Before I continue with today’s blog, I want to tell you that our website had a recent problem that caused everything to be deleted. Everything since we started in 2008 was suddenly gone! We are continuing to put things back together, and hope things will work better than ever. In another 3 months our web host promises that things will work even more smoothly. However, all of our wonderful reader comments for shows prior to this one have been deleted. Jon is slowly adding back all the older blog posts and podcasts as time permits. If you ever linked to one of our podcasts or blog posts on your website, that link is now broken and you will need to set up a new link. Thank you for your patience as we get things working again.

Rudolph Steiner

Our guest interview for this show was Dr. Thomas Cowan, a holistic MD who has over 20 years of medical experience. He relies heavily on the work of Rudolph Steiner, an Austrian mystick who founded a philosophic movement called “anthroposophy” or “human wisdom.” Steiner also taught that the human being has four “bodies” or spheres of activity and that humans enjoy the best health when these four spheres are in harmony or balance. The four interlocking bodies are Physical, Life-Force, Emotional, and Mental. In The Fourfold Path to Healing, Cowan dedicates the first four chapters of his book to these four bodies. They are: Chapter 1 (by Sally Fallon Morrel) “Nutrition: Healing the Physical Body,” Chapter 2 “Therapeutics: Healing the Life-Force Body,” Chapter 3 (by Jaimen McMillan) “Movement: Healing the Emotional Body,” and Chapter 4 “Meditation: Healing the Mental Body.”

Dr. Cowan

When asked about some important guidelines in relation to food, Dr. Cowan explained that concept of place was very important. Food needs to be both locally and sustainably grown. In addition, food has strong connections to the local community. The microorganisms in your home provide the bacteria to your intestinal tract. He also stated that he has never found a healthy group of vegans or vegetarians and that fat is more important than protein. It is important to develop a close relationship to your food sources and to use the whole animal. Bones in the form of bone broths or marrow provide important minerals. (Sally Fallon suggests that every town needs a “broth-al” to help obtain this) Muscle meats were the least important in traditional cultures.

We think that you will enjoy this interview and get some important ideas from it. If you want to know more, check out Dr. Cowan’s website and consider attending the Fourfold Path to Healing Seminar in New Hampshire later this month.

Jon and I have been busy decluttering our house in Johns Creek and preparing to stage it for sale. Jon put together some incredible video of our backyard birds eating mealworms from our deck. You can view it here. This weekend we are attending the conference of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group in Chattanooga, Tennessee. We’re looking forward to networking with small family farms that are using sustainable methods. The food should be great, too!

Our next podcast will be a video tour of Natures Harmony Farm in fall, 2009. You will be amazed to see what Tim and Liz Young are doing on their family farm in Elberton, Georgia.

While New Year’s Eve is always a time for celebration, this one is especially dear for Jon and me, even in addition to celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary on January 1. Here is the teaser (with apologies for the cliches): our goose is cooked, we bought the farm, and I’m going out to pasture in June! Keep reading to find out more! You can listen to our Podcast by downloading ONL057 from iTunes, Zune, Tivo, or Stitcher or by clicking on the embedded link below.

On October 9, 2009, Jon and I took a weekend to spend some quality time together. We stayed at Fair Havens Plantation, an historic Bed and Breakfast in rural Arnoldsville. This was in order to be close to Elberton on October 10 to attend Tim and Liz Young’s Local Food Camp Out at Natures Harmony Farm. Relaxing in the country settings away from our everyday responsibilities prompted one of us to comment, “Wouldn’t it be great to live out here and raise some of our own food?”

Wind forward 11 1/2 weeks to December 30, 2009. Just a few days after enjoying our Christmas Eve goose we are proud owners of an 11 acre farm and historic farmhouse near the Broad River just a few miles down the road from Natures Harmony Farm. I’ve decided to retire from teaching at the end of my 33 year career this May, and will spend my time with pastured livestock on our new homestead! Of course, it all happened with lightning speed, changing from a fleeting comment to reality once we applied our skills of expressing gratitude, setting intention, scripting to manifest abundance, and accessing our inner guidance systems. Looking back one year (or even 3 months) we can see how powerful these tools were when we applied them to our lives. These are all topics which we have covered in past podcasts.

Even though we never really discussed farming as a career alternative, it seemed like a natural progression due to where we’ve focused our energies the last two years. Jon is fortunate to work from home most of the time, so we’ll both be working on the homestead.

