Yesterday’s post covered some mixed views on the value of kale.

Beneath that post, WendyL commented:

I’ve tried to like eating kale but I just don’t, so I don’t grow it. We recently watched an episode of Evil Food Supply on YouTube. They went into detail about the human body doesn’t absorb nutrients from vegetables well and how many vegetables, including cruciferous vegetables, contain anti-nutrients. The take away from their report was eat more meat – especially grass fed red meat – eggs and dairy, as the human body can readily absorb nutrients from those sources.
Admittedly, I will still be growing a garden this year and don’t plan to give up eating vegetables but I must admit the more I look into it… the more I begin to see vegetables in a new light.

I believe this is the video she mentioned:

I watched it last night – it was an interesting presentation with some good points.

A friend of mine writes:

After reading something (posted by a friend) about oxalic acid, I dropped all leafy greens except cabbage and lettuce. That was also my last kidney stone. I miss Spinach and collards, but not enough to take that risk again.

I love berries and other fruits, particularly bananas, blueberries and watermelons. For vegetables, we mostly eat roots and brassicas, with some mustard and turnip greens. Spinach has been off the “edible” list for years, and we quit growing salad greens back in 2015 or so. I will throw wild greens in with scrambled eggs, though. And onions and garlic are always good.

We have gone carnivore before. Rachel managed gestational diabetes during a pregnancy without taking Metformin or insulin, simply by eating an almost zero-carb diet comprised of meat, eggs and cheese. One doctor was horrified and wanted her to eat a lot of carbs (a shocking amount, actually) while taking pharmaceuticals instead; however, the near-carnivore diet kept her blood sugar levels under control without medical intervention and the baby was good and strong.

Neither of us have ever dealt with kidney stones. We’re also able to maintain our weight easily, as we don’t eat much starch and almost no processed food.

Really, though – the biggest jump most people have to make isn’t the jump to zero vegetables or zero carbs or anything that extreme. It’s the jump from eating life-destroying “convenience foods’ and sucking down sugary drinks to eating foods that take longer to prepare and are much closer to nature.

So quit McDonald’s long before quitting salad.

Our normal diet is home-grown pork, farm eggs, some greens and roots from the garden, potatoes and daikons and cabbages (mostly fermented in sauerkraut) in spring, watermelons in summer, raw milk, butter, cheese, home-rendered lard, chicken and some rice and beans on Fridays. It’s not perfect, and it could be better, but we do alright.

If you don’t have the space to raise animals, grow lots of roots and fruits and get whatever meat and eggs you can manage.

And don’t freak out too much. As I said yesterday, the body can run on a lot of things.

I worked construction one summer as a teenager. The guys would eat Hardees biscuits and drink Mountain Dew and work all day in the sun. I don’t know how they didn’t keel over. I did the same thing and felt lousy – and they were older than me and had eaten that way for years. And some of them drank and smoked, too. The body really is resilient.

Just work towards eating the best you can and pay attention to the signals your gut and energy levels reveal to you.

As a final note, it’s been almost one month since I quit drinking alcohol as an experiment, and one month and six days since I quit smoking. That definitely has helped my energy levels. I wasn’t taking my own advice and “paying attention” to my body’s signals but now I have, and it’s a good thing since the spring season is packed with important work that needs to be done.