No, avocado toast every day is not a good thing

Clean eating and JERFing is all very well…until it becomes dementedly unsustainable.

Image via The Kitchen Cleanse
Image via The Kitchen Cleanse

We’ve seen it happen with chia seeds and quinoa, where the fashionable demand for these new foods have seen crops dwindling for the communities that rely on them as a traditional, staple food, with prices hiking by sometimes 4-5 times. Ethical consumers should be aware that poor Bolivians can no longer afford their staple grain (quinoa), due to western demand raising prices.

I recently wrote a post – Sorry, but you shouldn’t be drinking almond milk – to highlight the sustainability issues behind the scenes of our fashionable alt-milk obsession.

I hate to be the mirror-holder-upper to our bourgeois culinary habits, but today I need to flag the Problem With Avocados.

Around the world we’re eating a lot of avocados. Cafes serve a whopping half a fruit on breakfast plates. Raw foodies add a whole one to their smoothies. Avos are now everyday food, treated as base for a meal, not as a decadent accompaniment. Today, avocados are the most posted food on Instagram.

In Australia, plantings are set to double in the next decade to 110,000 hectares to cater for the demand and the industry’s aim is to get Australians eating five kilos per person per year.

Some might see this as a wonderful thing. But we must look at the implications of our eagerness to Avo Everything.

Well, first, they’re sucking up a lot of water. By one estimate it takes 272 litres just to grow half a kilogram (two or three medium-sized) avocados. This is a problem broadly. Especially here in Australia.

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Are you an eco-hypocrite?

We’re drowning in eco-wash. I’d be pleased about this state of affairs, except that regularly – neigh daily – I observe moments of earnest environmental engagement that gets it so selfishly, blindingly, egoically wrong.

Via Take 3 for the Sea campaign
Via Take 3 for the Sea campaign

Dangerously so.

Indeed the only the only thing worse than ignorance, is righteous hypocrisy. The latter being a far more stubborn force.

Really, this post is just a rant of things that tick me off. I’ve encountered all recently, or regularly. I’d love you to share your thoughts and expand on the list. We do need to hold a mirror up to ourselves, don’t we?

1. Organic food…wrapped in plastic

At supermarkets, standard, non-organic vegetables are sold loose. Insanely, it’s the organics that come

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Lonely much? Me too. This helps.

Further to my post on Martha Nussbaum’s notion of seeking out difficulty to have a good life, I’d like to chat to you about a rant on the value of loneliness I came across today on BrainPickings.com.

Image via Pinterest
Image via Pinterest

The rant picks up on an idea explored in The Lonely City by Olive Laing – that loneliess fuels creativity and a rich, full life.

Essentially it picks up on the paradoxical nature of loneliness. Lonely times can be sad and listless and characterised by a sense of lack. And yet loneliness is also a “vitalizing laboratory for self-discovery”.

Loneliness can “drive one to consider some of the larger questions of what it is to be alive.” This is indeed big and rich and strangely intimate.

Ever sat at a bar on your own in a big city? Know what she means? The barrenness of loneliness drives you down into yourself.

Loneliness, paradoxically, can see you cure yourself of loneliness by bringing you to the most secure company around: yourself.

I also liked this idea: Loneliness might be taking you towards an otherwise unreachable experience of reality.

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A slow food and boating guide to Turkey

You might have caught my last bareboat sailing trip in Australia’s Whitsundays? I loved bareboating – sailing your own boat, no skipper required. More than I thought. I slept. I ate. Did I mention I SLEPT!?

Screen Shot 2016 08 16 at 10.18.59 AM A slow food and boating guide to Turkey
That’s our cat. And Me. And the infamous Turquoise water.

So I saved up and planned and orchestrated another bareboating trip, this time in Turkey. Because I’d never been to Turkey. And I knew the hiking there was worth crossing the world for, too. And, then, there’s the food…right?

(A little side note on the terrorism issue: Yup, Istanbul’s Ataturk airport was bombed while we were there, as well as just a few weeks beforehand. Terror can strike anywhere in the world today. There appears to be no pattern to discern as to where or when or how. We did, however, decide to enter via Greece, by boat, instead of via Instanbul airport. I advise you stay abreast of travel warnings. It’s also possible to do similar trips in Greece, Italy and Croatia).

I explain how bareboat sailing works. In Australia, you can simply turn up with your driving license and you’ll be walked through how to sail your own boat.

To sail in Europe, however, you have to get an international sailing license, which you can SWOT heavily for and do a half-day session with an accredited agency before leaving. You’re then given a briefing on arrival, charts and

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Loanwords make me excited

I read recently about “loanwords”. These are words that English has “borrowed” mostly because there’s simply no English equivalent that can do such a beautiful, succinct, piquant job.

Image via Pinterest
Image via Pinterest

What I liked in the article (a Scientific American read) was the explanation for why we get such a lovely feeling – a thrill – from stumbling upon loanwords.

Do you know what I mean?

I’ve written about hygge which is a Danish word kind of meaning “cosiness”. But as a Dane will tell you…it means so much more. For me, this word is also something you consciously strive for. It’s about connecting in a cosy, elegant, unfussy way. It’s about weaving friendship and intimacy with ease.

