I Heart the Italian food pyramid

In the Italian gym, they have a food pyramid that is posted. It’s different than the American food pyramid. Could this be one reason why there is practically not a single overweight person in all of Rome, despite the pasta, pizza, and gelato galore? Or maybe it’s just because everyone here is a chronic smoker instead.

 

I love this food pyramid for so many reasons.

1. I’m highly converted to limiting carbs. When I stopped eating so much bread at every meal, my belly fat disappeared. I’m serious, it was like overnight, once I made the decision to limit white bread in particular. I feel like I figured out a secret that probably everyone already knows.

2. Vegetables, fruits, and daily exercise make the foundation of a healthy diet.

3. Red meats are limited.

4. Good fats found in avocados and olive oil are emphasized.

American food pyramid, you are partly the cause of America’s obesity. 6-11 servings of grains per day? You’ve got to be kidding me. Especially since most of the grains Americans eat are of the white, highly processed, high glucose variety.

It’s funny, too, that corn goes in the grain section on the first one, and vegetable one in the American one…

Anyone else think the American one is a bit outdated?

Ghana, Week One

When coming to Ghana, I really didn’t know what to expect. I tried to research it, but the information I found wasn’t adequate. I knew I’d have to go myself in order to get a frame of reference from my own perspective. Would it be as impoverished as parts of India? Would it be developed? Would there be good food to eat, beautiful sights to see?

Well we’ve been here half a week and so far it’s been unlike anywhere else we’ve been.

These are my first impressions so far…

For the most developed city in West Africa, Accra is surprisingly undeveloped.

However, it’s not as undeveloped as Ouazazarte, Morocco.

For some reason, the slums in Ghana don’t bother me nearly as much as the ones in India. There’s slums surrounding the outside of Rising Phoenix Magic Beach Resort where we’re staying.

We’re at the time of year where there aren’t hardly any white people. In the summer, I guess, it becomes overwhelmed with college students coming to do a good deed.

I’d like to volunteer with an organization myself, but of the 20 some odd organizations I’ve emailed, only one has gotten back to me, and it’s for a project that won’t begin until the beginning of December. I’d like to be involved with something, I really would, but it would require greater energy than I presently have (ie, go door to door asking) to find something. If anyone reading has any suggestions, please comment.

No one carries anything in their hands, it’s all on their heads.

 

This was meant to be the King’s house, but somehow it fell through, so it’s not used for anything. It’s shaped like a typical African stool.


Everyone dresses so vibrantly.

 

Food

A lot of potatoes. Below is jolof rice from the food court in the mall. It’s flavored with Indian-tasting spices. And… I eat salad here. I eat raw tomatoes here. I have not gotten sick. It’s a miracle. There’s a vegetarian restaurant on site which I love.

 

Jacob and I have both caught on to the nation’s favorite drink, which is like sweet nonalcoholic beer.
 

People from the slum dry their clothes on the lawn.

 
This building is our next-door neighbor.

 

Jacob got this little boy from Niger, who was cuddling up next to him like they were best friends, some coconut juice.

 

Internet

The internet situation here is pretty rough. No place has wifi, anywhere. Here we are getting registered for an internet stick. We have to pay per download which means I may be waiting to upload any videos until we leave the country.

Gyms

There are no good gyms in Accra. Zilch. We’ll go to the one at the national soccer team stadium and Jacob says all they have is a squat rack. I think this is going to cut our visit short.

“Do not pee here or you will have to pay 50,000 cedis” this is equivalent to $35019.40. Ironically, this is just outside the slum. You can bet everyone is urinating there.

 

People

There are many, many people here who seem to want something from us. It makes us doubt people’s intentions. They are extremely friendly. I went for an hour walk and got 3 phone numbers. But do they want my money or my friendship? Only time will tell… Two women that I met wanted to give me an African name. They asked me what day I was born on. I told them I didn’t know. They were shocked. “You don’t know the day of your birth? Was it a Wednesday?” they guessed. “I think it was Saturday.” “Ahh, then your name is Almah,” they said.

The view of the Gulf of Guinea from our place is the best part. 

 

Vegetarian

I remember the first time I met someone who was vegetarian and I thought he was really strange. Definitely not the kind of person who would convert me to the idea or anything like that. Who knew that several years later I’d have joined his ranks? Since I eat fish, I guess I’m technically a pescetarian.

If you ever invite me over for dinner, please know this:

1. I don’t care if you eat meat. I don’t care if you eat meat in front of me. I make Jacob a BLT every day. Please don’t feel guilty if you’ve made a meat-centered meal. I would love it if there were an alternative, but if not, I’ll eat the meat. I’m not a die-hard.

