QUOTE OF THE MONTH
All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man, the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. Chief Seattle
NOVEMBER EDITOR'S LETTER
Greetings from Iowa City! We enjoyed some scattered snow yesterday and a sudden drop to 17 degrees from 33 degrees in the morning. The trees, which just a few weeks ago sported brilliant, glowing foliage, are barren, and the full moon last night cast a stark light over the naked branches. Winter is rolling into the Mid-West... Perhaps because of the sudden departure of all those vibrant reds, oranges, yellow leaves, I was inspired this month to write about colors in foods. The visual appearance of food is often overlooked when we think about building a healthy diet. However, studies show that people's food choices are strongly impacted by how a meal looks to them, especially its colors. This month's article covers ways to improve your diet by focusing on the color of your foods, and simple ways to please both your palate and your eye at the same time. Have a wonderful, colorful Thanksgiving! Be well, Katherine
ACTION OPPORTUNITY OF THE MONTH: Stop EPA from testing human subjects
This seems unbelievable, but apparently the EPA is considering allowing testing of chemicals and pesticides on human subjects, specifically orphans and mentally handicapped children. You can register your opposition to the proposed rule by going to the below website: http://www.organicconsumers.org/epa6.cfm
ALERT: EPA TO ALLOW PESTICIDE TESTING ON ORPHANS & MENTALLY HANDICAPPED CHILDREN Forward this alert to friends and colleagues Wednesday, November 16, 2005 Public Comment Period Closes
December 12, 2005 Public comments are now being accepted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on its newly proposed federal regulation regarding the testing of chemicals and pesticides on human subjects. On August 2, 2005, Congress had mandated the EPA create a rule that permanently bans chemical testing on pregnant women and children. But the EPA's newly proposed rule, misleadingly titled "Protections for Subjects in Human Research," puts industry profits ahead of children's welfare. The rule allows for government and industry scientists to treat children as human guinea pigs in chemical experiments in the following situations: 1. Children who "cannot be reasonably consulted," such as those that are mentally handicapped or orphaned newborns may be tested on. With permission from the institution or guardian in charge of the individual, the child may be exposed to chemicals for the sake of research.
2. Parental consent forms are not necessary for testing on children who have been neglected or abused.
3. Chemical studies on any children outside of the U.S. are acceptable.
Simply Living Well Corporate Wellness Series
Preventable diseases cost businesses thousands of dollars a year. Recent research shows that over 50% of absenteeism at the workplace can be attributed to stress and stress-related illnesses. According to the Director of Health Care Management at Ford Motors, weight-related expenses alone are costing employers approximately $12 billion per year. A 2003 Chrysler Corporation study showed that employees with poor eating habits generated 41 percent more health case claim costs than those with good eating habits. Across the country, companies are beginning to take notice of the startling connections between employee wellness and fiscal responsibility, and look for better answers. Employee wellness programs not only boost morale, but make significant, measurable differences in healthcare spending. Studies have shown that employee wellness programs help companies reduce their healthcare costs an average of $3.72 for each dollar invested! For this reason, I have developed Simply Living Well Corporate Wellness Training Series, comprising 15 programs designed to inspire employees to take significant, preventative steps for their long-term health and wellness. The Wellness Series is accessible to a wide range of people, and the 60-90 minutes programs are highly interactive, incorporating exercises, visual aids, food samples, handouts and other media. The programs may also be combined for a half-day training, giving employees the opportunity to look at multiple facets of wellness simultaneously. The Wellness Series gives employees the skills to take control of their wellness by deepening their knowledge of the effect of nutrition and lifestyle change on their health. The Series is excellent training to help employees make the best choices to sustain their vitality and productivity for years to come. Currently, I am conducting workshops to corporations and organizations on a variety of topics including: -- Beyond Dieting: How to Lose Weight Without Even Trying -- Desk Yoga: Simple Practices to Reduce Stress at Work -- Sugar Blues: Breaking the Cycle of Sugar Cravings -- Reversing the Aging Process: Simple Steps to Look and Feel Younger Everyday -- Wheel of Life: Creating and Maintaining Life Balance -- Finding the Connections Between Your Diet and Your Moods -- Food and Energy: An Eating Plan to Help You Stay Vibrant
