Eggs – A Carton of Confusion?

Eggs are undoubtedly one of my favourite foods. They are quick and easy to prepare, super versatile and pretty darn cost effective too! But head into any grocery store and you’ll be confronted with the “WALL OF EGGS”. Natural, cage free, free range, pasture raised – suddenly the simple egg got a lot more complicated! Are the 5.99/dozen eggs really better for me than the 3.99/dozen brand? What’s the difference between cage free and free range? Let’s “crack” the code on this once and for all!

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

If the wide variety of terms on those cartons has got you confused, use the list I’ve created below to identify which terms have clout and which are just marketing fluff.

Regular (No Special Label)

Eggs without any other qualifying label on them are generally laid by hens fed a conventional, vegetarian diet. The hens are often caged or kept indoors without access to natural light or the outdoors. As they are kept in close quarters, they may also be debeaked to prevent them from pecking each other.

Natural/All Natural

These are purely marketing terms meant to trick the purchaser into thinking they are buying a superior product. There is no certification or verification needed to use these terms. Hens are likely fed and raised in the same conditions as those producing “regular” eggs.

Farm Fresh

Sounds great, but here is another term that has no regulation. These eggs can come from large industrial facilities and caged hens.

Free Range

Finally, a label with meaning! To use the “Free Range” label, producers must prove that the hens have been allowed access to the outdoors for at least 51% of their lives. BUT – and it’s a big but…there is no regulation regarding either the type or size of outdoor space. They could have access to dirt, a cement covered patio or pasture. As there is no regulation with regards to the size of the outdoor space, overcrowding is not uncommon and de-beaking is permitted.

No Antibiotics Added

This is another sneaky label. Producers are not allowed to sell eggs from hens treated with antibiotics and must wait a specified period of time after treatment is complete before they can sell the hen’s wares. In short, ALL eggs are antibiotic free.

Certified Organic

Organic eggs are laid by hens who are fed organic feed (free of pesticides and chemicals). There is no regulation as to how they are housed or the amount of outdoor access they have and, again, de-beaking is allowed.

Omega-3-Enriched

Hens are fed a vegetarian diet higher in Omega-3 fatty acids. This is often accomplished by adding flax seed to the diet. Again, there is no regulation as far as housing of the hens.

Cage Free

Hens are raised without cages, but this does not mean they have access to the outdoors. Often they are kept in large warehouses and in crowded conditions. Beak trimming is permitted.

Vegetarian Fed

Well, for starters, chickens are omnivores. Their natural diet would include protein from insects and worms, along with nutrients found in grasses. Vegetarian feed contains no animal products and would derive it’s protein from vegetarian sources, like soybeans. So really, a solely vegetarian diet is not a chicken’s natural diet.

Pasture Raised

This term implies that the hens are allowed full access to the outdoors to meander around the pastures are able to forage around for those bugs and grubs that are part of their natural diet. This isn’t a legal or regulated definition, so you want to do your homework to ensure the producer’s claim of pasture raised is accurate! Some companies, like Vital Farms, print the name of the farm where the eggs were produced on their cartons. You can go to their website and search for the farm to see the chickens in their pasture. Another great way to do ensure you are getting what you paid for is to get your eggs directly from the farmer!

Budget is always going to be a factor when we are filling our grocery cart, but how the animals are raised and fed should also hold some weight. In my next post in the series, I’ll discuss a couple of eggy myths and misconceptions before I dive into my final post on whether or not eggs are a valuable part of a nutrient dense, whole foods diet (spoiler alert…heck yes they are!).

Sources

Dessy, M. (2017). The Pantry Principle.Versadia Press

Food Labels Exposed [Booklet]. (2018). N.P.:A Greener World

July 2, 2020July 2, 2020

Minding Your Stress Bucket

Well Hello!! It’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything on here. Does anyone else feel like the days are going by faster since this whole pandemic thing started? I mean, it’s JULY already! Where did the last 4 months go?

I could use every excuse in the book as to why I haven’t been blogging regularly. I’ve been prepping for an upcoming board exam and working on my business. I wanted to be outside in the warm(ish) weather and, perhaps more than anything else, I needed to get away from my computer screen. Is anyone else just TOTALLY “Zoomed” out? Although these are all fine reasons, the truth is, I just really needed to drop some stuff out of my bucket.

I imagine our body’s ability to deal with stressors like a big bucket, a stress bucket. Everyone’s bucket is different. Some are a little smaller than others and fill up more quickly, whereas others are quite large and can hold quite a bit!

