The Family Table That Built Strong Bones Using Real Food and Traditions

Hey everybody, it's Nancy and Sylvia once again from

Family Tree Food and Stories.

We're gonna have a great show today, but before we start, I have a couple

of things I'd like to go over with you.

Our dear listeners.

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In addition, we are also doing a survey at Podcast Family Tree Food Stories.

There'll be a link at the bottom of the show notes on this episode.

and if you would just take a moment and answer some of the questions so that we

can create even more and better shows for you, because we do want every

meal to be a story and every story to be a feast like this one, right?

Sylvia?

Oh, absolutely.

you know, this is an exciting thing for me personally because I'm undergoing

some examination of bone health, because of medication I'm on for my

breast cancer that the listeners may know about 'cause I've talked about

it before, which suppresses a hormone that's essential for bone health.

when I look around and see, it's like if you have a Chevy, you're

gonna see a Chevy everywhere, right?

But bone health is just everywhere these days with supplements.

Foods fortified with calcium and protein, bone density scans,

medications and whatever, but.

All you have to do stand in the pharmacy aisle of calcium and

it's there blaring out the selling points of their particular calcium

and absorbant.

It is a great big word and we're gonna get to that here in a bit.

And if you haven't figured out already, that's

what our show is about today.

It's all about bone health, mineral rich foods and ideas and ways to keep well.

More than the radio eves going, but

Mm-hmm.

our body's going in many different directions, but ideally,

strong and healthy so that we can have more rich experiences with

those that we love and care about.

But I don't know about you, Sylvia, but my mom used to talk about health as

it related to the foods that we ate.

Did yours?

Well, not really.

I just think they just sort of did it.

I mean, that's in my experience anyway, and, I commend your

mother for talking about that, but my grandmother just sort of.

Cooked

She just did it right.

Yeah.

She just did it more so than my mother.

My mother really didn't, she wasn't a very good cook, but my grandmother

was good enough to make up for it.

and my mother's gone, so I don't, I won't insult her with this.

No.

But she would just end up with something really remarkable.

Traditional recipes often contain, as we have discovered about early kitchen life,

that combinations of food, they just knew this, trial and error that deliver the

nutrients we now know are very important.

Well, my mom used to talk about, make sure you drink your milk.

It's good for you.

Cheese was good for you bones.

Well, cheese is not necessarily as good for you today as it used

to be because we think of all the cholesterol stuff that's going on.

Alright.

So we don't wanna go down that rabbit hole

right now But milk was extra fortified with calcium, and I'm presuming

that the milk that we had as kids.

My mom used to get the milk and the orange juice delivered by the milkman

Oh, the

in the glass bottles.

it was like the thing that everybody did back then.

I don't think milk been around anymore that delivered just 'cause

it would go to the grocery store.

You had cream, you had, buttermilk, you could have regular milk and then you could

have orange juice that was delivered, which of course there's lots of orange

trees in Long Island where I grew up.

Yeah.

then there was other issues of bone health because our

community in Central Long Island was putting, fluoride in the water.

So there was a lot of issues about health and nutrition that seemed

to be central to our community.

As a whole, which I thought was rather interesting looking back At

the time I didn't even think about it as a kid other than like, ah, and

all the advertising that went on.

Um, wonder Bread used to do the Build Strong body's 12 ways.

Yeah.

Well, you can also sweat your pipes with Wonder Bread, but

that's been in other shows.

You know, there was a huge movement, drink milk movement

that really, I think almost was a disservice because it made people

think that was the only thing that they needed to do was to drink fortified

milk for a lot of different reasons.

But, you know, that was kind of interesting because it

isn't the only thing, right?

so there's a lot that goes into the foods that our grandmothers and

people before them, the ancients ate.

And so she, you should get right to the mineral story.

Let's talk about that.

Let's do that, please.

Uh, today calcium does tend to dominate the conversation

about bones, and it's like the king of the pharmacy, but what?

Well, calcium just doesn't act alone.

It's kind of like the, um, think of it as the bricks of a building, you

still need the mortar, but the structure holds those bricks together in place.

Vitamin D brings the body together to actually help the body absorb

calcium, think fatty fish and eggs.

