Category Archives: nutrition

Tips for improving dental health

dental health, nutrition

Since I know that other moms are probably also interested in how to improve their children’s dental health, I thought I would share some information that I’ve found valuable.  First of all, improving dental health is integrally linked with improving the overall state of the body’s health. The state of your teeth is a reflection of what’s going on in your body.  This contradicts the typical way of looking at the teeth as only cosmetic and independent from the rest of the body, but is a very important distinction. 

The following is what I’ve gleaned from various sources, and made notes on for myself – I’m far from an expert on nutrition.  From what I understand, improving your dental health is a two pronged approach: 1) eliminating/minimizing low quality foods that deplete the nutrients from your body, and 2) adding high quality food that build up the body to your diet. 

What are foods that should be minimize, and ideally eliminated?  There are reasons that each of the following are problematic, but I’ll just share the list of what to work on for now:
– sugars/sweeteners
– hydrogenated fats, margarine
-iodized salt
– processed foods
– pasteurized milk products
– soy foods
– unsoaked grains (even whole grains)

Of this list, I still sometimes use unsoaked whole grains and flour (but I’ve made big improvements in that area!), but otherwise I pretty much have eliminated everything else.

The body needs both calcium and phosphorus, and a lack of it seems to be the cause of tooth decay. Whole grains and soy foods are high in phytic acid, which bind with the phosphorus and escort a significant amount of the nutrients in those foods right out of your body. Soaking them neutralizes the phytic acid so that your body can benefit from the nutrients in your food.

Increasing foods that build the body up:
– bone broths
– cod liver oil
– butter oil

These are the three things I’ve seen most highly recommended to build up teeth. Of these three, I’ve so far only done the bone broths. I use broth quite a bit so that it’s part of our regular diet, even when the kids don’t see it (like to cook rice in). 

Other good things for general health that also positively effect the teeth and should be included as much as possible in the diet are:

– raw milk
– raw butter
– raw honey
– sea salt
– lacto fermented veggies (they strengthen digestion and assimilation)
– soaked/sprouted/fermented grains and flours
– pastured eggs
– saturated fats (animal fats and coconut oil)
– high quality animal protein (meat, chicken, fish)
– lots of veggies

 Of this list, I do most of them most of the time.  Sometimes I use supermarket eggs or regular store butter, but otherwise I’ve integrated all of the other suggestions into our diet.  You’ll notice that some of these are replacements for the list of things to eliminate, raw milk for pasteurized milk, sea salt for iodized salt, soaked grains for unsoaked grains, etc.  So it’s more like you’re substituting one thing for another than actually adding new strange things to your diet.

By the way, as a substitute for margarine and hydrogenated vegetable oil, I use coconut oil.  It perfectly substitutes for shortening.  I also occasionally use extra virgin cold pressed olive oil.  I also render beef/lamb fat and use that to add nutritional value to dishes.  (This is a great irony to me, since this is the kind of thing I used to very much avoid eating, thinking it was bad healthwise.)

Herbs for strengthening teeth:
– horsetail, lemon grass, red raspberry, nettle, lemon balm – I’m guessing these are good because of the vitamin c, but I can’t say for sure.

Avivah

Think toothbrushing is crucial? Think again!

dental health, nutrition

This past week I took all of the kids in for their six month dental check ups.  After my 5 yo was checked, the dentist told me that he’s been doing a good job brushing since everything looked good.  I smiled and said that was nice to hear.  Then the 9 yo was checked, and she told me the same thing.  At that, I had to tell her the truth – that it was more a credit to their diet than to their diligent toothbrushing.

The horrifying truth is, the 5 yo hardly ever brushes, and the 9 yo isn’t much better.  Yeah, they’re supposed to brush their teeth every night (that’s what I tell them to do after dinner when I send them upstairs to put on their pajamas and get ready for bed- and until very recently I thought that’s what they did), but a few nights before the trip to the dentist, my 9 yo son informed me that it had been weeks since he brushed his teeth.  I’d like to think he has a poor sense of time and meant days, but in the best of scenarios, it wasn’t too regular.

