Finding the "Food Freak" Balance, Part I

I'm a self proclaimed Food Freak.  I'm not sure what else to call myself.  I prefer to purchase locally grown, organic food whenever possible.  I get a little panicky when we go out to eat as a family, and not just because I worry about my four-year-old's behavior in public.  I will not eat chicken or products that I know contain chicken (more on THAT later) or pig or products that contain pig.  I have recently added cow back to my diet as long as it comes from one of two local farms that raise their cows on grass from birth to butcher.  I will eat seafood as long as it was not farm raised.  I will eat turkey only from our farmer.  "Our farmer"=the man that grows a large portion of our food.  I know his name, I know his wife's name, I know his address.  I see him on a weekly basis nine months out of the year when I swing by his storefront (which is a slum by "retail" standards, heaven to me--I once helped capture a mouse that was scurrying across the floor while I was perusing the local apple selection) to pick up our CSA and some of the most amazing organic bread I've ever had the pleasure of so much as smelling.  I try to avoid milk unless it's of the organic soy or rice variety, and eggs need to come from organically-fed, free-range creatures (chicken or duck [recently added]--I've never eaten goose eggs to my knowledge) whenever possible.  Needless to say, this time of year makes me a little twitchy.  Not only is my son's Halloween candy in the house, complete with every type of artificial coloring and flavoring and sweetener under the sun, Thanksgiving is coming...and then Christmas.  Traveling to Savannah for the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon last weekend was trying enough.  Seriously, who spends $55 in the grocery store for one night and one morning of eating when in SAVANNAH?  That would be us.

Let me develop this story a little bit by telling you all how I got to be this way...In 2007 I remember thinking my in-laws were insane for not eating turkey at our Thanksgiving dinner.  Thanksgiving has been "my" holiday since 1998.  I have cooked, I believe, every year but one since then.  In 1997 my dad and I ate Domino's pizza for our Thanksgiving dinner.  I vowed then that THAT would never happen again.  There have certainly been some mishaps; I recall microwaving an undercooked turkey one year so that none of us would get salmonella poisoning, and the year of the super-gritty turnip greens (sorry, Grandmother!), but overall I love the holiday and claim it as mine.  I even enjoy taking in what I call "strays" whenever possible for dinner.  Anyway, in 2007 my in-laws didn't eat turkey and I remember how odd I thought that was.  My father-in-law, (THE FOLLOWING IS THE EPITOME OF FACETIOUSNESS) who is not the least bit an opinionated type of person or the sort to suffer from ailments of conviction had read T. Colin Campbell's book The China Study and had instantaneously converted.  He was a confirmed Vegan.  I just thought it was him being himself and my mother-in-law going with the program.  I also remember that Thanksgiving because it was the holiday that I spent worrying whether or not my unborn son had DiGeorge Syndrome.  We were made aware of his heart defect earlier that month and I had undergone the subsequent amniocentesis to rule out Down Syndrome and DiGeorge Syndrome.  The Down Syndrome test had already been confirmed negative.  I was told at first that everything was clear, but another phone call a few moments later:  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Giddens, we don't have the results of the DiGeorge test back yet...we'll have to get back to you after the holiday weekend..." had me reeling.  My husband and I, and I believe my dearest friend (and Parker's Godmother) Lauren were the only ones that knew of the uncertainty.  Everyone else (including Charles's parents and my dad and his wife) believed that we were all in the clear; well, except for that little Tetralogy of Fallot thing.  Anyway, Charles and I were told that malnutrition and alcohol abuse by the mother were the only two things attributed to increased risk of Tetralogy of Fallot in a fetus.  I pretty much never touched alcohol between my college years and Parker's third birthday, so alcohol abuse was not a concern for us.  Malnutrition?  I never considered it.  It's not like I ever went hungry...

My father-in-law can be a passionate orator, and he tends to have read plenty about the things he likes to talk about.  I heard an awful lot about that book that Thanksgiving, and an awful lot about the positive changes it had made in the life of my father-in-law.  I was just starting to get fat from pregnancy and feeling miserable, craving cheese eggs like nobody's business but completely repulsed by chicken in any other form.  I began reading the book after my father-in-law lent it to me and I found myself agreeing with a lot of the things I was reading.  Then came the next event in this curious chain:  I developed a weird, itchy rash.  My abdomen, my chest, and my thighs were constantly itching and then the skin became very angry looking: bright red with hives everywhere.  I would wake up in the middle of the night clawing myself because it itched so badly.  I tried every type of moisturizer and lotion under the sun to alleviate the misery and nothing helped.  When I went to see my OBGYN for my next follow-up appointment, she shook her head in disbelief.  "I'm sorry honey, but it looks like you've got PUPPP."  Well, yeah, I had two of them at home, but they weren't puppies anymore and it wasn't like I had brought a new dog home and then gotten a rash.  I was a dog trainer, for crying out loud!  If the next thing on my plate was a dog allergy, I was going to have to check myself in for an extended stay in a padded room somewhere with a view.  But no, the doctor went on to explain that PUPPP is actually Pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy (PUPPP) and unfortunately for me I would likely be stuck with the rash until after Parker was born.  Curiously, while I fit the mold for PUPPP sufferers in that I was carrying a boy for my first to-term pregnancy, most women didn't get PUPPP until about the 36th week of gestation.  I was 26 weeks pregnant!  I had no idea how I was going to survive up to 14 weeks of that torture.  At least I had some reading I could do when I couldn't sleep.

While I was up reading The China Study one night and wishing I could scrub my belly with fine grit sandpaper, I was struck by a passage in the book that seemed to parallel the PUPPP research I had done.  Really it was one word that got my attention with the same efficacy as a wallop to the head with a brick: hormones.  Some doctors had posited that PUPPP was more prevalent in women carrying boys due to the male hormones present in the fetus.  The China Study was outlining all the evils inherent in consuming milk and milk products from cows treated with growth hormones and therapeutic levels of antibiotics.  I'm certain I couldn't follow that epiphany exactly backwards to tell you how I arrived at it, but I was certain then that I was right.  I cut dairy from my diet the next day, completely and cold turkey.  Within three days, my rash was gone.  My doctors were gobsmacked.  I was a convert.

My doctors were made aware of my dietary transition into the world of Vegan and everyone seemed okay with it as long as I was taking my B12 supplements, which I did religiously.  No more PUPPP, as you can see from the photo, and my little baby boy with his super special heart was developing better and growing bigger and being more active than the doctors could have hoped for.  Then came the day that changed my life forever...