Take the Elhaz Ablaze 30 Day No Sugar Challenge!

I’ve been reading a book called Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered by Peter Wells, and it is brilliant (I’ll review it when I’m done). He reports some fascinating information about the health of ancient Londoners (gleaned from extensive examination of their bodies):

“The bones indicate that overall nutrition was good. Remains of foods recovered through archaeological excavation indicate the extraordinary variety of foods available…Dental health was generally good, corresponding with the good diet and some degree of dental hygiene.”

This point about dental hygiene is notable. We have a modern myth that prior to scientific dentistry human beings – unlike every other species – had terrible teeth. Yet again and again in my reading I seem to find that the evidence  indicates that the only premodern Europeans who had bad teeth were the rich.

Why the rich? Well, take Elizabeth I for example, who reputedly had terrible teeth. England was raking in the cash partly through the sugar trade. The rich therefore had access to vast quantities of the stuff and it ruined their teeth. This is rather analogous to the Roman nobility who got lead poisoning from their water pipes – their privilege ended up working against them.

If we didn’t eat so much sugar in modern times the dental profession would probably shrink dramatically. They’re an inadequate intervention against a problem that is nutritional first, a question of hygiene only second. Weston Price found in his survey of traditional cultures that not only was their teeth excellent but, for example, their jaws even had enough room to comfortably accommodate their wisdom teeth!

The fact that we moderns have to get our wisdom teeth removes reflects the poor quality of our nutrition compared to various supposedly backward peoples, including our own ancestors.

In that vein, Price also found that when isolated traditional cultures started eating modern processed food their good dental health declined dramatically and almost instantly (and in fact their health in general).

All of this just reinforces my argument that being Heathen should probably mean being anti-refined sugar. I mean, everyone should be anti-sugar regardless of their spiritual affiliation really, but for Heathens it seems especially important because of our emphasis on reconstituting the old wisdoms of Europe.

Despite how strongly I feel on this subject, I still find it very hard to overcome my sugar addiction – even knowing how bad the stuff is I still get tempted, for example in situations where I don’t expect to be offered some evil sugar-based substance.

I worked out that I need to have a blanket no-sugar policy established in advance. So a couple of days ago I set myself a dare – for the next 30 days, no refined sugar. I can assuage my addictive voices with the promise that this isn’t a permanent break, just an experiment.

At the end of my 30 days I’ll be able to take stock. Already my allergies are getting less severe (though this is also due to high consumption of Eyebright, Camomile, and Licorice root teas, and rubbing them on my eyes and forehead, which is incredibly effective against even the worst hay fever migraines). I seem to have more energy and be less irritable, too.

It is quite likely that after 30 days I’ll choose to keep going for another 30 days, and keep doing that ad infinitum. Sounds good to me! 25 months ago I quit smoking cigarettes and that was hard – it took years and years of struggle and effort. But now I know I can overcome any addiction, because nicotine is powerfully scored into my personal and family orlogs as a deadly foe. I’m sure many readers could find similar sources of inspiration to fire up the anti-sugar quest.

Here comes the part where I lay down the challenge: join me on the 30 day no-sugar challenge! Think of it as an act of devotion to your body, your life, your spirituality. I’ve already managed to inspire two people to commit to a similar project and I want to spread the no-sugar disease!

It takes a little advance preparation, and you’ll find it necessitates a few big changes, for example only eating very high quality bread (or none at all) – because most white bread is just sugar; and also you might want to cut back on fruit juice (actually, orange juice is much nicer when cut with water anyway – smoother and more refreshing).

Trading white rice for brown is also a part of “no sugar”, because this extremely simple carbohydrate is basically sugar. You’ll never get over your chocolate and candy cravings if a third or a half of every meal is white bread or white rice.

When I first tried to move away from a carbohydrate overloaded diet I couldn’t imagine what I could eat instead. Then I discovered vegetables! The less white bread, white rice, and refined sugar you eat, the more you realise that vegetables actually taste really good.

Also, traditional cookery offers a myriad of creative ways to make them even more mouth-watering than they are in their natural state. My homemade sauerkraut is so good that people ask for second helpings when I serve it to them. Note that I am not advocating an extreme anti-carb diet, just a balanced diet with “real” carbs rather than refined wheat and sugar poison.

If you want to Take the Elhaz Ablaze 30 Day No Sugar Challenge then please, post a little comment to that effect, and let us all know how you are going with it. This has to be one of the most constructive and fun ways to express our Heathenry that I can think of. See you at the other end of the big Three Oh!

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Sugar: The Other White Christ

Warning: any resemblance to anti-Christian sentiment in this is article is purely coincidental.

One of the distinct impacts of Christianity has been the unilateral and wholesale destruction of cultures. Wherever missionaries have gone traditional ways of life, traditional knowledges, cuisines, religions, and material cultures suffer and dissolve. The blinding light of Jesus disintegrates everything before it, like a noxious cosmic bleach.