2. It’s possible that one day I will resume meat-eating… or that I will go the other direction and become vegan.

3. But for now, with the research that I’ve done, eating the way I do makes sense to me. Here’s why:

I love animals.

I picture the animal when I’m eating it, and I can’t divest the type of animal I’d never eat from the ones that are sociably acceptable. Like, it’s gross to eat cats and dogs right? But not sheep, lamb, goats, cows, pigs, chicken, or turkeys? Why not?

I do eat fish-sometimes-because I can go fishing. I’m still a little bothered by it, but I can do it. But I can’t imagine slaughtering a cow and dividing its parts for consumption. And if I can’t imagine doing it myself on moral grounds (that would make me sick) it seems strange to ask someone else to do it for me.

A whole new world of cooking is opened up to you.

A lot of people get stuck on just eating a slab of meat every night for dinner for lack of any other ideas. If you look at cuisines around the world, however, you’ll find so many ways of preparing vegetables, legumes, and sauces that there is an infinite variety available—much more than steak and potatoes or a hamburger.

 

Health.

The healthiest group of people in the United States are the 7th Day Adventists (the Mormons follow close behind). The 7th Day Adventists are about 35 % vegetarian and encourage a low-meat diet.

The Japanese are famous for their large centenarian population and they eat much more fish than meat.

The American Heart Association reports that vegetarians have a lower risk of obesity, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and several forms of cancer.

The animal industry mistreats animals and pumps the animals full of chemicals and hormones.

If you research this at all, you will be astonished at the conditions animals in the American food industry are left in. Pigs go insane at their treatment. They are sometimes castrated and boiled alive. They are left inside cages where they can’t turn around.

Chicken meat has four times the amount of arsenic (yes, the poison) than any other meat due to what drugs they are given.

Hormones are infused in the animals to make them bigger which we humans then ingest.

Much of the meat in the American food industry is highly processed, which means it contains dangerous cancer-causing ingredients like sodium nitrate which has been significantly linked to pancreatic cancer.

Eating meat damages the environment.

The meat industry causes more emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide than all the cars, planes, and ships in the world combined.

More than half of all the water consumed in the US is used to raise animals for food.

The run off from factory farms pollutes our rivers and lakes more than all other industry sources combined.

Protein

I’m no expert on this, but what research I’ve done is that you get plenty of protein in plant-based foods. Vegetables, nuts, eggs, and fish all provide protein—and so do milk and cheese. However, getting too much protein is linked to kidney stones and cancer of the colon and liver.

The Word of Wisdom

This is controversial, I know. But this is my interpretation of it: It says eat meat only in times of famine or winter. I believe the “eat meat sparingly” is taken too liberally (it’s eaten at every meal). Of course during the 1800s during winter meat was the only thing available. But these days you can get anything you want any time of year, making the need for eating meat…never.

I don’t know how to cook vegetarian?

It’s easy. There are plenty of cookbooks available, and you can even buy fake meat if you love the taste of meat (I don’t.) Substitute vegetables or bean curd or fish or cheese for your meat. As long as you replace your meat with something good, like plums for example, and not something bad, like carby doughy bread or extra dessert, then you’ll be on your way to getting all the nutrients you need (especially if you take a multivitamin) and reaching your target weight.

Artsy Fartsy

Thanks for a perspective change from my commenter on my last post. I really needed that.

It’s absolutely true that there are subcultures going on wherever you’re at. Though the things I wrote about last post are the most glaring to me upon initially returning to the States, it certainly doesn’t define all of America.

For example, my mother-in-law and I went to the first vegan restaurant I have ever been to yesterday, and it was SO GOOD! It’s called Fud (with an umlaut over the u)

Although you hear bad things about cow’s milk, I didn’t think that I could ever give up dairy because of the taste. But cashew cheese and milk is sooo tasty. Our ice cream was made of cashew milk and it was better than real ice cream! And we had tacos, one with a base of jackfruit in mole sauce and another with wild rice soaked overnight. Wow.

 

We also went to River Market, a really amazing little place which has a farmer’s market, Ethiopian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern restaurants, Italian, Vietnamese, and Mediterranean grocery stores, and a Polish/Ukranian pierogi shop.

Not to mention the most important thing about America which is why we want to stick around…family!

It is wonderful to be around family again.

 

Holy cow, I look so young in this picture.

 

Besides hanging out a lot with Al, Laura, and Luke (Jacob’s brother) we went to visit his grandparents in Iowa for the balloons.

