Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing
  • Home
  • About
    • About Casey
    • Philosophy >
      • Non-Diet Approach
      • Health At Every Size HAES ®
      • Intuitive Eating
      • Holistic Dietitians
    • Treatments >
      • Dietetic & Nutritional Therapy
      • Eating Disorder Therapy
      • Herbal Medicine
      • Flower Essences
      • Prenatal Nutrition & Yoga
      • Postnatal Nutrition & Yoga
  • Podcast
  • Services
    • COVID-19 Services
    • Consultations >
      • Dietitian
      • Naturopath
      • Nutritionist
      • Book a Consult
      • Consultation Info >
        • What To Expect
        • Fees & Rebates
        • Complete Wellness Program
    • Classes >
      • Schedule
      • Offerings >
        • AcroYoga
      • About
      • Praise
    • Bodywork
    • Courses
    • Freebies >
      • FREE 15 Minute Consult
      • Dark Moon Newsletter
      • A Modern Yogi's BS-Free Guide to Wellbeing
      • Elimination Diet Email Series
      • Videos
    • Upcoming Events
  • Apothecary
  • Blog
  • Contact
    • Dark Moon Newsletter
    • News

Casey's blog

Green Probiotic Turbocharger Juice

29/11/2011

4 Comments

 
Picture
Ditch the coffee and get a natural high with this ginger beer-esque, wake-me-up concoction! Probiotics are an important part of a healthy diet. 

Lactobacillus bacteria form a significant part of the natural intestinal flora. Large populations of this and other lactic acid-producing bacteria regulate the levels of friendly or “good” bacteria and reduce the levels of toxic pathogens.

The potential benefits of having more fermented probiotic foods in our diet include improved immune function, better digestion (leading to better energy), reduced bloating and reduced personal contributions to the greenhouse effect.

Read more about probiotic foods here, or just make the juice and feel the effects for yourself!

Juice the following in a cold-press juicer or any other kind of juicer you have:

  • 1 bunch of kale
  • 2 organic carrots
  • 1 lime
  • A thumb of ginger
  • A tiny bit of fresh turmeric (if you’re feeling adventurous)
  • 1 apple
Dilute the green juice with 1/2 cup water, add stevia to sweeten, then throw in a shot of grain-fermented probiotic – I like Grainfield’s Lemon & Ginger – to stabilise gut flora. This is the ultimate “health nut” drink that tastes like ginger beer and gives your body tonnes of fabulous enzymes, good bacteria and overall zest! You could also add probiotic liquids to smoothies - you don;t have to do juice if you hate the stuff :)

4 Comments

Recommended Reading List

29/11/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
Quite a few people have asked me which books are the best references for nutrition, health and non-dieting approach. Here is my regularly updated list (last updated in 2017) of my favourite books for your continuing education as hungry health-conscious eaters and badass body-positive guys and gals!
​

Intuitive Eating / Non-diet approach / HAES

If not dieting, then what? - Dr. Rick Kausman

This is the book that stopped me in my raw vegan, juice-fasting til 4pm tracks and lovingly encouraged me to start facing the fact that my relationship with food and my body had become disordered. I devoured most of this book in one day, and was forever changed. This book literally turned me in the HAES, non-dieting and body-positive direction, a trajectory I humbly continue to travel to this day.

Dr Rick Kausman is a general practitioner and the founding father of the non-diet approach in Australia. Years later I met Dr Rick in person at one of his if not dieting health professional trainings, and can confirm that he is an incredibly compassionate and sweet man who walks his talk. If you're sick of dieting and want to discover that there is an alternative to restriction and body hatred, this easy to read book will get you started. It feels like Dr Rick is talking to you in person.

Health at Every Size: The surprising truth about your weight - Dr. Linda Bacon

A little more data and research-heavy than If not dieting, this book presents the argument for shifting our focus well and truly away from weight and towards actual health. I've been lucky enough to meet from Dr Linda Bacon and she too is a quietly-spoken woman with a refreshingly calm demeanour who is passionate about her work. If you're still a skeptic about the whole HAES thing and want cold hard well-researched evidence as to not only why diets don't work, but why they actually contribute to weight and body image problems - then this is the book for you.