The Old Norse referred to Jesus as the “White Christ,” and he stood in particular conflict with blustery, red-beared Thor. The Christians of the day presented their religion in terms that would make sense to the Heathens, with the intention that they could then change everything around once they had power.

This still goes on today with Bible revisions and retellings tailored to specific audiences. Such duplicity, such slimy legerdemain, was the antithesis of straight-shooting, honest-to-the-root Thor.

The Heathens didn’t even have a word for themselves, let alone destructive designs. Indeed, new research suggests that even the Viking raids may have been little more than self-defence (of course, the Christian kings also got up to the same sort of behaviour, but to the Christians of the day it seemed that rape and murder was only verboten if you happened to worship more than one god).

There you go though: in place of the rich and subtle constellation of spiritual flavours afforded by decentralised polytheism comes the bland, one-size-fits-all model of Christianity (of course the reality is that there are infinite versions of Christianity, too, but none of them seem willing to acknowledge the extent of their de facto and abstract polytheisms).

In recent times the White Christ has taken on a new form: refined sugar. Refined sugar is the enemy of traditional cuisine and cooking. It is the enemy of healthy eating, the product of a worldview uprooted from the sacred interconnections of all things. This worldview might be nihilistic, but it borrows its contempt for the world from Christianity.

Don’t believe me? Here is an example of a good, respectable Christian opinion on the matter, from Robert Boyle in 1686:

“[love of nature is] a discouraging impediment to the empire of man over the inferior
creatures of God.”

We might as well say “reverence is a discouraging impediment…” or, given I am here writing about sugar, “good taste is a discouraging impediment…”

As I understand it, refined sugar causes massive health problems: obesity, diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, hypoglycaemia, depression and mood swings, and probably cancer. It contains no nutrients of its own, and apparently to process it the body needs to strip mine itself of existing minerals and nutrients. Eating sugar makes you fat and malnourished at the same time.

In my case sugar also exacerbates my allergies terribly, making my body attack itself. I won’t labour that particular analogy to Christianity, it should be perfectly obvious.

You could say that sugar is like monotheism. Instead of the endless subtle tastes and nutriment of polytheism – which has something for everyone, and acknowledges the sacredness of all things – we get the White Christ of the dinner table, White Sugar, which is poisonous, ruins the palate, and reduces human beings to a low ebb.

Trying to get White Sugar out of one’s life is not easy. Almost all processed, mass market foods have sugar added – regardless of what the food actually is, and even if it is meant to be sour or bitter. Don’t believe me? Have a good look. Oh, “high fructose corn syrup” is like the Pope of refined sugar, in case you were wondering. It isn’t just Jesus that gets rammed down our throats as children.

So not only is sugar very addictive, but it takes a lot of effort even to get food that doesn’t predestine you to sugar addiction. Imagine trying to quit smoking in a world where tobacco was put in everything in the supermarket!

I don’t know if Christianity is addictive but it is “the opiate of the masses,” and really, I think that it can be very hard for folk to disentangle themselves from Christian mentalities, even if they have formally rejected the religion. The apparently widespread presence of dualistic thinking in some Heathen circles attests to this in particular.

Keeping off the sugar once you are on your way is no easy feat either. I am at a point of getting onto and falling off the wagon at the moment. Last year I managed to stay “clean” for six weeks. I have never felt better in my entire life. Then one night I decided to indulge in an elaborate dessert and the next day fell into a rock-bottom depression, just like that.

All that said, as I eat less sugar I crave less sugar. Tastes are relative so the less we expose ourselves to the junk, the less our palate will require distorted and exaggerated flavours. We begin to appreciate richness, subtlety, the delicious tang of sweetness in its natural flavour context of bitterness and all the rest. I am getting there, slowly but surely.

If latter day “capitalism” (I use the inverted commas to distinguish from the thing that Clint would call capitalism) wants anything, it wants to present a seamless veneer of fixed-white—teeth-and-a-shiny-new-car happiness, the kind of shallow happiness that is utterly empty, like having a priest absolve one’s sins so that one is ready to recommit them for the rest of the week.

Much better is the honesty of vulnerability and depth, putting aside the ridiculous shining ideals (I use the word loosely) of capitalism and (particularly evangelical) Christianity. When we pass through the fake happiness of refined sugar (and its attendant ideologies), we give ourselves a chance to shoot for something much better: well-being.

Well-being isn’t necessarily happiness (sometimes happiness is an irrational and unhelpful emotion), although it does include a good deal of happiness. But rather than this happiness being the product of endless consuming, or the bloody death of some distant messiah, it comes from setting things right between you and the world.

