Radical Womanhood

Food: Sin Management, Germ Management

The Girltalkers are in the midst of a challenging series on food, sin, and eating to the glory of God. I highly recommend you pop over and check it out. I also look foward to the forthcoming book, Eat and Be Content, by their interviewees, David Kotter and Dr. Jeffrey Trimark.

On the same subject, I discovered this tidbit in the health section of The Washington Post today:

When it comes to food-borne illnesses, raw products generally "pose more possible hazards than already-cooked products," [David Goldman, assistant administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service] says. (An exception: listeria, a bacteria that can thrive in cooked products such as hot dogs and can cause miscarriage.)

So, how you stock and handle food from the grocery to your kitchen can make a difference in safety. At the store, keep juicy raw meat, poultry and fish well separated from fresh vegetables, fruit, cheese and other foods that will be eaten without cooking.

Also consider wiping down the grocery cart. Many stores now offer antibacterial wipes. If you don't want to do that, at least keep raw food in plastic bags where it won't come into contact with the cart. University of Arizona microbiologist Charles Gerba tested 60 grocery shopping carts and found that about half had fecal bacteria, mostly located on the seats where young, diaper-clad children ride during shopping.

No need to explain, then, why hand washing is another key step in helping to prevent food-borne diseases. Most people know to wash their hands before fixing food. But where many fall short is during food preparation.

"People take out the frozen food, break it up and put it back in the fridge without washing their hands," says Gerba, who has found that refrigerator door handles are one of the areas of the kitchen that harbor unhealthy organisms. Another common problem spot: the kitchen phone. "Those are two areas that people overlook disinfecting on a regular basis," he says.

Health experts say that the importance of cleaning cutting boards also can't be underscored enough. The tiny crevices of wooden cutting boards are prime spots for bacteria to thrive. So at Goldman's house, they use one cutting board for meat and poultry and one for fresh produce.

Ewww. I had been using those wipes for my own hands at grocery stores, but had been tossing raw produce in the carts in an effort to use fewer plastic bags. No way to win sometimes.

Slave to Food

A few weeks ago, I posted an entry about the importance of understanding nutrition--how cooking is not just a chore, but it is also a critical component of our health. Not long before that, I was talking to a friend of mine about her recovery from an eating disorder. She made several intriguing comments, so I asked her to write down her testimony to encourage other women who struggle in the same way. Michele never does anything halfway, so her testimony ended up to be a well-written essay! Here's how she starts:

If I mention that I’m writing about worship, most of you will not feel threatened. You know that you worship the true and living God. Maybe it’s a particular worship chorus, a passage of Scripture, or the Sunday-scents of your sanctuary that come to mind. Whatever it is, you know exactly when it is that you are a worshipper. Would you laugh at me if I said that I’ve worshipped a bowl of oatmeal? That I’ve worshipped gods of porcelain, fiber, caffeine, and plastic? If I tell you that I’m about to confess my own idolatry—or misplaced worship—will you keep reading?

I’m a recovering anorexic, a recovering bulimic, and a woman whose life has been dominated by food. Writer Anne Lamott describes the spectrum of her lifelong, eating disordered behavior: “It is a long, dull story. I had lots of secrets and worries about me and food and my body. It was very scary and obsessive, the way it must feel for someone who is secretly and entirely illiterate.” That might be the best description I've ever heard of the pervasiveness of the disease, the shame that accompanies every botched attempt at normalcy, the inevitable realization that normalcy cannot coexist with the problem and the furtive attempts to deny that reality. Shame, greed, economy, desire, focus, attention, caretaking, defiance, independence, luxury, guilt, restraint, preparation, self-control, domination, destruction, distraction—eating disordered behavior has manifested or defined all of these things to me.

Proverbs 9:17 says, “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant." Though, in context the passage talks about adultery, it applies well to the sins of anorexia, bulimia, or overeating. For years and years, I have participated in sinful eating habits that damaged my body, depleted my resources, and alienated all of the important people in my life. I can’t go too far into this discussion without asking the obvious question why. I never started these behaviors because they were convenient; neither could I stop them for that reason. Why did I—and do I—do these things? Because I wanted to—because the bread eaten in secret was pleasant. And my “wants” always reflect my heart.

To read the rest, download Apples to Apples: Reflections on an Eating-Disordered Life.

