For some years I've been interested in organic gardening, particularly permaculture. Recently I've taken a deeper dive into this method of 'natural' farming within which is embedded a deep reverence for, and trust of nature. And I've realised that permaculture has some uncanny parallels to the non-diet approach and Health at Every Size movement I am so passionate about in my clinical practice. For the last 7 or so years I've been working with people with weight, food and body image concerns, from wanting to lose a couple of kilograms to life threatening eating disorders.

One of the greatest teachers of this method of farming is Masanobu Fukuoka, author of The One-Straw Revolution. In this book Fukuoka describes his discovery of "do nothing" farming, where he creates situations where nature will do the work with the minimum of interference on his part.

So instead of spending hours ploughing the soil or spending money on adding chemical fertilisers to his crops, he simply chucks the rice straw back on the ground after harvesting it and scatters chook poo over it. Occasionally he sows clover to use as a green manure.

​And that's pretty much it.

And rather than seeing everything turn into a wilderness and watching helplessly as the prickles take over, Fukuoka actually equals the yield of farms that have had these modern high intervention inputs applied to them, with a fraction of the investment of labour and resources.
​

Of course by "healthy weight" I don't mean what the BMI deems healthy. I adopt Dr. Rick Kausman's description of your healthiest weight being the most comfortable, natural weight for you - the weight your body naturally arrives at and maintains when we provide the right "soil" (see number 2). So here's what I gathered together in my current understanding of permaculture principles and my more deeply rooted understanding of HAES and the non-diet approach. The biggest parallels between permaculture, and the non-diet approach and HAES as roads to body peace, are:

Q:
Can you recommend any vegan food sources of DHA? I’d like to try food before supplements. 


A:
This is a great question I was recently asked by a vegan client. Getting adequate essential fatty acids (EFAs) is extremely important for everyone, but especially for vegetarians and vegans, and especially if they are trying to fall pregnant, are pregnant or breastfeeding.

We all need EFAs for healthy brain, eye and nervous system function (and development in the case of pregnant mamas), and to keep our immune systems humming along nicely.

The two essential omega-3 fatty acids, EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) are most available in fatty fish like salmon, sardines and mackerel. You can also get these EFAs from fish oil. The fish themselves get it by eating phytoplankton, which themselves subsist on microalgae.

Since vegans don't eat fish, getting enough DHA can be tricky. This is especially true for pregnant and breastfeeding vegan mamas. ​

Read on for my extended answer to this question. If you're short on time, scroll to the bottom of the article for my short answer!

I work with a lot of yoginis and yogis, alternative lifestyle leaders, animal rights activists, and environmentally conscious folks. I also work in the field of disordered eating.

​So naturally I often find myself in the situation where I'm chatting with somebody who is very keen to heal their troubled relationship with food... but they don't want to budge on their vegan ideals. 
 
This person may have been through the psychological hell that is a full blown eating disorder...

... OR they may fall into the spectrum of disordered eating on the end of the continuum that wouldn't be classified as a clinical eating disorder, but disordered eating and disordered body image - an issue that faces a significant number of women in Australia.
 
OFTEN, they've experienced both.
 
The big question here is, "If I'm actively recovering from a clinical eating disorder - or any other form of disordered eating - can I be vegan and still get better?"

Do you watch what you eat?

Do you spend all day thinking about and planning your meals?
​Are you "careful" with your food choices?
Do you have rules and judgement around food?
Do you try to make the "best" or "healthiest" decision every time you eat something?
Do you struggle with weight concern, emotional eating, binging, and/or food obsession?

If so, you might want to take a look at your personal diet mentality.

Diet mentality, or diet thinking, leads to dieting behaviours. And dieting behaviours build a cage around a person that places serious limits on their capacity to live and enjoy a rich, full, and meaningful life.
​
​If there was ever an opportune time for us as individuals to slay our own private diet mentalities and weight biases - and for us to collectively dismantle the very diet culture that it stands upon - NOW is the time.