​
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works - Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

Written by two dietitians who really GET IT and have spent decades in the field, this is an experiential book with heaps of practical suggestions and activities, as well as patient stories to inspire and demonstrate the effectiveness of this work. I find myself coming back to this classic again and again because I've found that learning intuitive eating is a must when it comes to healing one's relationship with food and their body. The authors break the concept of intuitive eating down into 10 manageable chunks such as, "how to reject diet mentality forever, "how to find satisfaction in your eating", and "how to feel your feelings without using food".

This book basically explains how to stop dieting and start listening to your body. It's not the be all and end all to healing relationship with food, since a huge chunk of that involves extensive body image work. But learning intuitive eating is a vital starting point.


General nutrition

In Defence of Food – Michael Pollan

This book provides awesome insight into junk science and the reality behind the “healthy” diet the US government prescribes. This guy shares a very balanced approach to eating that I really resonated with. He loves his food too and shows you how to rediscover the joys of eating well with a few gems of advice that allow you to enrich your life and your palate.

Chakra Foods for Optimum Health - Dr. Deanna Minich

A guide to the foods that can improve your energy, inspire creative changes, open your heart and heal body, mind and spirit - and that's just the front cover. Written by an inspirational yogini and truly integrated clinical nutritionist -  a beautiful reference book.

Healing with Wholefoods - Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition – Paul Pitchford

The unequivocal bible for practitioners of traditional chinese nutritional medicine. This book will have you turning its pages in awe for hours in the Balinese cafe it belongs to while the staff wait impatiently for you to get out. This hefty tome also makes for an excellent video camera stand and a formidable self-defence weapon.

Vegetarian Sports Nutrition – Enette Larson Meyer

I had this book out on constant loan from the university library in my long distance and triathlon days to maximise nutritional benefits and boost performance, which it did. A must read for vegetarian athletes (who can find it harder to get all the goodies they need), coaches and nutritionists.

Putting it all together

The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self - Charles Eisenstein

This is simply an amazing book.  Charles wraps up environmental ethics and intuitive eating in the one book, with eloquence and thought-provocation. He talks about how connecting to your food and your body is so important, about the emotional and spiritual aspects of eating, and why nutrition is about more than just the physical chemistry of the food we eat. A yummy book to dip into time and time again.


Ageless Body, Timeless Mind – Deepak Chopra
​

A teabag of quantum physics steeped in a cup of deep spirituality, Deepak’s philosophy displays a nicely rounded example of immateriality merging with science, with a fair few gems on nutrition thrown in for good measure.
0 Comments

Discovering the “Right” Diet

27/11/2011

2 Comments

 
Continued from my previous blog, lessons from yoga, lessons from sea turtles.

As people often do when they first embark on a journey of health-improvement, my appetite for nutrition and health information grew insatiable. From my first year as a university (undergraduate veterinary science) student, I read everything I could on nutrition to the point of obsession!

In addition to studying the nutrition of various animals including primates in captivity and Moreton Bay's sea turtles, I dabbled in multiple nutritional experiments on myself throughout my time as a recreational triathlete and student, with the primary goal of enhancing my energy levels for the high volume of training and study I was undertaking. I added sustainablity and ethics to the mix when I first discovered yoga.

A riddle in an enigma
Soon I discovered that “improving your diet” is not as straightforward as I first imagined! There are diets based on religion, ethics, medical systems, anthropology, cleansing, the seasons, blood types.

You can choose to be vegetarian, vegan, even a fruitarian; you can adopt a macrobiotic diet, a live foods diet, a Paleolithic diet; you can minimise fats, or carbohydrates, or proteins; you can base your diet on Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine. I experimented on myself and scoured books on each of these, with varied fascinating and often undesired results!

The problem is, most of these systems contradict each other. One book might tout the wonders of soy, another will warn us of its dangers. One book might advocate a diet consisting primarily of raw foods, rich in enzyme vitality; another advises to limit intake of raw foods, so as not to dampen the digestive fire. One book will champion honey as a super-food; another says honey is just as harmful as any other sugar. Ayurveda says milk is a healing nutritious food, modern naturopathy often recommends steering away from dairy as it’s phlegm –forming and allergenic.