 

And actually, Kansas City is quite an artsy, fun city itself. There’s something called First Fridays, where local artists showcase their latest works and live bands play downtown. And the architecture of the city is really very beautiful. Too bad it has to get so dang cold around here…

 

 

The Nelson-Atkins art museum

My man took me out on a date to the art museum in Kansas City. He sure knows how to treat me right!

Looking forward to NYC next week and Kai’s wedding right after that in Dallas!!!

Atlanta

And here comes the month of traveling…we flew for 16 hours to get from Beijing to Chicago to Atlanta for a dunk contest The Jump Manual is sponsoring. NYC for an internet marketing conference, Dallas for Kai’s wedding and potentially Kansas City for the Hillers are on the horizon. Sometimes at this rate traveling can be a little much. But, there are a lot of fun things coming up so that’s good.

Our impressions so far of Georgia have been…clean, sterile and exactly like every other part of small town America. We could be in Keller, Texas or Hilliard, Ohio right now. It has the strip malls, Target and Home Depot complexes, bad traffic, and lack of cheap accommodation or public transport that your typical American city boasts of. But it does have plenty of excellent shopping choices, smog-less air, and English speakers, and you may rest assured I have already eaten fresh salads and crisp vegetables and chips and salsa to my heart’s content.

China was a little sad to leave. I mean, I admit I didn’t mind being daily approached by strangers who complimented me and wanted to take my picture, and our friend William is a one of a kind guy whom we will miss.

I wish you guys could have met William. He is so adorable. He speaks with a cute Chinese accent with a lot of inflection, and is so childlike. For example, when he was visiting our apartment one day he said, “Kalli, what is this?” Pointing to my makeup set. “This is blush, this is eyeshadow, and this is lipstick,” imitating how to put it on. He was all, “Oh! Now I understand, why you are so beautiful!” On our Great Wall hike, he asked each of us individually, “Jacob, can you believe, that the Chinese have built so great a wall thousands of years ago?” “Kalli, can you believe, that the Chinese have built so great a wall thousands of years ago? I cannot believe!” He brought traditional clothes to wear and referred to himself as William the Conqueror. This was his first trip to the Great Wall as well. He also introduced himself constantly to people as we walked along, including to a little girl who he cooed over, then told the doting mother, “Is she real? She looks fake!”

Here are pictures from some final escapades in China.

1. Taoist temple

Taoism believes that there are different departments in heaven that determine punishments and regulate different kinds of people on Earth. Sounds very orderly, doesn’t it?

They had everything, from the poisoning department to the abortion department to the 15 types of violent death department.

 

 

 

 

 

2. That’s Jacob in our favorite restaurant

This is our favorite salad. It has agarics, a kind of waxy mushroom, onions, and cilantro.

 

This is Jacob asking for two menus. For some reason, when you go out to eat, every single restaurant only brings one menu.

3. Happy Valley Amusement Park

 

5. Chinese Ethnic Cultural Park

This outdoor museum showcased the 56 ethnic minorities of China, and it definitely made me want to return to China and explore more outside of Beijing one day.

Three inches was the ideal size for a Chinese woman’s foot. I swear, the things women have been subjected to throughout history.

5. Forbidden City and Tiannamen Square

I admit I was a little frustrated with our tour guide because he just pointed to each place and said “this is where the emperor lived. and this is where the concubines lived” without elaborating. I learned more from reading the signs out front.

Chinese children wear these kind of shorts, the better to pee in the streets with.

Here is a picture of people taking a picture of me while others are taking a picture of Jacob.

The best part of this visit was the line formed of people from small cities in China wanting their pictures with us.

Here is Jacob trying to look Chinese.

6. Acrobatics show and Beijing opera

The acrobatics show was awesome. The opera was…not what I was expecting. They don’t really sing in their operas. They mostly do pretend sword fighting and speaking in a high pitched voice. Not to mention the instrumentation was almost entirely percussion. It was kind of surreal.

7. Meeting with friends

We met up with one of Jacob’s friends from his college in Iowa who is from Beijing named Ivy, and her husband from Finland. They own a business too.

We went out to eat with a couple from the ward named Andrew and Nicola, who introduced us to one of our best dining experiences ever, DaDong Restaurant which serves Peking duck.

8. The Great Wall

We went with a visiting American family and brought William along with us. It was beautiful, and it was definitely a hike! I was “glistening” the whole time. Because girls don’t sweat, they glisten. Visiting the Great Wall was an amazing experience. I’m really grateful to get to have done it.