The next new moon falls on Wednesday, April 26th. This mid-autumn moon cycle is known in many parts of the world as the Blood Moon or Hunter's Moon. And it is the perfect time for you to put this diet thing to bed, for good.

Read on for 7 hard-core (but realistic) ways to slay that MF beast that is the diet mentality!

Any die hard yogi, health coach, or budding nutritionist will tell you that your smoothie just isn't complete without acai berries, maca, or chia seeds. But did you know that far many flung "superfoods" carry a heavy environmental and social footprint?

Who wants to live to 100?

Who wants to look 25 forever?

If you've been brought up or conditioned to any extent by mass western culture, you may find your answers to those questions a little bit contradictory!

The western world is obsessed with youth, yet most of us want to live forever. Which implies ageing.

Our cultural impetus is on remaining youthful looking at any cost but at the same time, wanting to extend our life span for as long as possible -  it's a really weird mix.

Whilst I was in India earlier this year, I was astounded and pleasantly surprised to see billboards with elderly female politicians, activists and even moviestars - complete with jowls, pigmentation spots, double chins and droopy eyelids. How refreshing! You never see this kind of thing in Australia.

Of course there is a reverence for youthful beauty in India, but it doesn't totally predominante the media's portrayal (and therefore, the people's acceptance) of women. It got me thinking - if I had to choose between the two, would I rather live to 100, or look 25 forever? Obviously one is possible naturally, the other is somewhat possible via unnatural, expensive and painful means. So having a low tolerance to pain and no progress to date in my plastic surgery funds savings account, I guess I'll go for living until 100! (And just enjoy being 27 while I'm at that actual age).

The nutritionist in me then asked the inevitable question: what should we eat to live to a healthy 100, rather than the decrepit centenarian on life support and a plethora of medications that fuels the fear of ageing? And possibly even retain into advanced age, a degree of sexiness, aliveness, vivacity and pep? (I realise that using that word reveals a distinct lack of pep).

To answer this, we need to distinguish between life span and health span.

It's curious that in the west there is an emphasis on extending life span, rather than health span. According to United Nations estimates, Australia has the fourth-highest male life expectancy in the world (79 years) and the third-highest female life expectancy (84 years).

Big woop!

Many of us have spent time in nursing homes or seen grandparents battle with multiple chronic diseases for years leading up to their deaths. Life span seems more an indicator of how accessible modern medicine and pharmaceuticals are than how healthy a people are overall.

Life span is measured in years, but a longer life doesn't necessarily mean a healthier life. For many people in the western world, optimal health is reached between ages 20-30, after which pre-disease states start to set in and health deteriorates over the next few decades - asthma or allergies in your 20's, adrenal fatigue and PCOS in your 30's, pre-diabetes or diabetes in your 40's, high blood pressure in your 50's and so on. Check out any national health statistics for cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other chronic diseases - and the ever-younger ages people are developing these conditions - and you'll see that we have succeeded in extending our lifespans, only to spend more of our lives dying slowly.

Despite its amazing advances in treating acute health crises, modern medicine has been less successful in treating chronic disease, prolonging life span but not the proportion of life spent in an optimally healthy state. Our hospitals and nursing homes are filled with people "living" to ever increasing ages, but rather than dying late in life, people are spending more time starting to die early in life, and spending much of it in a suboptimal state of health.

Health span on the other hand, is the capacity for people to live vitality-filled, healthy lives until very late in life. According to John Robbins in his fantastic book, Healthy at 100,tThe Okinawans of Japan, Abkhasians of the Caucasus, Vilcabambans of Ecuador and the Hunzas of Pakistan are the longest-living peoples on the planet, but they also maintain incredibly high levels of health until very late in life.