Many mainstream scientific journals on nutrition advise us to limit intake of fat, especially saturated fat; an increasingly prominent minority of professionals contend that actually, traditional animal fats are good for you, or that coconut oil, a saturated plant fat, is a cleansing weight-loss food. Some authorities say that supplements are essential; others say they just give you “expensive urine.”

Some diets may be supported by the full weight of scientific opinion (CSIRO diet) yet felt completely wrong to me when I personally experimented with them. Others relied on my sense of environmental, social or moral obligations and these also felt unnatural and burdensome.

The examples are endless. How do we find the diet that’s right for us, if there is one? Maybe they all have elements of truth, despite their blatant contradictions. Or maybe none of them are right.


Inner wisdom
My chosen "healthy" diet, strict veganism, was not working for me. Faced with this dilemma and armed with the tools of a yoga practice, I decided to try something different. Instead of trusting any outside authority, I would trust my own body – no matter what it lead me to. I also tapped into my inner animal, so to say.

As a vet and wildlife researcher I was always fascinated by chimpanzees, with whom we share 98.4% of our DNA. I was intrigued by their non-scheduled, uninhibited, intuitive way of eating – their tendency towards simplicity, ease and necessity struck a chord with me.

So I began to combine the heightened sense of body awareness I was slowly harvesting through yoga, with my knowledge of these amazing animals, our evolutionary cousins. For the first time, I began to freely enjoy the uninhibited pleasure of food accompanied by a growing wellness and physical vitality.

Nowadays, I still read and learn as much about nutrition as I can, be it the latest esteemed journal article or the blog of a freegan living in New York. I've dumpster-dived in Brisbane, survived as a vegan in Thailand for months on end, and finally discovered and embraced non-diet approaches as my core health philosophy.

I've educated newly-arrived refugees on how to eat healthily in Australia where the diet is often less wholesome than their traditional ways of eating. I've stuck my arm up cows' bottoms and come face to face with the detrimental effects of the refined diet we feed these animals, not only on them but on ourselves. After years of academic and personal study, yoga, and plenty of self-experimentation I have learnt one thing that now guides all my dietary choices:

The only reliable authority, in the end, is your own body.

As a starting point, know that the simple tool of fully enjoying each bite of food has the power to resolve any questions about food choices and diet. This awareness of eating is the foundation of my nutrition practice. From here I work with clients to explore any dietary approaches they are interested in or that feel most attuned to them, keeping in mind sensibility and practicality.

It has been a long and windy journey, one that still continues to this day. I’ve spent the last decade developing my philosophy within every area of the food and nutrition field – from working as a veterinarian in our modern food systems, and researching the eating habits of domestic and wild animals, to working as a nutritionist consulting with chronically ill and hospitalised patients whose health reveals the results of such food systems.

On the surface level, I educate people on how to improve their nutrition (and sometimes prescribe medical nutrition therapy in certain disease states) - but as I've discovered there's much more to healthy eating than this. The process of getting to know yourself, your body and what foods it thrives on involves time and patience. I'm deeply honoured to be able to facilitate this journey with my clients as it's such a beautiful and exciting one.

Thanks for reading my personal story, I'm happy to answer any questions you have. Simply click here to send me a private message or question.
Picture
2 Comments

Raw Chocolate Orange Pie

27/11/2011

2 Comments

 
Picture
An elegant, chocolatey treat that invokes childhood memories of candied orange peel and jaffa lollies! 

Makes 1 pie, serves 8-12 (or 6-8 eager chocolate pie beavers!)

The crust:

½ cup almonds
½ cup walnuts
½ cup cashews – you can use any kind of nuts to replace any of those here, such as pecans, macadamias, and brazil nuts
2 teaspoons powdered chai spices (mix of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom)
1 cup pitted dates, pre-soaked in warm water for 15 mins
A few tablespoons date-soak water

The filling:

2 large ripe avocados
3 tablespoons raw honey or maple syrup
30g raw cacao nibs or broken pieces of 70%+ dark chocolate – ay carumba!
2 heaped tablespoons raw cacao powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tsp finely zested organic orange peel
  1. Combine crust ingredients in a food processor and mix together thoroughly to form a dough. Add a little more water, if required, to form a damp mass.
  2. Press dough into a pie dish to form a base.
  3. Combine avocado flesh, cacao, dark chocolate nibs, cinnamon, orange zest and honey in a food processor and mix until a thick, smooth consistency is reached. Add more cacao powder if you have especially green avocados and the mixture still looks and tastes a bit “avocado-ey!”
  4. Place chocolate filling into pie crust evenly. Place pie aside in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
  5. Slice pie into 8-12 pieces. Serve each piece decorated with thinly sliced orange or candied orange peel, and say hello to heaven!
2 Comments

Roast Earth Vegetable, Kale & Dill Salad

27/11/2011

1 Comment

 
Picture
Delicious, flavoursome comfort food that's packed full of veggies!
Serves 2 as a main, or 4 as a side dish.