The dentist couldn’t believe it.  She told me that she can generally tell who brushes well and who doesn’t by the kind of teeth they have, and that she never could have guessed that they don’t brush regularly.  My kids were just totally contradicting her experience.

Then she checked my 13 yo daughter, who is really responsible about everything, and when it comes to toothbrushing, she never misses a day.  Even when her braces were taken off, all of her teeth were perfectly white – most kids have yellowish marks around the whiter area of the teeth where the braces were.  Anyway, here’s the big irony – she had a cavity.  Miss Perfect Brusher.  Okay, so it was between the teeth and the bracket from her braces kept her from being able to get in there.  But still.  So much for regular brushing being the answer to cavities.  I’m not saying it doesn’t help – but there’s more to dental health than how often you brush.  Think about it – in traditional societies, people never brushed, and in cultures throughout the world, tooth decay was minimal.

So I told the dentist that my recent research on dental health has led me to believe that this child will always be the most vulnerable of all my kids to cavities.  Why?  Of all my kids, she’s the one with the worst teeth and is not coincidentally the one with whom I was vegan for part of my pregnancy with her. She’s also the one who had very crooked teeth (prior to her braces – her teeth are perfect now) and has hypoplasia on one back molar (this is caused by a malfunction in utero of the formation of dental enamel – you don’t see the results until the teeth emerge but that’s when the quality of it is determined).  I didn’t understand how she needed a root canal at the age of three when I only gave them a teaspoon of sugar daily in their breakfast oatmeal and minimal sweets once a week, otherwise had lots of veggies and whole grains (very little animal protein – just chicken once a week), only gave her water to drink (no soda or juice) – now I know.  She didn’t get the minerals she needed in utero at the crucial time to build strong teeth.  Apparently this is very common to vegetarians and children of vegetarian.  Kids need minerals that they don’t get in sufficient quantity in a vegan diet to develop strong teeth.

So while I wouldn’t tell my kids not to brush their teeth, it’s certainly overrated, and the role of superior nutrition is virtually never heard about – but it’s the nutrition that makes the real difference!

Avivah

Natural diaper rash remedy

nutrition

Yesterday morning, when I changed my toddler’s diaper, he was screaming while I was cringing at how red and inflamed his little bottom was.  I haven’t had to deal often with diaper rash, but occasionally it does happen.

Several days ago, I asked for a suggestion at the health food store, and it was suggested that I use castor oil with some aloe in it.  I didn’t have any aloe, but since I did have castor oil, that’s what I used.  And it worked – except on the areas that it couldn’t reach, specifically where the elastic of the diaper enclosed the inner leg and the inner crack of his bottom (where they specifically said not to apply it).  But now those areas were raw and almost bleeding – it was painful just to look at it.

So I tried more castor oil, and then put some cloth underwear on him so I would know immediately when he was wet and he wouldn’t have to sit in it for even a few minutes before he was changed.    Then because he was crying that the underwear were rubbing the same place on his upper thighs, I took off the underwear and let him go without anything.  He didn’t like that at all and kept trying to bring me a diaper to put on him, but I thought the air would be helpful.  And maybe it was helpful, but not helpful enough.  Fresh air and keeping the bottom dry are useful suggestions, but they are more effective in terms of prevention.  As a cure for a nasty diaper rash, it just takes too long. 

He was crying all day, walking in an awkward way to avoid anything touching that area, and only sitting on his knees.  My dh had the van for the day so I had no way to get to a store to buy any kind of ointment.  Finally, I decided to try the natural remedy that my 13 yo daughter has suggested to me several times.  (She’s read a book we have around the house about natural home remedies and has alot of info in her head as a result.)  I couldn’t see how it could work, but I was desperate to do something to help him, so I tried it. 

The remedy is to brown some flour in a pan and then apply it to the diaper area when it’s cooled down.  That’s the entire remedy.  He had been crying at every diaper change (as well as a good part of the day), but amazingly, as soon as this flour was sprinkled on him, he stopped crying.  Then he started acting more like his usual cheerful self, playing and running around.  When we next changed his diaper, we couldn’t believe the noticeable improvement.   It was late afternoon by the time we tried it, so I only was able to change him once (and sprinkle the flour on) before putting him in for the night.   By this morning, it was much much better – we can see a slight bit of redness, but he has no pain or discomfort at all.  All within a half a day’s time.

