Backyard Vegetable Gardens & Michael Pollan's 20 Food Rules for more Healthy Eating

Growing up we had a vegetable garden, Mom speaks of the vegetable garden her family had growing up, Grandma tended it and took after the example of her Mom, Grandma May, who was a pioneer crossing the prairies in one of those red river carts.  Those folks knew how to avoid wasting food, probably because they also knew what real hunger felt like. They knew about picking high-bush cranberries, about making jam and preserves, and of course making home-made bread.  Many of the necessary ingredients came straight from the garden, whether it was cukes for pickling or raspberries growing on canes in the garden, or tomatoes, carrots and other veggies amply supplied by the ground.  How natural is that?  Somehow after my family moved to BC in the late 80s we never gave a vegetable garden a second thought.  (Despite more favourable growing conditions.)  For almost 20 years I have been falling under the delusion that vegetables come from the produce section and not from the dirt.  Recent documentaries like super-size me the "Meatrix" and others have raised some significant questions for me about where my food comes from and how healthy it is.

So...

Today I started digging my garden.  It is another in a series of small steps I'm taking to eat food that is more healthy and more socially responsible.  I'm tired of eating without thinking as if in a waking sleep.  I want to put good foods in my body, and foods that have been produced, prepared and transported in a responsible manner. Some of you have heard of the 100 mile diet (now a book The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating) in which people attempt to only eat food that has traveled less than 100 miles to their plate.  To me the backyard garden is about as close as you can get in transportation cost and processing. With my recent rain-barrel project, I have 200L of (non-chlorinated) rainwater available to water the garden.

For me I can't get it "perfect" it isn't about perfection, its about direction.  Am I moving towards health or away from it?  For this reason I really enjoyed reading Michael Polland's collection of "food rules" that his readers sent in. Michael Polland has authored books like; The Omnivore's Dilemma, The Botany of Desire, and Second Nature: A Gardener's Education.  The list reads like a "Cole's Notes" of collective food wisdom served in bite sized chunks.

I absolutely love this kind of reading, discovering what has worked for others outside of my experience, beyond my culture.  I was taught to "clean my plate" to not waste food.  I was more recently taught to eat until I was full.  The idea expressed above of stopping when 7/10ths full was full is brand new to me, but judging from my wasteline, this might be the best advice to date!  (We'll see how I do with the application of this rule).

Check out Food Rules: Your Dietary Dos and Don'ts (via Lifehacker)

Cheers,

Greg.