A Week of Eating Indigenous Foods: With Many Postscripts!: Keeping Track of Nutrition

Traditional Foods

"Traditional" in the context of these projects means pre-contact foods. No beef, mutton, goat, chicken, pork, milk, butter, cream, wheat flour (no fry bread), rye, barley, okra, black-eyed peas, or any other "Old World" food that many of us have lovingly incorporated into our diets and tribal cultures. No processed foods (Doritoes, Lays Chips, etc), even if the base is corn or potatoes. No chocolate unless it is unsweetened cacao or sweetened with honey from the Melipona bee, fruit, stevia, camas or agave. Be adventurous and try unfamiliar foods! There are many foods to choose from. My American Indian Health and Diet Project site lists and defines many of them.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Keeping Track of Nutrition

Dinner I made last week of turkey breast, sweet potatoes, quinoa with peppers and tomatoes, prickly pear cactus fruit.

When you plan your meals, you may find this site useful. "My Calorie Counter" allows you to enter everything you ingest and the site computes the nutritional content of your food.
http://www.my-calorie-counter.com/calorie_counter.asp

Students in my History of Indigenous Food and Health course are required to keep a detailed food log. Many use this site to learn just how much fat, cholesterol and sugar they are eating, as well as vitamins and minerals. This is quite an eye-opening exercise for those who have never chronicled their diets.

See also this page on my big site for sample diets: http://www.aihd.ku.edu/exercise/diet_charts.html
Here is a sample breakfast (note that the carrot juice is Old World and, if I use this during the mini-diet I will cook turkey or goose eggs and substitute coconut milk for cow's milk in the coffee)

Breakfast:

Food	Cals¹	Pro²	Carbs³	Na⁴	FAT⁵	CHOL⁶	FBR⁷
1spray of vegetable oil	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2 eggs	150	12	2	280	5	424	0
½ c mushrooms	9	1	1	1	0.1	0	0
¼ c red pepper	20	1	5	3	0.3	0	3
2 green chilies	36	2	8	3	0.1	0	0
2 corn tortillas	120	2	25	35	0.5	0	2
4 T salsa	40	0	2	320	0.1	0	0
1 c carrot juice	70	2	15	16	0	0	1
3 c decaff coffee	4	0	1	4	0	0	0
1 T skim milk	5	0.45	0.65	6.5	0	0	0
1 pack Stevia	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

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2012 Challenge

Get Ready for the Second Annual Week of Indigenous Eating Challenge! November 2-9, 2012

Join the groups that have already voiced their support for the 2012 Challenge:

California Music and Culture Center, California Cultural Sovereignty Center, Native American Studies at Northern
Michigan University, Native Studies at California State University at San Marcos, Oneida Nation of Wisconsin Tsyunhehkw^, KU Tribal Law and Government Center, KU Native Faculty and Staff Council, Cherokee Arts & Humanities Council,the Cherokee National Theater Company, the KU Native Medicinal Research Program. Ku Environs and KU Farm Hands.

If your group is interested in offering moral support for this 2012 Challenge (you do not have to participate, just like the idea), let me know and I will add your name to the list.

November is Native American Heritage Month. During the first week, participants in this challenge will eat foods indigenous to this hemisphere. Eaters can focus on one tribe; or, because foods may be expensive, out of season, contaminated or not available, participants can choose to eat only one or two indigenous meals per day or, widen the meal possibilities by choosing any foods indigenous to the western hemisphere.

This site is maintained by Devon Mihesuah, the Cora Lee Beers Price Professor and Director of the American Indian Health and Diet Project (AIHD) at the University of Kansas. You will find many links here that connect to the AIHD site for recipes, lists of indigenous foods, resources for food research and gardening tips. Recipes are welcome. Send recipes and diet outlines to my e-mail: mihesuah@ku.edu

A Week of Eating Indigenous Foods: With Many Postscripts!