Sunday Story…Food Sovereignty

Is a new term I heard recently in a YouTube video from 2 young ladies doing semester in Thailand. The video can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvNTggnixX8&feature=youtube
Bottom line: we should own our food. We should own the process that brings that food to our table. We should take a proprietary interest in producing our food and if we can’t then we should take an interest in the people who do produce it.

We are divorced, in this country, from our food. We have abdicated our responsibility for our sustenance to large corporations, massive food producers and the federal government. Far too many of us assume food comes from a grocery market, not a farm. We are removed from the dirt, the very essence of what makes food viable to us.

I grew up with gardens. My parents grew lots of food and the kids helped pick the harvest, weed the rows and water. What we didn’t grow or didn’t grow enough of we went to a “u-pick’em” field and paid to pick the vegetables or fruit ourselves. My mother was an avid preserver…canned fruits, jellies, jams, you name it she preserved it. We ate those things all winter long. Honestly, it was a big job. I have had a garden that big and it is a lot of constant work. On the other hand it is a labor of love. There is nothing that quite compares to sitting down to a meal that you prepared with ingredients that you started from seed months prior. You watered them, nurtured them, harvested them, and in the end enjoyed the bounty.

We must stop allowing large corporate interests to own our food. The only way to stop them is to start planting food ourselves. Just a few vegetables to start with...one zucchini plant will produce enough squash to feed your entire family. A single package of lettuce will produce enough salad for your summer. These small acts of rebellion against the agricultural combine may not seem to be much but they will add up. You can also go find farmers yourself…CSA’s, Bountiful Baskets and other small producers welcome your participation in their efforts. Get to know the people you are trusting to put food on your table for you and your children. Support their efforts to be sustainable stewards of the land we all need to live on. Theirs is a labor of love, not a labor to squeeze every cent out of every acre.

Your children will never forget the lessons the garden teaches. They are bigger than plant water and care. They extend to goal setting, forward planning, delayed gratification and handling disappointment. These are lessons learned with your hands in the dirt and have a way of becoming deeply ingrained.
It isn’t hard and it won’t take a super human effort but the results will be life altering. Food sovereignty is up to each of us. The sooner we act the sooner we can find real health.

Namaste

John Mariotti

www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Sunday Story…Kids & Food

Last Saturday we had a very enriching discussion on nutrition and food. One of the places we didn’t get to touch on very deeply was the subject of kids and food. In other words, how do we get our kids to enjoy eating real food, and making food choices that will affirm their health?

Remember the three words…Eat Real Food. The first thing we need to do is make sure the example we are setting is in alignment with those words. Nothing will destroy this process faster than not walking your talk. If you expect your children to eat broccoli and carrots but you refuse to let anything vegetable pass your lips they will figure it out pretty darn quick. So start there…Eat Real Food yourself. And real food is simple…if you could have grown it, caught it, picked it, dug it, or killed it is probably OK to eat. If there is a food label on it, if there are more than three ingredients (especially if one of them is not found in nature) it, then it probably isn’t real food.

#2…Get the kiddos involved in the entire process from farm to table if possible. This is an excellent learning process for everyone, including you. It would be optimum to have a little garden in your back yard and get them involved in the planting and growing process. Or taking a trip to a U-pick farm so they can see where food really comes from. Any of the local Farmer’s markets are great choices as well. There are almost always samples to be had and you can talk to the growers or their representatives while you are there. Once the food hits the kitchen the kids can help in the decision making process about how to prepare the food and then get hands on in that process as well. I am not advocating giving your pre-schooler a Chef’s knife but a small paring knife can often be used safely. Many of us started in the kitchen standing on a stool next to Mom or Grandma chopping carrots or cleaning strawberries. If you don’t know how to cook something, get a recipe and learn together. Children love to see you learn new things; it gives them the example of lifelong learning we want to instill in them.

#3…Stock the house with Real Food. Slowly remove the food that is less than real. Begin providing different choices, vegetables or fruit as a snack instead of the fruit roll up (which may look OK but may not be as healthy as it could be.) Let your child see you making those Real Food choices and unless they are of a certain age they will want to emulate you.

#4 (and hardest)…Try to minimize their exposure to food marketing. I have never seen a commercial for broccoli or carrots but they are sure a lot of them trying to convince me to buy some adulterated edible non-food products under the guise of health. This is going to be difficult. And, honestly, most of our society today thinks it’s OK for kids to eat tons of sugar and other CRAP (Calorie Rich And Pathetic) food. It isn’t OK and it is why we are seeing an explosion in diabetes and obesity in our children. And once they start down that road we are putting them on a path that may be impossible to get off.

So…Eat Real Food. Get the kids involved in the process of finding, buying and preparing Real Food. Eat Real Food together. It is fun and your entire family will be healthier!