Yesterday after our closing we took our first truckload of items to the new house (Jon traded in his hybrid SUV for a Ford F150). The first item off the truck and put into our new home was my copy of Julia Child’s The Way to Cook. After unloading the truck, I looked out the living room window to the south pasture and was amazed to find a covey of Bobwhite Quail grazing on our lawn! I’ve heard the call of the male Bobwhites before, but have never seen one because they are so reclusive. Here were at least 30! We also have deer, turtles, owls, and wild turkeys on the property.

We’ll be sprucing up our lovely home in Johns Creek soon to sell to a new family in a few months. I will start my retirement June 1 in our Elberton home. Once we hit the ground running this summer, we’ll be blogging about our progress, what we learn, and sharing videos with you. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and Podcast so you don’t miss a thing! If we’re successful with growing our own pastured rabbits, chickens, eggs, goats, and sheep, we’ll open a farm store to supply friends and community.

If you want to see more photos of Broad River Pastures, go to our facebook page at Our Natural Life Podcast and look at our album, “Introducing Broad River Pastures.”

Would you like to eat real, fat-filled, natural foods such as butter, eggs, steak, and coconut oil and still lose weight and regain your health?

The Liberation Diet, like Sally Fallon and Mary Enig’s Eat Fat, Lose Fat , states that you can. Their claims are backed up by many readers who have done just that.

This “diet” does not include counting calories, and is safe and healthy enough to adopt for a lifetime rather than a temporary fix. Acceptable foods include nutrient-rich bone broths, organ meats, fresh vegetables, and small amounts of fruit and soaked grains. The book has a very easy-to-read style full of interesting historical facts. It is very accessible to the average reader. I’m sure it will spark some controversy. Please feel free to leave your comments! For many of you, the diet might seem very strange or difficult for you to implement, as it involves avoiding processed foods. For Jon and I, this kind of eating is part of our daily life. When we stray from this, our body soon reminds us to return to healthier habits.

For breakfast this morning I made organic (traditional but not local) coffee with raw heavy cream from grass fed Jersey cows, some local bacon from pastured pigs, and a lightly scrambled egg from local pastured heritage hens topped with chevre made by a local farmer from raw Saanen goat milk. I chased it down with a cup of raw goats milk. This is a typical breakfast in the Payne household (lucky us!) and one that would be endorsed on The Liberation diet. With this high fat, normal carb meal, there are no spikes in insulin so I can get by without snacking for the next 5 hours until lunch.

Worried about cholesterol? Listen to the interview with Chris Masterjohn on cholesterol facts and myths.

Wise Traditions Conference

I’ve heard from several of our listeners who are going to the Wise Traditions Conference in Illinois next week. I’m so sorry Jon and I won’t be joining you! Jon will be tied up in business meetings all week and I’ll be teaching. We’re hoping that next year circumstances will allow us to join you – in Maryland, I think. I’m sure you’ll network with some wonderful people and learn a lot. And eat great food!

A Listener’s Suggestions

As you know, we enjoy receiving email, facebook comments, tweets, and phone messages from our listeners. We like to know what you like and what you want to hear more of. I want to thank the listener, whoever you are, who recommended us to Jimmy Moore. He is now recommending us to his listeners and we have several new facebook fans. I think Jimmy would endorse Annette and Kevin’s diet plan.

Margaret Auld-Louie with Optimum Choices recently wrote to us with suggestions about our sound quality. We pride ourselves on doing the best job we can with our available equipment. We’d love to purchase a phone bridge to give you a better listening experience. By leaving us a tip in the tip jar or shopping from our affiliate pages, you can support us in continuing this Podcast. Thank you, Margaret, for starting the contributions. Here are the comments from Margaret regarding soy. Soy is also discussed in interviews with Lierre Keith and Robyn O’Brien.

