Sunday Song Day: "Feed Me", Turkey Facts, Notes from a Pediatric Nutrition Workshop
In an already stuffed week (homeschooling, Board of Education, Your Kind Kitchen’s first Live Interview with WISE Women’s Business Center, starting-a-business-from-scratch crunch-time), I signed up for a free Pediatric Nutrition Workshop (<—focused specifically on ways to boost one’s immune system) thinking it’d be a great way to learn a little more guidance to make Your Kind Kitchen’s weekly offerings nutritionally optimal and also for our personal use; and BOY HOWDY was it both informative and super involved (in the best way).
The workshop entailed daily interactive videos, worksheets to complete, homework, and feast of helpful information. All of my worksheets are photographed below, complete with additional links and examples of how we’re implementing the guidance. It’s shared with Nutritionist’s Kiran Sidhu’s permission, because she shares the zeal of helping as many souls/kids thrive as possible.
Want to set your child up for a lifetime of chronic disease: feed them the Standard American Diet. Want to spark them up with health & energy? Aim for plant-based whole-foods. If your hackles are raised, your nostrils are flared, you think this sounds like hippy hogwash, and you’re about to defensively double-down on assurances that I’m misguided, you should know 1982-2017 Me was in full-agreement with you and also loved to defensively double-down without having a single mechanistic idea of what those animal-products were doing to me (or my kin) at the cellular level.
Turns out the National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic, Yale, the United Nations, Harvard School of Health, American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, even the National Kidney Foundation are in lock-step agreement that plant-based diets promote robust health and are tied to preventing (even reversing) chronic disease… with a planet requiring plant-based diets for sustainability and a body demanding plant-based diets for optimal health, I realized I needed to grow forward and that decision propelled me and my family into the best health of our lives.
We’re all faced with the decision to fall back on old comfort/opinions or grow forward with science/health. There is so much to gain from moving forward, and gutting loss with what we stand to lose if we continue status quo.
Continue for: Turkey Facts; a cornucopia of multifactorial ways to boost your health & examples of how we’re doing them all; links showing how you can eat plant-based whole-foods incredibly cheaply ( $5 a day or even $1.25 a day!); Plant-Based Thanksgiving Ideas again; “The Little Shop of Horrors” Soundtrack on repeat all the livelong day and corresponding “marginal” doodles.
Live Kindly, Feast Kindly, Grow Forward.
Q’s homeschooled, we choose a new theme to write about each week, and this week we focused on turkeys. We read about the topic at hand, Q chooses what sentence he wants to work on, and the drawings are his own creation.
You could argue that he’d be better off drawing turkey hands, but we’d argue that awareness is growth, and growth is life.
Q knows many facts like the one above and given how strong/healthy he feels (and with as many other strong examples, and the science to prove that animal products are not nutritionally necessary <—in fact, they are harmful), he often wonders how it is that people can keep perpetuating a cycle of harm purely for taste and comfort.
Fridays are the day Ian is home to help with school, and it caused a smile that this was what they chose to write about. :-)
And while that artistic advocate worked through his drawings, I focused on this Pediatric Nutrition Workshop hosted by Kiran Sidhu.
If you’re looking for a wise and warm voice to follow through the fray, I highly recommend her. She runs a free Facebook Group titled “Raising Healthy Plant-Powered Kids” and it is a lovely whirl of helpful guidance, data-dense evidence-based fact, and is community oriented for optimal growth and communication.
Foods high in beta carotene.
Cruciferous Vegetable List and Benefits
Health benefits of consuming alliums, plus another link re: chopping alliums and the release of alliinase (<—powerful antioxidant).
“The Food We Eat Is Killing Us” - Dr Kim WIlliams (President Emeritus American College of Cardiology)
“Research Methodology in Nutrition Science” - with Dr David Katz
“The influence of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on the gut microbiome”
A Quillan Lunch: quinoa, sugar-free peanut sauce, furikake (<—handy for calcium, omegas, and iodine) , braised bok choy, quick-pickled daikon, roasted butternut squash, quick-pickled beets, and olives.
We work on making each meal as diverse as possible and we utilize a local CSA to make this possible/affordable.
Pumfu tostadas with pickled-jalapeno cashew queso, greens, hot sauce, ruby saurkraut and olives.
