Daily Archive

Jenny and her daughter

I don’t now about you, but I just love Twitter. On it, I find new friends almost weekly. Some are very different than I am, others share a similar outlook on life or interests. I have farmer friends, pig rancher friends, fisherman friends, columnist friends, tree-hugger friends, crunchy granola mom friends, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian and “other” friends…many more types of people than I would otherwise run into in the course of my daily life.

Now, it’s true that Twitter offers a very limited conversation level. I mean, 140 characters for someone as chatty as I am just doesn’t go very far. But, some of us take our conversations to email or Facebook for more in-depth discussion.

My friend Jenny and I chat mainly over Twitter. But she came home from the doctor with some amazing cholesterol numbers that I had to ask about. Here’s what she said in an email discussion:

“I grew up on a very processed diet.  Not low in fat overall, probably, but very low in animal fat, and high in vegetable oil, particularly the partially hydrogenated kind!  I was born in 1979, so I grew up in the mad heyday of trans fats, artificial sweeteners, food dyes, etc.  Real food was a rarity in the late 1980s, and my mom embraced convenience foods—she loved them.

“I must say I got pretty addicted to junk food.  To this day, I have to stay away from conventional grocery stores because I am very comforted by processed, packaged snack foods.

“I continued to eat a lot of that stuff until two years ago, when I read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, and it really shed a light on the unnaturalness of our food system here in the U.S.  I had also just lost my 60-year-old mom to cancer, and had a baby. My interest in living a healthy lifestyle was very high, so it was a great time to make a change.

“Over the past two years, we have given up processed food and other “junk.”  We make almost everything we eat from scratch—even the beer we drink!  We don’t eat baked goods, for instance, unless we make them.  We’ve stopped eating industrial meat and dairy, and try to eat almost exclusively locally.  We get our eggs and chicken from one guy, our beef and pork from another, etc.  We go to the farmer’s market twice a week, the health foods store once a week, and a regular grocery store only when mandatory!

“Our diet now is very high in fresh vegetables and fruit, and grassfed butter and pastured eggs.  My daughter and I drink raw, organic, grassfed milk, and the whole family eats pastured beef/pork/chicken about twice a week.  We eat some grains, mostly in the form of homemade bread, but tend to get most of our carbs from fruit and veg.  We don’t really snack, but eat very lovely, indulgent meals!

“As of this week, my LDL is 91 and my HDL is 70.  My doctor (a cardiologist) was blown away by my HDL.  He said it was the best he’d seen in a very long time.  I thought about telling him it was probably due to my steady diet of butter and eggs, but didn’t feel like hearing him dispute me!

“We still eat refined sugar in our coffee and baked goods, and refined flour. I’m afraid a brownie just isn’t a brownie when made with whole wheat flour.  I would like to drink more raw milk and start eating my egg yolks raw more often.  I would also like to totally give up eating dairy outside the house, as we did with meat.  It’s just so hard to go to restaurants now!  Why can’t there be more restaurants serving real food?  Also, I will always love Coca-Cola…we drink it once every few months and eventually that needs to stop, too.

“Another change I’ve noticed since changing my diet was my weight. In high school I weighed 125 lbs (at 5’6″), which shot up to 145 when I went to college and adopted the non-fat, vegetarian diet that was in vogue.  As I added more fat and meat to my diet, my weight went down to around 130, but it wasn’t until I made the switch to a high-fat (good fat) diet that I went back down to 125.  What’s funny to me is that I eat absolutely WHATEVER I want, whenever I want, and I’m at my ideal weight.  The key is that I’m not eating the absolute junk I adored for so many years—the calories I eat now are mostly really nutritious.  I’m sure I eat less food, overall, but I’m not making an effort in that direction.

“I’ve noticed that when you limit yourself to the highest quality animal foods, eating them becomes a celebration, not a routine.  Every time I spread grassfed butter on my toast or carve into a grassfed roast beef, I feel very, very lucky, and very, very pampered.  I’m so grateful to the animals, the farmers, the earth.  I value my food so much more, and I’m sure that contributes to my overall health, as well.”

I hope Jenny’s story encourages you to not fear healthy fat. Her 1.3 ratio of LDL to HDL is outstanding. Real food is good food, trust your palate!

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade.