Jessica Stover (00:07):
Hey everyone. Welcome to Networks Looks At.

(00:10):
This recording is an offering of networks for Training and Development's Online University.

Rosa McAllister (00:15):
Hi everyone and welcome back to Taste of Wellness. This is Rosa McAllister from Networks for Training and Development, and I'm here with my buddy and colleague, Tracy Lapreziosa. Wanna say hi?

Tracy Lapreziosa (00:29):
Hello everyone.

Rosa McAllister (00:30):
(laughs) And today's topic on the Taste of Wellness, nudge, nudge, wink, wink-

Tracy Lapreziosa (00:39):
(laughs)

Rosa McAllister (00:39):
... is talking about food and eating for wellness. This Taste of Wellness series started many years ago as we started at Networks for Training and Development, as we started pulling together different pieces of information that people were asking us to share about reiki and massage and meditation and all kinds of different things like that and we called it Taste of Wellness 'cause they're just short little topics, short little tastes or nibbles, if you will, or here in Hawaii we call them piu pus, which are appetizers, little bits. So today's piu piu or little bit is about eating. It's about food.

(01:21):
So just to get us started, first and foremost, a disclaimer - this is not a lecture, okay? I know talking about food's kinda like the no no topic of talking about exercise, talking about politics and religion, (laughs) and all that kinda stuff. They're almost no-nos. In fact, they make us sometimes very uncomfortable. Um, my guess is there might be some of you here who don't even, are not even sure you wanna listen to this because it's about food and you feel like there's gonna be a shame and blame game. Well, no shame or blame game here today from either of us.

(01:56):
So oftentimes, food and how we eat, we focus on that sometimes or it seems we get pushed to focus on that when things are not going so well for us, when we're not doing well, when we're not felling well, we're encountering an illness or something like that, ah-, or New Year's which is-

Tracy Lapreziosa (02:18):
(laughs)

Rosa McAllister (02:18):
... this is early January 2023, and sometimes it's a New Year's resolution. I'm gonna eat better. I'm gonna cut it back on this. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do... And we all know how those resolutions work. And it's interesting that a lotta times as I mentioned we've, we push into the focus about eating when, uh, we're not doing so well, when we're sick. A lotta people when they get cancer all of a sudden realize it's time to do something, I have to do it. We probably should've done it a little earlier, just saying.

(02:51):
So, again, not being a lecture, not any of that, we're just gonna share a little bit about ourselves and our focus, our travels, with food because we all eat, and most of us love to eat. And focusing on the joy and the fun and the tastefulness of food, I think, is really, really important so not to blame ourselves or shame ourselves.

(03:18):
Today there's many more options, um, and there's a lot more in the press, a lot more people talking about food and wellness, and even food as medicine, so it's all around us, which is great, but it also unfortunately leads to some of our guilt and our unmet resolutions.

(03:36):
So, just to get us started, I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about myself, so I am just about to turn 68 years old, in one month, I can't believe it. How the heck did this happen? As a kid, I was not the healthiest. I had a lotta respiratory issues which I later found out were allergies to the (laughs) very house I was living in, and various things in the house, and the weather, and all that kinda stuff. But I also was a quote "picky eater" from the time I was very, very young. For me it mostly around issues of food and texture. I couldn't stand things on my plate touching one another, different foods. I could not stand having my mouth eating one thing, one texture and then another texture kind of come in a surprise, like ice cream, you know? I love but as a kid, I couldn't handle ice cream that had pieces of something else in it because you had that smooth, creamy texture and then all of a sudden, there was a jolt of maybe even a chocolate chip, which I love, but the jolt of the mixed textures just did me in.

(04:47):
So my safety foods were hard boiled eggs, hot with butter on them, and I know that may make some of you gag, sorry, but that was one of my things. In fact as a little kid, I always asked for boigled eggs, apparently, because that was my standby food 'cause I knew it was safe. I knew except for a little, uh, wayward piece of shell, it was all one texture. I didn't have to worry about it.

(05:15):
I loved pasta, just basic pasta, no meatballs, no nothing on it, just buttered noodles were one of my things. And buttered rice, white rice. In fact, my mother used to get boxes of Minute Rice? I don't even know if that's still around.