So how do they do it? Sure, they exercise far more, have a respect and adulation for elders, find joy in their work and don't have a word for retirement in their vocabularies; all of this contributes to their comparitively long and vitality-filled lives. But from a purely dietary perspective, the traditional diets of these long-lived cultures are remarkably similar:

* The percentage of their diets that come from plant foods is between 90% (Abkhasians of Soviet regions) and 99% (Vilcabambans of Ecuador and the Hunzas)

* Their consumption of salt is low, and consumption of refined sugar and processed food is nil. Yep, not a smidgen of crap.

* Their overall daily calorie intake (adult males) is 1800 to 1900. In Australia, where lifestyles are far more sedentary, the average man consumes 2650 calories a day.

* In these diets, percent of calories from protein ranges from 10 percent to 15 percent, from fat it's 15-20% and from carbohydrates it's 65-74%. Mind boggling to the average westerner, who has been told to up the protein and cut the carbs in order to lose weight! The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends a daily macronutrient ratio of 10 percent to 35 percent protein, 20 percent to 35 percent fat and 45 percent to 65 percent carbohydrates.

I'm not saying we should emulate exactly the macronutrient ratios of these cultures, in the same way I don't expect we should all live in mud houses and run up mountains for 6 hours a day. These are simply points to think about and experiment with in your diet, rather than replicate exactly. And it doesn't have to complicated. In the words of Michael Pollan, "Eat real food. Mostly plants. Not too much."

For the last few weeks I’ve been volunteering on an organic farm in Tamil Nadu, Southern India. It took a period of adjustment, but I now love this part of India and particularly, planting, weeding, picking, composting and slashing in the cool mornings! I’m learning a lot about sustainable living, renewable energy and permaculture.

Being a dietitian I’m all about what to eat and how to eat it. Since my first few years as a veterinary undergrad travelling to rural Queensland for practicum, I’ve been interested in where our food comes from and the environmental impact of animal agriculture. But this is the first time I’ve actually gotten my hands into the soil and worked the land for an extended period of time.  And man, has it opened my eyes…

Starting work after a pre-dawn yoga session is a positively divine way to ground yourself first thing in the morning. With the sun rising and a gentle breeze, it’s a time when I feel calm enough to sense the energies of the garden and within my own body – and to feel that they are sustaining me. The farm is not just a place of work, but also a place of contemplation and connection with other energies.

I’ve loved being in nature for as long as I can remember. But I’ve always felt a schism within myself – that whilst I may be in nature, I am not of nature. This is perhaps the first time I’ve felt engaged with the earth, more aligned with its energies, more deeply in tune with the rhythms of living.

I’m sleeping on the ground, seeing bright stars every night and no matter how hard I scrub, have the impenetrable red dirt of work seeping into my fingernails and soles of my feet! But living closer to nature like this and being engaged with it to grow food and live off the land have helped me touch a source of life force energy.

It’s the same life force that I’ve inherently felt in natural foods - things like fresh veggies, green juices and sprouts, except this is on a larger scale. It’s really quite incredible and I feel an evolution in my understanding of human health and its close interconnection with the health of Mother Earth.

It’s as if my understanding of food as nourishment has come full circle. I now get why I had such a strong urge to come to India from Thailand - which was not part of my original plan and caused some serious upheaval and emotional angst on my part.

Here in Buddha Garden - a community farm in Auroville  by volunteers - it’s not just a question of growing vegetables, but of growing them with a particular awareness and consciousness. Growing the food we and the community need to live is not just about producing calories, vitamins and protein.

Our vegetables have a special energy that nourishes us on many levels. Doing this work is not just about completing garden tasks – it’s also about bringing a certain level of awareness and love to infuse the work while consciously working with the energies of the earth and creation.

For these reasons I’ll be bringing home a greater element of environmental consciousness to my nutrition work . I always knew in theory that SLOW food – seasonal, local, organic and whole – was best for us and for the planet. But now, having grown it, plucked it and eaten it fresh off the vine or out of the ground, I feel it in my bones. It’s as much a part of nourishing the body as choosing the right diet or getting the correct balance of nutrients – possibly more so.