Some of my past and current clients include:
** State Department Federal Credit Union
** New York City Department of Health
** The United Nations
** UNICEF
** UNDP
** United States Department of Agriculture
** The Hospital for Joint Diseases
** Embassy of Australia
** Nuclear Energy Institute
** Ethical Culture Society
** Association of Trial Lawyers of America If your business or organization is interested in supporting its employees to better understand the connections between diet, lifestyle and health, please let them know about these exciting programs. This is a great opportunity to take the information available in this newsletter and make it available to a much wider audience of your co-workers and friends. If you would like more information about the Health and Wellness Training Series, please e-mail me at Katherine@SimplyLivingWell.net or call me directly at 1-347-661-2143. Testimonials from recent Health and Wellness Training clients: "The United Nations Wellness Initiative was a success, not only in terms of high participation numbers but also in itis impact on staff members' health and productivity at work. Over 10% of all staff members registered in at least one health promotion program, and the individuals who actually changed behavior and maintained healthier behaviors over time have Katherine to thank. Katherine developed a 12-week series of holistic wellness seminars touching on nutrition, food and mood, stress management and communication. These workshops were extremely popular; in fact, Katherine developed a bit of a following, in large part due to her unique ability to connect with each individual even while leading a workshop in a room of 100. Her approach to health promotion is to raise awareness that our overall health status is a product of what we eat, our emotional health, lifestyle behaviors, and many other factors. She recognizes that stress, finances, and our struggle to balance work and life demands can all impact overall health. Katherine's approach integrates holistic health research and scientific evidence with role play and personal story telling, offering individuals a chance to share work through their own health goals in a group setting. She brought creativity and great energy to her workhops which demonstrated her passion for wellness. Katherine would be a great asset to any organization looking to provide on-site wellness programming or training for their health staff." Alissa Carlat, MS
Health Promotion Program Coordinator, United Nations Wellness Initiative
NYC DOHMH Wellness At Work Program "The Nutrition & Wellness Program has been a wonderful addition to our Learning Program. We have always provided training on everyday skill development and ways to relieve life's stress, but when we incorporated the nutrition & wellness series, our employees could see how nutrition affected our day-to-day functions and productivity. Great program!!" Eunice Deras, Nuclear Energy Institute
Website of the Month: Buy Nothing Day!
In order to stem the madness around the "Biggest Shopping Day of the Year", traditionally the day after Thanksgiving, Adbusters magazine inaugurated Buy Nothing Day in 1999. It's a good opportunity to evaluate our consumer choices and take a breather before the rush of the holiday season. http://www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/ "For 24 hours, millions of people around the world do not participate -- in the doomsday economy, the marketing mind-games, and the frantic consumer-binge that's become our culture. We pause. We make a small choice not to shop. We shrink our footprint and gain some calm. Together we say: enough is enough. And we help build this movement to rethink our unsustainable course." If this inspires you, consider taking it a radical step further with Buy Nothing Christmas, an initiative started by Canadian Mennonites. http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/
NOVEMBER HOLIDAY RECIPE: Greens with Cranberries and Pine Nuts
Greens often get left out of the traditional Thanksgiving meal, overshadowed by the heavier carbohydrates and meats. But keeping the greens in the menu can help you avoid over-eating richer dishes and balance the flavor and colors of the dinner. I like this recipe because it has cranberries, which are appropriate to the holiday and also provide a tangy, sweetness with the greens. Both the cranberries and pine nuts offer a nice contrasting texture and flavor for a vegetable dish. Greens with Cranberries and Pine Nuts 1-2 Bunches of Greens (Chard, Kale, Collards, Spinach)
2-3 garlic cloves
1/2 sweet onion
1-2 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup of pine nuts
1/2 cup of soaked dried cranberries 1) Wash and slice greens. If they have stems, chop them into small pieces first. 2) Slice leaves into long thinly sliced strips. 3) Peel, crush and chop garlic. 4) Heat olive oil in pan, sauté garlic and onions, and pine nuts. 5) Add stems of greens sauté for 5 minutes. 6) Add greens stir, keep heat medium to low and cover pan with lid. Cook for a few minutes 5-7 or until tender. 7) Stir in cranberries.