I’ve written about taking a flanerie, which is to take a wander around a city just to look and smell and absorb.

I’ve written about sookshma.

I’ve also written about the beauty of wabi sabi.

Apparently this fondness for untranslatable words stems from the awareness that a phenomenon, a thing, a feeling, something on this overly researched planet, has been overlooked by us. How wonderfully mysterious.

Yeah, I get this. We veer toward oddness, imperfections, gaps, unknowns, as we once did flat horizons.

Of course, on the surface, we rail against the uncertainty and “missingness” inherent in many things in life. But ultimately it is the discord in life that brings us richness and satisfaction. The stuff we truly want.

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A slow food and hiking guide to Symi, Greece

Two months back I found myself in Symi, a small Dodecanese island near Turkey, via the kindness of a stranger.

Symi island harbour
Symi island harbour

Sinead of @seasoulandsnow reached out on Instagram when she saw I was in Rhodes (how I wound up in Rhodes is a less pretty story). She offered me her holiday home in Symi as she had sensed I was having a pretty rough trot (the unpretty story). She’s never met me. She simply cared.

I was (having a rough trot) and so I took the opportunity. Because sometimes it pays to just go where the invitation leads you. And be vulnerable and in need.

I’m supremely glad I did. The place healed me no end. Symi is a truly special place where tourism hasn’t mucked with its spirit. There is a distinct sleepy fishing village vibe to the joint. Tour boats arrive from Rhodes during the

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“Clean Eating is a Myth”…and 5 other things I got right

Almost six years ago I quit sugar. I coped flack for this. Did I what.

When it came around to publishing my first book I Quit Sugar I ran the below Arthur Schopenhauer quote upfront, by way of highlighting where I thought the whole debate just had to head. Eventually.

Image via quotefancy.com
Image via quotefancy.com

Someone referred to this quote at a public talk I gave recently, asking me if I still copped flack (ridiculed) or if we’d moved onto the next stages of truth (acceptance).

I hadn’t thought about it since I included it in the book. But I did now. I answered thusly,

The ridicule has backed off big time. The trolls have quietened down. For half a decade I’ve served back science and reason as my response. It kind of pinned them to their wall.
The opposition is still there. It looks different now. It’s less violent. However, it’s becoming more mercurial, more seemingly reasoned. Like the one about how everything in moderation is great (not really possible with sugar, which is the foundation of my argument) and that we just have to burn off off the excess calories (thus positing the issue as merely one of empty calories).
But I think we’re well on our way to viewing what I’ve been saying for the past 5 1/2 years as common sense. I was even recently tagged the “sensible voice” in the wellness debate by a newspaper that had previously sledged me as “extreme”.

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The secret to a good life? Hunt down difficulty

I’ve read about the work of philosopher Martha Nussbaum for a while. She’s one of the most prolific thinkers around. Nussbaum has published 24 books, 509 papers and received 57 honorary degrees. Last month she won the Kyoto Prize, the most prestigious award offered in fields not eligible for a Nobel. And so on, so forth. She’s a fierce mind with a fierce set of ideas about life. You can read about the fabulous anomalies…bearing in mind she has some wonderfully robust ideas about inconsistency.

Image via nikakaiser.com
Image via nikakaiser.com

I found this thought worth pondering: She believes the point of life – a good life – is to not just accept difficulty (and grow/learn etc from it), but to actively seek it out. Indeed, she writes that if she notices herself feeling too satisfied, she begins to feel discontent.

“To be a good human being,” she says, “is to have a kind of openness to the world, the ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control that can lead you to be shattered.” 

This is a disarming notion for me. You too? I agree with her, though. I often have debates about the worth of hardship with folk around me  who “just want to be happy”. Happiness, I’ve written before, is one of many byproducts of leading a good and meaningful life. Surely we are here for more? Surely we’re here to grow? This is how we’ve evolved. It’s also how we feel most satisfied with our lives…when we know it’s heading somewhere. And we really only seem to grow and progress by overcoming hardship.

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The Cheapest Stew Ever – $1.70 per serve!

A healthy and wholesome meal for $1.70? Yep, I’m serious. This recipe from my latest book I Quit Sugar: Simplicious is literally the cheapest stew ever made. And with a few tweaks in can be turned into a healing autoimmune stew – my go-to fix on days when my Hashimoto’s is playing up.

sarah wilson simplicious autoimmune stew
This is my autoimmune version of the stew

This stew is drastically cheaper than chips. It’s also minimum fuss. Just dump all the ingredients into the slow-cooker and a few hours later you can tuck into a warming meal. To make my autoimmune version, see the ingredients you’ll have to swap below.

The Cheapest Stew Ever

  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 2 large carrots, cut into 3 cm chunks
  • 2 large parsnips, cut into 3 cm chunks
  • 2 swedes or potatoes, cut into 3 cm chunks
  • 2 celery stalks, chopped, leaves reserved
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 2 cups homemade Beef Stock
  • 1 parmesan rind (if you have one in your freezer)
  • 1.5 kg stewing beef (blade, chuck, brisket – whichever’s cheapest), cut into 2 cm cubes
  • 1 tablespoon English mustard
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon sea salt
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 cups Par-Cooked ’n’ Frozen silverbeet or kale (page 22)

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