Monday, November 29, 2004

It was after a long time that I went for a walk with MZ. We met in the parking lot of Rancho San Antonio Park. The sun was out, but it was still pretty cold. On our way to the Happy Hollow Farm MZ pulled a muscle in his right leg. Still, he insisted on carrying on with the hike. We took the same route we normally take: we go left from the farm and get on the narrow trail; we climb up all the way to the lookout point, and then loop back. It normally takes about two hours to do that hike. And two hours is a pretty good amount of time to talk about everything: from contemporary politics, to religions, to history, to analyses of societal currents. I’m not sure how we started talking about food, yesterday. I got MZ very excited when I put forth my thesis of the need for diversity in the food we eat. I told him that every food produces its own set of toxins in our bodies—broadly speaking each food is in a way a unique poison. If we frequently eat just one kind of food then we are stacking one type of poison in our bodies. We risk increasing that poison to a level of potency. The trick is to eat many different types of foods so that we get whole bunch of different poisons in minute amounts and none in the amount great enough to be detrimental to us. Most people’s diversity in food goes as far as rotating meat (beef, chicken, lamb, and goat) with vegetables. I believe we should go even farther. For example, why do we always eat chicken eggs? Why don’t we rotate chicken eggs with duck, ostrich, pigeon, and other bird’s eggs? When we eat beef we normally eat Hereford or Angus, why not other breeds? Why turkey only on the Thanksgiving? Have different types of turkeys all year round. Of course, this proposed food diversity is not readily available in common grocery stores. Popular grocery stores only stock food that has the most turnover, things that most people eat. You’d have to actively seek diverse food from groceries that stock exotic food. One way is to visit ethnic food stores and buy things that you don’t normally consume.