Our bodies are built to handle quite a lot of stress, in all it’s different forms. They protect us from immediate dangers by initiating our fight or flight response. They deal with foreign invaders, like bacteria and viruses, through our immune response. They deal with and eliminate toxins we produce or ingest – but they weren’t built for the multitude of stressors in this modern life of ours.

Many things take up room in our stress buckets:

Mental and Emotional Stressors

Work, Relationship or Financial issues
Feelings of anger, sadness, loneliness, depression, anxiety and worry

Physiological Stressors

Lack of sleep
Toxins in our environment or diet – pesticides, chemicals in household and personal products, processed foods, sugar, unhealthy fats, EMF exposure, pollution
Nutrient deficiencies from a poor diet
Illness or injury
Over or under exertion

Our bodies work exceedingly hard to manage all these stressors and keep that ol’ bucket from overflowing. They strive for balance (or homeostasis) at all times, even if that means stealing energy and nutrients from one system in the body to keep another from crashing and burning. You can see that, without bailing some of those stressors out of the bucket, resources eventually run out. We become less resilient to the effects of stress of our body. That’s when we start to see illness and chronic disease . rear their ugly little heads. Think about Christmas holidays. It’s pretty common for people to get sick right around the holiday season. We’ve got parties and menus to plan, we are dealing with a lot of family and trying to keep everyone happy. We are often financially stressed and, of course, we are ingesting a lot of maybe not so nutritious foods and beverages. That’s a lot of stuff being dropped in our stress buckets at one time – especially if our bucket was already half full! Eventually, things start to slop over the rim and we end up miserable, nursing a cold and just praying for it all to be over.

So back to my absence from the blog. Let’s see how my stress bucket was faring….

I’m preparing for the Holistic Nutrition Board Exam
I’ve just recently joined a networking group that requires me to prepare and deliver a short speech on a weekly basis (This is like a mini pailful of stress added to my bucket every week. Public speaking is well outside of my comfort zone!)
I’m working on managing Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (an autoimmune disease), which among symptoms like fatigue and lack of motivation, is causing me to lose hair like crazy. Seriously, my cat and are are competing to see who can leave the most hairballs around the house! Not the end of the world, but my vanity would disagree. Definitely contributing to some emotional stress!
I’m a small business owner in an economic downturn, trying my darnedest to make a go of this entrepreneur thing and contribute to our household finances.
We are in the midst of this pandemic – so, like many, I’m feeling a little isolated. I’m also homesick for my Canadian brethren and not knowing when I’ll be able to see family and friends across the border is tough!
Of course, I eat a pretty decent diet (gotta walk the talk), but I’ll admit that some comfort foods started making a frequent appearance on my plate. I got a little TOO into baking grain free scones for a while there.
I try to keep my toxin exposure as minimal as possible by buying organic, using safer personal products and cleaning with Norwex products, but I had been putting in a LOT of screen time between Zoom meetings and scouring social media for all the latest “viral” news.
My sleep has been wonky due to worrying about all of the above!

So there you have it – not a terrible list, but I was starting to feel a little bit of overwhelm. So, I listened to what my body was whispering to me before it began SHOUTING. I had to take the ladle to the bucket and lighten the load before it overflowed. I put the blogging on hold so I could focus on some other, behind the scenes, business stuff. I ditched the homemade treats and refocused on incorporating lots of bright, colourful veggies in my diet. I mixed up my workouts and added in some nice neighbourhood walks with the hubby. I gave myself permission to NOT be a perfect public speaker on my zoom calls and to start to accept that being uncomfortable is part of growth. I’ve been utilizing breathing exercised and getting outside more

Ways to Lighten the Load in Your Buckets

Breathing Techniques – Check out this website for some inspiration.
Tapping – Learn more here .
Reframing – Did you know that the difference between excitement and anxiety often lies in how we interpret them? Find out more here.
Movement – Any type of movement helps drain our stress bucket by promoting feel good endorphins and burning off excess stress hormone (cortisol). Stick with lower intensity activities if your bucket is really full. Overexertion can ADD to the bucket if your system is already taxed.
Getting outdoors – Soak up some sun, breathe some fresh air and connect with nature!
Hydrating – Most people are walking around dehydrated, try to consume half your body weight in ounces of clean, filtered water daily.
Prioritize sleep – Aim for 7 to 8 hours a night.
Take a break from the screens!! Not only can the blue light from our devices affect our sleep, the constant barrage of crazy from social media feeds isn’t doing anybody’s stress levels any favours.
Do your best to avoid toxins in your food products, cleaning supplies and personal products – Some great brands to check out are BeautyCounter, Native and Norwex
Eat a nutrient rich diet – Avoid processed and refined foods and focus on eating ALL the colours of the rainbow.