Since flour is something that everyone has in the house, and it takes just a few minutes to prepare this remedy, I thought that I should share something this easy and this effective with you! 

Avivah

Vegetable bargains

food preservation, Intentional Spending

I popped out to the store today to pick up some refreshments for our homeschooling gathering tomorrow, and when I was there saw some veggies on sale.  There are vegetables on sale, and then there are veggies that are super cheap.  These were in the latter category – on the reduced rack.

There was a point that I shunned reduced produce racks, thinking they were semi rotten vegetables that the store owner was still trying to crank some profit from.   But I’ve since learned that often there is just an overstock of a given vegetable and they want to sell the produce quickly before it goes bad.  I stay away from produce that looks really bad, since I don’t find it worth my time or money to cut away all the yukky spots. 

To find these reduced racks, look for small privately owned markets that discount produce substantially when it’s ripe or a little overripe.  I’ve found a local Asian market and a Russian market both have these, along with another local smallish store.The large supermarkets very rarely have these sections -I’ve only twice in years found reduced produce at national chains – both times ripe (not overripe) bananas.  They just throw away anything with imperfections. 

The challenge with reduced produce is that it has a short shelf life, and you need to use it pretty promptly.  For a family like ours, that’s not usually a problem, since the kids love fruits and vegetables and go through it fast.  But sometimes I’ve gotten carried away by the super cheap prices and gotten too much, and then had to make a real effort to use it so it didn’t go bad. 

Now that I’ve learned about making fermented vegetables, I don’t have that kind of pressure anymore.  Today I bought a lot of tomatoes and peppers, and then prepared two quarts of tomato pepper relish when I got home (you’d be amazed how many plum tomatoes you have to use to fill up a two quart jar!).  I also added some tomatoes to the batch of salsa I made, which was way too spicy for my taste.  (My policy is to make a recipe the first time as it’s written, so I know what it’s supposed to taste like before I make my adaptations to it.)  It’s nice that I can just add some vegetables to already fermented vegetables and then put it back on the shelf to ferment some more. 

My dd13 made two versions of cortido (Latin American sauerkraut), using the pineapple vinegar we made as the fermenting agent instead of sea salt for two quarts and sea salt for the other two quarts.  (The pineapple vinegar was interesting and easy to make – you put the core and skin of a pineapple in a jar with some oregano and water to cover, and let it sit out, covered for 3 days.  Then strain it out and voila – pineapple vinegar!) 

Avivah

Making lacto fermented vegetables

food preservation, lacto fermentation, nutrition, recipes

This was a new thing that I started doing about three weeks ago, and it’s been very successful.  Like the sourdough bread, I thought it would be a big deal to make, and it’s amazing how incredibly simple it is.

Let me backtrack a minute and say what lacto fermented vegetables are, and what the benefit of them is.  It’s a natural method of pickling that was used by traditional societies throughout the world until vinegar was created and replaced lacto fermentation because the results were easily duplicated and consistent.  But vinegar kills all the microorganisms, while lacto fermentation enhances the nutritional value of vegetables by enhancing the growth of lactobacilli, which enhances the vitamins, aids digestion and helps produce other helpful enzymes.  Lacto fermented veggies are a good addition to any meal because they help all the foods be better digested.

So here’s how incredibly easy it is: you take a quart sized jar, chop or shred up the vegetables you want to ferment, and pack it in as firmly as possible so that the juices of the vegetable(s) cover the top.  If there isn’t enough juice for that, you add some filtered water to cover.  Add some spices if you want.  Put in some sea salt at the top (I use Celtic sea salt for this), close the lid, and voila – after two days to three days your veggies are ready.  That’s the basic process in a nutshell. It took me making about six different recipes to realize that it was all this basic process, since there were little variations of ingredients and spicing for all of them.