So it's not just milk, like you said, magnesium helps the body use calcium

property prop property properly.

Like that needs to be a blooper in the show.

Think pumpkin seeds and almonds and spinach and delicious black beans.

I don't know about you, but I love a really good spicy black bean soup.

And then you have vitamin K and K2 collard greens.

That's your neck of the woods, turnip creams, kale, spinach.

Again, spinach.

Spinach seems to be coming back and I would think that calcium

would be like the white stuff, but that's not necessarily true.

No, greens are really important.

Right, and lettuce, and then also K2, which we don't hear too much

about, but these are fermented foods and soft, stinky cheeses and butters.

I could die for that.

That is my favorite.

Just give me a good, nice.

Chunk of sourdough bread and soft stinky cheese and I, I could

actually have a cheese and butter sandwich and I'd be very happy.

Sounds good to me.

Sounds good to me.

You know, you were talking about the milkman and the orange juice.

Sun and all our, whatever, whoever brought 'em, but it made me think my grandmother

lived in rural eastern Kentucky, we're mountainous mountains all around,

and the great anticipated day was when the government cheese got delivered,

Oh, interesting.

she'd

they deliver with milk too?

Yeah, I remember the cheese.

I remember everybody was so excited about the big chunk of

cheese and it would get delivered.

I have no idea who delivered it.

But that was a delivery that was made back in the day and I don't think

anymore, but, anyway, you know.

But here's an interesting story.

Now, when I was a little girl, did I aspire to be a fireman?

No.

Did I aspire to be a policeman?

No.

I wanted to be an anthropologist.

I think that's cool.

I wanted to dig in the dirt and find bones.

I mean, I thought that sounded really interesting.

Well, fast forwarding, here we go.

anthropologists, the real ones, studying ancient skeletons sometimes

note something really surprising.

Those bones are awfully strong.

I've been able to figure that out and they think the

explanation is fairly simple.

Three things to remember.

Mineral rich foods, and we'll talk about that.

Lots of moving around.

And plenty of sunshine.

There you go.

You're in the, you're in the healthy spot.

Vitamin D3.

We need that right.

And interestingly, this wasn't limited to wealthy households.

You would've thought that maybe, but actually it was the peasants, it

was the workers, some of the most nourishing food traditions developed

in rural and, poor communities.

'cause they had to make the most of everything they had and they learned

a lot like the indigenous people and, and all of that kind of stuff as well.

You know, anthropologists are very interesting people and at one point

in my life I thought I could do that too.

Except I have to, I have to confess something.

As a kid, when you take the museum tours, you go to the big fancy museums,

we would always have to go through.

In the Met in New York, the um, the Egyptian section, which had

the mummies and the skeletons.

I could not walk through there with my eyes open.

Really you.

I was always afraid of seeing the bones today.

Not a problem, but I think it took me probably till I was in my thirties

before I could open my eyes going through looking at mummies and dead bones.

Well, next, next, uh, what do they call those?

Next field trip I take to dig up bones.

I'm not taking you

Okay.

When I think about

bone health, I do often think of my grandmother's kitchen.

She didn't talk about nutrients.

There were no charts on the wall, explain calcium and magnesium.

But every meal she made somehow seemed to contain the very foods

that nutrition experts recommend.

And I think, , a lot of times, like I said, it.

It evolves through families that didn't have a lot.

They had, they picked up greens out of the front yard, that kind of thing.

This is an Eastern Kentucky Appalachia heart of it.

beans cooked with a ham bone and cornbread and cast iron skillet

and buttermilk on the table.

When you get iron from your cast iron

Well, there you go.

Sometimes there were fish and they were delicate little filets.

They were the whole thing, all its insides and the bones.

Now, if somebody tells me that I won't eat fish that has

all that in it, I just won't.

I'm, I'm sorry, I'm not, I'm not a back to nature person

ever had canned mackerel?

No, but I've had canned salmon and it contains some bones.

the can mackerel.

As a kid, I used to love that stuff and now it, to me it's cat

food, but that's besides the point.

It's funny how your tastes change when you get older, but the can

mackerel, if you opened it always had like the, the backbone of the

fish in there and it just crumbled.

