Well, there is no doubt that eating healthy is NOT cheap! Finding food items that are healthy for you are now becoming so difficult to purchase as a regular priced item that most people can not pass the cheaper deals for food items to continue the unhealthy addictive habits that we now find today.
In my book “3 Hot’s & A Cot” I speak about growing up poor. The fact is I never new I was poor. Why? Because I grew up with the three things my Father always told us was essential to having a good life. Those three things were:
1) We had a roof over our heads…(This is a basic need in life which means Shelter).
2) We had clothes on our back…(Once again a basic need which had nothing to do with keeping in style but more towards being protected).
3) Food on the Table…(This is a life sustaining need).
So looking back at what my Father said, I always seen us as rich. We met the three needs for life as far as sustaining ourselves. Now that I am older and I reflect on our lives growing up I have found that the 3 Basic needs have had a profound affect on me and others who grew up like me.
First let me say that I am of a humble up-brings and my ethnicity is Mexican-American. I was born as my parents and grandparents were in the United States of America but I am of Mexican descent. So growing up and going to school with 90% of my school population just like me allowed me to think that all was normal.
Second, the kids growing up with me ate and dressed just like me with hand-me-downs and we ate what our families could afford to feed as so once again I seen no difference between those who I grew up with and me.
Third, I lived with my Grandmothers…one who was on government subsistence and a small home (now referred to as shanty’s) and the other grandmother who had a larger house and land. The kids I grew up with also lived in as we did so this was not an issue. Yes…we all lived the same growing up but now life is different.
So let me take one of the three basic needs and express how that has influenced me now. Food! If you look at Mexican-Americans growing up you find that because most of us grew up poor, our families did what they needed to survive. Like our ancestors before us we learned to make foods that fed the entire family on the cheap. So staples in our homes were pastas, rice, beans, flour, eggs, potato, and lard. A typical meal growing up was rice and beans or Mexican spaghetti and beans. The bread we used was Mexican tortillas made with flour or corn (masa herina). In fact, I did not remember eating bread until I got to High School. So while growing up these were the store bought items that were basic to most families.
We had meats like whole chicken, and other meats (poor or cheaper cuts) such as pig and beef. Now when I refer to poor cuts…a staple on Sundays for most families was Cow Head. This has over the years become a tradition in our culture. Cow Head is normally discarded in most American States and not allowed for consumption but it is still allowed in the State of Texas where I was raised. It is a wonderful tasting part of the cow in our culture (Brains, tongue, cheeks and eyes). It is also very greasy! We also had tripe and intestines. When it came to pork, we had pig feet and any other portion of pork that was normally thrown out because it was cheap. So if things were very good we and we had real steak or chops or a whole piece of chicken, that meal was the best. These meats are not the healthiest of meats but it was what we could afford.
In addition, when my grandmother received government subsistence we received government cheese, coffee, sugar, salt, can pet milk or carnation milk, powdered milk and powdered eggs. So making meals needed to be done in a manner to feed the entire family. If we had rice and beans with flour tortilla’s and we got a chicken neck in our meal…well, that meat we got meat and we sucked every bit of juice out of our neck. My other started to take the chicken, boil the meat and take all of the meat off the bones. She chopped up the meat and mixed it in the rice so that everyone got some meat in their meal. She new how to make food stretch.
Now lets look at the Mexican-American culture. We as a people average (men) 5’6” to 5’10” with taller men at 6’0” or so. As we get older, we are over-weight, have diabetes and hypertension or High Blood Pressure. Our women average 4’10” to 5’4” with taller women at 5’10”. They are beautiful women and as they grow older they become over-weight with diabetes and hypertension or High Blood Pressure. Why? Is it genetics?
I think many doctors say it is genetics but I believe it is mostly because of food. As a people we are average to short with some exceptions but the only genetic equalizer in our health is food. So lets look at the food. Rice & Spaghetti…both are very filling and feeds a family easily because of the amount you can give them. Both are carbohydrates. Mexican spaghetti and rice is made by frying the noodle or rice in lard. It’s cheap. (Carbohydrates which turn into sugar in the body once you eat it).