ARTICLE: Color Me Healthy: 5 Ways to Use Color to Improve Your Diet
Why were blue M & M’s the last ones to make it in the bag, after red, green, yellow and brown had been around for so many years? Do blue foods whet your appetite (think blue lettuce, blue turkey)? For most people the answer is no. Blue foods don't appeal for good reason: outside of blueberries and rare blue-purple potatoes, there are very few naturally occurring blue foods on the planet. Blue food was a “color warning sign” for our ancestors indicating a potentially harmful, even lethal, food. Though we’re rarely foraging for food these days, we carry the same food colors biases and generally eat in accordance with them, whether we realize it or not. With the advent of artificial colorings and flavorings, our once adaptive ways of using color to determine the health value of foods might be working against us. Foods can now be made to appear in ways that bears no resemblance to its original form and color. An obvious example is Heinz’s bright green ketchup, a product pioneered for children in 2000, and many other “fruit” drinks, candies, and snacks. What most people don’t realize, however, is that oranges are often dyed “more” orange to mask natural discolorations on their skin, and farmed salmon would be white if not for food coloring. It’s important to realize that even foods we think of as whole or natural are tampered with so they look more appealing. Much of our diet, particularly packaged and processed foods, attains its bright, pure color from the use of synthetic colorings and dyes. Here are five tips on balancing your diet with color, using ancient and modern wisdom. 1. Eat With the Rainbow The most natural and effective way to balance your diet is to eat a broad range of naturally multi-colored foods. The reasoning behind this is simple: the various colors of food indicate the presence of different vitamins and minerals. By eating the full spectrum, we can guarantee that we’re getting a wide range of nutrients. This may seem simple, but many people tend to gravitate toward certain colored meals— often mostly white white or brown. A quick scan of your plate to see if more than two colors are represented is a good way to assess if you’ve balanced your meal. Some examples: red foods are typically good for the heart, memory function, urinary tract health and lowering the risk of some cancers, and contain the phytochemicals, lycopene and anthocyanins. Yellow and orange foods are also good for heart health, the eyes, maintaining a healthy immune system and lower risk of some cancers. They contain varying amounts of antioxidants such as vitamin C, as well as the phytochemicals, carotenoids and bioflavonoids. Green foods also lower the risk of some cancers, keep eyes healthy and promote strong bones and teeth and contain the phytochemicals such as lutein and indoles. 2. Beware Green Ketchup One reason the blue M & M’s may have finally made it to the bag is that we have become accustomed to unnatural coloring in foods. The American food industry uses 3000 tons of food color per year. Bright colors would have represented fresh, healthy foods to our ancestors, so it’s easy to see why we have the same attraction to them. Though we know logically that Twizzler’s don’t grow bright red and ripe on the vine, nor are Skittles harvested plump from berry bushes, these foods mimic our idea of what fresh fruits and vegetables should look like.
The risks however, are more serious than you might imagine. According to Dr. Andrew Weil, “The danger is that the chemicals used to create color are energetic molecules, many of which are capable of interacting with and damaging DNA. Anything that damages DNA can injure the immune system, accelerate aging, and increase the risk of cancer. Indeed, many synthetic food dyes once considered safe have turned out to be carcinogenic. Some approved for use in Europe are considered unsafe in the United States, and vice versa.” Dr. Weil also warns against the serious impacts of artificial colorings on children, and says that yellow food coloring may be connected to migraines in children.
