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It's a wonderful world we live in. Things you never imagined could have
gluten in them are now – miraculously – gluten free!
I've recently had gluten-free popcorn, gluten-free corn meal, gluten-free
oatmeal and – who'd have ever dreamed such a thing possible – guaranteed
gluten-free eggs, milk and cheeses.
And I'll be quite honest, I never once noticed that these products had the
gluten removed.
How'd they do that?
When so many people believe that all we need to do to be healthy and happy is
to look for shrink-wrapped packages stamped with a gluten-free label, you have
to start taking this business seriously. Surely, the same people who package
your white bread, your Twinkies, and your tasteless winter tomatoes wouldn't try
to deceive you with a label promoting gluten-free what-not?
No doubt all of this gluten-freeness is going to be a boon to the less than 1
percent of the population who suffer from celiac disease, a painful inability to
digest the gluten protein found only in wheat, rye and barley.
Many have apparently decided that the best way to show support for those who
suffer from celiac disease is to avoid all gluten-containing products
themselves. We should all be just as sympathetic to the .2 percent of the
population allergic to eggs, the 1.2 percent of the population with allergies to
bananas, the 1.4 percent of the population that has peanut allergies, the 2.3
percent of the population that has shellfish allergies, or the 60 percent of the
population who can't fully digest milk.
In that spirit of solidarity, I can honestly report that my garden is now 100
percent gluten free.
How did I do it?
Mostly by ignoring the latest Hollywood and New Jersey food fads, by trying
my best to avoid any shrink-wrapped food product plastered with claims that it
will make my life better, and (not least) by planting and harvesting vegetables
that are good to eat.
As others have pointed out, "good to eat" isn't a self-evident concept in a
bipolar world that flips repeatedly from hysterical food paranoia to processed
food gluttony.
So I'll need to clarify.
I don't eat vegetables because they're good for me. I eat foods that make me
feel good, from the moment I bite into them until hours and days afterward. I
like foods that taste good and smell good and make me want to get up and enjoy
life. If they don't do that, I don't enjoy them.
And because they make me feel good, I'd guess they're good for me. After
several hundred millions of years of eating plants, I'd guess our animal bodies
have come to enjoy certain plants for a good reason.
But shouldn't I be metering out my diet based on vitamins and specialized
nutrients and calories and carbohydrates and glycine indices and antioxidants
and all that other nonsense?
No. Because no matter what the Wizard of Oz tells you on the telly, we still
have no scientific certainty how any of these things actually work, individually
or together, in our bodies. We're not even sure we're measuring the right
things.
So even the best science makes good guesses about what's good for us.
If the science isn't certain, who do we turn to for dietary advice? Your best
guide may be your senses. Based on my sense of taste and smell, I have good
reason to believe that this body evolved to take full advantage of the highly
complex chemical components of plants, in which I detect odors and flavors far
more subtle and varied than I do even in meats, sweets and highly processed
foods.
That's no surprise. Our bodies evolved to take advantage of the world around
us, just as that world evolved to deal with us. Some plants evolved to benefit
from the fact that we ate them, and some plants evolved to keep us from ever
wanting them. Our ancestor's bodies evolved to detoxify the plants that they
could detoxify, and to react strongly against the ones they couldn't.
Our very sensitive noses and our taste buds evolved in large measure to sniff
out these differences. That's why most of us can readily distinguish the
chemicals in rosemary from the chemicals in blueberries, even though they're
only a few molecules apart. And if we haven't inundated our senses with highly
processed chemicals (concentrated sugars, artificial flavors and refined fats)
deliberately designed to overwhelm them, I'm fairly certain our sense of taste
and smell is a better guide to good eating than the best current scientific
testing.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating the faddish "paleo" diets that purport
to have us eat the meats that cavemen ate. The trouble, of course, is that the
common "paleo" view of what cavemen ate seems to be based on a careful study of
the Flintstones. Better science has pretty well demonstrated that early humans
evolved with a highly varied diet of plants, supplemented with lean, stringy
meats and even moderately processed grains when they were available.
Having occasionally tried to live off the food I could shoot with a gun, I
would have to imagine that spear-throwing humans, in an age before
refrigeration, must have eaten a lot of meatless meals rich in vegetables. They
must have been delighted, as I was, when rich-tasting grains like whole wheat,
corn or oatmeal became available to fill the empty spots on the plate.
And I have a sneaking suspicion, backed up by some science, that the
vegetables I grow in my garden are a little more like the plants humans first
evolved with. Based on the complexities of their flavors and their odors, their
crispness and moistness, I'd be willing to bet they're far richer than most
grocery store vegetables in the chemicals and fibers that our bodies crave.
So maybe I'm advocating a different kind of caveman diet, a diet based on
what our senses and bodies crave.
It's not a perfect system. Sometimes our bodies don't react to things that
aren't good for us until it's too late. Sometimes, we develop irrational
aversions to things that would probably do us good. Being a thinking animal, I
try to weigh these exceptions reasonably.
But mostly, I just turn to my garden. Gardens teach you the delights of
eating seasonally varied diets, as our ancestors did, and they reawaken your
taste buds to the complexity of odors and flavors, so you're more likely to
enjoy a variety of foods and you're more likely to crave the kind of foods that
our bodies evolved to take advantage of.
I figure my body knows what it's doing when it craves a stack of grilled
eggplants, tomatoes, basil and goat cheese, slapped between two not-too-thick
pieces of gluten-rich ciabatti bread. If I were one of the .75 percent of the
population that had celiac disease, I'd sure enough lose the bread, and I bet
I'd feel just as good.
And in any case, I'd trust my own nose and garden over some corporate crook
who figured out how to get rich slapping meaningless labels on packages in the
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