Beans (pinto is a Mexican staple) normally boiled for many hours with pork and then after it is cooked served on the side or refried in…you guessed it, Lard.
Then our bread…Tortilla! Well, a tortilla is made with flour, baking powder, salt, lard and water. Masa harina is the traditional flour used to make tortillas, tamales, and other Mexican dishes. Literally translated from Spanish, it means “dough flour,” because the flour is made from dried masa, a dough from specially treated corn. (Carbohydrates which turn into sugar in the body once you eat it). Starchy vegetables (e.g. potatoes, peas, corn, dried beans/peas) Grains and grain products (e.g. anything made with grain flour – bread, pasta, cereal, etc.) Fiber (bran, gums, cellulose, etc). It all adds up as sugar in the body.
Carbohydrates are organic compounds that contain single, double, or multiple sugar units. Simple sugars are only one or two sugar units long and are typically sweet tasting whereas complex carbohydrates are thousands of sugar units long and have a starchy taste. All digestible simple sugars and starches eventually get converted to glucose in our body. Most types of cells use glucose as their main fuel source. After we eat sugars or starches, our blood glucose level rises. This signals our body to produce insulin, a hormone, so that cells can take the glucose out of the bloodstream and use it for energy. Excess glucose will be stored as glycogen in our liver and muscle. If there is still excess glucose after maxing out glycogen storage, it will be converted and stored as body fat. Eating too much sugar or starch of any type can cause you to gain weight. This can be found in Biology on line: http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Carbohydrate So the staples of the Mexican-American diet and most Central & South American countries is carbohydrates.
Now, add in the government subsistence items. A typical New Years with buñuelos (Mexican-American fried flour tortilla with cinnamon and sugar), a cup of coffee with carnation milk from a can and sugar in the coffee…this can be a real buzz.
So lets look at what we just had on a typical staple meal(Dinner):
Mexican rice: 547 calories 53 carbs 37 fats 5 proteins
Mexican Refried Beans: 217 calories 33 carbs 3 fats 14 proteins
Flour Tortilla: 181 calories 24 carbs 8 fats 3 proteins
Total: 948 calories 110 carbs 48 fats 22 proteins
This is with 1 cup of rice, 1 cup of beans and 1 tortilla. I do not know about other people but a typical meal for me growing up…I had 3 tortilla’s. So what does this mean? 412.5 grams of sugar in 110 carbs the body just for the meal. That comes out to about 103 teaspoons of sugar in this meal that is slowly trying to burn off. So take the Dr. William Davis test if you’re a diabetic…check your sugar and write it down today. In the morning, eat one slice of bread before you have anything. Then test you blood after 15 minutes. Write it down. Now tomorrow morning, have a snickers bar for breakfast before anything. Wait 15 minutes and then test your blood. Write it down. Now check your numbers. Your sugar is higher after eating bread due to the carbs, flour, wheat and burns slow. Harder for the body to get rid of. Spike glucose sugar levels.
Amazing…so if people want to blame diabetes on genetics, I do not. I blame it on the food we ate. High carb food that over long periods of time wore our body down causing diabetes. So how do you fix this problem…do what everyone will tell you not to do. Eat healthy by adding more whole foods and live foods to your diet. Eliminate any flour or wheat from your diet. Stop eating process foods like chips, bologna, cookies. Read labels and be your own detective. Use alternative flours like sprouted flour, almond flour, coconut flour. Use safer oils like walnut, almond oil, coconut oil. Add nuts and cheese, whole milks to your diet. Cut out on carbs as much as possible…especially flour/wheat carbs.
There is nothing wrong with “poor” people food, I ate it all my life and never knew it was poor people food…and as a person who grew up poor I was happy to have what I could get. A basic need of “Food on the Table.” Now that I have the opportunity to know the difference in what my heritage has done to many because of our culture and survival of our time, I have no regrets that my parents have done what they had to do to keep us within our 3 basic needs. I am proud of how that taught us family values. They taught us about faith and God. Something else...I was never ashamed of being or growing up poor...maybe because I never new I was and never felt poor. I always felt rich with three other Basic Needs...God, Country & Family!
Now it’s my turn and I just want to learn and give my family an opportunity have it a little better. A little healthier. To break the Chain!