He advises avoiding foods that have “color added," "artificial color added," "U.S.-certified color added," or "FD&C red No. 3" (or green or blue or yellow followed by any number; these are FDA-approved food drug and cosmetic dyes) in the label. 3. Celebrate the Wabi-Sabi of Organic Food Wabi-sabi is a Japanese philosophy that celebrates the beauty of things being imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It means appreciating the beauty of things that are modest and humble, as well as unconventional. We are accustomed to buying foods in supermarkets that look “perfect”, with few of the flaws found in nature. However, if you’ve ever traveled to other countries or shopped in health food stores or farm markets, you’ve probably seen vegetables that look quite different: oranges with a green tinge, tomatoes with spots and bumps, skinny carrots bent off at strange angles. Organic foods are less likely to be uniform in color or appearance. Taking a wabi-sabi attitude, we can appreciate how these foods are still beautiful, though they may have imperfections. Even if you’re orange isn’t completely orange, your apple not entirely red, you can rest assured that it isn’t wearing “make-up” like much of the produce from conventional grocery stores. By dropping the expectations of having cosmetically perfect food, we can open up to more natural and whole foods eating. 4. Value Colors Like the Chinese Do Chinese medicine also recommends eating across the color spectrum. A traditional Chinese meal attempts to balance not only flavors, aromas, textures, and colors in the different courses that are served, but also the energies provided for the body by the various ingredients. According to Five Elements theory, a basic philosophy of Chinese nutrition, foods are associated with different elements (wood, fire, metal), seasons, colors, flavors, directions, organ systems and environmental influences. For instance, green/blue foods are typically related to liver and gallbladder function, red foods are connected to the heart and small intestine, yellow foods are associated with the stomach, spleen and pancreas, white foods with the lungs and colon, and black or dark foods with the kidneys and bladder. Five elements can be a helpful way of thinking about balancing your diet, with the guidance of a somewhat different set of criteria. Acupuncturists are often well-versed in nutritional Five Elements theory. 5. Don't Eat in the Dark We are naturally attracted to the varied colors of blooming flowers, bright foliage, a rainbow across the sky. Multi-colored meals are not only healthier for you, they provide a pleasing aesthetic and actually help you enjoy your food more. People who have been studied eating in the dark report the food not tasting as good when they can’t see it. Preparing an attractive, multi-colored meal can enhance your overall appreciation, enjoyment and digestion of your food. Also, remember that there is nothing wrong with foods dyed with natural colors obtained from plants. Annatto is the most common and comes from the reddish seed of a tropical tree. Latin American cooks use it to make yellow rice and breads, and it is also commonly added to butter and cheese to make them yellow or orange. There is also a red pigment obtained from beets, a green one from chlorella (freshwater algae), caramel, and carotene from carrots, all of which are safe for consumers.
ABOUT KATHERINE JAMIESON, HOLISTIC HEALTH COUNSELOR
Katherine was trained in Holistic Health Counseling through the Professional Training Program at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York City, and certified by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. She was certified to teach yoga in 2001 through the New York Open Center Prana Yoga Teacher Training, instructed by Dr. Jeffrey Migdow, MD. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from Wesleyan University. Before entering the Holistic Health field, Katherine was a Peace Corps volunteer for two years in Guyana, South America. Her practice combines cutting-edge, holistic nutritional theory and yoga breathing and postures, to help people address their health concerns and attain optimal health and well being in their lives. She has been a speaker at the United Nations, UNICEF, UNDP, the New York City Department of Health, the Hospital for Joint Diseases, the USDA and the Embassy of Australia. She maintains a private practice for individuals committed to addressing their health concerns through diet and lifestyle change. If you are interested in reading back issues of this newsletter, in publication since May 2003, please feel free to visit the web hosting sites where you can find the full editions catalogued: http://zines.webvalence.com/sites/SimplyLivingWell/ http://casts.webvalence.com/sites/SimplyLivingWell/index.html
Turkey Booties and Turkey Heart Attacks: Strange but True Turkey Facts
Turkeys’ heads change colors when they become excited. 45 million turkeys are eaten each Thanksgiving; 22 million turkeys are eaten each Christmas; 19 million turkeys are eaten each Easter.
Tom turkeys (males) have beards. This is black, hairlike feathers on their breast. Hens sometimes have beards, too. Male turkeys gobble. Hens do not. They make a clicking noise. Gobbling turkeys can be heard a mile away on a quiet day.
Turkeys have heart attacks. The United States Air Force was doing test runs and breaking the sound barrier. Nearby turkeys dropped dead with heart attacks.
In England, 200 years ago, turkeys were walked to market in herds. They wore booties to protect their feet. Turkeys were also walked to market in the United States. The costume that "Big Bird" wears on Sesame Street is rumored to be made of turkey feathers. For their first meal on the moon, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin ate roast turkey in foil packets. (courtesy of the University of Illinois Extension) THANK YOU FOR READING AND BE WELL!
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