How to do that? By adopting an attitude of reverence, by working to cultivate and deepen the living memory of the sacredness of all things – including our own bellies. Christianity tends to devalue the spirit of all things but their distant messiah (pantheistic Christianity is ok though), and capitalism sees only opportunities to cash in, sees no forests or people but merely resources and consumers. Units of exploitation.

So just as quitting refined sugar in our sugar-saturated world is hard, so is quitting irreverence. I think perhaps that if I make my battle against sugar a twin to my battle against the nihilistic amnesia that can so easily sweep over me (and most of us) then I might get just the boost I need. After all, if there is only spirit…then eating right is a spiritual practice of great sacredness.

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The Prime Directive: The Fallacy of Cultural Purity

Up until the mid 20th Century, Christian missionaries felt it their duty to seek out isolated indigenous cultures, and effectively stamp them out. The missionaries often saw any customs and traditions, even language and modes of dress, as links to their old (necessarily evil) religions. Some governments also formulated policies to eradicate the language and traditions of indigenous peoples in order to expedite their assimilation into the dominant society.

By the 1970s anthropologists were alarmed at the rate of acculturation of tribal people in the Amazon and other remote areas of the World, and raised a new awareness of the importance of preserving and studying these cultures. By the 80s, some anthropologists were agonising over the fact that even the act of visiting an isolated society for study, would introduce unforseen changes in the very thing they were trying to preserve.

It was in this climate that the stories for Star Trek’s “Next Generation” were written. Many of these stories hinged around moral conflicts arising from the Prime Directive. This directive was their all important principle of non interference with less developed civilisations. In some episodes, anthropologists have to study their subjects from a hidden location. It is considered harmful for these societies to even learn of the existence of more advanced civilisations. This directive reflects the feelings of many in reaction to the previous injustices; that we need to hermetically seal isolated societies to save them from contamination from the modern world.

However, if we really take a good look at both of these extreme positions, the first assumes that the indigenous people have an inherently inferior culture, and are incapable of harmonising with their more numerous neighbours. The second assumes that the people are not even capable of dealing with the truth of their situation in the World. Both positions are patronising in the extreme. Neither of these positions give indigenous people any say in how they might prefer to deal with their futures.

Is there a middle way? If we discover a tribe that has never had outside contact, do we let the missionaries destroy their way of life, or do we quietly build a wall around them, so they will never know we exist? In reality, they can not remain unaffected by the outside World forever. Eventually, they will be forced to deal with the World. We have seen from historical experience, that culture shock nearly always leaves indigenous people vulnerable to the depredations of religious, political, or commercial exploiters. The only reasonable solution is to carefully prepare and inoculate the culture against the worst effects of outside contact.

The suffering and losses of indigenous culture have not been due to their inferiority or stupidity. They were merely caught unprepared, and at a huge disadvantage. If they had been forewarned and prepared, they would have been able to retain more of their original cultural heritage. Many governments are starting to see the value of this middle way, and now encourage their indigenous people to preserve their language and traditions while adapting to the wider society and its laws. Many indigenous groups are now turning back to their traditions for inspiration, and identity.

This adaptation does require change. Not all traditions should be preserved. A century ago, head hunting was common in remote regions around the World. Obviously, keeping some traditions would cause more harm to a culture as a whole, as outside contact increases.

In Star Trek’s early references to the Prime Directive, it was expressed merely as non-interference in the internal politics of other cultures. Later, it was expanded to express non-contamination of less developed cultures. This probably reflects the influence of some “postmodernist” thinkers of the time, whose version of “multiculturalism” saw a need to preserve cultural differences, even if it meant encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid.

In the real world, cultures have always been changing. Complete isolation is a rare and temporary condition. Cultures change from within, as traditions are handed down and re-interpreted. Elements are constantly borrowed from neighbouring cultures and languages. There is no such thing as cultural purity, and therefore complete preservation is illusory.

Hopefully, most of us will have an interest in preserving, and even reviving parts of our own ancestral heritage. If we are to maintain these traditions, we must do so consciously. In the modern World, we have access to so much information, that we are free to choose what works for us. Many will don the trappings of various cultures as little more than fashion accessories. Others will be more deliberate and research their choices. In their search for connection, many modern individuals are emulating tribal customs, such as tattooing and piercing.

In former times, culture was absorbed unconsciously, enforced by the norms of society. Now, we have more freedom, but also more responsibility. However we decide to construct our own cultural background, we must do it in the context of the wider society in which we live, while still being respectful and knowledgeable about the cultures we draw from. To do less will merely result in an anachronism or eccentricity that will not really benefit anyone, and even trivialise or dilute the deep symbolism involved. If researched and applied successfully, it will be a source of pride and empowerment for ones self, and a benefit to the wider community.

Sweyn

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Take the Elhaz Ablaze Traditional Food Challenge!

I’m very proud of myself: I spent the evening chopping, pounding, and mashing cabbage mixed with salt and whey into glass jars so that they can rot for a few days and turn into that super-nutritious wonder-food known as sauerkraut.

