Meghan O. – Page 2 – Meghan's ComAlt Field Study

Week 3 Project Update / Self-Experimentation: Coconut Oil

This week, as with last week, I decided to do another self-experiment. Though my focus is on herbal medicine in the Pacific Northwest and cinnamon and coconut oil are not native to this region, I find it helpful to get a baseline knowledge of herbalism and natural remedies before I dive headfirst into regional medicine. Additionally, I am not treating any specific illness with these “remedies,” only seeing their potentially positive impact on my body, which I consider to be generally healthy and unproblematic. An important part of health is wellness, not just survival or treatment of symptoms, so I am embarking on this period of herbal self-experimentation as a method of improving my quality of life and overall health and not treating something, which I will get into in more depth as I do more research.

But, I digress. This week, I decided to explore the effects of coconut oil on my body. A long time ago, I read an article about the importance of drinking the milk at the bottom of your cereal bowl – the water soluble vitamins in the cereal will be digested just by eating, but the fat soluble ones must sit in the milk in order for you to get them, so drinking the milk enriches your vitamin consumption. I don’t know how accurate that article was, but I have done some research on fat versus water soluble vitamins, and it clearly is important to have both. But that got me thinking – if vitamins can be fat or water soluble, what about bacteria?

Many skincare experts suggest washing your face with an oil based cleanser as well as a water-based (soap) cleanser. Also, many cultures have used oil pulling for thousands of years as a way to clean teeth, believing that swishing oil in one’s mouth is a way to avoid plaque build-up, tooth decay, gum recession, and even bad breath. So is coconut oil the silver bullet for acne, skin dullness, halitosis, and sautéed vegetables? This week, I decided to find out.

Instead of cleansing my face with just my usual soap, I also removed my makeup with an oil cleanser. And in addition to brushing my teeth with my usual tooth powder, I began my nightly oral routine with oil pulling for ten minutes with coconut oil.

Within a few days, I noticed a significant difference in my skin. It felt clearer, I had fewer zits pop up, and I didn’t once find any residual makeup on my pillow the next day. The tooth one is harder to judge – whitening takes time to notice, and though my mouth felt cleaner, that isn’t exactly an accurate measure of how much it may or may not be helping on a deeper level. It doesn’t seem to be doing any harm, however, and my breath smells good so I think I’ll continue.

That’s it for this week with me as an herbalist guinea-pig! Next week I’m hoping to use some foraged plants from Evergreen’s forest to treat the pain and bruising I have from rollerskating for the first time, though that’s a story for another post.

Week 2 Project Update / Self Experimentation: Cinnamon

Week 2 has been fantastic so far. After tasting the cinnamon tisane we made in week 1 and learning about its potential medicinal properties for treating diabetes, I became interested in how it could affect my own experience of taste. About a year ago, I became obsessed with a movie called That Sugar Film, an Australian documentary in which a man who doesn’t consume sugar decided to embark on a “sugar binge” á la Supersize Me. However, in That Sugar Film, instead of eating exclusively foods unusually high in sugar, he simply ate the average Australian diet and consumed the expected, even healthy amount of sugar each day, and put on an enormous amount of weight, and did serious damage to his health.

After seeing that film, I decided to stop eating sugar for a month, and other than losing weight, feeling more energetic, and feeling hungry less often, I also found that my experience of the flavor of sweetness was at a much lower threshold than before. In fact, I hardly needed half a teaspoon of sugar for my tea to taste sweet, as opposed to the usual two I put in.

This week, instead of eating sugar, I treated my craving for sweetness with cinnamon stick tisane and observed the difference.

I felt more energetic, slept better, shed about a pound, lost a lot of bloat in my face and belly, and when I ended the experiment, I didn’t crave sugar as much or need as much to satisfy the urge.

To be sure, some of these results could definitely be the placebo effect. I wanted the experiment to yield results, so maybe it did, and it was by no means conducted under scientific conditions. However, I find it good for myself to do something of a “reset” of my sugar tolerance from time to time by going without it for a while, and this was an effective way to do that. Plus, cinnamon is delicious!

Week 1 Project Update

Welcome to my project! As of yet, I have very little idea of where I want to take this. I am starting with work on my ILC and gathering resources. I took a trip down to Radiance to talk with employees and explore their in-house library, and I will be ordering several books recommended to me from them. For now, I know I want to study herbalism specifically in Washington and possibly work on foraging skills and putting together comprehensive information on what medicinal uses there may be for plants found on Evergreen’s campus.

Week 3 Tasting Lab

For this week’s tasting lab, we were offered the taste of different spices: cardamom, mace, peppercorns (two black types and one white type), nutmeg, Hungarian paprika, smoked paprika, cinnamon stick, cumin, cloves, whole star anise, and vanilla. We then made our own spice blends. Mine consisted of black pepper, star anise, clove, cardamom, and nutmeg and I’m rather inclined to put it on some vanilla ice cream – I’ve always enjoyed spicy-sweet flavor combinations, and the blend I made is somewhat similar to chai spice, which is one of my favorite flavors ever.

After hand-picking kale from the Organic Farm, we roasted it with olive oil and dipped it in the different spices. I also made an everclear infusion with black pepper and bay leaf which we can sample next week. I have always enjoyed tasting foods that should be sweet and finding them savory and vice-versa, which is why I chose to infuse alcohol, which usually is made into sweet or astringent cocktails with traditionally savory flavors, creating a disparity between the flavor anticipated and the flavor experienced; the area between those two is where food is the most interesting to taste.

One of my favorite movements in recent culinary history has been the rise of gastropubs, which take traditionally basic foods and play with their texture, flavor, and appearance. At Quinn’s in Seattle, you may be served grapes bursting with carbonation due to fermentation. At the White Rabbit in Kingham, England, you may spread jam on toast and be pleasantly surprised by the fresh and unadulterated flavor of just ripe tomato bursting across your palette.

I have always enjoyed magic tricks, and my favorite came in the form of a meal I had at Spur (also in Seattle) in which I was served cheesecake with raspberry puree, which in fact was goat cheese on a cracker, cut to look like a cheesecake, and served with pickled onion puree instead. It was delicious and unexpected, and not as pretentious as some meals I’ve had (foie gras ice cream, anyone?), but rather a delightful prank played on the senses.

There is a playfulness to food too often neglected in “nice” restaurants which is what makes the gastropub so appealing – you can show up in jeans and a t-shirt and enjoy a Manny’s while being absolutely baffled by your own tastebuds.

Week 1 Tasting Lab

For this week’s tasting, we sampled different eggs before knowing their origins and again after, and contemplated the effect of knowledge and trauma on taste. We tried a plain egg, a tea egg, an egg prepared with beet juice and sugar, and salmon roe prepared in the traditional Japanese fashion. For me, learning the origin of each egg didn’t particularly impact their flavor. For example, learning that the tea egg was made with tea from Sakuma Bros. farms reminded me of my dislike of their business but didn’t effect the flavor. However, as Lindsey told us that eating salmon roe was potentially putting salmon populations in jeopardy, I felt guilty and took pause before consuming more, though I have to admit that I still finished my portion. Salmon roe is one of my favorite foods, but perhaps I will eat it in more moderation going forward.

So far, I have not found learned history of a food to impact its appeal, though as we continue through the program I may find that changes. I don’t think that it will though – I am, after all, the kid whose parents brought her to Stone Barns at the age of six and, after learning the history of the restaurant, still demanded unequivocally to have salt added to her chicken dumpling soup because it was too bland. Being a foodie and a person interested in food’s origins has never kept me from speaking my mind, and acting accordingly.