I’d like to hear a podcast on the problems with soy (ideally an interview with Kaayla Daniel, author of the Whole Soy Story, which I have read). As a WAPF member, I’m well aware of the problems but find that few people outside of WAPF are aware of the toxicity of soy. Even most farmers are unaware of it and this makes it difficult to find any pastured poultry or eggs that are soy-free. I have tried educating farmers about it but they won’t listen to me as a lone person and a “city girl”. When I tried to talk to a farmer about this at the Golden farmer’s market, her reaction was “are you allergic to soy?” as she could not comprehend any other reason why I would want soy-free chicken and eggs. I gave her info from WAPF but she just does not have any interest in eliminating soy from the diet of her chickens, especially with no one else requesting this. I was buying chicken and eggs from a soy-free Kansas farmer who delivers to Denver but now she has ceased deliveries due to family medical problems. So, the only remaining sources of pastured poultry within reasonable distance of Denver are that farmer at the Golden farmer’s market (in the summer only) and Wisdom’s Natural Poultry who proudly proclaim on their website: “Corn and soybean meal is what gives our poultry the unique fleshy texture that nature intended.” http://wisdomsnaturalpoultry.com/ It’s easy to tell people they should eat pastured poultry and eggs from local farmers but it’s not so easy to find in some parts of the country (like here), much less finding soy-free pastured poultry/eggs. (I am a member of the Denver WAPF chapter, but still, it’s hard to find sources for some things.) I find it much easier to find grassfed beef and lamb (which can be purchased at Whole Foods, if one can afford it), than pastured poultry, which is not available in any store. In Colorado, there are far more farms offering grassfed beef than pastured poultry. A podcast on the toxicity of soy would help educate people so that they will start demanding soy-free products from farmers. People need to have multiple farms offering soy-free pastured poultry, since (as I have found from personal experience), farmer’s circumstances frequently change and a source you depend on for a product often goes away and you have to find another source (that is one disadvantage of buying from small local farmers vs. stores). In my searches, I found one Colorado farm aware of the problems with soy, Foxfire Farms (http://www.foxfirefarms.com/organicfree-rangeeggs.aspx). They sell pastured eggs but not poultry. However, they cannot meet the demand for eggs: “Due to a very high demand eggs will not be available until production exceeds the demand”. In Colorado, the demand for pastured eggs exceeds the supply at every farm, in my experience (not even considering whether the eggs are soy-free). You might want to interview FoxFire farms for a podcast, as they are a really great farm, offering grassfed goat, lamb and beef. The Foxfire website states: “We have developed a local and national reputation as practitioners of sustainable agriculture. Richard acts as a sustainable agricultural consultant, participating as a speaker in many local, national and international conferences. Richard is a regular contributor to “The Stockman Grass Farmer”, a magazine for Grass Farmers”. They are far from Denver but there is a farm store north of Denver that carries their lamb, so I have bought a little there (it is quite expensive).

Comments are welcome!

WWOOFers UpdateMy son Matthew and his wife Lillian are enjoying their experiences with World Wide Opportunities in Organic Farming (WWOOF). They have worked in farms in both the north and south islands of New Zealand tending calves, house-sitting, and weeding in fruit orchards. You can follow their adventures and see photographs at www.KiwiTrex.com. I’m happy to hear that strangers are taking them in and making them feel part of the family.

Are you eating Franken-foods? GMOs are Everywhere

In Iowa, where Jeffrey M. Smith lives with his wife, he is surrounded by fields of corn, soy, canola, and cotton that have been genetically modified with bacteria to allow these crops to either eat poison, meaning that they are herbicide tolerant, or they produce their own poison in order to kill insects. Scientific studies confirm that these foods are very dangerous to people and animals.

Smith’s book Seeds of Deception is the best-selling book on GMOs. However, his more recently published Genetic Roulette: the Documented Health Risks of Genetically Modified Food, makes the topic greatly accessible. Instead of using a narrative format, Jeffrey uses easy-to-find, bulleted facts about the scientifically documented dangers and risks of GMO food. Quoting from Amazon reviewer C. J. Robinson, “The layout of the book is an exemplar of clarity and should serve as the model for any reference book. It is designed to make the material accessible to three levels of reader: scanners, casual readers, and those who want detail. Each double-page spread is devoted to a problem with GM foods, with the left-hand page having the topic heading, a quote by an expert, and a few summarizing bullet points; the right-hand page gives technical detail. You don’t need a science background to understand it. While the book is not bedtime reading, terms are defined and the boggle factor is kept low. The table of contents enables the reader to scan the problems with GM food and quickly to access the evidence on each. ”

This comprehensive book was written as a combination executive summary brochure and textbook, making it very easy to readily locate pertinent information. It is written in four parts to include heavily documented evidence for these assertions: 1) There are documented health risks for genetically engineered food; 2) the regulation of GM foods is inadequate to protect public health; 3) industry studies are not competent to identify most of the unpredicted side effects; and 4) there are serious flaws in the arguments used to justify GM crops.

