Nourishing Traditions followup

I want to thank everyone who contributed to yesterday's comments on Nourishing Traditions. I always enjoy reading your thoughts but I want to take this opportunity to explain something about myself that a few of you don't understand.

I firmly believe that everyone has the right to a different view to my own, and to express that view in a thoughtful and respectful way. Difference helps makes us what we are as a group of people - it makes us more interesting, it gives me reason to think about the comments left and, over time, it helps shape me and possibly others who read here. Difference allows us to see other possibilities.

When I recommended this book to you yesterday it was not so you could do what I'm doing. I don't want anyone to be an imitation of me. I made that recommendation so you could read that book and get from it whatever your stage of life, knowledge and past experience will allow you to get from it. I am 60 years old and I have enough life experience to know that many of the things that were good for me when I was 30 do not work well for me now. Needs modify throughout life, nothing is stagnant, change is necessary.

So the recommendation was not to drink raw milk or to eat meat or anything else. The recommendation was simply to read the book - and to see if it made enough sense to you to make some changes. I found the information on cholesterol and heart disease to be very interesting. I often wondered why deaths from heart disease continued to increase when the consumption of low fat foods increased. But everyone will get something different from this book and that is a good thing.

I want to remind you that my blog is not a prescription for anyone to follow. It is simply an account of how I live. If what I write gives you ideas or motivation, that's wonderful, but always remember that your life is about YOU, not me. I hope you will always be open to change, but only ever make changes after you've thought about them carefully and in the context of your own life.

Kim NZ made a good point on the cost of meat. Kim, I expect that our costs will be minimal but I will monitor it. We won't eat meat every day. Our diet will continue along the same lines - eating from the garden and backyard for the most part - we will replace a fish meal with a meat meal maybe once a week. So far I have bought 2 kg of shin beef, with the bone in, that cost $9.90 a kilo. A kilo (with bone) will make us four meals so it's affordable at the moment.

To all those people who are waiting for a reply to an email, I'm slowly getting through them and hope to contact you soon. As always, I enjoy your input here and I love that we are such a diverse group of people. I hope to be back later with the pattern for the ascot scarf.