Tracy Lapreziosa (05:29):
Mm-hmm. (laughs)

Rosa McAllister (05:30):
Which cooked really fast and was really mushy and then add butter to it and a little salt and it was all one texture that my mouth could handle. So I was very, very thin. I was not particularly healthy, I had these respiratory issues, et cetera, et cetera, and a very picky eater.

(05:49):
So for the most part, my family kinda went along with that. I was the youngest of a bunch of kids. As I got older and invited over to people's houses, it was always a problem for me because what in the world were they gonna serve me? I knew I wasn't gonna have my boigled eggs or my buttered pasta or buttered m- Minute Rice. So it was always a bit of a challenge, and I remember many meals at a friend's house where I would just kind of push the food around my plate and fake a headache or something like that.

(06:19):
Neither of my parents really ate much meat. M-, I remember my mom was kind of a casserole queen and so there was lots of things with cream of mushroom soup, Campbell's soup and stuff like that, made with that. I remember pork chops which I could not stand because they were too chewy and there was always a bone and I, that grossed me out. I never had a steak in my life, I remember having roast beef once at a boyfriend's house in high school and it did not go well at all.

(06:50):
So no surprise, when I was in college actually, I think I was a sophomore in college, I was turning 21 and I decided to try to be a vegetarian. At that point, I think I was pretty much living on peanut butter in the cafeteria, peanut butter on bread and apple butter or applesauce, again, because it was textures that I could handle, tastes that I could handle, no s-, no surprise meat, none of that other stuff. So I decided I would try to be a vegetarian. I had always loved fruit, I was not so really into vegetables but I thought if I could cook them well enough and they could be m- (laughs) mushy, frankly, it might work, and if I could add them to pasta and/or rice, that might work. I had also grown to love potatoes at this point because they're also mushy, white, you got it. That's my stuff.

(07:39):
So anyway, so at 21 years old, I became a vegetarian and here I am almost 68 and I'm still a vegetarian because it has worked for me. I can't do meat and bones and skin and stuff like that. I do eat the occasional fish because I live here in Maui, Hawaii and we have a plentiful of fish here that's very fresh but really I only have it, like, at certain restaurants if I go out or when, like, my son cooks it because I know it's safe, frankly. Otherwise, I'm a total veggies. And nowadays, interestingly enough, I love multiple textures. It's something that I have kind of groomed myself for and I actually savor and love multiple textures.

(08:25):
Living here in Maui has been very, very good for my health in many, many way. Over the years, I combated all the allergies and respiratory problems and get a handle on it. Being here, living here has really helped me with a simple living, uh, a very standard, basic climate that doesn't change too much weather, and lots and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. So it's really easy for me and again, I am not suggesting in any way being a vegetarian is the way for all of us to go. It's just what works for me.

(09:00):
So I'm gonna stop now. Tracy, you wanna tell us a little bit about yourself and your food?

(09:05):
Oh, and I have to admit, I love carbs.

Tracy Lapreziosa (09:08):
(laughs)

Rosa McAllister (09:09):
In case you didn't notice, potatoes, rice, pasta. I love carbs and I love crunchy, so that means chips, pretzels, nuts. I try to keep my crunchies to my nuts because it's added proteins for me and things like that, yes, I can completely go overboard on those too.

(09:29):
Go ahead, Tracy.

Tracy Lapreziosa (09:30):
Okay. That's very interesting because I probably, I mean, I'm looking at you and your restricted diet and you're, like, expanding out as you grow and you get older. My experience is the total opposite. Total opposite. As a child, I ate everything, everything and anything from hot peppers to, you know, whatever. I ate it all at a very young age. Wild ranges of flavors from sour and sweet and, and hot. I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country so there was a lot of sweet and sour and all of that and I, we had meat and potatoes every day, almost every single day, to the point by the time I was a teenager, like, I don't want mashed potatoes. I don't want (laughs) beef. Because my dad worked in construction and when the money was good, uh, in the summertime, they would go buy a half of the steer and get it, you know, all of the different cuts of meat and have it put in the freezer, and they'd get bushels and bushels of potatoes and they'd go in our cold cellar in a big bin so there was always, like, enough potatoes for the army, you know, at the beginning of the winter.

(10:45):
So, we always had meat and potatoes, meat and potatoes, so I got rather, rather tired of that, but I also, there was a lot of baking and cookies and cakes and all of that and I had a really good sweet tooth or a bad sweet tooth, whatever you wanna call it, because I ate everything and I was, I wasn't skinny when I was young like Rosa. I was the opposite. I was overweight as a young, as a child at, like, fifth grade, like sixth grade, seventh grade. And then it was like, "Ugh, I got, I gotta, I gotta lose weight."

(11:18):
So I ended up doing things like pocketing my lunch money and eating popsicles for lunch, so which really wasn't good for me at all. Not at all. And into adulthood, still eating that same kinda diet and it wasn't 'til I s-, again, I, we talked about having some type of problem, illness or problem, that you have to start looking at what you're eating and for me it was, like, a lot of inflammation, so it was, like, "Okay, I've gotta a lot of inflammation, what do I do? I don't wanna take medication, I don't wanna, you know," and I just started res- researching a lot about mind and body and food and body and how they all work together and started working on taking that diet (laughs) that was like this and kinda shaving it down, you know, shaving out inflammatory foods and, and then shaving it down to what I thought was the right thing for me because I was, "Ah, I don't wanna eat meat, I wanna become vegetarian, I wanna work towards that," and I started working towards that, eliminating meat, not because I didn't like it or I didn't like the texture, just because I thought it was bad for me. And if you don't eat the right beef, it is kinda bad for you. (laughs)

(12:30):
So I started eliminating that and then all of a sudden, other issues began to evolve and it's like, "Ugh. There are other things that I am eating that are not, not helping me." And it's, it's not what's right for everyone, it's what's right for your body.

(12:47):
And, you know, I ended up working with someone with, um, nutrition background who's kinda like my food coach and it's functional medicine, like func-, she does, uh, muscle testing to kinda determine what my body needs and what it doesn't need. And it changes. There are sometimes where I need this and other times where it's like, "No, don't have that. You need this. You know, don't, don't do that." And there's just so many ways that I just kind of continued to explore with different foods and keeping a food log and finding out that, you know, whenever I ate things that had a lot of gluten, I had a lot of belly problems and that kinda thing, so it's like, "Stop the gluten, belly problems went way. Hm. I guess I don't, I guess gluten's not for me."

(13:30):
So, you know, we all have different bodies because we come from different backgrounds and I, something I read recently was, like, your gut, uh, as a child has the same gut biomes as your mother had.

Rosa McAllister (13:44):
Mm-hmm.

Tracy Lapreziosa (13:44):
So we kinda pass it from generation to generation but there're other things that happen in our life that maybe change that, so we have to cons-, I, I don't know, I constantly look at my food as, is this, is this piece of food that I'm going to eat, is this going help my body today or is it gonna be toxic? (laughs) so, I look at food as medicine and I try to pick those foods that really work for me, so I, my diet is pretty restricted now. It's gone from here to kinda down here and I eat the things that I know are good for me and every now and then I stray outside of that but I have my safe foods that I kinda try to stick to.

Rosa McAllister (14:21):
Yeah.

Tracy Lapreziosa (14:21):
I had the opposite-

Rosa McAllister (14:24):
You brought up-

Tracy Lapreziosa (14:24):
... experience. (laughs)

Rosa McAllister (14:25):
Yeah, which is interesting and I didn't know this at all. I didn't know this. I mean, you and I decided to talk about food and food as wellness and, you know, all of that, and eating for wellness. But I had no idea about that, how interesting, we're kinda opposite. I went from very, very narrow to much broader in what I can eat and why I eat and how I eat and what I enjoy and you went from very broad down to narrow. But both of us continuing to change and continuing to stay attention, pay attention to it.

(14:55):
So you brought up a couple things that I, I'd really like to pull out and us talk a little bit more about and one of them is this cultural background stuff. Our, our heritage. Because it feeds into, ha ha, no pun intended, it feeds (laughs) into, you know, how we are. It's how we're built. You know, I'm very, very tall, I have big bones, I was very skinny, I am not so skinny anymore, but I mean, that's how I'm built. I'm f-, my heritage is Irish and I thought it was Dutch, and, from my father's side, my mother's side very Irish, I'm now finding out through, you know, my, I, genetic coding all that kinda stuff that it's very, very British Isles, you know, UK kind of, I, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, all of that stuff, but there is this Germanic, Netherlands, Switzerland, whatever combo from my father's side too. Which would lead you think think that there should be meat and potatoes and meat po-, you know, all that kinda stuff.

