Better Food for a Healthier Family: Our Journey's Beginning

My eye's swelling finally decreased enough to slit open around noon today. It felt like a long time to live without 3D vision. Made me feel empathetic towards all who have to wear an eye patch for life. (And I do have a photo of my swollen eye, but it's gruesome and the computer is actually refusing to load it, so I'll leave it out.)

Rain kept me from working outside. I was thrilled to stay inside and read to Abraham and Isaiah, picture book after picture book, hour after hour. Jadon played games with Gramps, the Skip-Bo expert. In the afternoon, the family went to mail off a water sample. I'll be interested to see what contaminants, if any, we have.

I also have us now registered at Local Harvest, apparently the premier website for finding locally grown foods. That's a bit of marketing finally completed.

And now, a brief history of our dietary journey, or, why we eat as we do.

Shortly after we got married, Phil made me quit the Pill. I was relieved: it had been a rough couple of months feeling so crazy-emotional. Since then, I have talked to maybe one woman who didn't feel the Pill made her crazy; almost universally, women feel like it's a harsh drug. (I've since learned that hormones in the body are measured in parts per trillion. I wonder how heavy the doses in the Pill are.)

After marriage, I also had odd rages at odd times. Those rages were really odd—I wouldn't feel particularly angry one minute, then would hit the roof, but still have a little voice in the back of my head saying, "Amy, you're not acting rationally. This isn't like you." I would say it felt almost like demon-possession, like something took over my body.

My brother, too, had rages. We both tried eliminating wheat. The rages ceased.

Was it psychosomatic? Well, my brother once ate teriyaki chicken and went off running around the hills, screaming for three hours. The teriyaki sauce had soy sauce, and soy sauce has wheat. No kidding.

And I would take communion until I realized I had rages every Sunday afternoon. No more communion for me. (Only for a short time, though. By the time we left Boulder, though, eight families of about 15 also had at least one person avoiding wheat, so we took rice crackers instead of bread.)

My oldest son had night terrors. This, too, looked a bit like demon-possession. He would shriek in the middle of the night, sometimes for an hour or two, eyes open, but no cognition. And so, no comfort. I took him off wheat, and from that day on he's had no night terrors.

As an extra benefit, my sister, who had only seen Jadon on rare occasions, said two weeks later, "When did Jadon become so nice?" She noticed an entire personality change that I hadn't really noticed.

For a time, grandparents would treat the boys with cheese puffs or candy. The boys cries changed, becoming more high-pitched and pervasive. They became more aggressive, more unhappy. We cut off such treats, and the emotions stayed normal.

Most dramatically, perhaps, was Phil's change. He suffered debilitating migraines several times a month since junior high. He would miss work, staying in bed for days at a time. We hadn't suspected MSG until I came across a link to Hidden Names of MSG. Apparently MSG has many names, and is difficult to peg down.

Once we started to eat primarily whole foods, it became easy to peg which foods still triggered migraines, whether hot sauce or salad dressing or Mexican take out. Chocolate and red wine also triggered them on occasion, but migraines hurt enough, he was willing to give those up, too.

Which is all to say, we are happy to eat mostly whole foods. We like being (mostly) emotionally stable and (mostly) healthy people.

This wasn't the only reason we started a farm, but the lifestyle of eating better quality food was the beginning of our farming journey, I think.