Ingredients
  • 8 small desiree potatoes
  • 3 carrots
  • 3 red onions
  • 1 head Garlic
  • 1 bunch kale
  • 1/2 bch dill
  • 1/2 bch parsley
  • juice from 1/2 a lemon
  • 1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • 3 tsp paprika
  • 1 1/2 tbsp rice bran oil
  • white pepper and celery salt to taste *

What to do
Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Separate garlic cloves leaving the skins on.

Wash and cut potatoes into wedges. Wash carrots (peel if you want, we don’t – there is too much goodness in the skin!) and cut into pieces the same size as the cut potatoes.

Peel onions and cut into wedges leaving the core intact to keep it together during cooking.

Place all ingredients into a baking tray and add oil, paprika, nutmeg, salt, white pepper and mix softly.

Hint – Sit the potatoes on their skins during baking to stop them from sticking. It gives them more colour.

Roast vegetables for 30 mins or until cooked depending on what size your vegetables are cut.

Meanwhile, remove stalks from your kale (they’re a bit tough) and cut or break into large pieces. Chop parsley and dill roughly.

Once veg is cooked mix everything together gently while still warm and add the lemon juice.

* Celery salt is made by drying celery leaves in the oven at 100 degrees C for about 20 mins then crushing with natural rock salt or himalayan salt in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder. It’s an amazing and natural seasoning for anything. My favourite application is using the salt sprinkled on sprouted essence toast smeared with avocado… heaven!

Cook with love, chew your food fully and experience the wonderful tastes and grounding properties of the root vegetables.
1 Comment

Intuitive eating

25/11/2011

3 Comments

 
Picture
Intuitive eating... includes intuitive drinking! Yes this tea had sugar in it! And it was delicious!
The "perfect" diet...
In an ideal world, there would be no need for someone to tell us what and how to eat. Like animals in the wild, prehistoric humans, and some traditional peoples who are very in touch with their bodies, we would naturally be drawn to eating a vibrant, constantly changing, delicious, satisfying diet, free of deprivation; a diet perfect for our individual needs.

We would also know when we are comfortably full, and when not to eat. Without fad diets and "what she eats" pieces on actresses and models in terrible women's magazines influencing us.

We would eat intuitively, based on the naturally fluctuating needs of our bodies through our changing external and internal environments – weather, season, our physical and mental state, demands put on our bodies, and so on. Our bodies would be highly sensitive to even the smallest changes in our environment.

As a result of our being in touch with the Earth’s natural cycles, our digestion would work pretty harmoniously. As a result of eating intuitively and in harmony with the cycles of nature, our energy levels would be optimal, our libidos healthy, our minds sharp.


Get your nose out of Anastacia, we’re in the 21st century!
Does this sound like a fantasy? If you’ve read the book Anastacia by Vladimir Megre describing a reportedly true encounter with a woman brought up in the Russian woods, you’ll know the lifestyle I’m describing! In our modern world, living this way seems like a far-off fairy tale.

From the day we are born and even before then, we are over-fed a steady stream of chronic stress, environmental pollutants, questionable diets and diet trends leading to binges on easily sourced fast food, and chemical stimulants. We have been taught not to trust our innate cravings and tastes, instead turning to coworkers, scientists, celebrities, the media and fad diets to tell us what and what not to eat, never mind how, when and why we are eating.

If there is a perfect diet for humans, an "intuitive diet" would be it. Deep down, we know what’s best for us, just as a bird, a wolf or a child does. But it’s hard to eat intuitively when we’re mentally fatigued by our stressful lifestyles, and we’re confused by the enormous amount of often conflicting information about food that lies out there.


