Read Real Food Online

Authors: Nina Planck

Real Food (3 page)

Back home on the farm in Wheatland, meanwhile, my omnivorous parents were the healthiest people I knew, lean and cheerful
as they tucked into fried eggs and pork chops. Something was wrong with me, but I certainly didn't suspect my perfect diet.
In 1995, in this none-too-healthy, somewhat muddled state, I moved to Brussels to work for NATO's parliamentary arm. I was
twenty-three going on twenty-four, it was my first time going to Europe, and I was full of anxiety. My friend Indya had to
reassure me, "There are vegetarians in Europe."

In London I Am Rescued by Farmers' Markets

ON JULY 4, 1996, after a year in Brussels, I moved to England as a journalist for
Time
magazine and found a place on St. Paul Street in Islington, a groovy north London neighborhood. A typical London row house,
it had a little, overgrown garden, which I cleared out, hauling away many buckets of shattered concrete from an old patio.
A farmer from Cambridgeshire delivered a load of well-rotted compost, which I had fun digging under. I laid a stone path to
a spot where the morning sun fell, and put a bench there. One other place got sun, and there I built a raised bed, barely
four feet square, for zucchini, herbs, and lettuce. It was a tiny patch, nothing like sixty acres in Virginia, but it was
mine.

Apart from the clouds, I loved everything about England and made lots of friends, but soon I was homesick— not for Virginia
but for local produce. My sunny patch was too small for all the vegetables I wanted to grow. I tried several whole foods shops
and what they call "box schemes" (a weekly delivery), but they all disappointed. The produce was organic, but it was often
wilted, bland— and imported. I took the Tube to London's famous street markets, which, not long ago, featured local produce
from Kent ("the Garden of England"), but they mostly sold Dutch peppers and Israeli tomatoes and T-shirts.

Imported fruits and vegetables couldn't compare to the ones we grew at home. I longed for ripe strawberries in season, fresh
asparagus with its scales unfolding, and traditional apples instead of the standard commercial fare: underripe Granny Smiths
from Australia or insipid Red Delicious from Washington State. Desperate for good produce, I rented a site near my house,
set about finding farmers, and opened London's first farmers' market on June 6, 1999. The minister of agriculture rang the
opening bell, Prince Charles (a keen organic farmer) sent a letter of congratulations, and all the major papers and the BBC
turned up. The farmers, many of whom had never sold at retail, were doing a roaring trade. Soon they wanted more markets,
and people in other neighborhoods were calling. By September, I'd opened two more, in Notting Hill and Swiss Cottage. In January
2000, I quit my job— by this time I was a speechwriter for the U.S. ambassador to Britain— to start more farmers' markets.

After many years as a fairly dedicated vegetarian, I had begun to eat fish, partly because I had a great fishmonger, but probably
more because the experts said fish was good for you. In 1999, a terrific book on brain chemistry,
Potatoes Not Prozac,
persuaded me to eat eggs again and to cut back on juice, honey, and white flour. Very quickly, I felt better and began to
need new, smaller clothes. But I was still fat- and cholesterol-wary, quite afraid that meat, butter, and eggs would give
me a heart attack.

My own farmers' markets rescued me. Here was real food on my doorstep, just like at home— only better, because there were
also new foods I'd never eaten: dried beef, pork pie, crème fraîche. Overnight I stopped using the supermarket, except for
things like olive oil, chickpeas, and chocolate. For
The Farmers' Market
Cookbook,
I wrote recipes for beef, lamb, pork, poultry, even rabbit— and ate them all. Without really trying, I stopped thinking about
food and started tasting it. Beef and lamb didn't thrill me (nor do they now), but I loved roast chicken and bacon. I never
meant to lose weight, only to eat more real foods (more ice cream, less nonfat yogurt) and tastier ones (more chicken, less
tofu). The pounds did their proverbial melting as I swapped rice and beans for roast chicken, bacon, and cheese.

My other complaints disappeared too, along with the colds and flu. As a vegetarian, I would have scoffed at the idea that
my diet was anything but ideal. Now it's clear my body was depleted of protein, saturated fat, fish oil, and vitamins A, B,
and D. Among other virtues, protein and fish help keep you trim, B vitamins and fish prevent depression, vitamin A aids digestion,
and saturated fats boost immunity. I knew nothing about that, of course, only that the more meat, fish, butter, and eggs I
ate, the better I felt. Health and good cheer restored, I became curious about the claims for a vegan and vegetarian diet.
What I learned surprised me: we are not natural vegetarians— and no traditional culture is vegan.