And now I couldn't eat, watch the bones in the museum or look at them,

but I could certainly crunch the bones and the fish for some reason.

We had two other friends and, and I went to Paris for a big birthday.

The girls and one of my friends just was, didn't get outta the country really

that much or really out of New York much.

she ordered fish at this lovely little sort of bistro in Paris that

we had gone to one night and they brought the fish, the whole fish

and the head and everything, and.

my other friend Diane, and and I were happily eating our snails and everything

else, and the fish comes and she screams, and the entire restaurant

looked at her and started to laugh.

Meanwhile, the waiter ran over really fast and said, Madam,

would you like me to remove that?

Oh yes, please.

please.

So we gotta chuckle out of that one.

It reminds me of my Escargo story when I was doing a job

interview for my first law job the, uh, test of the evening was serving Escargo.

That's snails, right?

And not telling me that that's what it was.

Oh, they had a great laugh.

They had a great laugh over

Do you like them today?

Uh, no, not really.

Not really.

And you don't see 'em much anymore either, so Anyway,

but, but anyway, you know what, what my grandmother did wasn't really a diet.

it was just supper, but there's one food that really counts.

And I have a question for you.

What is the one food you could mention at a dinner party that might help really,

really help build strong bones, but you get some pretty skeptical looks.

What is it?

Oh, I think you're gonna say, well.

It's gonna be either a salad topping and tint or a pizza topping.

And that's sardines.

Sardines.

My dogs love sardines.

Oh

my

gosh.

The juice.

Yeah.

Who likes 'em?

My dogs

Oh,

oh.

Bob likes 'em too.

He will eat a sardine, like,

Well, good for him.

He is worse than the cats.

Well, we don't have cats, but all the extra juice and the oil that

come outta sardines, we put it on top of the dog food, and the dogs are

just happy as climbs are high tide.

That is amazing.

'cause that's really good for them,

It's good for them.

It's good for him too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you eat the little boogers, you just eat the whole thing.

All their little bones and all their little I'm not sure.

Uh, no, no, no, no.

but it's, eating an entire fish was what people used to do, including the bones.

And because they're packed with calcium and minerals and all those

little good things that make it work.

And because the bones are so small, cooking softens them

enough that they're easy to eat.

But kind of crunchy.

Yeah,

I like that.

But you see versions everywhere.

And actually the Mediterranean fishermen grilling sardines, the fresh

ones are supposed to be fabulous.

I've never had a fresh sardine, but they're delicacy and now my, I, my

aunt and uncle with their kids, spent a couple of years in Kyoto, Japan.

'cause my uncle worked in, in marketing overseas.

And my cousins came back with dried little tiny fishes, which were

considered Japanese candies for the kids.

Wow.

I grew up in the United States and not in Japan.

Ooh.

take bubble gum over sardines any day.

yeah.

You know, the Japanese are sort of, they

like,

kind of weird.

you know, they're kind.

Yeah, I was trying, I was groping,

But I do like sushi, so

but, but you, here's the reason.

fish began in our world.

One of the things that went away, were eating small fish.

now we just throw 'em back in, right?

But fish began arriving on our plates as neat little boneless

filets or chicken fingers.

So, I guess that's not fish, but it's nothing, like it resembles

the original thing, just like small fish, which is kind of.

Interesting and too bad in many ways.

'cause people get used to eating things too, and they've developed this thing

about sardines and small fish and so it's like a mental thing as much as anything.

there was a fellow on YouTube that, or not YouTube, I guess

it was on Instagram, that a friend had sent to me and he was cooking sardines

in a can on his kitchen counter.

So he, put a, piece of paper on top of the can peeled the, the lid off, and

all the oil went onto a piece of paper.

And instead of cooking the sardines in a pan, he cooked

the sardines by flaming that.

Paper towel on top of the sardines in the can.

Now, I wouldn't try this at home.

It looked very adventurous.

I showed it to Bob and he said, you are not doing that in our kitchen.

And I said, but why?

Well,

No, I didn't.

I didn't cook the sardines in the can with a flame and a paper towel.

Nah,

Okay.

