Fast forward to when I was raising my family: I had no idea whatsoever about nutrition, balance, wholesomeness, organic. It’s funny – I am well-educated, intellectual, articulate, thoughtful, but I had absolutely no idea that there was any sort of connection between what one eats and the quality of one’s strength and health. I know, right? I just thought that whatever one ate was converted into energy for the body to use – I had no knowledge of disease being caused by diet or food choices. I really had no idea. Was I a responsible and thoughtful Mum? Absolutely. Did I take my responsibility seriously? Unequivocally. But I was ignorant. I walked only in the light that I had. I didn’t know the light was murky and foggy, I thought it was bright sunlight.
And then, in my 30’s, I had a shaft of revelation come in like a bolt of lightning. I call it my ‘crazy lady’ moment. We lived at that time in a duplex, and in the one next to us was a family with a mother that I believed with all my heart was the weirdest, most crazy lady I had ever seen or heard. She was obsessed (to my way of thinking). She sourced fresh fruit and veggies, she tracked down grass-fed meat, she blended and juiced the most unprintable concoctions, she thought sugar was evil (at that time, I was a serious sugar addict to put it politely, so on that account alone I knew that our friendship was not destined to last – how wrong was I?). She made her own yoghurt, she looked at her urine, she made sure that everything was the best that it possibly could be before it went into her family’s mouths. I thought she was deluded and wacky and that she was bent on bankruptcy with all the dollars she would think nothing of spending on her appliances and foods.
She gave me a set of DVD’s by a lady called Sally Fallon. I accepted them because she wouldn’t take no for an answer (I must have seemed so lost and such a desperate case to her). And I put them away in a drawer and hoped that either she or I would move away soon. We did move. To another state. And then one day I saw the DVD’s and out of curiosity I watched them. OH. MY. GOSH. The intellectual in me just sopped up the information. I loved everything, just everything, Sally said. (My children soon came to know her as the ‘Sally says’ lady – I guess I might have quoted her a few thousand times as I was on my perpendicular learning curve.) She spoke simply but powerfully and logically. I got it. And changed. Not everything, because it’s a journey, right? I changed what I could and how I could, in a way that didn’t drive my children away and in a way that our budget and what we had access to allowed.
And then I found that Sally Fallon was coming to the city that I lived in at the time. I went to see her lecture, and I became further enamoured and enlightened.
I don’t know if it’s to do with the better diet, but I have definitely changed my stance now. I am curious to learn something every day. I love to hear people’s stories. I’m not bothered if I agree or disagree, I hope to learn something. Maybe I disagree. Maybe my own position will change. I am big enough, I hope, to change my position if I see something that I had not seen before, and I am big enough to maintain my own position and continue to disagree but with respect and kindness. Either way, almost every day, I learn something new and interesting about food, diet, supplements, health, disease, allergies, chronic conditions etc etc.
My world and that of my children is very different now thanks to the seeds sown by my crazy neighbour (who by the way I love very much and who I have acknowledged and thanked for her kindness, patience and persistence). People probably think that I am crazy – in fact, I know that they do. I suppose I am. I mean, there are people that are way more out there than me, my world is constrained by things like my living circumstances, my budget, my time constraints, my ability to get hither and thither to this market or that supplier. And I still unfortunately like sugar. But at least I understand a whole lot more what I am doing. And I can make informed choices and decisions. And I take real pleasure in preparing this dish or that dish – it might be a raw fudge or a bounty bar or a curry built from scratch. And I shamelessly enjoy hearing about (and I often end up doing) what my friends are making either for dinner or for a treat. And I have learned to enjoy high-end quality. In season things. And yes, organic things, because they are seasonal, and they just taste better because they are not hot-house grown or poisoned with chemicals. Things made from scratch with really good ingredients. Do I still eat things that I used to? Yep. (I have an inexplicable thing for donuts and for kit-kats – what can I say?) But I love eye-fillet steak and grass-fed meat and single-origin chocolate and my own biscuits rather than anything bought because I know how much sugar to put in (about 1/3 of what the recipe calls for). I bake a lot. Yesterday I made choc chili cookies. To me, they are one of the ultimate things to have with an espresso. I like that with a shift in the desire to learn, then the capacity to gain knowledge increases exponentially.