(15:57):
That's, so the heritage for me is yes and no. So I, I, I think it's very, very interesting and the whole idea of the, uh, the gut biomes from your mama. You know, my mom was a very picky eater as a child she talked about and she got better, but she did not eat much meat and out of us six kids, most of us don't eat meat or j-, it just doesn't re-, it just doesn't work for us, to be honest and, you know, we're much healthier without it, so there's that cultural stuff and then y- yet not.

(16:31):
There's also, you know, there's been all kinds of different dietary kind of things in the press, the whole thing about eat right for your blood type is one of those. Well, my blood type is one, it's kind of unusual, and it's from a part of the world where they don't eat much meat interestingly enough. They're much smaller people in stature, I'm not sure where I got this blood type, roving, roving people I guess, way back when. But for that blood type, I'm not supposed to eat a whole lotta meat, so I'm not sure that I a- ascribe or subscribe to that eat right for your blood type but I think that there's something to this when we look back at our heritage and how we are built, physically and every way else.

(17:19):
Anything you would add?

Tracy Lapreziosa (17:21):
It's interesting that you talk about the blood type diet because I've read that book, like, cover to cover twice and (laughs) you know, again, they break the foods down into this is what's, you know, medicine for you, this is neutral, this is toxic, and what's interesting is I read that book, like, years ago before I started going to my coach, you know, working with a nutrition coach, and now the lot of the things that I'm not supposed to have or not, that are, she's telling me are not good for me, were things that that book kinda said were not good for me. And, you know, so, oh, my blood type was meat and I don't really w- want to eat meat but it, and my nutrition coach is telling me, "Well, I think you should eat red meat, only three ounces at a time, at least three times a month."

(18:06):
So, but, you know-

Rosa McAllister (18:08):
Yeah.

Tracy Lapreziosa (18:10):
Fortunately I, I like it but it's just, there's other issues of why I don't want to eat it.

(18:15):
So, yeah, I found that there's some validity in that. I mean it, it-

Rosa McAllister (18:17):
Mm-hmm.

Tracy Lapreziosa (18:18):
... seems to kinda match up along the way. There may be a few things that are different but there's, you know, there's a lot that's very, very similar.

Rosa McAllister (18:26):
Right. And I think that's the key to all of this is, you know, I can be a bit of a zealot about some things, um, and it's not preachy to others but it's to myself. It's, I can be a bit of zealot to myself, like, "Oh, Rosa, you shouldn't do that. You know that that's blah blah blah blah blah," you know, that kinda stuff.

(18:44):
Um, but there's really something to this, to this eh-, t- taking into consideration, I guess is what I'm trying to put out here for anybody listening in. This idea of taking into consideration variables. What is your heritage, what is your cultural background? What is your familial background? How did your parents eat? Did it work for them? What about your siblings if you have them or aunts or uncles, cousins, grandparents, et cetera? You know, what worked for them, what didn't?

(19:13):
And, you know, interestingly enough, in my family as I look back on many of the doff relatives of the male variety, they didn't last so long and, you know, women outlived them in my family and lot of them, frankly, were meat eaters, to be honest. Not all of them, certainly, but ...

(19:32):
So another thing, um, beyond the cultural and the blood type and all of that, you also mentioned about this idea of food as medicine and we know that certain, eh- eh-, we know that medicine comes from plants. We know, m-, at least in the old days. We know that medicine came from food, we, food comes from plants. And food as medicine is really true. We know that, like, you know, certain things when you have an upset stomach, you know, my mother always gave us ginger ale to drink or, um, shed flatten Coca-Cola and give that to us. Well, there's some actual reasons why those things work. Or saltines, she would give us, saltines with butter on it. And it's because there's certain things to that, the salt will do different things, the crunch, it's easy, it's bland, blah, blah, blah. All these kind of things.

(20:22):
But this idea of eating food as medicine, preventative-wise, not just when we're sick but preventative-wise is kind of a concept that I think even doctors are taking on, or at least some doctors are taking on in the medical field. Would you add to that?

