A Nourishing Ideology

I don't know if being a Montessorian was just a beginning step on the road to "crunchiness" (as the people who love me most refer to it), or if all roads in my life would have led me there, but there's no doubt, I have arrived.

When I took my absence from writing, part of my motivation was that I was losing my voice.  I don't know that I was sure what I was writing about anymore, or what I was doing in general.  Following as many "mommy blogs" as I do now, I was starting to feel like everything has been covered or that I was becoming overly influenced in what I was choosing to write.  Now, however, I have found the clarity to just keep plugging along with what I am doing and what passionately drives me, wherever it may take me.  This blog is about being more than just Montessori, but making sure that I stay with those roots always, because let's face it, I am at heart, a Montessorian.

Montessori is all about the prepared environment; we create the appropriate environment to allow our children the freedom to operate within it.  This goes far beyond safety, but rather refers to the idea that what we place in the environment is what the child will use to create himself, stimulate his intelligence, and help him with the development of his foundation; what goes in the environment is what nourishes the child.  Lately, I've been feeling that more so than just what my son interacts with around him, but everything that goes into him is part of this same prepared environment.  Everything that he eats affects his behavior, his intellect, his mood, his self control, and his abilities; he is what he eats.  Food is medicine.

These beliefs have driven me to an ideology of nourishment; everything that goes into my son's body should be like the prepared environment around him, chosen to best provide the nourishment for his entire self.  This path has led me to the "Real Food" movement.  Books like Nina Planck's well-written Real Food: What To Eat And Why have changed the way I think about "healthy."  Rather than being dominated by thoughts of cholesterol and low calorie, Nina challenges that the problem with food is that it has become overly processed.  Ancient foods like beef and butter have been falsely accused, while industrial foods like corn syrup and soybean oil have created a triple epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.  We need to return to the traditional way of cooking and eating things that are real.  Enter Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, based on the research of Dr. Weston Price.  This is the definitive cookbook on how and why to eat real, homemade, made from scratch food.  Dr. Price argued that we need to return to more nutrient-rich foods: we should be pasture-feeding livestock, soaking our grains, and drinking raw milk (yes, yes, this one is a charged topic and one I'll discuss at another time; here's how we currently stick with pasteurized milk, but I buy it pasteurized at low temps, non-homogonized, and from local pastured cows).  The argument is a simple one: most of the food you buy at the grocery store is overly processed and that means less nutrients.  If food is medicine and you are what you eat, then it's no wonder we have so many unhealthy epidemics right now.

How are the foods most people eat bad for them (and especially, bad for children)?  Well, besides the fact that processed foods are often filled with dyes, preservatives, chemicals, pesticides, and artificial flavors, much of it actually lacks nutrients.  In other words, if the entire purpose of feeding yourself is to nourish your body and operate at optimal levels, most of our food fails to do so.  It's just filler. By processing and mass-producing many foods, we suck the nutrients (the whole reason we are supposed to be eating them) right out of them.

For example, let us talk about eggs.  Eggs are a fantastic superfood, a very high-quality protein.  They have so many nutrients in them: choline for maintaining cell-membrane structure, vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin B12, omegas, the list goes on.  However, how much of those nutrients are in the eggs you eat are entirely dependent upon how those eggs were sourced.  Studies show that pastured eggs have 4 to 6 times the amount of vitamin D than conventional eggs, as well as 1⁄3 less cholesterol, 1⁄4 less saturated fat, 2⁄3 more vitamin A, 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids, 3 times more vitamin E, and 7 times more beta carotene.  That's a lot of change in the egg just from a shift from a chicken's natural diet and treatment.  If the doctor offered you a brand medicine that worked 100% effectively and had less side effects (let's consider more cholesterol and fat to be a side effect in this analogy) or another that worked 40% effectively and had more side effects, which would you choose?

Nina Planck's book can give you even more information about nutrient-rich as opposed to nutrient-robbed foods.  The arguments are pretty compelling.  So much so, that is has changed the entire way my family eats.  Well, at least when I'm in charge of it; gotta remember Robyn O'Brien's "80/20 rule" from The Unhealthy Truth for balance in all things (speaking of another book that will change the way you look at the foods our children eat).    I find myself soaking grains in order to make them more digestible, using sprouted flours, cooking beans rather than buying canned, and generally, trying to cook from scratch.  I'm buying foods from pastured animals and organic when necessary (some foods need to be organic while others are less impacted).  The truth is, you might say it's easier because I'm a stay-at-home mom and have the day to do these things (although, if you knew my toddler, you might not think I really had that much time).  But women like those who write Food Babe and 100 Days Of Real Food will tell you that there are many ways to adhere to this ideology and still utilize convenience.  Sometimes it's more about what you buy.  For example, Ezekiel 4:9 breads are already a sprouted, whole grain source that you can buy at the grocery store (well, maybe not any grocery store) and Arrowhead Mills now makes sprouted wheat flour.  But, you'll also find that the make from scratch method can actually be a lot cheaper, especially if you've ever bought a can of beans compared to a bag of them.  If you can garden (oh how I wish I could right now!), then you've got an even cheaper way of harvesting nutrient-dense foods.

When I think of all the reasons to follow my new food ideology, I am also reminded that food and nutrition were extremely important to Dr. Maria Montessori.  Granted, she's operating from the knowledge of the late-1800s, early 1900s, but all the same, that's the roots we "real fooders" are trying to get back to.  In her first major book, The Montessori Method (which you can read online here), she devoted an entire chapter (the seventh) to "Refection: A Child's Diet."  While I don't agree with everything she says and feel that science has taught us more about some of them (I theorize that she would change her mind about some of these things), like her discouragement of snacking for children, discouragement of cheeses for children (what?!), and discouragement of green vegetables for children (double what?!), I find that most of what she wrote is in harmony with the real food movement.  She advocates foods straight from the source, emphasizing "freshly gathered."  She also advocates plenty of broth-dominant soups (bone broth being highly praised when you start talking about the value of nutrient-dense and healthy foods).  As I look for ways to feed my son, I find myself continually returning to this chapter.

This ideology has taken me on a new path of study, but I am finding that no matter where I go with it, it always reminds me of my Montessori principles, which I love.  Dr. Montessori wrote "we are here to offer to this life, which came into the world by itself, the means necessary for its development, and having done that we must await this development with respect."

As I continue this journey, I'll share more with you about how I do it, and also, how my little guy and I it together.