Annjulie Vai
Dinner Geography
October 13, 2011
My dinner(s) consists of mostly foods that I grow, gather, hunt/fish or trade from the ‘aina of Maui. I have been raised in a way to be conscious of my food choices and to hold “organic” food choices as the most healthy as well as most beneficial to our body; At the same time my mom always stressed the importance of eating off of the land from our local area and that growing our own foods as much as possible is not only the best for our overall health but for the health of Mother Earth. Having the least impact in the case of agriculture production, distribution (where it comes from), how it is processed is one of the best ways that we can make a difference in our food choices to help sustain the vitality of our Earth and all the natural resources within it. When we grow our own foods and care for them then we know exactly how they were grown we know what kind of nutrients, soil, and compost that we feed them and we can then have the control over the conscious decisions that we make that matter and ultimately benefit Earth and ourselves and everyone around us in doing so. If you do not have the ability or resource to grow your own food you can substitute shopping at the farmers market and build a relationship with them thereby knowing where and how your purchased food is grown and at the same time be a contributor to the local economy and supporting local people and families within your own community. You can also get your meat and fish from hunting/fishing or by making your purchases or trades with other local people, community based functions and stores, homemade, or certified organic outlets such as Whole Foods to ensure fresh, quality, organic, wild, and nutritious products. Thinking and doing with this type of mindset makes a huge impact in our local economy, health, Earth and every ecosystem around us, everything is connected.
My dinner is as follows: Pahole salad, wild ferns gathered from my ahupua’a in Kipahulu at Hahalawe stream, kula onions from my garden, tomatoes from Kula Dave purchased at Pukalani Supertte (family owned mom and pop store), cucumbers from the Pulehu Nui Farmers Market, soy sauce, cuttle fish, olive oil, vinegar, sugar (all not local). Some items especially flavors and condiments are not available accept from the big stores because they come from all over the world and are not produced in the islands. Next was wild fish that I caught fishing out at Nu’u Bay in Kaupo; I fried it in vegetable oil (not local), with white Diamond G rice. Included in this dinner was tartar sauce made from Best Foods mayonnaise, and Del Monte pickle relish as well as melted butter from the Best Yet brand.
For this assignment, I chose to focus on my condiments and what I call extras that are consistently part of my household’s daily food intake. I pride myself in my commitment to local produce and products but when it comes to condiments and extra flavors it is near impossible to find a local source. For the rest of this paper I will focus on butter because I use a lot of it and I want to research it and find out what is the best choice when it comes to shopping for butter. I know in my na’au that the best choice would be to have a dairy cow and make fresh butter as we did when I was growing up, but since that is not really feasible I want to find out what the next best option would be….I am guessing raw unprocessed local butter; but that is not available either so I am going to look into the health benefit and differences between Best Yet brand that is the cheapest and say an organic pasture fed butter like Organic Valley.
I think that the majority of us can agree that the nutritional content of animal meat will vary widely depending on the diet and living conditions of the animal. In doing my research I found that it is also true of butter. We all love butter, it goes with just about everything weather it is sweet, sour, meat, fruit, veggies, pasta…you name it butter makes it better. So I figured I eat enough butter it is worth knowing the general facts about our purchase choices for butter.
The majority of us can probably agree that the nutritional content of animal meat/flesh varies depending on the diet and living conditions of the animal. In doing my research I found that it is also true of butter. We all love butter and have been taught to avoid it and that it is bad for our arteries and that eating too much butter causes lots of bad affects in our body. I agree that this is true of commercial grain fed butter but opposite if it is real pasture fed butter. What I found out was appalling to say the least….basically IF YOUR MEAT AND DAIRY SOURCE IS NOT RAISED IN A PASTURE EATING LIVING GREEN GRASSES IT IS POISON… Seriously shocking that even organic does not make such a huge difference as the nutrition that follows the animal straight to us from pasture raised or wild versus (even organic) GRAIN FED OR SWITCHED TO GRAIN FOR FATTENING DOES. Any meat or dairy from a pasture fed animal is beneficial and nutritious to our body including reducing body and belly core fat, reducing chances of cancers by up to 50% AND providing us with healthy omega 3s that are absent in grain raised animals. The grain raised meat and dairy make us fat, sick, have huge increases for clogged arteries and cancers….every article I researched told of the health in pasture raised animals…Mother Nature knows best…all the vitamins, nutrients and omega 3s are converted by the cow from the grass and then passed to us in the meat and dairy. In fact the butter from a pasture or wild animal is nearly orange-to-yellow…NOT WHITE because that is the vitamin A, E and beta carotene from the grass….It does not exist in GM Corn fed animals.
I could go on and on about this it is horrifying what we ourselves are pretty much force fed through the American system of food production and manufacturing. Then IT TOOK ME HOURS AT COSTCO TO FIND OUT IF IT IS GRAIN OR PASTURE FED!! IT is hard to find any pasture fed dairy products at all on this Island. For meat you can raise your own, hunt or go to Pukalani Superette…(only meat that is entirely raised in a pasture on Maui for its lifetime) for the butter and dairy Organic Valley states right on the label “pasture fed” and some other brands found at Whole Foods….expensive but if you take the time to do the research worth every penny and it tastes 100% better, and sweeter, our bodies need it and our children are worth it.
This eat wild website is awesome and is backed up by many journals and articles that are from reputable sources:
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