Humans are omnivores, meant to eat everything from leaves and fruit to meat and eggs. Our anatomy is a hybrid of the herbivore
and carnivore, with flat molars to chew vegetables
and
sharp teeth to tear into meat. Our digestive tract is neither very short (like a dog's) nor very long (like a cow's), but
somewhere in between. All over the world, omnivores eat different foods: fish on the coasts, caribou in the woods, beef on
the range. But dinner for a cow (grass) or a tiger (meat) is the same everywhere.

For about three million years, we ate mostly animal foods— as a percentage of calories, much more than today. Early humans
had a particular taste for bone marrow, brain, fish, and organ meats— and with reason. Marrow contains monounsaturated fats,
brain is rich in polyunsaturated fats, fish is the only source of vital omega-3 fats, and liver has loads of iron and vitamins.

This preference for rich food— rather than the leaves and bark other primates ate— had a profound effect, turning us into
Homo
sapiens:
the thinking ape. Relative to body weight, we have the biggest brains of all animals. Our brains grew bigger rapidly, easily
outpacing more vegetarian primates, says William Leonard, a professor of anthropology at Northwestern University. "Brain expansion
almost certainly could not have occurred until hominids adopted a diet sufficiently rich in calories and nutrients."
2
With primates, the general rule is: the bigger the brain, the richer the diet.

We humans are the extreme example of this relationship. Modern hunter-gatherers get 40 to 60 percent of calories from animal
fat and protein, compared with a mere 5 to 7 percent for chimps. Our brain is not only big but also ravenous, using sixteen
times more energy than muscle by weight. What does the brain need to run smoothly? Fats, especially fish oil. The brain is
an astonishing 60 percent fat, of which half is docosahexaeonic acid (DHA).
3
DHA is found only in fish.

The simple truth is this: there are no traditional vegan societies. People everywhere search high and low for animal fat and
protein because they are nutritionally indispensable. Frugal cooks use small amounts of meat and fat to supplement the vegetables,
grains, and beans that provide most of the calories. Think of collard greens with fatback in the American South, Latino refried
beans with lard, and the Asian stir-fry with a little pork and lots of rice. Cooks know that gelatin-rich bone broth extends
the poor or scant protein in plants. Even vegetarian societies prize either dairy or eggs. Indian cuisine relies on eggs,
yogurt, and ghee (clarified butter); Hindus call foods cooked in ghee
pukka
(authentic or superior) and foods in vegetable oil
kachcha
(inferior).

The vegan diet is unnatural and rare because it's risky, especially for babies, children, and pregnant and nursing women.
"When women avoid all animal foods, their babies are born small, they grow very slowly and they are developmentally retarded,"
said Lindsay Allen, director of the U.S. Human Nutrition Research Center. "There's no question that it's unethical for parents
to bring up their children as strict vegans."
4
Vegans risk deficiency of three critical nutrients: protein, vitamins, and fish oil.

The body uses protein for structure (muscle, bone, blood) and operations (enzymes made of protein run the whole body). A cow
can live on grass, but omnivores need complete protein and they must get it daily because it cannot be stored. Most plants
contain some protein— some, like beans, a fair amount— but all plant protein is incomplete. Protein is made of twenty amino
acids, nine of which are called
essential
because the body cannot make them. All plants lack one or more of the twenty amino acids, or contain too little of one. Soybeans,
for example, have all the amino acids but not enough methionine; corn needs more lysine and tryptophan. Protein needs are
unforgiving: when the diet lacks amino acids, the body ransacks its own tissue to find them.

Incomplete plant proteins can be combined to make complete protein. Famous pairs are wheat and milk and rice and beans. Yet
this is still second-best nutritionally, for even when combined, plant protein is always inferior to animal protein, in quantity
(there's more protein per calorie in fish than in rice and beans) and in quality. Unlike plants, meat, fish, milk, and eggs
contain amino acids in the
ideal
amounts for human health.

VEGETARIAN MYTHS

Myth: Our primate cousins are vegetarians.

