn, no bread, none of the stuff that makes up the vast majority of my diet, even now.

But, I kid you not, I get it, now. A few months ago, I would’ve been mentally scoffing and shaking my head. Now I’m wondering if I could accomplish such a dietary change. The short answer is no — if for no other reason than I’m finally getting really good at baking bread — but the long answer makes me realize how far I’ve come.

The distance traveled — how far I’ve come — is the drift, or maybe the rush, away from "normal". Normal, in so many ways, is just plain wrong.

“Normal” means that people really don’t cook any more. “Cooking” these days means buying a box of mac-n-cheese (low-brow) or Bertolli frozen meals (hi-brow) or seasoned entrée from the meat counter at the grocery store and “cooking” it at home. Cooking from scratch seems so rare I rarely talk cooking to casual acquaintances, because I can’t stand their disbelieving reactions.

The big change that has pushed me to quit buying frozen pizzas and Cheezits is an auto-immune disease. My rheumatologist has stopped short of calling it rheumatoid arthritis, but that’s a good enough description for me. It came on strong late last year, keeping me awake all night long in continuous aching pain. It tore at my desire to exercise, making me weak and depressed.

After the diagnosis — and some drug prescriptions that finally kept the pain at bay — I started reading up on my new life partner: autoimmune disease. My immune system, for no reason yet known to science, was attaching my joints, causing pain, weakness and inflammation. A fair bit of popular literature suggested that these autoimmune diseases — including RA, asthma, lupus, Crohn’s, multiple sclerosis, to name a few — were increasing in frequency at a near pandemic level, and that it’s our diet that is the most likely culprit.

Although it's mostly a hypothesis only indirectly supported by existing research, the argument was very compelling to me. Before reading about this, I had thought I was eating a healthy diet, but when viewed in light of these theories, it was actually full of processed meat and processed foods — the source of an over-abundance of fatty acids that might be sending my immune system into over-drive. My daily and weekly intake of essential omega-3 fatty acids, on the other hand, was far too sparse.

So I changed. There’s nothing like real pain to serve as the stick and the hope of staying pain-free to serve as the carrot (oh so healthy) as the basis for a life changing incentive. In the process, I made the following changes:

• No more buying processed lunch meats or mass-marketed raw meat.


• No more buying eggs, except for baking.


• No more store-bought breads/pitas/tortillas of any kind. I bake my own.


• Only bake with whole wheat flour.


• I started adding flax seeds to my weekly bread loaves and other foods – a good source of omega-3 fatty acids.


• I started buying and eating more fish, and only wild-caught fish.


• I joined the Lawrence Community Mercantile coop grocery, and started shopping there more often.


• I switched to “old fashioned” oatmeal instead of the instant packets for breakfast.


• I cut way back on eating out.

As a result, I am down to eating only a couple of servings of meat each week, instead of the two or three a day I used to eat. I eat a lot more fresh veggies than I used to. I cook from scratch a lot more, and I’m spending significantly less money on food than I used to. Shopping is easier, as I am hardly ever tempted to browse the meat department or the snack food aisles. I am much more aware of the sources of the foods I eat, and I stay away from anything where I can’t readily identify all the ingredients.

It seems shockingly different from most people I know. But it also seems to me that those same people — all the "normal" people — are just nuts to eat the way they do, to be so unaware of the sources and content and nutritional values of the foods they eat.

I wish I could get everyone who wants to eat healthier that this is the trick: you really have to find a way to let your concern for your health take precedence over your cravings. Sure, I still have cravings, but instead of craving Cheezits (I used to go through a box a week), I let my hunger push me towards veggies and homemade bean dip with fresh garlic and cilantro, or an occasional bag of low-fat microwave popcorn.

In a nutshell, I believe people really need to start being literally afraid of the vast majority of foods in the grocery store. That reaction you have to seeing kids eat those preservative-laden, packaged snack cakes covered in green or pink icing and coconut? You need to have that same reaction to boxed cereals, processed meats and all that fast food.

For my own part, I hope I can maintain this diet and this attentiveness to what I eat.