Much Ado about Diet

[I think I'll dispense with the original title of this post, which was "Wacky Way to Save Money #7: Eating Cat Food" (Betcha thought I'd have abandoned this whole wacky way thing back in November...nope...I'm way too stodgy and Germanic for that...I've also had my sense of humor surgically removed without my knowledge, says my husband. Oh, no, it was bred out, says I...long about the time the Reformation hit).

The post in a nutshell was going to say, go read the ingredients in your pet's food bag, realize that those are actually the cheapest and healthiest things in the market, and stock your pantry with those. Well, I was wrong, so let's move on (Whew! Dodged that one!).
So--on with the actual post!]

Our cat is fat.

So fat, in fact, that every person to visit our house in the last year, be they friend or family member, has remarked, almost without variation in diction, "That is one fat cat." My response is usually something like, "Oh, we've tried to put her on a diet..." to which one friend of the family deadpanned, "Too late." Well...what is she eating?

I checked the bag: Chicken, chicken by-product meal (yum), corn meal, corn grits, chicken meal, dried beet pulp, dried egg product, natural chicken flavor, sodium bisulfate, potassium chloride, fish oil, DL-Methionine, brewer's dried yeast, choline chloride, calcium carbonate, vitamins [list of vitamins]. Yeah, that's the reaction I had. Not much of an article. Then the whole idea got shelved for awhile, 'cuz life got busy (as it always does). But there's nothing like chronic pain to get your attention.

I thought it was just the typical late-winter cold. Heck, I might even have had the flu. I certainly wouldn't have noticed the difference. I just felt old. Stiff, sore, creaky, cranky, perpetually fatigued, with sore places in my teeth, back, and knees. Now granted I wasn't doing anything to help my health. I was staying up late on the Internet, eating all the calories I could get my hands on (to feed the baby), and just trying to get my work done around the house. And while I'm not overweight, I sure felt bloated, even after a BM. Constipation had become my constant companion, and with the onset of seasonal allergies, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. Then one day the chest pain hit. Oh, crap, I thought. What the heck is this pain?

It bothered me so much, I parked the kids with sweet Rachel (who is surely some angel sent from God, in the form of a friend), and went to urgent care. They took blood, did a chest x-ray and EKG. Everything turned out normal. We discussed gall bladder disease (since my husband had had that, and the pain didn't start until I ate a loaded-with-hydrogenated-fat turnover from the store), which tends to hit women after they've had a few kids.. But I can't say I was convinced. Perhaps this was some kind of stealth angina. It surely wasn't in my head. I felt like I had a box on my chest, and the feeling didn't go away in a few hours or a few days.

The one person I hadn't talked with yet was my midwife (the one who says I gave Tom the milk allergy. Why's she always telling me things I don't want to hear? Like..."Push!"). She said my labs had always been normal, and poo-poohed the idea of gallbladder disease. "With all the allergies in your family, you might have a wheat allergy," she said. What? She then went on to describe how she and her epileptic husband had felt soooo much better on a wheat-free diet and he had even stopped seizing. Yeah, right, I thought. We had a good conversation, but I didn't give any credence to the wheat idea until the next time I sat at my computer and Googled "gall bladder disease." I read for about an hour but nothing clicked. The next day, I thought about how Mary had been right about the whole allergy thing and felt like a heel for doubting her. So I googled "wheat allergy," and then narrowed it to "food intolerance". What I found blasted my socks off, but as usual if I post all my newfangled ideas in one breath, as it were, I might phrase it the wrong way, or sound too credulous. So I'll think about it a bit more while I brew up my findings.

***

So now I've had time to think and, while I would prefer to get my thoughts down in a traditional, organized, scholarly fashion, I do most things on the fly nowadays, so here goes...

Food is important. I think everybody agrees on that. I mean, people in third world countries are starving because rice (and wheat) is so expensive now. And I think it safe to say that we rely on grains more than any other food source. After all, it doesn't take much space to plant a bountiful vegetable garden (at least, a square foot garden). And we would all benefit from having a fruit or nut tree in our yards. But who can grow wheat by themselves? I mean, don't we need wheat (and corn, rice, dairy cows, and soybeans) to live? Well, it's an open question.

Alert readers may have noticed me touting a three-to-six month emergency food pantry to economize on grocery bills. And while this all seemed like common sense to me, I didn't take into account varied diets and the importance to health of a variety of fresh food. I really don't want the lawsuits of people who've followed my advice and lived on shelf-stable canned food and flour that was at least three month old. There's more to this issue than saving money--however that might go against the (tightwad) grain.

After I had my pain episode described above, I found a particular diet on the Internet that helped me. And while I don't want to tout the benefits of one diet guru or philosophy over another, I found a high likelihood that food allergies were causing problems for more people in our family than just my son Tom. This particular diet requires the consumption of more fresh, whole foods, as do others that endorse whole foods, raw foods, sprouting/fermentation along with the shunning of all processed (read: shelf-stable) food that you buy at the grocery store. Which presents us with a problem.

What do you stock your pantry with, if you're dependent on whole/fresh/raw/otherwise perishable foods? My aim here is not only to minimize cost, but to maximize nutrition, as well as to provide a measure of security in tough times. Can any of these foods be stored? For how long?(This is just brainstorming here, so if you have experience in this area, please give me your suggestions):

1. Dried fruits, vegetables, and meat: Many whole natural foods can be successfully preserved by dehydration. Consider buying a dehydrator if you have abundant garden produce or a fruit tree.

2. Pickled or canned preserves and vegetable relishes (home canned, store-bought if necessary): Look for low/no sugar and no preservatives. Includes sauerkraut or other pickled greens. Organic would be great.

3. Whole grains: brown rice, wheat berries, whole oats, barley, lentils, and beans may be stored in a cool, dark, dry place, such as a root cellar. Soak overnight in warm water, then cook gently.

4. Frozen meats and stocks: Assuming you have an extra freezer, you can preserve many kinds of food, including raw nuts and seeds, extra loaves of bread, or specialty flours.

5. Certain fresh vegetables of the winter/root variety can be stored in the ground or in a cool, dark cellar: Such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, squash. I read somewhere that you can pack them in sand as well (A root cellar can be a waterproof garbage can half-buried in the ground and covered with leaves).

6. Specialty products: Such as powdered goat/cow milk, soy/rice milks in shelf-stable containers, baking mixes, spices and seasonings, chocolate, sweeteners, tea and coffee, etc.

Whew! That's a longer list than I expected. It seems that building a food pantry makes sense no matter what diet you're on.

One more thought about the higher cost of "healthy" food. Nobody wants to pay less for their food than me, I assure you. I've spent four years creating the ultimate tightwad-from-scratch kitchen. But are potential health problems worth it in the long haul? Were my food policies harming my family? Perhaps. By buying only what was on sale, clearance, or markdown, I was always buying the oldest of the old. I thought it couldn't be unhealthy because I was always cooking from scratch (or because I grew up on processed cheese and canned tomato soup). But since then I've widened my view...it makes more sense to pay a little more now for the highest quality food you can find, rather than risk ill health, reduced quality of life, and higher medical bills later.