The Whole Truth About Googala

My daughter, excited to try the new fennel soup recipe, and said fennel trying to soften up. It's so pretty, but hard to beat into submission...

In order for us to take this journey together, there are a few things we need to clear up first. You may have noticed, in my inaugural post (Why blog, why now?), that I referred to a string of "food religions" that I have been exploring and comparing. What you may or may not have noticed is what was missing from that list, such as Low Fat, Low Cal, Portion Control, South Beach, Atkins, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, ________(insert latest diet craze here). This is because for me, and hopefully for you as well, these are not options of consideration. The nutritional theories that support these diets are much of the reason why googala is so present in supposedly healthy diets, and keeping well-meaning people fat, sick, and miserable. (By the way, this is a tell-it-like-it-is blog. Not for the overly sensitive...just FYI...) And so, dear readers, we must go back to the beginning. Back to the conversation that I had with my friend, when the word googala was invented.

My friend Erica is an extremely intelligent Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. She and I worked together in my past Life at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on a Gastrointestinal and Endocrine unit. You would think that this makes us experts in food and nutrition, but sadly, it does not. Stay tuned for more on that one...But, I digress. Erica was experiencing skin breakouts, and I, being her Skin Care Consultant, was asking her what she had been eating lately. (Why, you ask? Oh readers, we have so much to learn together! Enjoy the journey.) She told me that she has been eating "reasonably well-balanced meals with enought fruits and vegetables, and treats in moderation." "But how much processed food are you eating?" I asked her. To which she responded why does it matter? If she is eating enough of the good stuff, why isn't she allowed to have a store bought cookie for dessert? And this is what I told her:

"This is not a meritocracy. Your body is a machine that was designed to run on whole foods. It doesn't recognize non-food, and it doesn't know what to do with it. When you eat an apple, your body says: "oh, an apple! I know how to digest that and what it's for." If you eat almonds, it says "I know what to do with that!" Your body recognizes the water, fiber, vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins, etc. in whole foods, and handles them accordingly. Now say you eat a processed cookie with chemical dyes and sugars: your body says, "this is...googala...I don't know what to do with googala..." But it is very smart and resourceful, and it has a system for dealing with foreign matter or trash. So, the googala goes through and the liver and kidneys and the gut and skin do what they can to handle it. And on it goes: "Fiber, Vitamin, A, proteins...woah! Googala. Um, ok let's put that aside..." So it doesn't matter how much you feel you deserve to eat googala by offsetting it with other foods, the fact is, your body was not designed to thrive by digesting it. Our body is brilliant: it will handle the processing of googala every-once-in-a-while, without seriously taxing our machinery. However, are most of us using true moderation? (hint: it's not once a day, or even once a week!) No. Most people live on googala, with whole foods as the exception. And now they are living with an extraordinary gammit of illnesses that they are convinced is just "coincidence" or even "normal" for people of their age/race/gender/bone structure/fill-in-the-blank. It's like putting motor oil in your gas tank and saying, "What? My tank is full! Why isn't it running properly? Something must be wrong with my motor..."

OK, it's a goofy metaphor. But it worked: I enlightened Erica, and googala became a household name. I began to identify forbidden foods as googala for my children, and I made sure to take the time to eplain to them why foods they were previousy allowed in moderation were now forbidden and/or replaced. We will be talking more about this process in future posts, but I will leave you with a memory of one of the best conversations my kids and I had on this subject.

My son struggles a lot more than his sister with resisting the temptation of processed sugar, and one time he asked me, in utter frustration, "Mom, why do they make googala taste sooooo good?" Now, I have been discussing the concept of Marketing with my children, because I wanted to raise them with a lot of awareness about their status as a consumer, and how most of what we see and hear is designed to influence our emotions and part us with our money. If you haven't started this kind of education with your children, please do. It saves you a lot of "But why? I want it!!!!" conversations in the future...So when he asked me that question, I went straight to the Marketing answer: "Because if you knew how sick it makes you, you would never buy it. They have to make it taste really good in the hopes that you will ignore what your body needs." Was he angry that I was telling him he couldn't eat the crappy candy he got from school? No! With that explanation, he kissed me on the cheek, and said "I'm so glad you're my Mom."

It takes a lot of work, people, but aren't they worth it? Aren't you?

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Latest new recipe: My own invention! Cauliflower, fennel potato soup. I love the look of fennel, but am struggling to make it tender enough to enjoy eating it. I sauteed it until soft, but very, very browned. I used it in place of leeks in a cauliflower, leek, potato soup recipe we love. It's a pureed soup, but I left the potatos cubed like a chowder. The flavor was very interesting...We liked it the first night, but it doesn't make for good leftovers. The kids ate some no thank you bites, and my husband said the flavor was good, the color was off-putting.

Currently reading: OK, I admit it. It's Harry Potter The Goblet of Fire. I love to read aloud to the kids in lieu of watching TV, and I have waited for years to get them HP ready. It has shoved Eat To Live to the backburner. But I will be trying the White Northern Bean Hummus recipe soon, and I even bought dried beans to soak so I can avoid the canned version, which has high levels of BPA. A new step for me...

Why blog, why now?

Let me explain the title of this blog.


I am what many people would refer to as a "health nut" in that I take steps to prevent or avoid illness via the food my family eats, and the products that we use in our home and on our body. However, I always found the term "health nut" to be a mostly positive one where the person in question actually enjoys the process. Oh sure, we all know how irritating these people can be, as anyone who lives by a strict code can be to people who don't "get it." But this form of self-satisfaction often comes from a place of smugness, when one believes oneself to have found The Answer, and bathes in the glory of the Light of Truth (cue heavenly shaft and angels singing).