The Relevance of Food

Last week, after the caregroup meeting ended, a few of us gathered in the kitchen and began to compare notes about nutrition and cooking. (For the record, more men than women were part of this conversation.) We were all motivated by health concerns to research this area and then buy, cook, and eat the food we were recommending to each other. After experiencing a vast improvement in my allergies, I have become a one-woman sales pitch for the inflammation-reducing properties of the Omega 3-rich Mediterranean diet. By switching to this kind of nutrition and consuming fish oil supplements, I was able to cut my allergy meds in half and completely discontinue using any steroid-based drugs, while simultaneously seeing dramatic improvement in my pulmonary function tests.

The point is this: diet and nutrition are hot topics of current medical research because what we eat is more critical to our health than we previously understood. It's becoming apparent that we have been negatively impacted by the food industry's business choices to maximize profits or extend shelf life with items such as preservatives, trans fats, hydrogenated fats, high-fructose corn syrup, and processed foods with an excess of one essential fatty acid (Omega 6), an imbalance which leads to an increase in certain diseases. However, let's be honest. We eat this stuff so we have kept the demand high for trans fat-heavy, sodium-laced, processed foods. There would be no food industry without hungry customers.

Recently, TIME magazine published a story titled "How the World Eats." The article is accompanied by a photo essay featuring what families from fifteen different nations eat. A family of four in Germany spent the equivalent of $500.07 for a week's worth of food. Contrast that with a Sudanese family of six in a refugee camp in Chad who only spent $1.23, supplemented by the rations received at the camp. In each of the photos, the families pose with their groceries arrayed around them. The Sudanese family, of course, had the most meager display, which was disturbing to see.

The article's thesis is how, with globalization, families across the world are abandoning traditional diets and dining habits to adopt the rushed and unhealthy habits of the Western nations. One nutritional anthropologist quipped that she's never seen a village in the developing world where you couldn't find a Coke. I would concur, especially with my recent travels to Mexico and Bolivia. Every tiny outpost had a cola sign and a robust stock of soda. It's not just the marketing of commercial or mass-produced foods that is implicated in this article; it's also the busyness of women. The article concludes with a peek into the kitchen of a 60-year-old woman in northwest Tokyo as she prepares a proper Japanese lunch using fresh ingredients she purchased that morning.

The mother of two grown children pads around the kitchen in slippers and a violet kimono, chopping Japanese radishes and carrots, carefully packing a sushi cake with tuna and vinegared rice. She serves dishes arranged on an individual tray just so, down to the direction of each set of chopsticks. She looks happy, even serene as she works, but when asked whether she has passed these skills on to her daughter, she sighs. "Of course not," Shinobu says. "She's far too busy for this."

So let me float a controversial question: Are women making the right choices to neglect basic cooking and nutrition tasks or skills to pursue other activities? I well remember the youthful disdain of the girls who had to take home economics classes in middle school. No one then thought it was important to know how to cook or to understand nutrition. We looked down on that aspect of family life. "Slaving away in the kitchen" was not for ambitious young women. But consider the state of our collective health in this nation; nutrition is immensely important.

It's not just a meal. It could be better than medicine.

The family pictured above is the Ayme family of Tingo, Ecuador. Their food expenditure for one week: $31.55. Cooking Method: Wood fire. Photo courtesy of TIME magazine.

Finite Creatures and the Gift of Sleep

Sometimes I have a weird guilt trip at the end of the day. As the evening winds down, I realize I haven't written a blog post for the next day. I am tempted then to stay up to meet some self-imposed publishing deadline (which, sadly, I have actually done). Other times, I have to talk myself down and remind myself there's no need to sacrifice sleep for a voluntary activity. Reality check! The day is done. No one is going to die if a blog post isn't written. Go to sleep.

Scripture says sleep is God's gift to us (Psalm 127:2). But the temptation in our 24-hour culture is to ignore our creaturely limitations and try to live in a caffeine-fueled, sleep-deprived state. This is unwise for many reasons. Recent scientific research has shown the myriad benefits of getting at least seven hours of sleep, if not more. Our bodies need sleep, as do our minds. It's common knowledge that attempts at late-night conflict resolution are unwise--when we're weary, we lack clarity and self-control to resolve our disagreements. Now science is confirming that sleep-deprivation also affects moral judgments.

Sleep is one of those boundaries given to the finite creature from the all-sufficient, benevolent Creator. God has designed sleep to restore our health, bolster our learning, and process our memories. I think He has also given us sleep in order to rest and trust in Him as He works out the details of our lives. Lydia Brownback wrote about this when she addressed the flip-side of sleep-deprivation--anxiety-driven insomnia.

But if God is the one who makes us dwell in safety, what are lying awake worrying about? Maybe we are worried that God's idea of safety differs from ours. We have our agenda, and we often are pretty set on how things should all work out, and, of course, there are no guarantees that life is going to go our way when we get up in the morning. Or could it be that we have too much to do because we are taking on more than God has called us to carry? He has given us six days each week in which to labor; doesn't it stand to reason that a good God won't give us ten days' worth to accomplish in those six days?

There are some seasons of life in which sleeplessness may be an unavoidable factor for women, times such as caring for a newborn or for a family member with a critical illness. I believe God will supply sustaining grace for those needs. But when we lose sleep in order to strike something off our To Do lists or to entertain anxiety (I'm preaching to myself now, too!), we're ignoring a fundamental truth: we're finite and we're never going to get everything done on our agendas. Only God will accomplish all that He has declared will come to pass. This is the province of an infinite, all-knowing, all-sufficient Being. That should humble us and encourage us at the same time, for this is also the One who lovingly watches over us as we sleep (Psalm 4:8).

Sweet dreams!

Soda or Water? Planning for a Healthier Future

It feels so virtuous to order a diet cola, doesn't it? Even if you are ordering something else completely ridiculous (hot fudge brownie, anyone?), the diet cola order can be counted upon.

It may be that this is not wise for your future health, according to a new study conducted by Dr. Katherine Tucker of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center at Tufts University. While it may seem like a good choice for the short-term of weight control, it may be affecting your future bone health. I am focusing on diet soda since my observation is that more women drink diet than regular soda. But according to a UPI report, it's worse if you drink regular cola:

The study found that women who consume sugared cola had lower bone mineral density at all three hip sites, regardless of factors such as age, menopausal status, total calcium and vitamin D intake, or use of cigarettes or alcohol.

However, cola consumption was not associated with lower bone mineral density for men at the hip sites, or at the spine for either men or women. The study states that the results were similar for diet cola and, although weaker, for decaffeinated cola as well.

Tucker stressed that as with any epidemiological study, the results should be taken with caution. "We are not certain why women who drank more cola also had lower bone mineral density," she said.

Tucker told United Press International that the observed correlation between cola consumption and lower bone mineral density in women might be due to the interaction of two factors -- phosphoric acid and caffeine.

Taken by themselves, phosphoric acid and caffeine don't significantly contribute to bone loss. However, the combination and interaction of these two ingredients in regular cola might be responsible for the lower bone mineral density of women observed in the study, Tucker said.

This would also account for why the correlation was less significant for decaffeinated cola.

There are so many messages we women receive about our bodies, but the important one is to steward one's physical frame and health for the glory of God, and to preserve the ability to serve Him now and into the future. Yet it seems all of us struggle to accomplish this at various points; condemnation is always looming right around the corner. Scripture is clear that our beauty will fade, but there are choices we can make to that might contribute to a healthier future. Bone loss is a significant health challenge for older women. I hope that having this information today will help us all in the days to come. To read the full UPI report, visit Science Daily.

Water. The less-costly alternative to diet soda.

Alert: E. Coli in Bagged Spinach

Here's timely information for all my salad-eating, female friends: There is a national alert about an E. coli outbreak in bagged spinach, a bug that has sickened primarily women in the Midwest. The FDA is advising people to avoid eating it for now.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumers nationwide should not eat fresh bagged spinach, say health officials probing a multistate outbreak of E. coli that killed at least one person and made dozens of others sick.

Food and Drug Administration and state officials don't know the cause of the outbreak, although raw, packaged spinach appears likely. "We're advising people not to eat it," said Dr. David Acheson of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Eight states were reporting a total of 50 cases of E. coli, Acheson said Thursday.

The death occurred in Wisconsin, where 20 people were reported ill, 11 of them in Milwaukee. The outbreak has sickened others -- eight of them seriously -- in Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah. In California, state health officials said they were investigating a possible case there.

The outbreak has affected a mix of ages, but most of the cases have involved women, Acheson said. Further information on the person who died wasn't available.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Wisconsin health officials alerted the FDA about the outbreak at midweek. Preliminary analysis suggested the same bug is responsible for the outbreak in all eight states.

The rest of the story is on CNN's website.

UPDATE: The outbreak has spread to 20 states, but the source has now been traced to a company in California. The latest AP story is here.