joel salatin chs

8/20/2019 Joel Salatin CHS

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/joel-salatin-chs 1/5

© 2014 Lotus Health Project. All rights reserved. 1

Join the Integrity Food Movement! For Your Health and the Health of Your

ChildrenAuthor: Joel Salatin

The contents of this presentation are for informational purposes only and are not

intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any

questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

We live in a time when food gets short shrift. The

historical repast has turned into a lap-meal between

stoplights. How we view food indicates the respect wehave to our bodies specifically and the earth

generally. Food is body fuel, just like gas is car

fuel. Would you put gas-like substances in yourcar? Why would we put food-like substances in ourbodies?

Junky fuel makes a car run bad. Junky food makes abody run bad. What is junky food? Many people have tried to define it, so I'll borrow

some of the most common threads and weave them into a practical litmus test.

1. Unpronounceable ingredients. If you can't say it, you probably shouldn't eat it. Isn't

that simple enough? Humans have never eaten laboratory concoctions until extremely

recent decades. The food dyes, stabilizers, flavor enhancers brewed up in laboratoriesinstead of kitchens have no place in the human diet. If the food-like substance

emanates from something that looks more like a Dow Chemical laboratory than your

home kitchen, it'll probably clog your system and shut down your engine.

2. Broad ingredients, like natural flavors or artificial sweeteners. This includessubstitutions for the real thing, like Aspartame rather than cane sugar. If it has cloves,

why can't they say cloves? The point is that whenever a food has to include non-foodbroad items, you can be sure those are non-food enhancers foreign to your intestinalmicro-flora and fauna.

3. Anything not available before 1900. This is one of Michael Pollan's rules, and it's

probably pretty good. Dolly Madison and Martha Jefferson used a host of foods most

people have never heard of today. From chokecherries to currants, our ancestors ate a




far larger variety of food than most moderns. The supermarkettoday is primarily a four-color cardboard sales pitch to eat corn

and soybeans in a lot of different ways. We can all be thankfulthat hot dogs were introduced at the 1890 world's fair—they

just slipped in under the radar.

4. Anything advertised on TV. If the company and food item

are big enough to pay for TV advertising, you can be sure that it's merely a food-like

substance that's more junk than real. The smart thing is to stay away from anythingadvertised on TV. This is far easier if you're like me and don't have a TV. Especially for

your kids. Who needs it? Get them in the kitchen whipping up dinner with you.

5. If it won't rot. If you put food out on the counter at ambient temperature and it's

stable when under natural conditions it would spoil, don't indulge. That includes organic

ultra-pasteurized milk that's shelf-stable (no refrigeration required) for up to sixmonths. Folks, that ain't normal. You can squirt Velveeta cheese on a plate and leave itin the dining room table for months. It won't mold, desiccate, liquefy or smell bad. Ifyou put real living cheese on a plate and leave it at room temperature, within a day or

two it'll sprout fuzzy mold and within a week, sprout legs and walk off the table. It'sgoing places. If food won't rot, it won't decompose, and digestion is decomposition just

like a compost pile.

6. If it honors the pigness of pigs. This is a broad ranging idea, but it speaks tobiological and environmental integrity. If the food doesn't build soil and honor the

physiological distinctiveness of life, it cheapens eating to an act of desecration rather

than reverence. This means you have to do some sleuthing. If the government thinksthe food is great, it's probably taken environmental or ethical shortcuts to get to yourplate. This rules out meat, dairy and poultry grown in unnatural conditions likeConcentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). It rules out genetically modified

foods that represent the pinnacle of hubris toward life. It rules out chemical fertilizers

that destroy soil, pesticides, herbicides and anything that aids and abets the NewJersey-sized dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

You can't be a bystander and expect life to take care of you.




In general, you want whole, unprocessed foods that you prepare, package, preserve,

and process in your own kitchen from sources you've vetted either by third partyassociation or personally. Yes, this takes a bit of participation. You can't be a bystander

and expect life to take care of you. You have to become an active participant in somevisceral element of life. Obviously not every morsel can or will pass these tests.

Goodness, I enjoy a Snickers Bar about twice a year, too. But in the main, these are

the ideas that will put you into the clean body fuel business.

You see, in the end food defines our view of earth stewardship. Riparian dead zones,effluent spills from CAFOs, and poisoned children in tomato fields are a direct result of

how we choose to eat. When we patronize a system that assaults our ecological womb

as egregiously as factory-farmed, chemical-based food, we're are guilty accomplices inhurting the earth and our own bodies.

