January 2010

Back in November -- appropriately enough, on Thanksgiving Day -- four scientists for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, published a report about the environmental impact of food waste in America. They calculated that, every year, as much as 40 percent of America’s food supply is discarded! (That’s a 28 percent increase, by the way, since 1974.) If you divide that amount among every man, woman and child living in the U.S., we’re talking 1,400 kilocalories -- or 1.4 million calories -- per day, per person, that end up in the trash.

It's not terribly unusual for me to come home from a meeting with food. Whether it be Surly cupcakes from the Salty Tart bakery, Fisher Farms bacon from the Birchwood Cafe, or a whole heritage chicken from Jackson Hollow farm, I spend a lot of time talking about food, surrounded by food, and tempted by food. Still, even for me, it felt a bit strange to leave a meeting with my arms full of frozen, organic baby food: sweet potatoes, apples, a carrots/beets and rice combo, and more.

Before we get to the remaining five foods on the list of the 10 most healthful foods that we probably don’t eat, but definitely should, let’s review the first five: cabbage, beets, guava, Swiss chard, and cinnamon. We learned that cabbage boosts our production of sulforaphane, which is a powerful cancer-fighter; beets reduce the level of artery-damaging homocysteine in our blood; guavas are the best source of lycopene, which is key to maintaining prostate health; Swiss chard contains powerful carotenoids, which help keep your retinas young; and cinnamon helps to stabilize your blood sugar.

A wise friend once said “awareness rocks!” I couldn’t agree more. When I started down the detox path myself, I realized that all of my researching, experimenting and learning about less toxic eating was coagulating into a new form of awareness. If I cared so much about how hard my poor liver was working, I reasoned, I should probably find a way to bring all of this glorious non-toxicity into the rest of my world as well. What we consume certainly plays a big role in how we bring toxins into our bodies, but the air we breathe and what touches our skin matters too. With this in mind, I started looking around my house for sources and solutions.