I thought you were a weenie about the anthropologist thing, but now I'll

give you some credit that's bold.

Give Bob the credit for not allowing me to flame the kitchen,

Oh, I know, but Bob can't hold you down for long.

But , anyway, he's some of my other things like when you're ordering a

Caesar salad, how many people say hold the anchovies, which is related.

They're related.

Anchovies are a little more tart, which is what gives Caesar salad

it's flavor, and why you want

You don't really taste them.

I mean, you get the saltiness, but you don't see the

That's right.

So the next time, get the anchovies.

Okay.

Do it.

I like anchovies, actually.

But what about bone broth?

That's our, that's another one.

Bone broth is popular

know, before we go to bone broth, let's take a quick little break

and there's a lot to talk about at bone broth, but we'll be right back.

So, Sylvia, we're back and we're talking about bone broth.

Mm-hmm.

And it's making a big comeback, you know?

It is.

And have you ever made bone broth from like scratch with real beef bones?

No, I'm not a big bone broth kind of gal. That's

just a little too much for me.

But they say

it's really good for you, you know?

it's supposed to be really good for you.

And I tried the bone broth diet ' somehow there's always like an extra 10 or

15 pounds that you've gotta lose.

So I thought I was gonna get on this bone broth kick.

But, those bones are expensive.

Probably more expensive.

I now know they're more expensive than going out and buying it in the.

In the container.

But, I tried making bone broth a number of times.

It is the most disgusting thing I have ever done.

it really?

Most disgusting thing I've ever cooked in the kitchen.

Well, I'll, let me tell you why we did it in two different ways.

It was in the slow cooker was one way and the other was in a giant

sort of soup pot on the stove top.

The amount of gunk and grease, it's probably not grease.

It's like bone fat and stuff

Yeah.

Supposedly the stuff that's good for you.

Yeah.

It goes everywhere and the smell is not that good.

Now we're talking raw bone broth.

There's nothing else in it but it, smells kind of even fresh bones.

It smells kind of gamey to me.

I know you can put vegetables in it

and create a soup out of it?

I didn't add vegetables, I add seasoning.

So you know, some salt, some peppers, some basic stuff, some

Italian seasonings and whatnot.

But I didn't add anything else because I didn't wanna add onions,

especially 'cause some of the bone broth I'd give to the dogs.

'cause you know, the dogs gotta eat too.

They got some extra treat.

But it was, the consistency was really, really gross.

you, you know, sometimes food really is delicious, but there's, something

about the smell or the consistency that just, yeah, like I can't eat

cream spinach for that reason.

It's just like, Ugh.

Really?

Oh, that's interesting.

We'll do a show on that sometime.

This stuff like that where it's just doesn't seem right to you

Foods that

or not.

Yeah.

Who is at grocery?

There you, let's just say it.

but the result they say is deeply nourishing.

Why?

The gelatin.

Well, gel NOx gelatin is based out of bones, right?

Yeah.

And, collagen, which is a big rage right now, people taking collagen,

supplements, for, a variety of things and it's deeply nourishing.

, and I just buy the box kind, okay.

If I'm making chili for instance.

But in the Chinese tradition, it was considered a strengthening tonic

and, nobody poured it down the sink.

Do you put bone broth in your chili?

You said,

I put bone broth, well, it's not bone broth.

I'm sorry.

It's beef broth.

Ah,

wrong

word.

Yeah, but that's what my, recipe that I love has that,

um, is what that was, so, yeah.

Very interesting.

But you know, so bone broth is not just beef, it's also chicken.

Jewish moms used to make with all the chicken feet.

Well, I guess Chinese do that too.

The chicken, the really good chicken broth supposedly made with the chicken feet.

sure.

It's got collagen and

I guess so.

I can't, get

No, no, no.

no, no.

Don't tell me too much.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

but here's a fun fact.

Did you know that the word restaurant.

Like as in my restaurant, I have a restaurant comes

from a French word, restore.

R-E-S-T-A-U-R-E-R.

I guess it would be re, I don't know, meaning to restore.

Ah, who knew?

That's my mission.

I will restore you.

you are a fancy dance.

We're gonna call you a , fancy dancey, Sylvia.