I really look forward to bringing this new awareness (as well as some fun ideas for sustainable food and organic cooking workshops!) back home to share with anyone else who is interested in lightening their environmental footprint and eating more consciously. See you all in March!

Dirt encrusted hugs, Casey :)

By Palasis Cooney, wholefoods chef

Awareness is the first step of realisation. When our bodies are showing clear signs of imbalance then we may become aware something must be done about it. Nutritionally, many symptoms are created by mineral imbalances in the earth's topsoil. Depleted soil will no longer provide the nutrients for plants that we need to assimilate in our diets in order to maintain a healthy body and mind. If we are aware enough we may realise that for many nutritional deficiencies, depletion of the earth is the root cause of the problem and something must be done about it.

I have just completed a Permaculture Design course in Thailand and I'll be travelling around some more to gain experience in the principles and techniques of permaculture and self-sustainability. I went to Thailand with an open mind and had no expectations of what I was going to receive from the course.
 
The teacher Christian Shearer shared with us teachings that went beyond the physical realm and a little into the emotional and spiritual aspects of the holistic, integrated system of Permaculture Design. Through effective communication methods, clearly stated goals, the desire to meet basic human needs and effectively and consciously directed action we can form communties where all members can use their creative gifts to support it.

Permaculture seeks to create agriculturally productive systems with the diversity and sustainability of natural systems in order to provide food, water, shelter and all other needs in a a sustainable or even regenerative way.

Parallels between human and earth health

Science can be a little daunting, but science is everything we observe in the world around us and beneath us. The soil  is the main part of what I am writing about here and it is literally teaming with billions of bacteria. Guess what - so are we! Our bodies have more bacterial cells inside them than human cells and if we can understand parallels between the earth and our bodies, we can more deeply understand the problem and what needs to be done about it.

The simple yet crucial observation that I made was the distinctive similarity between the way the Earth is treated through modern agriculture, and how humans are treated - by themselves or otherwise. In Permaculture there is a model based on inputs and outputs, which shows us what elements we need to survive and thrive off an area of land and which of these the land can give us. The earth really can give us everything we need, so this simple model is not complete without considering and actioning what can we give the earth in return.

The problem with monoculture

Let's take a look at the monoculture production of iceberg lettuce, keeping in mind this process is common among all modern agricultural farming techniques who produce a monoculture. In many parts of the world, the seeds for this crop are sourced from Monsantos.

Monsantos is a sizeable corporation that monopolises the production of the most widely used crops in the world and sells their seeds to farmers in the most remote regions of the world. Once planted these genetically modified seeds produce plants that mostly produce no seeds and pollinate crops all around the vicinity to take on the same characteristics, hence no more seeds except from Monsantos.  

This is disastrous for marginalised communities struggling to survive. Monsantos provides GMO seeds to disaster stricken communities sometimes for free. Once these seeds are up and growing they require fertiliser - and it's compulsory to use Monsantos fertiliser or legal action can and is taken against farmers. This fertiliser is a cadmium (heavy metal) based salt, which rather than making the soil and plant stronger as in organic farm methods (by balancing out the semi-permeable membranes of the plant), this chemical fertiliser bloats the plant so it's basically water.

The plants appear to grow bigger and faster but it's not in any way healthier. This is when hungry insects come in to devour the compromised plants. These insects are then killed with insecticide which is cleverly stocked on the Monsantos shelf.  The soil progressively becomes more acidic and the soil structure is weakened. The bacterial balance in the soil is disturbed as pathogenic lifeforms multiply and plants are unable to utilise the normal decaying organic matter to be healthy. Fungal disease then sets in and Monsantos again stocks the fungicides used as a bandaid solution to the mounting problem.