I am not that kind of nut. I am the other kind. The crazy kind.


I started out believing myself to be the former, until I recently found myself drowning in conflicting information. For several years now, I have had one simple mission: discover how to feed my family. The irony of this dilemma is not lost on me. As Americans, we are no more than 20 feet from a snack at any given point of our day. Our grain silos are so full of corn and soy, we are having to invent new ways of using it. There is soy in your printer ink. Our grocery stores are so choked with options, that we give food to children to make arts and crafts with. (Here's a fun little game! Go visit a homeless shelter sometime and bring macaroni, paint, and yarn to teach the kids how to make necklaces. That look on their face? Shock.) No, I know I have options. Waaaay too many options. What I mean is, how do I feed them in a way that nourishes their body, does not contribute to excess weight, future heart disease/cancer/diabetes, maximizes flavor and nutritional content, stays in my food budget, and doesn't rape and pillage ethnic groups or the Earth in the process? Because there are a lot of opinions on that matter, and they are all in direct conflict with one another.


Whole Foods? Vegetarian? Vegan? Paleo? Flexitarian? Seasonal? Organic & Grassfed? Local only? And my personal favorite: Everything in moderation?


Each one has their scientific evidence to support their own particular brand of crazy. I have flirted with each of these "food religions," some longer than others, some with intention, and some accidental. Except now, I am dragging 3 people along with me, and they do not share my Holy Grail-type attitude about this quest.


Mothers have it hard these days. And I don't mean stalk it and kill it hard. Or hurry to gather it in an early frost hard. Or spend all day, every day in the kitchen hard. Or there isn't enough hard. I do have enough perspective to be very aware and grateful about the privilege of my status as a middle-class American, knowing that Mothers in Africa risk being raped and killed to walk several miles for water. But it is not like it used to be. Life used to be simple: you ate whole foods in a seasonal, local manner because that was the only choice you had. Sure the blueberries and tomatoes are in the store in January, but should you buy them? They will reduce your risk of cancer, but they are depleting all of the water in Mexico and taking out the Mexicans who grow them (Remember those people who some of us are trying to prevent from coming here? The ones who pick all of the produce because we won't take those jobs?) Also, many of us work full-time or at least part-time, and we all know that the plethora of convenience foods that have sprung out of the Feminist Movement are killing us slowly. Our generation of children are the first to have a lower life expectancy than we do because of food related diseases (aka preventable). Seriously. We may not be ignoring our kids all day to keep up with extraordinary tasks of survival, but man are we busy! Not too many of us have the time to be investing hours of research, shopping, preparation, and execution that many of these food religions seem to require. And yet, knowing that we may be responsible for the future slow death by disease of our families, how can we be nonchalant about this subject? "The 1992 Bogalusa Heart Study confirmed the existence of fatty plaques and streaks (the beginning of atherosclerosis) in most children and teenagers (Eat to Live, Joel Fuhrman)." Yikes.


I was lucky to get 3 months maternity leave, work part-time on weekends, and have a partner with a good job to support me financially while I "womaned" the home front. I breastfed both kids well past 1 year of age, and ate what I considered to be a healthy diet (ah, the good old days!) Still, my children have had food sensitivities, food allergies, eczema, asthma, digestion problems (and that is all I am going to say about that!), and developmentally appropriate phases of "Eeeeeeeeeew! I am NOT going to eat that!" And it just so happens that my kids are not picky, and eat extremely well compared to the general population. I honestly do not know how some of you all do it! (Think you know picky? See my friend Emily's blog "Wheels on the Bus" for her experience with one of her three children. Her hilarious cookbook "Cooking on the Edge of Insanity" came from many of her posts.) The more I learn, the less I know, and the panic is starting to rise.


And this is where you come in. I am standing at a crossroads. I don't have the answers, though many of you turn to me for them. I am usually the one people ask advice of. I am the one who cleans out my friends' pantries when they can't take being tired and overweight another second. I am the one who was asked to take a field trip of people to the grocery store to teach them all how to read labels (I'm not kidding. There were about 10 of us...) And so, after much prodding from friends to post my food journey, I take this plunge to share with you my successes and failures. In particular, I will be addressing the unique challenges of waging World War III against all of the people trying to shove sugar down your kids throats wherever you go. Right now, my strongest tool is the "I can't control them but I can control you" (my child) theory. It works, but it takes will and commitment. My kids are the ones that politely say "no thank you" when they are offered candy wherever they go, and I don't even have to remind them that this is our stock answer anymore (well, most of the time). We even made up a word in my family: googala.

Goo-gah-lah: noun. Non-food. Chemical or fake. Example - Child: "Mom, can I eat this blue lolly pop?" Mom: "No, it's googala." Child: "Oh."

It's brilliant. It has reduced my argument to two irrefutable words. My children know that these words are my last. I have friends now who are starting to use the word in their homes. Go ahead - use it in good health. We're all in this together.

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Latest New Recipe: Blue Apple Nut Oatmeal from "Eat to Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. A fruit- heavy, grain-light hot cereal made with bananas, blueberries, chopped apples and walnuts. Oh, and plenty of cinnamon.

Reaction: Daughter ate the whole bowl saying "it's okay," son griped about the blueberries being "weird" when it was hot, but ate it when it was cool (he prefers cold oatmeal as a rule). I ate a bowl and agreed the frozen blueberries were a bit rubbery, but got through it all and felt satisfied. The walnuts definitely make the dish. Husband did not eat. Breakfast to him is bacon eggs and coffee. Or just coffee. Sigh.

Currently Reading: Eat to Live, Joel Fuhrman, MD. Interesting so far, but he has no concern for the environment, and advises us all to eat fruits and vegetables 365 regardless of location or season.