Using this basic process, we’ve so far made: cucumber pickles (my 5 and 7 yo kids did these), pickled tomatoes and peppers, ginger carrots, kimchi (so far the favorite), beets, roasted red peppers, turnips, sauerkraut, preserved lemons, salsa, horseradish, garlic, daikon, and a veggie mix of my own creation (second favorite).  A bonus is that they look very attractive lined up on the kitchen counter.  🙂

Though they can be ready in as few as 2 – 3 days, they can stay out for lots longer than that.  That’s nice because there aren’t suddenly lots of pickled vegetables that all have to be eaten at the same time.   And I don’t know about you, but I often find that I don’t serve as many salads or fresh veggies at mealtimes because of the time it takes to prepare.  Now even at my busiest, I can whip out two or three of these at mealtime – no preparation needed but to put it in a serving bowl!

I’ve also made pineapple vinegar, but have yet to use it for anything.  I’m planning to use it for salad dressing and for some of my next batch of fermented vegetables, but I still have about 8 jars on the counter, fermenting away, so I’m not rushing to make any more right now. I combined the two quarts of preserved lemon into one jar when it was finished and drained out a bunch of the liquid for salad dressing – it’s delish!  I’ve been using it every day by itself as dressing for my lunchtime salad.  Since I poured it into a salad dressing container (there was just a little of the original stuff left so I poured it out to make room for this), everyone, guest included, has been using it on their salads and is none the wiser.  🙂

Making sourdough bread

food preservation, lacto fermentation

Here’s another of my new culinary experiments – sourdough bread.  I began my making the starter, and I’ve found it very interesting to see how it works.  I never knew much about it, but it seemed intimidating to me.  Basically, a starter is homemade yeast.  You just mix some water and flour, leaving it covered at room temperature for a day.  Then the next day add a cup of flour and water each, and continue this for seven days, while it continues to stay at room temperature (covered so nothing gets in it).  I found it fascinating to see how the microorganisms all around us can be grown in a way that contributes to our health. (Ideally you should use non chlorinated water but I’ve done it with sink water and it’s still worked.  You can also let the water sit overnight so that the chlorine evaporates.)

At the end of seven days, you use some of the starter as the leavening agent for bread, and mix in some more water, flour, and salt.  (I used the recipe in Nourishing Traditions.)  Stick it in a loaf pan, place it in y0ur unheated oven, and let it rise overnight.  Letting it rise long enough is really important to the quality of the final loaf – the second time we made it, dd13 was doing it and she let it rise for only an hour in a warm oven (she’s used to baking yeasted doughs) and the final result was so heavy that it was hard to chew.  Bake for about an hour at 350 degrees.  We baked it when we got up in the morning and enjoyed it fresh from the oven with butter for breakfast.  Yum!  It was a dense loaf, but very flavorful.  Since it was so much heavier than regular yeast loaves, it only took a couple of slices to be satisfied.

I think that I’ll start to make this once a week since everyone is enjoying it.

Replacing white sugar

Healthy Living, nutrition, Parenting

Okay, so the last three weeks I’ve been in super healthy mode.  Every once in a while I decide to upgrade the nutritional status of my family, when I’ve gotten used to past upgrades.

The first major, major change is I’ve finally decided to totally get rid of white sugar in the house.  I don’t really buy processed food, so the sugar that we were using was just in the foods we made, mostly baked goods.  But since white sugar has absolutely no nutritional value and contributes to most diseases, it seemed like there wasn’t any reason to keep it in.  I’ve resisted this for a while because the sugar substitutes are so much more expensive.

But I’ve finally done it!

I bought honey, stevia, and sucanat, and have settled on using sucanat as our main sweetener.  Well, for the family, anyway, because I’m back to my sweetener free food plan, which I went off during pregnancy after a long time on it.  I haven’t really found a way to use the stevia yet, the honey I’m using for hot drinks for the most part, and the sucanat is easy to use when replacing sugar because it’s such a similar consistency.

In case you’re wondering what sucanat is, it’s dehydrated natural cane juice.  It’s the color of brown sugar but grainier.  You can get in health food stores, but after buying one bag there to try it out, I went to my bulk food supplier and got it for much cheaper.  Just because it’s a healthy sweetener doesn’t mean that I’m using lots of it – I’m not.  I try to remember the idea that sweet baked goods are treats, not everyday foods.  I’ve been making less muffins as a result.