Over-stuffed on dietary information
Be careful about reading health books – you may die of a misprint! – Mark Twain

For anyone who has decided to improve their diet, it soon becomes apparent that healthy eating is not as straightforward as first imagined.

There are diets based on religion, ethics, medical systems, anthropology, the seasons, blood types. You can choose to be vegetarian, vegan, even a fruitarian; you can adopt a macrobiotic diet, a raw foods diet, a Paleo diet, a ketogenic diet; you can minimise fats, or carbohydrates, or proteins; you can base your diet on Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine.

The problem is most of these systems contradict each other. One book might tout the wonders of soy, another will warn us of its dangers. One book might advocate a diet consisting primarily of raw foods, rich in enzyme vitality; another advises to limit intake of raw foods, so as not to dampen the digestive fire. One book will champion honey as a super-food; another says honey is just as harmful as any other sugar.

Most mainstream books on nutrition advise us to limit intake of fat, especially saturated fat; an increasingly prominent minority contends that actually, traditional animal fats are good for you, or that coconut oil, a saturated plant fat, is a cleansing weight-loss food. Some authorities say that supplements are essential; others say they just give you “expensive urine.”

The examples are endless. We ask ourselves, how do we find the diet that’s right for us, if there is one? Maybe they all have elements of truth, despite their blatant contradictions. Or maybe none of them are right.

To our detriment, we have confused ourselves with mountains of conflicting dietary information. Despite our persistent focus on diet and all the research that goes into it, we have ended up more sick, depressed and confused than ever. We have lost our natural way of eating and knowing.

Return to intuitive eating
Eat when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty, sleep when you are tired. - Taoist adage.

The only reliable authority, in the end, is your own body. We need to learn how to trust our bodies again, and how to listen to the messages it is sending us about diet. The simple tools of tuning into our bodies and fully experiencing each bite of food have the power to resolve any questions about food choices and diet.

This doesn’t mean we should go out and fully experience every bite of a large bucket of KFC if you don;t actually you feel like it! After a life time of ignoring your body, getting back in touch with it can take a little bit of work and a lot of patience.

It’s hard to listen to the body when a symphony of opposing authorities on diet are shouting their new findings and guaranteed weight loss methods from the rooftops. 

Somehow, we need to restore our sense of body trust if we are to start feeding ourselves properly. This is where it can be helpful to have a nutritional therapist with an understanding of non-diet approaches such as Health at Every Size or Mindful Eating. Someone who can balance healthy eating with sane eating!

What I do
As a non-diet dietitian, I empower people to start eating in the way that’s most beneficial and intuitive to them. I show them how to get back to basics and re-learn how - not necessarily what - they really need to eat for optimal health.

To qualify me to help you, I’ve spent the last decade developing my philosophy within every area of the food and nutrition field – from working as a veterinarian in our modern food systems, and researching the eating habits of animals, to working as a nutritionist consulting with chronically ill and hospitalised patients, to working as a non-diet dietitian with people suffering from eating disorders and in the throes of "clean eating" and fitness junkie recovery.

I’ve done the work for you in sifting through and integrating into my practice evidence-based dietetic and naturopathic science, and wisdom from more traditional schools of thought such as Chinese Nutritional Medicine, Ayurveda and Yoga. My goal is to provide a truly holistic, deeply personal and highly effective service for people with health, eating and body image problems, people who just want to maintain their health, and people who struggle with dietary fads and conventional dieting.

In a one-on-one consultation, we explore simple new ways of eating that will markedly increase your enjoyment of food without disease, BUT ALSO without guilt. We investigate your behaviours and conditioning around food and how we ignore vital messages from our bodies.

We address habits like food "addiction", under- and over-eating. We discuss the role of yoga, meditation and other mind-body practices that have been scientifically proven to help us get in touch with our intuitive way of eating and being.

Want to find out more? Check out what a private consultation with me looks like.
3 Comments

Is beer healthy?

25/11/2011

11 Comments

 
Picture
When it comes to diet, I advise people to select foods from the bounty of nature rather than eat out of packets. But drinks are important, too! But how about the yoga of drinking? We hear so much about diet and food that often we forget about drinks, which can make up a significant proportion of our diet and therefore have a huge impact on our overall health.

