Last week I picked up our second farm share, and when I brought it home we took everything out of the bag and spread it out to see what we had to work with, and brainstorm recipes. I had a flashback from my childhood to the magic craft bag from Barney. If ever I wished something from my childhood TV shows would come to life, it was that.
I waited awhile, but I probably appreciate it more now. The CSA, I am certain, is the adult version of the magic craft bag: an unanticipated combination of items that you have to figure out how to combine to make something useful and good. It is the ultimate opportunity to exercise creativity, and in my grown-up life in particular that is a welcome opportunity indeed.
We get a new share every other week, and we barely finish it. I have been devouring articles about how to make produce last: how to keep greens from wilting and how to store fruit to keep it perky. And we have become good friends with the AllRecipes app, figuring out which search terms will turn up a recipe that uses the most of our fresh ingredients.
This week I Googled chard smoothies, looking for an inspired mix to use up the leafy greens from last Wednesday. And one of the top results, to my surprise, was a bold blog title telling me "How Green Smoothies Can Devastate Your Health"!
As a social media marketer, I am all too familiar with clickbait. It's a pet peeve of mine. On the other hand, what if one of my go-to breakfasts is slowly killing me?
So I read it, and the short version is that green leafy vegetables have something in them called oxalates that can crystallize inside the body and can cut or scratch membranes and cause kidney stones and all manner of other issues. It sounded extreme, and not entirely unbiased, so I looked at a couple of other sources and noticed something that was repeated throughout the original article: People who drink green smoothies tend to drink them often, several times a week or every day.
First of all, this is an assumption about the behavior of ALL people who drink green smoothies. Secondly, other articles made far more of a point of saying that some people are more sensitive to oxalates and more susceptible to the kind of health problems that they can cause - if you eat too many of them.
(Perfect opportunity to plug my mantra: moderation, people!)
Here's the thing: my case against this anti-green smoothie post and its brethren is by no means unbiased either. I like green smoothies and they make me feel good, so I'm going to keep drinking them. I am obviously not an expert on oxalates, kidney stones, or even green vegetables. But I have always hated when people tell me that their social diet is better than what I'm eating. It just seems so spiteful, and I can't help but think that people who spend all their time writing these blog posts about what carcinogens are found in their favorite tea bags, and what "14 foods you eat every day that cause cancer" probably don't enjoy eating very much, and probably aren't very happy in general.
Plus, there are probably as many blog posts about the benefits of green smoothies as there are about their dangers; as many posts about why raw veganism is good for you as there are about how bad it is for you; as many posts about how a paleo diet made someone into a new, happier and healthier person as there are about people who became miserable and sick when they tried paleo; and so on. Most of them - on any side of the fence - make some valid points, or are based on something true.
There are things I love to eat that other people hate, things that my friends and family devour that make me feel terribly ill. I paid attention in research class when the professor said that experiential data isn't statistically valid; I know science is based on reproducible testing and results on a large scale. But let's be real. We're human. We don't believe anything unless we have some personal, first-hand connection to it.
I like talking about what foods I like, and what foods you like, especially if we both are passionate about food. I like talking about things people are passionate about. (A friend of mine just wrote a blog post about "spreading the paleo love", which is an approach that actually got me interested in learning more about paleo.
Set that against a different friend who started eating paleo in college and told me regularly that our bodies aren't made to process the kind of food I was eating, and that my diet was going to kill me. You won't be surprised to learn that I didn't try very hard to eat with him from then on.)
When I was talking about all of this, J said, "But you actually like eating healthy." I do. I like home-cooked meals and things I don't have to excavate from their packaging. I feel better when I eat fresh things, and I like the taste of them. I try to buy from responsible sources when I can. And, yes, I do enjoy ice cream and donuts and chips and chocolate and frozen salted caramel cappuccinos every now and then!
Across the board, I like to do things that make my life better, my relationships better, my community better, and my world better. I'm human, and there are a lot of things I can't control, so I can't hope to have zero negative impact, but I am doing my best to create a net positive. I don't want to read things or be around people who leave a bad taste in my mouth or try to force their views on me, I try to exercise the Golden Rule and not be that for other people.