With bacteria and fungal balance compromised and soil more acidic than is viable, the earth will still attempt to naturally heal itself. There are some plant species that grow in dead soil to restore and regenerate it - these are weeds and legumes. They are nitrogen fixers, that is, they take nitrogen from the atmosphere into the roots and make it available for the bacteria and fungi to use and continue the natural process with nematodes and protozoa and eventually, the plants. However, this process is seen as a threat of course and out comes the Monsantos branded herbicides to destroy any chance of soil survival.

A minor saving grace to provide beneficial nutrients to the soil is this: once the crop is gone and in the travelling process to Woolworths or Coles, a piddly spread of three elements is dusted over the soil in the form of NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium). This keeps the soil weak enough to remain sick and strong enough for sellable plants to grow. Under this model, when the bare minimum of three elements are used as sole fertiliser, the Monsantos chemical cocktail is necessitated to keep plants alive.

It seems to me like the Earth's soil is on a life support system. By continuing to operate in this reductionist system we are inevitably the ones paying the price in our health and that of the earth.

This is the same process used by the meat industry and poultry. How long does it take for a chicken to get to your table? Around 6 weeks. Six miserable weeks of being fed antibiotics, growth hormones, and being stuffed into a lot with thousands of other birds. The birds are unable to partake in natural chicken behaviours - moving around the garden eating insects and fruit, and scratching about helping feed back manure into the system of life. The chicken can't move and has broken bones as it grows too quickly and puts on mass too quickly for the bones to catch up. It's a quick solution to get the money in the poultry meat industry's pocket as quickly as possible. Let's not mention the marketing that goes with it. 

Net effects on human health

Food is one of the most basic ways for a human being to nourish his or her mind, body and spirit. How can we possibly have a fighting chance if we are being fed a chemical cocktail of hazardous sprays, heads of lettuce mostly made up water and a mix of three basic elements out of the dozens that our bodies need? 

When we mix the problem of depleted soils and nutrtiionally devoid produce with highly processed convenience foods, we create a state of health and a corresponding societal structure that leaves many people feeling stressed, depressed, and empty on so many levels. Intentionally or not, this feeds another infamous industry: pharmaceuticals.

We are being kept alive enough to keep the major food industries profitable, and sick enough to assist the pharmaceutical industry. Those in control are not dealing with the problems, but rather applying bandaid solutions that are cheaper. If this is sounding eerily similar to the health solutions applied to humans, you are justified in your alarm. All health issues, whether human health or land fecundity, need to be dealt with at the root cause of the problem, rather than symptomatically. This is what holistic human health systems and permaculture have in common.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that the underlying cause of suffering in the world can begin to be solved by healing the earth's soil. Leading permculturalist Geoff Lawton said, " You can solve all the worlds problems in the soil". By improving the quality of the soil - the source of where our food comes from - and by creating massive diversity in our gardens, plants will be healthier, stronger and more resistant to disease. We would have no need for insecticides, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. 

Grow local, buy local, eat sustainable

By supporting local growers in your community, you will know where your food is coming from and you'll be eating food that's in season. We are a product of our environment, and by obeying the laws of nature, living in harmony with our natural biocosmic and bioregional cycles, our own health and immunity is bolstered.

We each have a role to play. Humans are just as important as the bacteria and fungus in the soil, just our being here creates an environment for other species to survive and interact with each other. We have the power to form communities and grow our own food on a local scale, thus creating more unity, more beauty in bio-diversity, and greater health on every level. 

Are you in?

When I return, i'll be bringing with me a plan to establish community gardens, building on the progress we are already starting to see in our local community and on the Gold Coast in general. This plan will require community support from anyone interested in taking control of their lives. There is no need to be bound to an unsustainable system when we can instead utiluse tried and true systems that have nurtured and sustained indigenous cultures all over the world for tens of thousands of years. I'll show you what to grow, how to grow it, when, where and why. Time is going by fast we need to look after ourselves and each other, NOW, to end the suffering.