A cold beer (or 4) on a Saturday afternoon, a warm chai tea on a Winter night, or a mouthful of fresh water scooped up from a rapid-flowing northern NSW creek, all elicit different sensations, emotions and memories.

On a more physical level, they can also be significant contributors to our overall nutritional state, especially if they are a regular part of our diet.

Soft drink - a "sometimes" drink
I’m sometimes asked, “What drinks in particular should I avoid at all costs? What’s the worst possible thing I could drink, and what’s the healthiest?” When we eat intuitively, remember that whatever the beverage, the only authority is your own body.

And there are no inherently good or bad foods - or drinks! However as your body will tell you if you tune in enough, there are "everyday" drinks, and there are "sometimes" drinks.

Enjoy exploring the flavours and effects of a whole range of drinks, but keep in mind that besides rainwater, truly "healthy" drinks are not easily available in our day and age, or need to be made at home i.e. they take time.

If I had to say one drink that we should minimise as much as we humanly can, it wouldn’t be beer, coffee or even hard liquor – it’s soft drink. Why? The high refined sugar content, questionable colourings & flavourings, and mechanised carbonation process create a highly synthetic drink that I personally can’t handle more than a few sips of.

Ironically, modern soft drink is made in imitation of traditional beverages like root beers and ginger ales, which were not necessarily alcoholic. These were fermented from natural sugars and herbs and were very healthy beverages, chock-full of enzymes, vitamins, “good” micro-organisms, and electrolytes.

So, a stubby a day…?
I’m not suggesting you start a drinking x amount of VB a day for your health! (Or Coopers, or Cascade.) Modern beer uses hops, a fairly potent medicinal herb, which is a sedative and sexual depressant that many people don’t handle all that well. Traditionally, dozens of different herbs were used in beer aside from hops, all with different tonic, flavouring, healing or psychotropic properties.

Home-brewed beer is probably better than store-bought, as it’s likely to have higher levels of the good bacteria and all the other goodies that stimulate digestion. The appreciation and exploration of the ways of fermentation is both an art and a yoga. Bottoms up!

Water – the primary thirst quencher?
Many traditional cultures rarely drank water. In China, even to this day, you never see water served with meals – the beverages are soup, tea, or a fermented drink such as beer.

Warm beverages are said to be much gentler on the digestion than cold ones, while some soups and fermented beverages actually aid digestion. Unfortunately, most of these super-healthy drinks have disappeared from the Australian culinary scene.

Good Gut Grubs
By eating a standard western diet we are missing out on a lot of the foods and drinks that traditionally long-living cultures thrived off. The most prominently missing foods in my opinion, are probiotics. 

Over the past ten years we’ve all heard that Lactobacillus bacteria form a significant part of the natural intestinal flora. Large populations of this and other lactic acid-producing bacteria regulate the levels of friendly or “good” bacteria and reduce the levels of toxic pathogens.

The potential benefits of having more fermented probiotic foods in our diet include better digestion (leading to better energy), reduced bloating and reduced personal contributions to the greenhouse effect. Who doesn’t want that?

Although you can make fermented grain drinks at home, for the average 9-5 worker this can be overwhelming, at least at first. If you’d like to get more of this bacteria into your diet immediately, I recommend trying a ready-made probiotic liquid, fermented naturally using organic and/or biodynamic ingredients. 

Examples include: Kombucha, kefir (water or coconut-based), organic ginger beer, and home-brewed beer.

A number of Australian and international compaines make these kinds of drinks, which are surprisingly affordable. You can dilute them with water, freshly squeezed juices, add to recipes, use in smoothies, juices and salad dressings or just drink neat.
11 Comments

From farm to fork - my personal story

25/11/2011

5 Comments

 
Picture
If you’re reading this right now, at some point in your life you’ve probably made the decision to improve your diet. Perhaps you were inspired by a health crisis. Some people are diagnosed with diabetes or had to experience the turmoil of a heart attack, before deciding to do something about their health. Other people have food allergies or intolerances and are forced to change their diets. 

Perhaps it was a spiritual awakening that made you change or simplify your diet. Maybe it was the start of a new relationship. Most of us just want to look better and feel more alive! Maybe someone or something has prompted you to eat in a more ethical or environmentally sustainable way. Most people I talk to nowadays would like their diet to impact less on the earth.