There’s no way to avoid stress completely – in fact, some stress is good for us. It gives us a sense of purpose and motivation. But everyone’s perception of stress will differ and what is only a “drop in the bucket” to one person may be a tsunami to someone else. So take stock of what is in your stress bucket and, if it’s feeling like it’s getting a little too full – it’s time to put a hole in that bucket, dear Liza. (I REALLY hope someone gets that reference!)

March 23, 2020March 23, 2020

The Monday Mention – Wired to Eat by Robb Wolf

I have been following Robb Wolf since he released his first book, The Paleo Solution, back in 2010. Our CrossFit community had formed a book club of sorts and Robb’s book was first on the list. Since then, I’ve followed along as he’s broadened his reach into podcasting, seminars and health coaching. I enjoy his no-nonsense, humour laden writing style so when he released his second book, Wired To Eat, I knew it would be making it to my bookshelf fairly quickly.

In broad terms, Wired To Eat focuses on exactly that – ancestrally, we are wired to eat as much as we can for survival. Our ancestors needed to eat all they could when food was plentiful to prepare for times of famine. In today’s world of hyper palatable, processed foods that are super convenient to procure or even have delivered right to your home – our wiring is creating a multitude of problems. As the author states, if you are “not fat, sick and diabetic, you are, from a biological perspective, ‘screwing up’” (pg.13). We ARE wired to eat, but to eat foods that are whole and unprocessed and to have to expend a lot of energy sourcing these foods. Modern diets are devoid of both of these factors and we are paying the price. By following the concepts laid out in Wired To Eat, readers can work toward balancing their blood sugar, decreasing insulin resistance, repairing their appetites and preventing chronic disease states.

Although both of Wolf’s books are similar in style and promote a “Paleo” style approach to eating, I found it interesting to see how his dietary lens has shifted in the last decade. Wired To Eat focuses much more on people’s bioindividuality. Yes, he still promotes the paleo approach and a low carbohydrate, whole foods diet, but he specifies that this way of eating is just a starting point. It is a way to rewire your body to a whole, natural foods appetite and then focus on customizing it to your own unique needs. The book focuses mainly on carbohydrate tolerance by testing the affects of certain carbohydrates on blood sugar levels. The main takeaway, however, is that no one diet is perfect for everyone and we must do the work to find out what works best for our own “wiring”.

The bioindividual approach of this book lines up perfectly with my beliefs as a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. Beyond diet, the author also delves into the importance of non-dietary factors, such as sleep, community, stress and movement on one’s overall health. He spends a lot of time on these areas, seeing them as pillars of health, just as important as diet. These are all areas of focus in my practice as well.

I think this book would be a good, informational read for any reader. So many people try a “Paleo” style diet as a last resort and I feel we must educate people to incorporate a whole foods, ancestral type diet before they are in crisis. The information in this book can be quite scientific and some may feel a little overwhelmed by it. However, Wolf does a great job making the information as approachable and enjoyable to read as possible. I think Wired To Eat would be a great resource in combination with working with a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner who can clarify specific ideas and be available for further discussion. Anyone who has become “carb-phobic” would also benefit from this resource, as it can slowly guide them through the process of adding in certain carbohydrates and finding out how well they handle them.

Wired To Eat highlights the importance of bioindividuality. It delves deep into the why and how of personalized nutrition and how lifestyle choices also play a vital role in one’s health. Through his humour and casual writing style, Robb Wolf makes these topics both accessible and enjoyable for his readers and provides a plan that makes changing one’s dietary outlook and health doable.

Rating 4.5 Peaks — My Rating: 4.5/5 Peaks

November 4, 2019December 1, 2019

The Monday Mention – The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

There’s something you should know about me… I’m a bibliophile, a bookworm, an avid reader. Whatever you want to call it, there is nothing I love more than immersing myself in a good book – especially when the sunny Pacific Northwest summer days turn to day after day of drizzle. Now, I’m no snob when it comes to my reading material – give me a mystery, a biography, an old classic or a science laden textbook – heck, even the back of a shampoo bottle – and I’m a happy camper. So I’ve decided I should use at least some of the hours I spend with my nose buried in a book as fodder for this blog and share my thoughts on some of my favourite, and maybe not so favourite, health and nutrition related tomes.

First, a Favourite….

