Hello Everyone




I was interested to hear a number of my friends commenting on how healthy I looked after returning from India. This really intrigued me, as the extremes of air conditioning and summer heat gave me a mild asthma attack. The lack of mosquito netting had me covered in mozzie bites, some of which became quite irritated – thank goodness for those malaria tablets! What on earth could I have been doing to make me appear so healthy?
Chennai in India is a strongly vegetarian area where rice and other flours are used in preference to wheat. Also, women, do not usually drink alcohol, men sometimes drink spirits and beer. My diet was therefore heavily based on curried rice, curried lentils and curried vegetables – for breakfast, lunch and dinner! One of the most memorable meals presented to me after a workshop at one of the universities was of very spicy, green, spinach rice dish, accompanied by less spicy yellow, saffron rice with a side dish of rice porridge!
Even the odd omelette I ordered was curried! I was not too fussed on Indian coffee or tea as they were made with condensed milk and very sweet, so my main drink was water. Who would have thought that all of this wheat-free, alcohol-free, caffeine-free diet would have had such an impact in such a short time?

Then in Malaysia we saw the Muslim attitude to food. Although we did not observe Ramadan I enjoyed eating the Halal meat. And like the fact that the animal was blessed before it was slaughtered.

But it did get me thinking...what if we became more vegetarian? What would it do for our own individual health and that of the planet? Certainly all the research suggests that a more vegetarian diet would be one of the easiest ways to have a more sustainable planet.

The movies on the plane got me thinking too. There is a scene in Avatar where meat is blessed before it is eaten and the animal acknowledged for giving up its life to feed us.
How many of us really consider the origin of the food we eat? And the life that has been sacrificed to sate our hunger? As a farmer’s daughter I remember well the number of animals my Dad killed to feed our family in fact I was quite adept at preparing chicken and turkeys from his training. But I never once stopped to acknowledge that animal and thank it for giving up its life to feed us. If you have ever seen the film “The Gods Must Be Crazy” you will recall that the tribesman always thanked his prey for the food that it would give his family.
It seems that we are very disconnected from our food supply. Once upon a time every family had their own vegetable garden usually accompanied with a chook yard too. Children got to plant vegetables, in my case the first experience was radish as it was foolproof.  Community gardens are a way that we can contribute to reconnecting to the land. In using permaculture principles conserving our resources and applying sustainability techniques we can all share our knowledge and produce with the community.

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Till next time
Roz Townsend  http://www.roztownsend.com/