Veterinary Insight

For me, it was a mixture of the latter, plus yoga. I’ve always been interested in nutrition and health, but as an animal lover I first decided to become a vet. During my veterinary degree I spent months on end on sheep and cattle farms, in large-scale chicken operations, in abattoirs and remote country veterinary practices.

I witnessed the husbandry of these poor creatures firsthand. I studied the environmental impact of animal agriculture, and still can’t fathom how mega-tonnes of pig waste and cow manure could be washed into rivers or left to leach into the earth in holding tanks. (Read the FAO's Livestock’s Long Shadow 2006 report for an eye-opening, scientifically validated assessment on the environmental impact of food-producing animals.)

As a veterinary student, I was the giver of countless injections of antibiotics to keep animals alive in over-crowded housing, of hormones to keep cows in an unnatural endless cycle of pregnancy and lactation, and other drugs and painful procedures necessitated by their living standards – for example, castration of male lambs without anaesthesia, tooth and tail clipping of piglets, dehorning in calves too old for such a procedure to be humane and safe, among many other procedures.

Watching a sheep with broken legs waiting for hours to die in the off-loading truck bays of abattoirs is something hard to wipe from one’s memory. I saw more during 2 minutes on a chicken slaughter floor than in watching the movie “Earthlings” and all the other animal-rights activism media I had seen up to that point. 

After seeing for myself what we put factory farm animals through, and what we put through them, it became challenging for me to continue to eat the same way I was taught as a child, i.e. meat and three veg.

I'll continue my account of yoga, sea turtles, and what they have to do with human nutrition, in my next blog Lessons from Yoga.
5 Comments

Lessons from yoga, lessons from sea turtles

22/11/2011

1 Comment

 
Picture
Continued from my last blog post, From farm to fork:

At the same time I was waking up to the realities of food-producing animal agriculture, I was introduced to yoga where I began to discover my interconnectedness with all other beings. One of the first dietary changes I made was becoming a vegetarian - a natural and unsurprisingly common side-effect of practising yoga.

I bet you’re thinking, “oh no, she’s a hippy with a degree” and that this is going to be a glorified lecture on why we should all go vegetarian! Don’t worry, I’m not 20 anymore. And I don't think we all have to become vegetarians for optimal health.

Vegetarianism had its perks - it opened my eyes to the conditioning I’d received as a child from my parents, teachers and government. But it certainly wasn’t the answer to all my nutrition questions. It was only the beginning, and carried with it its own attendant problems!

Aside from going vego, which is relatively easy to do overnight, yoga also taught me to listen to and trust my body, which is a lifetime's work. I started noticing that as a strict vegan there were foods and ways of eating that my body simply didn’t appreciate!

I didn’t get it when even as a "healthy vegan", I started putting on weight* for the first time in my adult life and continued to have crappy skin and feel tired in the afternoons. It was confusing because I was so convinced that my vegan diet was the pinnacle of good nutrition! Although my body suffered, my ego was fighting fit and I certainly enjoyed the feeling of moral superiority over our omnivorous friends!


(*weight should not be the focus of any health approach, but I did notice this response by my body and it puzzled and trouble me at the time as I was very weight-conscious in my early 20's.)

Eventually I was to learn that it wasn’t what I omitted from my diet – animal products – but what I was eating, and how I was eating - the attitude or bhava with which I was eating it - that was the "problem".

At that stage I was 20, and still had many questions. Amongst my commitments as a freakishly over-achieving young person, I was a competitive off-road triathlete and had just picked up sponsorship. I knew that I needed to improve my diet for health and sports performance but I didn’t want to compromise on my newfound yogic food ideals and plant-based diet.

Strangely, it wasn't until I explored sea turtle physiology that I really started to question the health of our modern day diet (even the modern vegan diet) and some of the foods in it.


Sea Turtles - what can they teach us?

Towards the end of my veterinary degree I became very interested in marine biology, and took up a research position at Moreton Bay Research Station, North Stradbroke Island. With my dual interest in wildlife and nutrition, I decided to investigate the health impacts of marine debris ingestion on sea turtles.

More than anything, this research showed me that when an animal eats something that's clearly not designed for its body, things can go pretty wrong. Wild animals are far healthier than the cattle, pigs and chickens kept in intense factory farms.

