Meet the Friedmans.
Introduction: please provide an overview about you and your family:
Kenny writes, “I am a professional musician and Wendy is finishing up her education on her way to being a full time ultrasound tech. We’ve been married almost 5 years and we each have two kids. We live in Long Island, New York. We are avid tennis players. We began our journey of “food consciousness” in the summer of 2010 and never looked back. We’re pretty far down the rabbit hole!
Unfortunately, the kids (ranging in ages from early teens to 20 years) were too late in the game to really get into our new “nourishing” path. We do our best to educate them, but they have a very low threshold! For Wendy and I, we eat nearly all-organic veggies. We “import” our meat and dairy — it’s all humanely raised and from animals that live on pasture. We very rarely eat at restaurants anymore, and when we do it’s either at restaurants we know are conscientious about choosing their sources or we don’t eat meat at all.”
What are the ways you nourish rather than merely feed your family?
“The most recent change we have made is that we found a local spring about 10 minutes from our house — I bought 8 1-gallon glass jugs and most of our drinking water comes from there. We’re doing our best to get off the flouride grid!
We cook together as many nights as we’re home together and find it makes us stronger as a couple and it’s far more economical to do so. I only wish we could afford to hire somebody to clean up afterwards!
We’re constantly reading books, watching movies, keeping up to date with blogs like this one and trying to “spread the gospel” of traditional diet over today’s awful and unhealthy “standard American diet”.
The change came about when a “conscious” friend of mine saw a Facebook post I’d written regarding a recurring acid-reflux problem I frequently had. I am so grateful that he reached out to me that day. We spent a couple of hours on the phone and he gave me the basics of what’s wrong with today’s diet.”
What were your first steps?
“I immediately cut out wheat 100% and cut down my sugar intake significantly. I became much more conscious about reading ingredients rather than just the nutrition panel. He also pointed me toward cultured vegetables to help with the reflux. Within a few months, I was making my own!”
How do you know you and your family are well nourished?
Since changing my diet, I have experienced the following changes:
1. Higher energy level
2. Better mood
3. Seasonal allergies, which I suffered from for my entire life have disappeared.
4. Nasonex Rx in the garbage
5. Advair Rx in the garbage
6. Advil in the garbage. I have not filled one single perscription since changing my diet. I used to be on antibiotics 2-4 times a year for sinus infections.
7. Far less time spent in the bathroom (the details shall be spared!)
8. By improving my gut flora via probiotic foods and the abovementioned cutting of wheat and sugar, my reflux has largely gone away.
What are some of your favorite meals or favorite foods?
- Oatmeal made with coconut milk, pom seeds, raw honey and a huge chunk of raw butter
- Lamb Loin chops
- Coconut chicken or shrimp
- braised leeks or fennel
- Any roast with this recipe
What pearls of wisdom would you offer those new to these principles?
“You’ll feel better within a couple of weeks, but don’t expect to “undo” years of damage in a short time. Stick with it, and it pays dividends. It’s great that my wife has been totally into this journey — I can’t imagine how difficult it would be if I can going it alone in the house.”
Final Thoughts?
“The most important thing you can do is vote with your dollars. If you don’t agree with the ways or means in which your shopkeeper or food producer works, stop giving them your money. Every time a person puts their money into somebody’s cash register they’re saying “What you are doing is fine with me.” This is more powerful than any petition or letter than can be written to a congressman. (don’t get me started on government intervention in my kitchen!)
Spread the word to as many as you can in your “sphere of influence”. I have changed the way my extended family eats, as well as many friends — each to varying degrees. Each of them now has enough knowledge to spread to their own “sphere of influence”.
It is heartening to see this movement growing. My regret in life is not knowing any of this when my children were small and more impressionable. I know in my heart they’d be happier and healthier. I hope that someday when they mature they’ll embrace a cleaner diet.”
See more testimonials from our Nourished Families series.
Nourishing Our Children 
7 Responses to Traditional Food: “Stick with it, and it pays dividends.”
I would love to hear from like-minded people.
Email me at 4040deuce4040 at gmail dott com
There are so many more things I’d love to add to this…the most important being the advice I give to everybody:
Don’t rely on the government, the pharmaceutical industry or even your doctor to give you good advice about food or diet. Do your own research and look at historical patterns. Be responsible for yourself and your own health. Gov’t, BigPharm and BigAg/BigFood look out for themselves and their profits first. Healthy people make lousy patients. Doctors aren’t trained in nutrition — they are trained at how to prescribe medications to quell symptoms of illnesses that are usually brought on by poor diet. Treat the cause, not the symptoms! The human body has an AMAZING capacity to maintain and heal itself, but it needs you to provide it with the proper “tools” to do so.
Kenny Thank you so much for saying this! I really needed to hear it!
Thanks for reading this, Alex!
Good luck on your journey.
Thank you so much for this blog entry! I will share it on my fb page. I deal with so many naysayers (living in Northern Ca there are a lot of “health nuts”,vegans, western doctors, etc. who say that eating this way will cause all sorts of problems) that I start to doubt that I am doing the right thing for my health and my family’s health.
Thanks for reading, Lauren!
The comment from Alex led me back here to re-read what I had written half a year ago.
My most commonly given advice/perspective is to “control that which you can control.”
There are so many areas of stress nowadays that are out of our control: Weather, traffic, the economy and politics, to name just a few. One thing we CAN control is the choices we make about food every day.
We each choose which foods (and drinks) we are going to raise to our lips and ingest — as adults, that isn’t dictated to us by the media, the politicians, mother nature or people who otherwise don’t know better.
Keep yourself as far out of the conventional food system as possible — it’s a little extra effort, but then again…so is sitting in the doctor’s office waiting room.
Exercise your power over the things you can directly control!