But the other fun fact is also that people used to use bone broth in the

early medieval days and even probably the colonial days as a restorative type

of food and an illness for regular.

Colds and flus, which makes a lot of sense, right?

'cause they probably didn't have orange juice, which you mom always told

you to take when you're not feeling well and childbirth of all things.

I can't imagine

Yeah.

Yeah, just kind of restorable kinda stuff.

And early restaurants served broths meant to restore people's

strength, including bone broth.

And that's hot now.

Fancy restaurants in the cities are now serving bone broth

They are, but there was a bone broth store here.

It closed down.

I think it was a idea whose time had not yet arrived.

But then a lot of people talking about it

A bone broth store.

That's pretty interesting.

And bone marrow is the hot thing too,

where you would, it's expensive as

spoon and you dip it out and people love it.

That would be something.

I can't stand thoughts of it.

That's the problem with me.

if something just doesn't seem right, I can't do it.

Well see, I think I probably could do that because as

kids, my sister and I would fight over the, well, actually my dad too.

We fight over the, bone marrow that would be in a ham steak that had

the little bone in it, and there's always that juicy little, it was,

for some reason that was good, but I can't stand making bone broth soup.

Alright, well we'll move on to something we both like Fermented foods.

Oh yeah.

Pour me a drink.

I'm there.

Okay.

they appear frequently in traditional diets.

we know today, sauerkraut, all those things don't have to have

all that much protein in them.

A lot of people think all they can, they have, everything has to have

protein, but fermentative foods appear frequently in traditional diets.

And do they contain?

Many contain vitamin K, K2, helps guide the

calcium to the bones, right?

It needs a little path, a direction.

I would say Vitamin K2 is kind of like the road sign to say

where the calcium has to go.

And then we talked about earlier, a little bit of.

Source of calf's liver is good for vitamin K2 and chicken liver.

Oh god.

A good chicken liver pate.

Just gimme that, and the stinky cheese and of course egg yolks add

that in there and full fat yogurt.

But that is delicious.

You know, I wonder if a good scotch on the rocks has a little vitamin K2 on it.

No, try it.

They'll put you in charge of that.

but another example is nato, N-A-T-T-O, a fermented soybean dish eaten in Japan.

another little fun fact, and I've never had NATO or nato, I don't

know what it would taste like.

It didn't sound great.

I would have to say, at least that's what I hear.

It acquired taste as to how you put it kind of politely, right?

Well, that's okay.

And apparently areas where that is a common food, they have lower incidences

of fractures, bone fractures, this must be part of the blue zones where, you've

got the longevity thing going on too.

But, it's fascinating to really understand how so many of the foods

that we do eat impact our life.

I don't think we think about it as much as we

Mm-hmm.

that's right.

because osteoporosis, that happens for a variety of reasons.

Aging's one of them.

Or if you had a leg disaster like I had on a prescription drug for too

long, that went the other direction.

small Caucasian women.

Are really prone to osteoporosis.

I'm in that category and that Japanese women are in that category.

But it's interesting that they have done more with foods it sounds like.

And I haven't done any large scale study of Japanese women's bone

health, but it's just kind of interesting because they are prime.

subjects for this problem, osteoporosis at a young age.

So anyway, just, just interesting to, to follow all of that

Well, just quickly on that note, you know how some, you see it here

more in the states than you do probably in other areas, maybe even in the UK as well.

They something they called Dowager's Hump

on.

Right.

And I've seen it more on petite women

than, like you said, an older women.

There's a, a dear friend of mine up north who is an artist.

She's well since passed, but, NIAID had what I would call Dowager's

Hump and just very frail, but I don't see that typically associated

with the Japanese in any way,

Well, I think that may be a clue as to what they're, I do

have a funny story about meeting with the bone health people the other day.

Okay.

About what I'm going through.

so I. Setting kind of sheepishly at the end.

He said I was gonna have to have treatment and all that kind of stuff.

And I said, one other thing.

I've kind of put on a few pounds.

when I got diagnosed I was like, the hell with looking at what I'm eating?

I was gonna eat anything I want.

Right?

And he stopped me the truth.

He said, don't try to lose weight.