Tracy Lapreziosa (20:40):
I agree, I definitely would agree with that. Um, I'd like to see more doctors taking note of that.

Rosa McAllister (20:45):
Mm-hmm.

Tracy Lapreziosa (20:46):
But I know that I'm finding a little bit more understanding now than what I did in the very beginning when I say, "Well, I'm not gonna take that medication 'cause I'm gonna try this first."

Rosa McAllister (20:55):
Right.

Tracy Lapreziosa (20:55):
"I'm gonna try, you know, changing my diet first and then we'll come back and talk about that." You know? Because there is-

Rosa McAllister (21:01):
Yeah.

Tracy Lapreziosa (21:02):
... time and place for medicine and sometimes-

Rosa McAllister (21:04):
Absolutely.

Tracy Lapreziosa (21:05):
... sometimes you have to take the medicine and then you can change your diet and do some things that kinda helped you to not have to take the medicine. Yeah, there are different things like that but ...

Rosa McAllister (21:15):
So this term that we're using, food as medicine, literally means that there is some food that you can eat that will help, you know, various things, various illnesses or issues that you're having. But the other ih-, the other idea with food as medicine is kind of like what you talked about, it's eliminating certain things or increasing certain things for wellness purposes so that it's not specifically to get rid of the headache necessarily but to help prevent you from getting headaches in the future, if you will. Focusing on your food and your diet.

(21:47):
The other thing that I always like to talk about that I think is really important is the idea of we call it here in Maui and Hawaii, we call it localicious, this idea of eating local.

Tracy Lapreziosa (22:02):
Hm.

Rosa McAllister (22:02):
Eating as close to the food source as possible and as fresh as possible. Doesn't necessarily mean organic and I know there's a lotta back and forth about organic foods and it's certainly pricier, but the more you can eat, I believe very firmly, the more you can eat the foods closer to the source, the less need there is for preservatives and fancy packaging, and shipping, and all kinds of other things. So, um, eating fruits and vegetables that are in season in your area makes sense to me. You know, when we live, regardless of where we live, our body acclimates to the climate and to the region and to the ways of that area, so wouldn't it makes sense to eat foods also form that area and that season as much as we can.

(22:55):
So this doesn't mean don't go eating, you know, something that you love because it's not in season, but I mean, we've all seen strawberries off season compared to strawberries fresh grown in your area in season, and we know the difference, right?

Tracy Lapreziosa (23:11):
Mm-hmm.

Rosa McAllister (23:12):
So, so many, we have access now to foods from all over the world any time of the year and it's just a little weird when you think about it. So here in Hawaii, there are certain things, local people just don't eat certain fish or certain things at certain times of the year because it's not what's we say going off or it's not what's running or it's not in season. So there's this idea of trying to eat as locally sourced as possible and as seasonally matched as possible. I think it makes a lot of sense.

(23:49):
So I'm conscious of the time. We try to stick to about 20 minutes per each of these and there's so much more we could talk about with this idea of mindful eating, not just slopping some stuff on your plate. I mean, we all do a grab and go, come on, let's be honest. And we all have grab and go go tos that we go to, but trying to be more mindful about what we eat and how we eat is a whole other topic but the more we can do that, I think the more we can, we are consciously serving our bodies that way, these vessels that we're in.

Tracy Lapreziosa (24:26):
Definitely. When you pick up that piece of candy, look at is a, "What's this gonna do for me?" (laughs) Maybe put it back down. (laughs) You know? And yeah, you're right. Mindfulness is two ways. It's what you're eating and how you're eating. Are you, are you really tasting it or, you know, just gobbling it down?

Rosa McAllister (24:44):
Right. So, we're gonna end here. For those of you listening in either, well, whenever you are because this is a recorded session, hope you have enjoyed our, this taste of wellness. We have lots of other topics recorded over many, many years, some as webinars with video and some like this one that are podcasts or just audio, and we have several more coming up soon. So thanks for joining us, eat well, enjoy your food, chew it a lot, have a seat, hope it's pretty and hope it's feeding your body well. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Tracy.

Tracy Lapreziosa (25:24):
Mm, thank you.

Rosa McAllister (25:26):
Thank you for listening. We hope the information provided was helpful. Don't forget to stop by our website and take advantage of all we have to offer.