What We Talk About When We Talk About Food

I don't know about you, but lately I've been feeling bombarded with information about food and discouraged because it seems like everything I eat or feed my family is somehow bad.  I care about the health of my family (I have probably spent more time researching health concerns on the Internet than I spent studying for the bar exam), and I totally agree with the idea that health and food are intimately related.  Yet somehow, all this food hype makes me want to bury my head in the sand.  Food information is easily (overly?) available via numerous documentaries, books, articles, Buzzfeed lists, etc.  So, armed with all this information, why do I not conform better to best food practices?  Here are the two main reasons:

1.  Informational Confusion:  It's hard to sort between health concerns, environmental concerns, ethical concerns, and taste concerns, since these things often get lumped together in the "bad food" category.  It's hard to tell what's really crazy scary bad v. what's maybe not the best.  It's hard to tell what's based on fear of unknown future consequences (such as GMOs) v. science.  It's hard to know what's being called a good food today, until a new study labels it a bad food.  (Ie butter, coffee, wine, eggs.)  It's hard to weigh competing concerns - like, is it better to eat 5 daily servings of non-organic produce, or to eat half as much produce but have it be organic?  But information is not the main thing.  The basics of how to eat better aren't that hard:  less sugar, less salt, less processing; more produce (especially greens, preferably organic) and whole grains; less and better meat; less and more wholesome snack foods and dessert.  The main thing is...

2.  Practical Concerns:  there are limits to what i can afford, what kind of products are available in my local grocery store, how much time i can spend on food prep, and what my family members are willing to eat.  There's also the issue, let's just be honest, that while I want to prolong the length and quality of my life, I also want to enjoy it, and this involves eating the occasional milk shake.  (Okay, more than occasional.)

So, in light of these concerns, here are my "eat better food" resolutions.  I'm hoping these things will be more helpful than watching another documentary about how Monsanto is evil or reading a viral article about what really goes into a Chicken McNugget:

• Find real food recipes that are affordable and manageable - I used to think the affordable and manageable part was impossible, but i recently bought Mark Bittman's cookbook, "How to Cook Everything", and he has all sorts of real food recipes that are not more expensive and barely take more time than heating up processed food.  So I'm reading up and trying to incorporate some of these in my repertoire.  
• Find more information about "intermediate foods" - I know about super foods like broccoli and almonds, but my kids won't eat these things. I want to learn about the alternatives that are better than Cheetos, Skittles, and soda, but that kids will actually eat.
• Drop the all or nothing attitude.  I am trying to slowly move away from processed food where it's practical, but it's not something that happens overnight.  Sometimes cooking real food seem like an all or nothing lifestyle, when in fact cooking a few real food meals a week, or cooking meals that combine homemade elements and pre-packaged elements, or eating a few more servings of veggies would all be a lot better than doing nothing.   
• Stay away from food articles that are guilt inducing but not otherwise helpful.  Self explanatory.  
• End goal:  be more intentional about food.  I'm definitely not going to be giving up all frozen pizzas or pre-baked cookies, but I'm going to try not to have them be my default so often.  I would like to learn more "real food" recipes and keep ample food on hand so that when we're eating frozen pizza, it's because we're really craving it, not because it's the only dinner option in the house.  

Exciting News!

Today we met with J's nutritionist and she gave approval for us to stop using his feeding tube!  (If you're wondering why he uses a feeding tube, here's the story.)  We will stop using it for food starting today, and use the next 8 weeks to transition his water and medicine intake from tube to mouth.  Then he will keep the tube in for another 6 months to make sure he can maintain his weight.

I knew there was a good chance this would happen today (we just saw his GI so I knew his weight and growth have been good, and we've been tracking his diet so I knew his calories and nutrients were in the right range).  But it's still sort of unbelievable that we finally made it to this point.  Every time we thought we were getting close, some new bump in the road came up.  When we left the NICU, we thought there was a good chance that he would be eating orally within a month, once he passed a swallow study.  If I knew then that we were going to have the tube for 4 more YEARS rather than 4 more weeks, it would have felt utterly overwhelming.  The feeding tube turned out to be not nearly as bad as I expected, especially considering how challenging it can be to feed him by mouth.  Nevertheless, we have been looking forwad to this day for the past 3 and a half years, and I am so excited that it's here!!  I'm not a big crier (that's an understatement), but I cried happy tears on the way home from his appointment, cried again on the way to the gym, and will probably cry again before the night is over.  This is such a milestone for us.  I'm so proud of Joshua for working so hard even on the days when eating is a physical and mental challenge; I'm grateful to the therapists who have helped us teach him how to eat; and most of all, I'm praising God for getting us to this point.

To mark this milestone, here are some of the unique memories of tube feeding:

• Leaving the extremely sterile NICU and tube feeding J outside the hospital for the first time near a gas station in rural Nevada. Becoming 1000% more aware of germs everywhere.   
• Putting in the NG tube for the first time by myself at midnight when J was 5 weeks old - feeling terror as it was happening and then feeling like a superhero when I got it in correctly. 
• Countless hours spent watching Friday Night Lights and Grey's Anatomy at all hours of the day and night while the food slowly made it's way through the NG tube and we monitored to make sure he didn't choke.  
• Finally getting some sleep when he got the G-tube, fundoplication, and feeding pump at age 4 months.  
• "Feeding the bed" - the nights when the feeding tube got disconnected from his stomach and the formula got all over the mattress rather than in his belly.  (You will not meet a tube feeding family who has not experienced this rite of passage.)
• Thinking he swallowed his G-tube and taking him into the ER for an X-ray (we wondered if this was even possible - it turns out to be one of the very few things you can't get a Google answer for).  
• Watching him pretend to tube feed his teddy bear.   
• Administering food and medicine via G-tube on a crowded Southwest flight with the help of the kind stranger next to me.  
• Explaining to J that filling the car with gas is like the car getting tube fed.   

I could go on for pages, but will stop there :).  We would love continued prayers for Joshua's eating - it's a little scary thinking about taking out the tube down the road - but today is a day of celebration and praise!