This means we have to think ahead. Here are some ideas to help us eat withconscience.

1. Take all the entertainment/recreational time and money budgeted for one year and

spend it on treasure hunting your local integrity food providers. Every area issurrounded by integrity farmers and food purveyors, but they are literally a

subculture. You have to join their tribe, enter their subculture, and a whole host ofnutrient-dense integrity food will become available.

2. Develop domestic culinary arts. Most moderns are

far removed from some of the most basic culinary skills,like how to cut up a chicken or prepare a butternut

squash. "Get in the kitchen" sounds like banishment to

remote island exile. Rather, it should be a wake up call

for what we've lost. No civilization deserves or enjoys

integrity food when its people mass-exit personalawareness and responsibility toward food. We fear

what we don't know; participating is the way to beinformed and therefore comfortable with food.

3. Techno-gadgetize your kitchen to make the job easier. What could possibly be easier

than a slow cooker or crock pot? Teresa and I give them out as wedding gifts. I can't

fathom how many households do not have a slow cooker. It's the quickest and easiest

way to prepare a meal. Grab a steak or roast, throw in some potatoes, onions and




carrots, and plug it in on your way out the door. At 40 watts it bubbles along all day

using half the energy of a light bulb, and if you come home at 5:00, dinner's ready; at8:00, dinner's ready. Never burned and always just right. Bread makers, ice cream

makers, Cuisinarts, timed bake. Today's kitchen is not a place of drudgery; it's a placeof space age convenience. Enjoy it.

4. Cultivate leftovers. A thermos with hot stew is far cheaper and nutritious than fast

food. At our home, we never cook lunch—even though as a farmer I work from

home. It takes too much time. A slice of cheese and an apple is just fine if we don't

have leftovers. But usually I can find some leftover lasagna or casserole. The fact thatthe industrial food system now sells individual servings of things shows how seldom

people sit down and eat together but also indicates a disdain for leftovers.

Ultimately, we cannot have physical health if we don't have planetary health. We can't

have planetary health until we start eating in a way that heals our landscape

nest. Figuring out how to grow food in a way that heals the ecology and stimulatesnutrition must captivate our creativity and vocation. Here are some ideas for gettingthat done.

1. Grow something yourself. I'm a hugefan of kitchen chickens. Get rid of the

cat, dog, gerbil and boa constrictor. Twochickens are far more enjoyable and

functional. They eat all your kitchen

scraps and gratefully give you eggs for

their work. How about that? And talkabout a role model for children. They get

up early, happily work all day, turn scraps

into usefulness, and then go to bed real

early with no desire to run around at

night. A dog and cat just sit aroundwaiting for you to take care of

them. That's a horrible role model for kids. Chickens are the real deal. How about potgardens—growing food in pots? What were you thinking? Ha! Lots of innovation hasgone into urban food growing. Enjoy it. Edible landscaping. The U.S. has 26 millionacres of lawn. Certainly a portion of that could be turned into edible production. How

about a beehive on the roof? Grow your own honey.




2. Find your farmer. Realize that knowing

your food is at least as important asregistering the kiddos for the soccer

league. Wouldn't it be nice if we could livewith integrity without having to think about

it? But everything worth doing requires

effort. And change requires, well,

change. You can't keep doing the same things

and expect different results. Many integrity

food producers are desperate for just a fewmore customers who will push them over the

profitability edge and let them quit the commute to the town job to support their farm

habit. Wake up and appreciate that you have the distinct privilege and honor to enableone of these struggling integrity farmers to succeed. That's real ministry.

3. Buy in bulk and in season. You can save a lot of shopping time and grocery moneyby buying volumes, whether it's bushels of beans and canning them or half a beef andputting it in your freezer. Don't have one big enough? Throw out the entertainmentcenter and put in a freezer. It'll take less energy and be far more enjoyable in the long

run. I know this is radical stuff, but, folks, integrity takes radical action. It doesn'tcome naturally. We love quick fixes, short cuts, and something for nothing. But none of

this ultimately works. When will we be radical enough to change our state ofaffairs? Amazingly, what I'm suggesting is the way everyone lived by default not very

long ago. It's actually much more historically normal than the supermarket with sku-

numbered microwaveable packets of food-like substances.

What do you say? Shall we join the integrity food movement? Is it worth it? These are

rhetorical questions, by the way. Together, we can embrace our ecological nest, both

inside us and outside us, and caress this awesome biological reality--life. Let's do it

together.

joel salatin chs

Documents