Weight is your friend.

And I hear the reason being that what makes osteoporosis improve even if

you're taking the supplements or whatever you're taking is the pounding on your

body because it strengthens your bones.

They have to be stronger to take that pounding.

Isn't that good?

I've never had anybody tell me I didn't have to lose weight.

I

love that.

my hips are good for my bone health.

Oh, please.

Thank you.

Give me another scoop of ice cream, please.

So we're gonna go on to another section of what we're

talking about on bone health, which is the mystery of the pot liquor.

Now I'm sorry.

I think that sounds kind of perverted.

Oh, no, you're gonna love it when I

explain it to you.

one of my favorite food traditions comes from Appalachian kitchens.

You knew I'd get there eventually.

and if you've ever watched or know about a pot of collared greens,

now that's, they're serving them a lot in nice restaurants.

Our restaurant has collared greens.

I've seen 'em all over menus in town, and they simmer slowly.

Stove and something wonderful happens over time.

The green soften, the flavor deepens, and the cooking liquid

becomes rich and dark, and it has a name and it's called pot liquor.

So, wait a second.

Wait a second.

This is the juice,

that juice is called pot liquor, now what comes to mind

when you hear the word pot liquor?

Where would you think that comes from?

Okay, so I think of probably, a disgusting old man licking

Yeah.

the pot with his tongue.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

But another alternate spelling I love this is pot liquor, L-I-Q-U-O-R.

Now that I can handle.

Which sounds like a lot of fun, right?

I'll lick it.

you get enough pot liquor and you,

Add a little

anything, right?

twist.

I'm good.

But what's happening there in that pot liquor is

something really remarkable.

Minerals from the greens dissolve into the broth, so people for

generations understood that.

Pot liquor was the very best part.

Nobody poured it down the sink.

You just sopped it up with cornbread and that was another thing.

And suddenly, what looked like a humble pot of greens became

a deeply nourishing meal.

So let me ask you, , something about, these greens

because I'm a northern gallon collard greens were not a thing.

does it get gray and disgusting looking?

No,

no.

I had 'em just last night.

and crispy.

Had it just last night, one of the sides

on my menu and, it's green.

It's big.

You know, I'm sitting here thinking, I don't know, what

do collared greens come from?

but it's green and it's just big leaves and they're

Okay, well there is some kind of green that I have seen that

it turns sort of like a grayish, greenish, I'd call it like green

cardboard looking kind of stuff.

So maybe it that's,

I'll have to.

doubt it.

Yeah, I doubt it.

But

I'll have to find out what that is.

Either that or somebody's grandmother

No,

wrong way,

no, this is definitely not gray.

It's very green and it's a good thing to order 'cause you're getting that

little extra, juice, that comes with it.

But.

Before that though, I want to recognize an important piece of

knowledge that indigenous people, behind some of these, traditions and

I guess it happened Native people.

I've heard Native Americans, but it really started, I think when

the Spanish came over and, and in the Caribbean and places like that.

I, I'm gonna say this and I'm gonna probably say it wrong, but it's a

process called Nixtamalization . Ah, It's soaking corn in alkaline water

made with lime or wood ash, which kind of weird thinking in my mind, but they

filter it, I guess, through wood ash.

but what is important about it?

The process releases niacin and it made the corn easier to digest.

And it adds calcium in the process, but it releases the niacin.

Now the reason that got so cool is that corn-based diets, especially

where the settlers relied heavily on corn, 'cause corn grows very

well in this country, that could lead to a disease called pellagra.

And that was from an overdependence on corn that did not have niacin.

So it puzzled early American settlers until.

People discovered the cause and the indigenous people

had already figured it out.

It's like a skin disease, mental disorder.

all kinds of really ugly things start happening to you

with that particular disease.

But it's a way you process the corn

Yeah, and let me add one more thing.

I researched whether the cornmeal.

we buy on the shelf.

Today is not, but what the corn that we, or the corn meal we buy is enriched.

If you see, in this country, we've chosen to enrich things so that.

The people get a whole host of vitamins and minerals.

Not just niacin, but everything else if you look on the

package, that's what's going on.

So they don't go have to go through that process, that, they discovered

and used for a long, long time.