We eat pickled things in just about every meal, so this one was easy. Raid your grocery’s refrigerated fermented foods per your favorites, or if you’re looking for a simple recipe: here’s our quick-pickled cabbage.
A fun way to use brazil nuts (for the selenium mentioned in the chart above): grate them on top of meals. Looks like grated parm, and has a rich buttery taste,
And above we learned that mushrooms are amazing because they are boasting zinc, vitamin D, selenium, and copper; and another delicious way to eat them is via mushroom gravy (<—recipe found within that link comes with other Thanksgiving ideas.)
More reading re: the lymphatic system and immune function. The gist: your lymphatic system’s fluid doesn’t move unless you move, and this fluid is tied to your immune system, so get moving. :-)
We try to adhere to Lifestyle Medicine guidelines which state the same thing Kiran is illuminating above: health is a multifactorial system. To optimize your health, you need to: eat a diet of primarily (if not exclusively) plants, get moving, make time for sleep, factor in some time to relieve stress, and get outside.
Rainy Day Yoga & Cardio
Throwing stones at the pond down the road
Him - “We’re really good about the part about cuddling. We cuddle in the morning, we cuddle in the evening, and you cuddle me after every lunch.”
We utilize a local park to run around.
Ian works long Mon-Thurs and has off on Fridays now, which means Friday PE is always out somewhere with Papa. <3
Outside Time
More Cuddling: Watching “National Parks Adventure”
United Nations - PLANT-BASED DIETS PROVIDE “MAJOR OPPORTUNITIES” TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CRISIS
For us, the environmental and compassionate reasons behind plant-based feasting are enough of a draw, but the fact that plant-based diets are directly tied to cardiovascular health (both preventing and reversing heart disease) was a BIG nail in the coffin of animal product consumption. Both sides of our family are so full of cardiovascular disease that Q was assigned a cardiologist just to make sure he was ok…the result? Proof that he is absolutely robust, avoiding the pitfalls associated with diet, and doing everything his cardiologist recommends for best health: eating a plant-based diet and keeping active.
How to implement? If you can: CSA’s put diversity, affordability, lower emissions, and community support in a basket tied with a bow. :-) Here was our Saturday pick-up (we’ve entered into the biweekly season, so this is 2 week’s worth of food, but $36 a week for local/ORGANIC produce).
If CSAs aren’t around, we Love Aldi! <3
Post-Prep and ready for the week. On weekends, I tend to quick-pickle an array of vegetables, will make a big pot of grain (rice or quinoa, for example), a soup/stew, and a casserole. I’ll then pull those out through the week to make different/tasty combos.
Like this Friday lunch of black rice, sugar-free peanut sauce, chopped bell peppers, quick-pickled cabbage, quick-pickled beets, quick-pickled daikon, and sprouts (lentil and alfalfa) from our friend Noelle.
Finished product topped with sunflower seeds and furikake.
Mushroom gravy, green beans, and polenta. I hid some turmeric within that polenta. :-)
Ginger Cake, apple sauce, and peanut butter.
Cannot recommend the lemon ginger cake enough. We made a similar version with orange and chocolate and that will be posted soon too.
Black Bean Brownie Sandwich with peanut butter, homemade berry sauce (blueberry, mango, strawberry), and apple.
The benefits of no-refined sugar, fiber-packed black bean brownies for breakfast? It helps you reach your health goals for the day. :-)
How’s your day stack up in comparison? Where can you improve? For us it’s always making sure we squeeze in enough actual exercise, and fitting in enough legumes.
Something my father sent to me this week. <3
Interested in making some shifts, but erroneously worry that plant-based foods are price prohibitive? Plant-Based feasting is actually cheaper than animal-product dense diets, and here are some Low-Budget Resources:
And what did we get for actually listening to all the world renowned doctors and leading health organizations by implementing a plant-based (mostly) whole-foods diet? A son who went from failure-to-thrive (despite a diet of antibiotic-free/organic/local meat, dairy, eggs, and rare junkfood) to sprouting inches over the last year and is healthier than ever.
Here seen: he’s got the energy to work away at that standing desk all day and still be beaming. <3
And what’s he working on? An advanced curriculum for his 5 year old self, while cultivating a deep passion for drawing.
“Feed Me” from the Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack was on frequent repeat this week.