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma – A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan confronts the seemingly simple questions of “What should we eat?” and “Where does my food come from?”. By tracking four meals back through the food chain, Pollan discovers that the choices we make when it comes to our food reach far beyond merely deciding meat or vegetable, low fat or high fat. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is less about choosing from the variety of foods we COULD eat and more about determining what we SHOULD eat, as these choices not only affect our health, but have political, ethical, environmental and financial consequences as well.

Throughout the book, Pollan takes us through the sourcing of meals supplied by three different food chains, the industrial, the organic (both industrial and pastoral) and the hunter gatherer. Tracing these meals back to their roots provides some surprising and disturbing insights related to each of these food systems. Industrialized corn, by being massively overproduced and subsidized by the government, has found it’s way into virtually everything we eat — whether it is the feed used to produce meat, high fructose corn syrup or other additives used in processed foods. The variety we see at the grocery store is really an illusion, as the industrialized food system has turned our society of omnivores into specialized eaters of corn (pg. 117). Ironically, the mountain of corn produced on farms each year cannot support the farmers themselves, either physically (as it must be processed to be eaten) or financially. Today’s monoculture farms are really nothing more than food deserts (pg.34).

The organic food system, through absence of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, is undoubtedly healthier than the basic industrial system. The differences between the two, however, stop there. With mono crops and their need for fertilizers (even if organic) due to soil depletion, the petrochemicals used in shipping and the use of synthetics in food production, organic now resembles industrial more than ever. The industry uses marketing and catch phrases to lull the consumer into believing what they are buying is good for them, the animals and the environment.

Conversely, the pastoral farm system (absolutely my favourite section of the book) relies on a symbiotic relationship between the earth and animal and between different species of animals, as well. It’s a system that recognizes the bio-individuality of the animal and lets them express their innate instincts. This type of sustainable system creates an ecological loop, where waste basically ceases to exist. The environmental and moral benefits of this way of farming are obvious but, as Pollan recounts, not without its own set of issues. There is little support for the sustainable farmer as he has no need for the chemicals, machines and fertilizers sold by the companies that are most likely bankrolling the policy makers. Lack of subsidies and regulations forbidding the slaughter of animals on site all add to the cost of the food produced. As such, sustainable food is seen as something only the moderately wealthy can afford. This is another aspect of the Omnivore’s Dilemma explored in the book – does the money saved by buying government subsidized, mass produced, nutrient poor food offset its cost to our health, environment and ethical well being?

My much loved copy. Shoved into carry-on bags, left out on the patio and thumbed through relentlessly, I’ve read it several times and I think it has a few reads left in it!

The final meal prepared by the author was one he hunted and gathered himself. Pollan readily admits that this is not a viable way to source all food in today’s world, but in exploring this simplest of food chains he was able to re-establish a connection to and a gratitude for his food that is lacking in most standard food systems. He also explores the idea that America’s lack of culinary traditions (wisdom passed down by our ancestors informing us of what we should eat and how it should be prepared) leaves us prone to confusion and “Omnivore Anxiety” (Pg.300). Without guidelines provided by our culture, we are more apt to follow the advice of so-called experts, the slick words of marketers and sadly, end up with a fad diet not tailored for us, but for the pocket books of big business.

I would implore anyone who eats food to read this book. Whether you eat industrially, organically or sustainably, you should know where your food comes from so you are making educated choices. One reason I chose to review this book is because, as a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, I advise clients to source food from sustainable producers as much as possible – food that is local, seasonal, nutritionally dense and, in many cases, more expensive than what, on the surface, looks to be the same product sold at the grocery store for less money. Being able to discuss how your food choices affect your health, the environment and even influence the food economy is vital. The observations Michael Pollan makes in The Omnivore’s Dilemma align well with the principles of Nutritional Therapy and delve further in to the question of what we should eat than just looking at what is healthier for the individual. The more we educate ourselves, the less complex the Omnivore’s dilemma becomes. By gathering this knowledge, we empower ourselves to make changes that benefit our wellbeing, the wellbeing of our land and animals and the wellbeing of our food system as a whole. Joel Salatin, the “Godfather” of sustainable farming practices, is quoted in the book as saying, “In nature, health is the default. Most of the time pests and disease are just nature’s way of telling the farmer he’s doing something wrong” (pg.321). Perhaps the same could be said of our human diet. The rise in chronic diseases that we are experiencing could very well be Nature’s way of telling us that what we are eating is wrong.

References

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals. New York : Penguin Press, 2006. Print.