Truth: All primates eat some animal fat and protein.

We eat more to feed our big brains.

Myth: We are natural herbivores.

Truth: We are omnivores with bodies designed to eat plant and animal foods.

Myth: Historically we ate less meat.

Truth: Historically we were even more carnivorous than today.

Myth: Other cultures are vegan.

Truth: There are no traditional vegan societies. Even

vegetarian cultures use butter and eggs.

Myth: We don't need animal protein.

Truth: Omnivores need complete protein every day.

A small amount will do.

Myth: Plant protein is as good as animal protein.

Truth: Plant protein, even when combined to provide

all the amino acids, is inferior to the protein in meat, fish, dairy, and eggs.

Myth: Soybeans contain complete protein.

Truth: Soybeans contain all the amino acids but

not enough of one (methionine).

Sources: Loren Cordain,
The Paleo Diet;
Weston A. Price Foundation; Joann Grohman,
Real Food;
and www.beyondveg.com.

Deficiency of essential vitamins is a risk of plant-based diets.

Vitamin B
6
is found in small amounts in plants, while chicken, fish, and liver are rich sources; vitamin B
12
is found only in animal foods.
5
Only animal foods (especially seafood, liver, butter, and eggs) contain true vitamins A and D. Animals can make vitamin A
from beta-carotene in grass; cows are particularly efficient. Humans, too, can make vitamin A from beta-carotene, but with
much more effort. The conversion requires bile salts, fats, and vitamin E. Babies, children, diabetics, and those with thyroid
disorders are poor converters. Humans can make some vitamin D in the skin from cholesterol and sunlight when it hits the skin
directly, but many people, surprisingly, don't get enough sunlight, especially people with dark skin.

The gravest risk of a strict vegan or vegetarian diet is deficiency of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and DHA, found only in
fish. In theory, the body can make these polyunsaturated fats from plants (flaxseed and walnut oil), but humans, especially
babies, aren't very good at it. Loren Cordain, a professor at Colorado State University and an expert in historic diets, says
that low DHA in mother or baby causes behavioral, mental, and visual problems in infants. Studies show that vegan breast milk
is deficient in DHA.
6
Other risks are low birth weight and premature birth.
7

I found these facts about vegan and vegetarian diets chilling and felt intensely grateful to my omnivorous mother. If I were
pregnant or nursing, I'd eat lots of wild salmon, and if my kids got ideas about being vegan, I'd do my damndest to talk them
out of it. An adequate
vegetarian
diet, however, is possible, if it includes complete protein, plenty of flaxseed oil, and vitamins A, B
12
, B
6
, and D. If you must be a vegetarian, do eat butter and eggs for the protein and vitamins and flaxseed oil for omega-3 fats.
Better still, eat fish, too.

Back in 1999, I knew nothing of chimp diets or vitamin A or why babies need fish. Farmers' markets, not nutrition textbooks,
restored my appetite for real food. As I ate my way through the English landscape, discovering local delights like the unctuous
smoked eels of Somerset, I wondered: is there an ideal diet for omnivores? In the 1920s, a Cleveland dentist named Weston
Price had the same question.

I Discover Weston Price and His Odd Notions

OF ALL THE SIGHTS at a farmers' market, there's none quite like Susan Planck, hell-bent on selling two truckloads of vegetables
in four hours. In her midsixties, my mother is lean and fit, with more energy than her crew of eight workers put together.
Though she has often had a scant five hours of sleep, she moves lightly and quickly, hefting a bushel of red peppers here,
changing a price there. She calls out: "We've had perfect weather for lettuce . . . This is the last week for strawberries!"
My mother has a talent for education. From her signs, handouts, and books-to-borrow, customers can learn about everything
from soil minerals to breastfeeding.

She's also a sponge for information, so I wasn't surprised when someone at the Falls Church Farmers' Market brought her an
article by Sally Fallon called "Why Broth Is Beautiful." Fallon said that stock from beef, poultry, and fish bones is rich
in calcium and other minerals, in a form easily assimilated. Broth is also a protein sparer; it is easy to digest and facilitates
digestion of everything else. Because it's tasty and nutritious, broth is a key ingredient for frugal peasants and great chefs
alike. Fallon called for a "brotherie" in every town serving veal stock, chicken soup, and beef consomme.

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