Yet even in these most resilient and long-living of animals, the tiniest bit of plastic – the size of a fingernail –brings about a slow, painful death in a large proportion of sea-turtles found dead on the shores of Moreton Bay. I did many intensely smelly autopsies to prove it! Ironically, much of the debris that is ingested by marine animals is plastic bags and junk food packaging. Which brings us right back to our own health.

Obviously if you eat plastic, you’re not going to feel the best. But how about the clogging effects of some of the foods we eat? Consider the artery-clogging effects of convenience foods high in trans-fat that contributes to the epidemic of heart disease. And closer to our turtle example, we have margarine, which is touted as a healthy substitute for butter.


Conflicting information

The Dietary Guidelines for Australians recommend that we limit the amount of saturated fat we eat or replace the saturated fats with unsaturated oils. We are told by myriad doctors, dietitians and diabetes educators that one of the simplest ways of achieving this is to switch from butter to margarine spreads on your toast and sandwiches, and even in cooking and baking.

The process by which margarine is produced is interestingly similar to that used to produce plastics. Called hydrogenation, liquid vegetable oil is converted into a solid or semi-solid grease with a grey colour. It is deodorised using high heat and chemical additives, then bleached white and then dyed yellow. Finally, artificial flavours are mixed in to make it taste like butter. 

In the jargon of the chemicals industry, this process of turning a liquid oil into a solid or semi-solid is called plasticisation.

In a world where a person has doctors and dietitians encouraging them to eat margarine on one side, and naturopaths warning against the dangers of it on the other, it becomes harder to tell what’s really best for our health and know what exactly we should be eating.  Who do we listen to? And where does our innate knowledge step in?

I wasn't feeling fantastic on a vegan diet because it largely consisted of similarly synthetically created foods - textured soy protein, vegan sausages, soy ice cream and vegan mayonnaise - these things are not much better than margarine. A modern vegan diet consisting of these foods just didn't work for me.

In my final blog: discovering the right diet - how I put the pieces together and uncovered the most important rule of nutrition there is.
Picture
At Moreton Bay Research Station treating a Green Sea turtle
1 Comment

    Categories


    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    POPULAR POSTS


    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    ARCHIVES


    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    July 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011

    MORE CATEGORIES


    All
    Allergies
    Autumn
    Ayurveda
    Babies & Children
    Best Of The Blog
    Body Care
    Body Image
    Body Inclusivity
    Body Positive
    Breakfast
    Breastfeeding
    Chocolate
    Consultations
    Cravings
    Desserts
    Detoxification
    Dinners
    Disordered Eating
    Dreaming
    Eating Disorders
    Education
    Environment
    Essential Oils
    Exercise
    Family Nutrition
    Farming
    Feminism
    Fermented Foods
    Fertility
    Fitness
    HAES
    Healing
    Health
    Health At Every Size
    Health On A Budget
    Herbal Medicine
    Herbs
    Homesteading
    Hormones
    Immune Health
    Integrative Medicine
    Intuitive Eating
    Lunch
    Magic
    Meditation
    Menopause
    Menstruation
    Metabolism
    Mindful Eating
    Moon
    Motherhood
    Movement
    My Personal Story
    Natural Cycles
    Naturopathy
    Non Diet Approach
    Non Diet Yogi Podcast
    Non-Diet Yogi Podcast
    Nutrition
    Omnivorous
    Paleo
    Permaculture
    Plant Spirit Communication
    Podcasts
    Postpartum
    Powerlifting
    Prenatal
    Probiotics
    Raw
    Recipes
    Recommended Reading
    Self Love
    Sex
    Simple Eating
    Skin
    Smoothies
    Snacks
    Social Justice
    Spirituality
    Spring
    Strength Training
    Stress
    Summer
    Superfoods
    Supplements
    The Wellness Diet
    Traditional Chinese Medicine
    Traditional Foods
    Traditional Wisdom
    Vegan
    Vegetarian
    Veterinarian
    Weight Neutral
    Wildcrafting
    Winter
    Witch
    Women's Health
    Yoga

    RSS Feed


    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
Picture
All content copyright Casey Conroy - Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing. For more information please click here to see my disclaimer.
Natural health for EVERY body. Copyright © 2022
0432 618 279 | info@funkyforest.com.au