Not only that, but the whey I used I made myself just a few days before that, along with some delicious cream cheese (now all eaten). Ohh, and I’m getting déjà vu as I write this, always a good sign.

Yes! 2010 is the year of the Healthy Chaos Heathen! I have several goals for this year, but one is to make good on my Substitute Living rant from last year. I have this vision of Heathenry as being a movement which incorporates traditional food, organic farming, and a rejection of industrialised agriculture with all its iniquities, environmental destruction, capitalist greed, and shocking malnourishment.

But you know what they say: be the change you want to see. So there I was, bits of juice-flecked cabbage flying up around my mallet, as I joyously got to work.

I feel more and more strongly all the time that Heathenry really needs to get its sleeves up and get serious about nutrition. If we abandon the miserably conveyor belt diets that cause heart disease, cancer, and diabetes then we’ll be well on the way to demonstrating why faith in old ways is a winner: we’ll be the healthiest, happiest – and maybe even most attractive – fringe group of weirdos around!

I made a lot of sauerkraut and I spent about an hour working away, doing the simple, repetitive, hypnotic tasks that were involved. There is a real magic in preparing one’s food from the ground up, especially when fermentation – which unlocks incredible nutritive powers in food – is involved. I wandered into various gentle trance states, connecting deeply with my simple sense of lived, embodied being.

Next week when I get a chance I’m going to hit a local farmers’ market (not literally) and see what lovely organic treats I can lay my hands on; and soon I’m going to be creating all kinds of delicious, nutritious foods. It is easy to dream up the notion that its too hard or I haven’t got the time or whatever, but I suspect that the better we eat, the more energy we have, and the more energy we have, the less convincing these excuses will seem.

So here are some proposals for what Heathenry applied to food would look like:

A rejection of refined flour and refined sugar, surely the two biggest enemies of good health that there are;

A rejection of the (now debunked scientifically anyway) crazy idea that fats are bad and that food made from synthetic chemicals such as margarine is better than the natural foods that humanity has been thriving on for millennia;

A celebration of localised food production, the idea that you get to meet the person who makes the ingredients for your meal, that food buying is more than just the anonymous and mechanised task of collecting plastic-wrapped, sorry looking morsels from the sickly-lit supermarket shelf;

A celebration of slow food, taking time to treat one’s body right. As I say, I suspect that the more time one expends on such worthy endeavours, the more time one ultimately gets back in good spirits and energy;

A recovery ultimately of the social essence of cooking and eating, rather than miring ourselves in TV dinners and fast food gorging.

I’m dead serious, Heathenry has to be about our bellies first and foremost. I don’t care what else you believe, say, or do. If you aren’t serious about reconnecting to traditional, genuinely nutritious food, then I strongly question whether you are actually serious about Heathenry.

Hey, we don’t all have to be perfect, or build our personal gustatory Rome in a day! Just taking small, methodical steps is enough. Having the courage to question and experiment.

Of course, this process isn’t necessarily easy, mostly because of our brains. Even after I read the research showing that the “fat is bad” hypothesis pretty much never had any sound empirical basis (except for those deadly synthetic trans fats that you get in the margarine that was supposed to “save” us from butter), well, I still struggled to free myself from the spell. It has been beaten into us all so thoroughly, this vile propaganda.

But folks, eating a lot of fat doesn’t mean overeating. A diet can be low in calories and high in nutrients, and part of that is all those lovely fat-soluble nutrients like Vitamin A, and Vitamin D, and all that. I read somewhere that body fat is so essential that when we starve our body will break down brain tissue to survive on rather than touch certain types of fat stores.

One of the bad things about fridges (apart from the greenhouse gases) is that we stopped doing all the food fermentation tricks we used to use all the time to preserve food, not realising that those tricks serve to make the food easier to digest and more nutrient-dense. But now, in this best of both worlds scenario, I can leap headlong into my fermentation and use my fridge to make my efforts easier and more efficient. No one said you have to do this whole food renaissance thing the hard way, just the right way.

Anyway, these are issues that need more than my rapid-fire, scattergun opinions in order to be compelling. I strongly, strongly recommend that everyone who reads this buy copies of In Defense of Food and Nourishing Traditions. These two books will set you unerringly on the right path. Michael Pollan and Sally Fallon are absolutely honorary Heathens for their efforts to open the minds and bellies of our jaded 21st century culture.

Anyway, I have some beans on slow simmer I need to check, and some big tall jars of sauerkraut-to-be to marvel at (all it takes is time to ferment, how brilliant is that?). Have a joyous and maybe even inventively healthy new year, and – go on! Take the Elhaz Ablaze Traditional Food Challenge! Sure beats dressing up in ye olde clothes or giving yourself stupid, grandiose Old Norse titles!

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