Namaste

John Mariotti

www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Sunday Story…Dietary Defense

As a Martial Arts Educator, a self defense instructor, a father, and a concerned member of our community I have been teaching people about self defense for over 20 years. For the most part that means I teach people how to protect themselves, their families and their property from individuals who may want to cause them harm. This consists primarily awareness training, boundary setting, and confrontation management (kicking a** and taking names).

Here is a sad fact: you are much more likely to be laid low by diabetes, obesity, heart disease, or the myriad of other life style diseases than you are going to be a victim of a violent attack. Learning how to defeat an attacker with a well placed “ninja” strike is sexy and exciting. Eating your vegetables? Meh…not so much.

The leading causes of death in this country are not gunshot wounds, knife attacks, or random violence. As a matter of fact, none of those even make the top 10. #1? Heart Disease. #2? Cancer. (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm) You can do something about this, just like you can do something about random violence (be aware, set clear boundaries, know how to respond physically). But will you?

Most of us need to fix our diets. I could go on about the statistics regarding obesity and diabetes type 2 in this country but I will refrain. The fact is we are the most over-fed and under-nourished people in the history of the world. Read that sentence again. More simply…we eat too much of the wrong food. We have relinquished our connection to the food we eat. This is, in itself, unhealthy. Then we have allowed major corporations whose primary interest is in perpetuating their own profits to tell us what we should be eating. This whole process is perverted and wrong.

I am not going to tell you how to eat. I have some pretty strong opinions about it as many of you know. What I am going to tell you is this: EAT REAL FOOD. Not food that comes from a box, bottle, or can. Not edible non-food products that have labels on them with a list of ingredients created in a laboratory.

Some basic rules:
If you don’t know where it came from, you probably shouldn’t be putting it in your body.
If you need to read the label before you eat it, you probably shouldn’t.
If the food has more than 3 ingredients it probably shouldn’t be eaten.
If it has an advertising budget it may not be REAL FOOD (when was the last time you saw an ad for broccoli or carrots?)
If you grew it eat it.
If someone you knew grew it, raised it, hunted it, or caught it, eat it.
If it still has dirt on it, eat it.
If you have to think about how to cook it you probably should eat it.

None of us want to be the victims of violence. No one wants to be punched or kicked, or harmed physically. So why do you assault yourself with chemically altered food substances that steal your vitality? I get it…it tastes good and it’s cheap and fast. So for convenience you will risk your health? You will save a couple bucks today and spend lots on prescriptions in the future? This is backwards people…we should be spending our money upfront on taking care of our health instead of on the back end taking care of our sickness.

“Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food”…Hippocrates

Namaste

John Mariotti

www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Sunday Story…Mired in Mediocrity

One of my favorite sayings is this: “Everyone wants to go to heaven. Nobody wants to die.” There is work to be done to discover how good you can be. There is a price that has to be paid to pull you from the mire of mediocrity. The price is a simple one. You have to apply yourself full out; with intention and intensity to getting what it is you want and where you want to go.

The fact is most people only pay lip service to being great. They bemoan lost opportunities and wonder how the Kobe Bryants, Peyton Mannings, and Tiger Woods could not be great at their every outing, while lying on the couch never making that first step toward their own greatness.

The human machine is designed for survival. This body we live in is going to do everything it can to be as efficient as possible under whatever circumstances we put it in. This body isn’t designed for a high level of fitness, it is designed for mediocrity. And in this day and age we have made survival much too easy. We aren’t hunting or foraging for food. We aren’t worried about our next meal (most of us) or whether we will have shelter or not. Our day to day survival does not depend on our physical performance any longer.

It is easy to stay average, to live a life that does just enough to get by and survive. If you want to live up to your potential you are going to have to get up and start working at. We weep for people who have no physical opportunities, yet we sit on our rears and allow our own opportunities to slowly, surely and happily dissipate. We have such good excuses…too old, too fat, too tired, too whatever. The fact is we are just happy to get by, to survive and leave greatness up to someone else.

You have greatness living in you. You have the potential to be so much better than you are today. You can define better however you want. Your potential is lying dormant and it is going to stay in hibernation until you awaken it. Somewhere deep inside you are afraid to awaken this dragon of achievement. You know, your body knows it is going to hurt, it is going to be difficult, and it might even be a quest that you will fall short of achieving.

You can’t be great if you don’t try. You can’t be great if you don’t start. You can’t be all you could be if you don’t put aside your fears and decide that heaven is worth dying for.

Here is a piece of good news: your physical potential does not die until you do. So whatever your current state is you can make it better. Your potential to be better grows as you get better, like a well that continues to refill. Unless we try to get really good, super hero good we will never know how close you might get. You might even know you can never get there but you keep doing everything you can to get there anyway. Because being mired in mediocrity is a fate worse than death.

Get out and strive to be the best you possible. And guess what…You will be great.

Namaste

John Mariotti

www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com