So is this kind of like when they, how many

grits that are all puffed up?

Is that.

Now that's the, that's the ones that are

treated through this process.

Yeah.

Nixtamalization.

They go through that process and it puffs those corn kernels up.

And they're the more natural version of it, I would say.

What surprises me?

'cause I had never seen these things.

I'll call 'em these things before.

It's like white puffed up.

Things that, you know, it's like, I can't describe these white, puffy things.

It kind of looks like, thick popcorn.

Right.

You know, you would, I I, I'm trying to figure out how to describe

it on from an audio perspective versus a visual perspective.

If you haven't seen hominy, they call, I guess hominy corn or hominy grits, right.

But it's a corn kernel that's, it's white it looks like a, thickened popcorn.

that's the best way I can describe it.

of a thickened looking popcorn is What it looks like and lie.

The fact that they use lie sounds like it would be

I know

I know it does, doesn't it?

I guess they knew what they were doing, but maybe we should just like

the fact that they enrich it and.

I have to admit, I have seen it.

I have never eaten it.

I should be a lot more adventurous,

never eaten it.

And when we,

back in the other

direction.

I gave you all

week, at my first week in college in Virginia, they

served us that with, bean and bacon soup and strips of bacon.

And we all said from the north, they're trying to kill us.

I love that.

So maybe you should switch to what we call the peasant bone diet

Okay, I'll

alright.

All right.

A peasant bone diet.

Tell that to your dinner party that the next time.

Okay.

I'm serving tonight a peasant bone diet, It's a pattern that you start

to see emergent, and that's why they call it the peasant bone diet.

Lots of lentils, whole grains, leafy greens, fermented

foods, small fish and dairy.

Things like yogurt, which I think is also fermented, isn't it?

Isn't yogurt fermented?

Has a bit of fermentation, but I am presuming

they don't do these all together.

I can't imagine like the fish and the yogurt and the

leafy greens alta. One stew.

Okay.

be kind of gross.

But if you can get these foods, in your belly on a regular basis,

then they can provide a whole round kinda wholeness that, makes us healthy.

At least for our bones.

Do you like yogurt?

I eat it every morning and, yeah, it's something I've just

built into my system for things like bone health and just health in general

because.

for your gut health.

Do you have a particular brand that you like?

Yes.

Chobani all natural, no sugar and,

Plain

Yeah.

Plain.

the, and the Greek style or the regular style?

Greek style.

And it's the blue lid.

I know what you're talking about.

Well, yogurt, it's interesting, we'll just sort of take a

side detour here for a second.

yogurt is very different in taste from brand to brand.

It is,

you're gonna love this.

I found a new brand down here.

I absolutely love better than any of the commercial brands you

could find in the grocery store.

I found it at Sprouts.

It's called Nancy's yogurt.

well of course you're gonna like that.

It's really, really, it's better than Chobani in anything.

It's very good.

'cause I used to like the Chobani, so I'm a convert to Nancy's yogurt.

I think we'll have to put it a, a

What's the taste that makes it so much better

because it's pretty plain stuff.

you know, the Chobani, to me is good, but it, it tastes a little

mealy, you know, it's like a little dry.

and the Nancy's yogurt seems to have a little bit more.

It's, that's sweet.

'cause it, it doesn't have a lot of sugar though.

Yo yogurt, surprisingly has enough sugar in it, even its

natural sugar from the milks.

But, there's something that's just very delicate and nice about it that still

has some substance that I really enjoy.

So if you're ever at a sprout or, or anything, go try it.

Nancy's yogurt,

Hmm.

Well, what I find is that I don't like yogurt.

So what I do with yogurt, I'm never gonna find one I like, I suspect,

Bob doesn't like it either.

He likes Nancy's.

okay, well, I, I'm fine with Chobani, but I put

walnuts on it and blueberries in a little bit of a spray of honey.

I was about to say honey.

Yep.

And that gets it down in my palate.

cause I'm just like, not a big fan, but it's good for you.

So I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna convince you if you can find it, try Nancy's yogurt

Well,

a try.

anything Nancy says is good.

You

know, I'm, I'm a, I

am a convert.