So, green-smoothie haters, try a gentler approach next time, and maybe you'll be one step closer to saving me from kidney stones.
I waited awhile, but I probably appreciate it more now. The CSA, I am certain, is the adult version of the magic craft bag: an unanticipated combination of items that you have to figure out how to combine to make something useful and good. It is the ultimate opportunity to exercise creativity, and in my grown-up life in particular that is a welcome opportunity indeed.
We get a new share every other week, and we barely finish it. I have been devouring articles about how to make produce last: how to keep greens from wilting and how to store fruit to keep it perky. And we have become good friends with the AllRecipes app, figuring out which search terms will turn up a recipe that uses the most of our fresh ingredients.
This week I Googled chard smoothies, looking for an inspired mix to use up the leafy greens from last Wednesday. And one of the top results, to my surprise, was a bold blog title telling me "How Green Smoothies Can Devastate Your Health"!
As a social media marketer, I am all too familiar with clickbait. It's a pet peeve of mine. On the other hand, what if one of my go-to breakfasts is slowly killing me?
So I read it, and the short version is that green leafy vegetables have something in them called oxalates that can crystallize inside the body and can cut or scratch membranes and cause kidney stones and all manner of other issues. It sounded extreme, and not entirely unbiased, so I looked at a couple of other sources and noticed something that was repeated throughout the original article: People who drink green smoothies tend to drink them often, several times a week or every day.
First of all, this is an assumption about the behavior of ALL people who drink green smoothies. Secondly, other articles made far more of a point of saying that some people are more sensitive to oxalates and more susceptible to the kind of health problems that they can cause - if you eat too many of them.
(Perfect opportunity to plug my mantra: moderation, people!)
Here's the thing: my case against this anti-green smoothie post and its brethren is by no means unbiased either. I like green smoothies and they make me feel good, so I'm going to keep drinking them. I am obviously not an expert on oxalates, kidney stones, or even green vegetables. But I have always hated when people tell me that their social diet is better than what I'm eating. It just seems so spiteful, and I can't help but think that people who spend all their time writing these blog posts about what carcinogens are found in their favorite tea bags, and what "14 foods you eat every day that cause cancer" probably don't enjoy eating very much, and probably aren't very happy in general.
Plus, there are probably as many blog posts about the benefits of green smoothies as there are about their dangers; as many posts about why raw veganism is good for you as there are about how bad it is for you; as many posts about how a paleo diet made someone into a new, happier and healthier person as there are about people who became miserable and sick when they tried paleo; and so on. Most of them - on any side of the fence - make some valid points, or are based on something true.
There are things I love to eat that other people hate, things that my friends and family devour that make me feel terribly ill. I paid attention in research class when the professor said that experiential data isn't statistically valid; I know science is based on reproducible testing and results on a large scale. But let's be real. We're human. We don't believe anything unless we have some personal, first-hand connection to it.
I like talking about what foods I like, and what foods you like, especially if we both are passionate about food. I like talking about things people are passionate about. (A friend of mine just wrote a blog post about "spreading the paleo love", which is an approach that actually got me interested in learning more about paleo.
Set that against a different friend who started eating paleo in college and told me regularly that our bodies aren't made to process the kind of food I was eating, and that my diet was going to kill me. You won't be surprised to learn that I didn't try very hard to eat with him from then on.)
When I was talking about all of this, J said, "But you actually like eating healthy." I do. I like home-cooked meals and things I don't have to excavate from their packaging. I feel better when I eat fresh things, and I like the taste of them. I try to buy from responsible sources when I can. And, yes, I do enjoy ice cream and donuts and chips and chocolate and frozen salted caramel cappuccinos every now and then!
Across the board, I like to do things that make my life better, my relationships better, my community better, and my world better. I'm human, and there are a lot of things I can't control, so I can't hope to have zero negative impact, but I am doing my best to create a net positive. I don't want to read things or be around people who leave a bad taste in my mouth or try to force their views on me, I try to exercise the Golden Rule and not be that for other people.
So, green-smoothie haters, try a gentler approach next time, and maybe you'll be one step closer to saving me from kidney stones.
posted from Bloggeroid
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