Little Shop of Horrors is an engaging musical much loved in America, there are some great lessons within the character development and choices, there are a lot of fun rhymes that come in handy for ELA work, but this musical is def too dark for the average kiddo.
If you’ve spent any time with us and Q, you’ve likely witnessed just how much we unpack about the world around him, and movies/music are no exception. The first time he saw this movie, it was with us and his grandmother and it involved a lot of explaining and “cover your eyes”; and to this day, though he may repeat “Feed Me” on repeat for an hour (**insert much motherly eye-bugging**) he’ll still cover his ears each time the Dentist yells at Audrey, temporarily leave the room, or come over and hug me while whispering “He’s just so mean!”
Q’s been keen on life cycles, the macabre, and antiheroes for several years already; so he’s the kind of kid who listens to it and tells you all about how Seymour should have made better decisions, how the dentist is the example of a villain (“Because he assaults women and thinks it’s fun to hurt people!”), and how he understands Audrey 2 is a super villain (<—“But we also eat a lot of animals, so why we think he is a villain is a little silly, right?” <—PREACH IT, Q!), but Audrey 2’s design is super fun to draw so he’ll be doing variants from now until eternity. :-)
What’s the most impactful thing you can do as an individual to help your kin, community, millions of species, and planet? Transition as plant-based as possible.🌎♥️
Why? Plant-Based foods are environmentally imperative 🌎. They also promote ideal health💪 (which takes stress off our overburdened health care system), are inexpensive🙌, delicious🤤, & compassionate. 💕
Why imperative, though? 🤔We’re approaching (& have crossed) climate tipping points that will doom our kin & millions of other species. 😱📣Reducing/eliminating animal products is the *most impactful thing an individual can do* to prevent worse. 🌎🔥
Why? Animal Agriculture creates more emissions than the entire transportation sector combined, it’s tied to water waste/loss/pollution (<-- freshwater is our most precious resource💧), land loss/deforestation (<-- exacerbates climate change by reducing our ability to sequester carbon🔥🌎), ocean acidification (<-- FYI 50-85% of earth’s oxygen originates from oceanic plankton🌊) & vast species loss/extinction/suffering💔📣🌎
Plus, consuming animal products is tied to increased risk of cardiovascular disease❤️🩹, diabetes👎, cancer👎, and chronic disease👎; whereas Plant-Based feasting is linked to preventing/reversing some of our most common diseases (<— like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer); plus it promotes ideal health & robust strength (ie Olympians, Weightlifters, Endurance Athletes are thriving via PBWFs too). 🎉🙌♥️
What organizations are promoting plant-based diets for best health and environmental stability? National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic, Yale, the United Nations, Harvard School of Health, American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, National Kidney Foundation, even the Parkinson’s Foundation.
We’re all overwhelmed in one way or another, but for the sake of our kin (and the millions of species we share this planet with) we need to start pivoting forward. As someone who once rarely ate green things & used to eat animal products at every meal, I can assure you that is possible, affordable, enjoyable, & purposeful to pivot Plant-Based. In fact, our whole family is now healthier/stronger than ever. 🙌♥️
Anecdotally, our son had failure-to-thrive, was also plagued with perpetual ear-infections/sinus-infections, and had an omnipresent runny nose. What was he eating? Grass-fed milk, organic/antibiotic-free/grass-fed/local meats, eggs from organic-fed/well-loved chickens from a neighbor, every meal came with vegetables, and we limited junkfood. He was healed via a plant-based diet: he’s launched out of that diagnosis and the last time he had a sinus-infection (or was sick at all) was in 2019 when he had some cheese at a school Christmas party. Before shifting to PBWF’s he was sick every month, and how he’s a robust, vital, thriving kiddo. 🙌🎉♥️
If you think any of the above sounds over-reached/absurd/impossible, please go read the links above. I understand the inclination to hackle-raise (<—because I was once totally there) but the science is clear: any step we make forward is imperative (<—and again “STEPS” is the focus. Don’t leap, just start making steps!). It’s as simple as starting with one meal a week and growing from there.💕
We have the ability (deliciously, healthfully, kindly, inexpensively) to *preserve/protect* the planet we share with millions of species & our kin. How are we going to use that power today?✌️🤟🖖