Fancy Nancy.

Oh, look at Whole Foods.

I don't know.

We don't have a Sprouts, but we have a Whole Foods

Well maybe they'll have at whole foods.

But anyway, if you can't get it, just ask your grocer and

they should be able to help you.

Order me some Nancy's.

Fancy

Nancy's yogurt.

Okay.

Very good.

I'm sure they'll know you too.

You are a force of nature.

Well, it's not my brand about whoever she is.

She's brilliant.

Mm-hmm.

Well, on that note, the whole idea of understanding how foods

can help us build strong bones 12 ways, or build strong bodies 12 ways.

It's all about everything that we eat and making it not just

delicious, but good for us.

And that's important like.

Trying some new things.

Maybe I'll have to try some of that Yucky pot liquor.

Yeah, but remember, just think of it as L-I-Q-U-O-R.

That'll

Yeah, that's right.

I'll add a dashes something.

A splashes

Yeah, there you go.

So you can make, you can play with your mental state here, but you can also

keep on the anchovies, and say, yes, I'll have double anchovies on my Caesar

salad thing very

like anchovies.

Well.

We'll have to try that at a next dinner party, and maybe we'll ask Meredith

to say, Hey, Meredith, what have you done with your dinner party lately?

Something that's

She's gonna kick going with that.

Hey, another food that I love and I try to add it like to chili, is chickpeas

They're, yeah.

Very high in protein and minerals too, so that's good.

Well, the hip bone is connected to the collarbone.

Let me know, the hip bone is not connected to the collarbone.

Yeah.

But, but some

neck bone.

I did walk through the Egyptian section with my eyes closed,

there you go.

You didn't know.

and the wrist bone is connected to the hand bone,

and the head bone is, well, it's

And it's all a holistic thing, right?

Our bodies are connected in, that way.

But, the potluck thing, reminds me of something my grandmother used to say.

Someone started to pour the liquid, she'd practically chop your hands off.

they saved everything.

and they, you certainly didn't throw away that because it was that piece

of cornbread and sopping it up.

You had to sopp it up.

And so pee pee.

Ed, onto your cornbread.

and wisdom wasn't written in a cookbook.

It was written in the way people cooked, and I'm proud

of that Appalachian heritage.

There's a lot of people bringing that out now and talking more about that

because there was a lot of wisdom there, and I'm sure in every part

of the country, even where you were raised, that wisdom came through, right.

Absolutely in, very different ways.

And I think some of it has to do with the generational, not just from where

you are, but what our parents went through and our grandparents through

World War I, world War ii and, and other battles and even economic

times where things had to be saved.

My dad would save everything that was left over and would eat them, it didn't matter.

There could be a little hard piece of steak in the fridge and

he wouldn't wanna toss it away.

And he referred to those little leftover bits as his sniggles, so he would have a

I love that.

love that.

I'll remember that.

That is great.

a little piece of leftover, it the sniggle, and it could be

lunch or a snack along the way before you got a little too hungry.

Yeah.

and I, I think even if you're not ill for any specific reason, like I have

this and I have to deal with it, but you really ought to take a look at your diet.

I'm not a big fan of dieting, and now I've been given permission.

I don't have to, By my doctor, I would say.

But, really look at yogurt in the morning as such a fortifying thing.

And like you said, gut health is an increasingly important thing.

And so you have that.

And then, trying to eat plenty of protein, and all of those minerals

and things that come from the greens and, bone broth if you can tolerate it.

I can't.

But anyway, I'll do all the other things.

All right.

Right.

A colorful plate is a good plate no matter where it comes from, whether

it's from mineral or plant or animal,

Yep.

So.

The next time you sit down at a meal, look at everything that's on your

plate, maybe how it impacts your body and your bones and your health.

And remember that every meal has a story and every story is

a feast, including where it came from and what it can do for you.

And please remember to like and share the show.

And don't forget, you can share your stories with everybody

that you know and you loved.

in our book, My Family Tree, food and Stories, because.

As we said earlier, every meal has a story and every story is a feast Until later,

we'll see you soon and we'll hear you soon at Podcast Family Tree Food and Stories.

Goodbye.