If you’re wondering how the kids are taking to this, it really hasn’t been a big deal.  Part of it is that I don’t spring these kind of things on my family and leave them feeling like I forced it on them.  I really believe in getting them on board by sharing the info that changed my thinking on – I don’t actively try to convince them.  And because there are easy replacements for the sugar, they don’t miss anything.  In fact, they really like knowing that the sweeteners we’re using are good for them!

Avivah

Sprouting grains

food preservation, nutrition

Today I did something I’ve thought about doing for a long time but never did – I sprouted wheat grains!  Are you wondering why in the world I would want to do that? 

Grains have phytic acid in them, and this blocks the nutrients present in the grains from being fully utilized.  So while you might feel really healthy when your diet is filled with whole grains, not nearly as many of the nutrients are  absorbed by your body as you might expect.  There are a couple of ways to remedy this.  The suggestion I’ve seen most often recommended for improving the quality of flour is to soak the flour in an acidic medium before baking with it.  But this didn’t appeal to me since it would change the quality of the bread. 

Then I remembered reading somewhere about someone who soaked and sprouted her wheat, then dehydrated it, and then ground it.  That option would give me a good quality flour and the flour would maintain it’s usual consistency for baking.  So I decided to try that.

The sprouting went much more quickly than I expected.  I needed to sprout a large amount of wheat, so I couldn’t use the usual quart jar that I use for sprouting salad sprouts.  I filled up a large pot a little more than halfway with grain, then filled it up close to the top with water.  In the morning, the pot was almost full since the water was mostly absorbed.  I poured out the remaining water and rinsed the wheat with fresh water before draining it again.  I was concerned about how effectively it would sprout due to the large amount that I was working with, but it really worked out fine.  I stirred it around when I swished water in, so that whatever was in the middle or top would switch places.  I did this a total of three times.

The wheat sprouted after a day and a half, much faster than I was expecting.   I didn’t even notice the tiny sprouts at first; my kids had to bring it to my attention.  Then I put all of the sprouted wheat into a big turkey roaster to dehydrate on a low temp in the oven, and periodically stirred it.

On one of the early stirrings, dd decided to taste one of the grains, and thought it was so good that she asked if she could eat some.  At first I thought she was joking, but then I realized it would potentially make a nice dish, so I agreed that we could cook a few cupfuls up.  I served it with butter and honey, and everyone gobbled it all up for lunch, and requested more.  I agreed again, but told them we would need to start more wheat sprouting so we would have the flour to bake with when we needed – that was the point of doing all this!  Today we started another large amount of wheat soaking, maybe about 15 cups or so (two potfuls this time). 

It’s amazing how easy this was – I initially envisioned it would be very time consuming (which is why I was reluctant to try it for so long), but the hands on time for it was maybe ten minutes total.  Most of the time involved was waiting.  I think the hardest part is just thinking and planning a couple of days ahead so that the grains are ready for grinding when you want to make bread.

Avivah

Using up turkey bones

Intentional Spending, nutrition

After two weeks of no food shopping, I went out last night and stocked up on chicken for the month, as well as a few other things.  Without checking, I assumed I would have room in the freezer for it (especially since I hadn’t put anything in for two weeks), which is usually true.  Well, that was a mistake.  My freezer is very full, for which I’m grateful.  But since I didn’t realize this until I got home, I put myself in a challenging situation of having alot of perishable food and no place to store it.  Believe me, I’m not complaining about having too much food.  But I was very busy for hours last night trying to find a solution (and I’m still working on it today!).

I started by rearranging the fridge to make room for the new groceries.  Since earlier in the day I defrosted a large amount of fish to make two new recipes in bulk, I took that out.  Then I prepared two fish pies and several loaves of a three layer fish dish – so there was more room in the fridge – but then I needed freezer space to store it!  It was a classic catch 22 situation, and one that was repeated every time I tried to make more room.