In our Podcast interview, we use 2 letters Cathy received from Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss as a tool for discussion with Jeffrey. The letters were written in response to letters written by Cathy to Sen. Chambliss asking him to support HR 6636 , a bill sponsored by Sen. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). You will hear Smith debunk seven claims that Sen. Chambliss makes – 1) GM foods are similar to selective breeding, 2) GM foods are necessary to feed the world, 3) Use of GM foods reduces pesticide use, 4) GM foods undergo years of rigorous safety testing for people, animals, and the environment, 5) our food supply is the safest, highest quality in the world and agriculture biotechnology is heavily regulated for food safety. It only requires labeling if the new food product is significantly different than its conventional counterpart, 6) since biotech crops are safe to eat and there are no studies to refute this safety, mandatory labeling is not appropriate and would increase the cost of food to the end consumer (however he approves voluntary labeling of organic foods), 7) government scientists will thoroughly evaluate government crops and ensure that any variety submitted for deregulation is safe. Be sure to listen to our interview to learn the truth on these 7 points.

I will let you know this much here: The only human feeding study ever conducted on GM food was done with Roundup Ready soy. The study showed that genes inserted into the soybeans transfered to the bacteria living inside the human subjects. The bacteria continued to function inside them. Their gut bacteria now includes the Roundup Ready gene. This continues long after they stopped eating GM soy. They continue to have foreign, potentially dangerous proteins produced inside of them. Eating GM food is like playing genetic roulette. You don’t know what will happen.

A Call to Action!
We would like to challenge you to take action immediately. What can you do?

1) Get a copy of Genetic Roulette and read it. Check out Jeffrey’s website and learn more about the problem. Listen to the interview at the end of this blog.

2) Spread the word. Blog about the topic of GMOs. Feel free to link back to our website and this article. The media in Europe caused every major food company to omit GMO products from their European brands, even though they continue to keep the ingredients in products sold in the United States. The commitments by the food companies all happened within a single week. The tipping point of consumer concern was achieved in Europe in only ten weeks. In that time period over 750 articles were written connecting GM food with documented health risks. This happened in 1999. In the United States it was hardly mentioned, and was referred to as one of the ten most underreported events of the year. Sixty percent of Americans think that they have never eaten a GM food. The issue is awareness. The press does not seem willing to cover this story, but with new media, we could send thousands of blogs to every continent. We need to educate people about dangers to their health. Write letters to the Editor and use social tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed to alert consumers (everyone you know) to this vital issue. Please do your part! It’s our responsibility to stop it. Ten weeks from now is just before the Thanksgiving holiday. This would be an appropriate time to be truly thankful for choices about eating foods that are safe and as our creator intended.

3) Vote with your fork. Download the Non-GMO Shopping Guide so you can avoid foods that are GM. The easiest way is to eat fresh rather than processed foods and buy organic. Be sure to avoid the at-risk ingredients. These are soy, corn, cotton (cottonseed oil), canola, beet sugar, Hawaian papaya, and some non-organic zucchinni and crookneck squash. GM tomatoes, potatoes, rice, and wheat, are not currently in the food supply. Assume that fast food meals include GM ingredients.

4) Write a letter to your senators in support of HR 6636, the Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act. You can use email to do this here.

5) Join the Campaign for Healthier Eating in America. This is designed to achieve the tipping point of consumer objection in the United States to force GMOs out of the market. As little as 5% of U. S. shoppers would be more than sufficient to affect change because GMOs offer no consumer benefits.

6) Take the no GMO Challenge! Try avoiding GMO foods for 30 days and blog about the attempt.

7) Join the GM-Free School Campaign to rid school lunch programs of GM foods. You can order a free video and 60 page manual from Jeffrey’s website to help bring the attention of the school community to this topic.

We’d love to hear about the steps you are taking! Leave a comment to this article and let us know.

Our Natural Life Product Launch!

Over the last 14 months we’ve been providing educational information, informative interviews, and provocative discussions about living a holistic, sustainable, and healthy life. We’ve invested much time and financial resources getting this information to you, our readers and listeners. Your overwhelmingly positive response has made the efforts worthwhile. We’d like to continue this project, but will need some capital to do so.

You can support our cause by leaving a tip in the tip jar, using our portal to purchase products from Amazon.com, and shopping with vendors from our go shopping page.

We are now offering our first product, a series of CDs with copies of some popular shows. We have two formats to choose from. The first option is a a CD that you can play in any CD player at home or in your automobile. This will be a series of 4 discs for $14.95 plus $3.05 shipping and handling. The second option is a CD of mp3 files that can be downloaded to your computer and transferred to your mp3 player. This is one disc for $9.95 plus $3.05 shipping and handling. Click on our products tab to see our first two offerings, Sustainable Food Interviews Volumes 1 and 2. Items soon to come will include collections on Holistic Health and Self Help. These items will make great gifts for friends and loved ones. We greatly appreciate your support by purchasing our CDs!

This post is part of Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday blog carnival. I’m a renegade. Are you?