To eat well, eat close to the earth

By: KATE FRATTI

Bucks County Courier Times

There’s nothing like a little awareness to gum up the works. It’s especially true for me now that I’m revamping my diet.

This week, I made the mistake over breakfast of reading the nutrition panel on a loaf of low-carb whole wheat bread. I did this because it tasted like old straw. I fully expected it would, since everyone knows low-carb is good for us. Still, I was curious about what exactly was making it taste so nasty.

The label indicated that, in addition to delivering no pleasure, the bread also doesn’t deliver much else. No vitamin A, no C, no riboflavin, and just the tiniest, insignificant amounts of thiamin, niacin, iron or folate, whatever that is. So, this particular slice of whole wheat was good for getting a bit of runny poached egg to my face, but I could have done the same with a cardboard box top. The cardboard couldn’t have tasted any worse than the bread, and probably contained more fiber.

Ever since I confessed my diet woes, I’ve been getting e-mails and phone calls not just from fellow dieters – the good dieters and the very bad – but also from fitness experts who want to school me.

The experts’ message? Food is fuel. You can use it for entertainment, for comfort, for nurturing loved ones, but in the end, if that food is not delivering nutrition, you’re not nurturing anyone.

I hate that message, but now I am aware of it.

I’m also aware that some of you are wondering why, with all the important things going on in the world, I’m milking the diet topic.

How could I help milking it this week, once I got word a Newtown Township dairy farm is trying to educate Bucks Countians about nutrition. (Get it? Milk? Dairy? Too cheesy? Forgive me. I’m weak for lack of fatty, salty calories.)

Birchwood Farms will sponsor an event at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the New Life Christian Church in Newtown. It’ll feature New Jersey author and fitness expert Kevin Brown, who, with nutritionist Annette Presley, has penned “The Liberation Diet.”

Promotion for the book claims it “shatters myths to bring a commonsense approach to eating and living.” In addition, the book includes discussions on food additives, fats, carbohydrates, calories, water and salt. The idea is to get readers to “look at how they eat, why they eat and what they eat in a whole new way.”

There’s that pesky awareness theme again.

Brown argues that much of what we’ve been taught about nutrition is a bald-faced lie perpetrated by the prepared food industry. Our focus should be on “real” food. To eat well means to eat close to the Earth, and that doesn’t mean sprawled on a picnic blanket in the grass with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and potato salad. Although it’d be a lot cooler if it did.

The answer to America’s weight problem? Locally grown fruits, vegetables, whole grains, raw dairy, wild-caught fish and organically fed cows, chickens and pigs.

What’s Birchwood’s interest in Brown’s approach? The farm has been a raw organic creamery since October 1943, when it was founded by Howard Tierney, who came to Bucks from Connecticut. It’s run today by his grandson, Michael Tierney Jr., who’s still using his grandfather’s recipes.

A lot of the farm’s Web site (www.birchwoodfarmdairy.com) is dedicated to nutrition education. Mike describes the family’s mission this way: “To use our God-given blessings of family, of military service, of compassion and wisdom to continue to help the less fortunate, to promote the dairy industry in a practical and unique fashion, to improve the dairy cow, to research practical unknowns, to educate the public, to lead by example while earning a living.”

At the New Life Christian event, you can sample Birchwood raw milk and dairy and meat products. The certified organic raw products are made from the farm’s own 100-percent grass-fed Jersey cow milk. The organic grass-fed-only Angus beef, pork and veal are “the most nutrient-dense available,” according to Mike.

Cheese samples? Did I hear cheese?

New Life Christian Church is at 4 Freedom Drive. Birchwood Farms is at 428 Brownsburg Road. For more information, call 215-598-8633.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news_details/article/577/2010/january/15/to-eat-well-eat-close-to-the-earth.html