I realized last night that I had some fresh turkey bones in the fridge so I made a pot of stock (that now needs to go into the freezer).  I deboned it and have a pan full of turkey for a stir fry or pot pie now, but then my kids told me we have more turkey bones in the freezer.  So I figured I would just cook up another batch and be finished with all of the bones at once.

Because of their shape, they take up a disproportionate amount of room, so even though I would need to put stock and a pan or two of shredded turkey back in the freezer, I figured I would have some space gain.  I asked my ds8 to bring up all the bones – and he brought up three big supermarket bags full!  I didn’t realize they had been accumulating – I vaguely remember dh bringing them home and asking what to do with them, and me telling him to put them in the freezer.  But I didn’t see how much he had, and assumed it was the same amount as usual (enough for one pot of soup).  Usually I don’t  have more than one batch in the freezer at a time at the very most, but there was a lot after Thanksgiving (in case you’re wondering how we could possibly have so many turkey carcasses, we got them for free from a friend who owns a restaurant).  I’m now on my second bagful, so we’re down about 8 carcasses.  Just 10 or so carcasses still waiting to be dealt with!!  My sink and counter are full of them!

I’ve decided to spend all day making stock and since it’s so concentrated, I can freeze it in small amounts.  When I defrost it, I’ll add plenty of water and each container of stock will be the base for a delicious soup.  Since I’ll have an entire shelf available in the freezer with all of those bones taken out, I’m planning to spend some time cooking ahead all the chicken I brought home and then pans of chicken will replace the bones.  And then I should have a little more room in the fridge – so I can go shopping for vegetables. 🙂

By the way, do you know how extremely good for you properly prepared bone broths/stocks are (not the stuff that comes in a can from the supermarket)?  I didn’t, until reading Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon a couple of years ago, a combination of a cookbook and nutritional information resource.  She goes into detail about the benefits – a gelatin rich broth (the gelatin is released by the bones that are cooked for a long time) supply hydrophilic colloids to the diet (you’ll have to read the book to know what that means!), and are protein sparing and thereby allow the body to fully utilize the proteins taken in.  Gelatin also is useful in the treatment of many chronic diseases.   Broths also contain amino acids, cartilage, and collagen, which have been used to treat a number of health ills.  In short, they are very nourishing and if you are on a limited food budget, they are not only inexpensive to make, but can substitute for meat in the diet.  You can cook your grains in them, use it to flavor other dishes, or use it as a base for incredibly flavorful soup.  I always marvel at how everyone seems to think that you need a powdered MSG filled soup mix to give a soup flavor – definitely not!

Last winter I posted instructions on how to make stock from scratch, so if you want to try your hand at it, you can click here.

Avivah

Coughing and feeling yucky

nutrition

Everyone’s been under the weather here for the last few days, when the weather suddenly got very cold.  I always find that sudden weather changes result in the kids getting sick.  This time it’s a runny nose and chesty cough. 

My very good friend organized our synagogue Chanuka party to encourage a sense of community among members, and my older girls are volunteering (they just left to take care of setting up and whatever else they need to do before it starts a little later today).  I’m sure it will be a lot of fun and a nice opportunity to spend time with people I don’t get to regularly see much of.  But I don’t think we’ll go, as much as all the kids are hoping that we will.  

When my husband gets home, I think I’ll run out and buy a homeopathic remedy.  We have one remedy for coughing (spongia tosta), but it’s for a dry barking cough, and isn’t really a good fit for the kind of cough they have.   Homeopathics are very specific, and the best benefits come from accurately matching the symptoms and remedy.  I don’t know nearly enough about homeopathics, so I did research online.  (I just love the internet – it’s fantastic how much great and useful information you can get right away.) 

I don’t take the kids to doctors unless they really get sick, which means they rarely go.  For something like this, the doctor would confirm that there’s some kind of virus going around and that there isn’t any medication that will help, that it will pass with time (I know this from experience, which is why I don’t bother going anymore).  Once when I went to the pediatrician with a child hit hard by a virus, she told me the above, and added that most parents want to leave the doctor’s office with a prescription, since that it makes them feel they are doing something to help their child.  

Avivah