Nutrition at Timberlane
by Jim Salinsky and Brian Lifsec

Since the beginning of Camp Timberlane and the first meal that was served here, H. and Sharon have tried to provide the campers with filling, nutritious food at mealtimes. Nutrition (or the lack of it) has never really been a problem at camp, as long as the kids were served their fortified cereals, drinks, and breads, It has not been a problem, that is, because it has not been seriously looked at until now, and by only one counselor in particular, Brian Lifsec. Defending the Hikens, however, Brian realizes that it is not only the camp diet that needs reexaming, but the whole American fancy for excessive starch, sugar, fat, and salt in most of the foods we eat.

Brian allocates and has been practicing for the past two years a course of eating that includes unprocessed grains (wheat, barley, corn, and bran), fruits and vegetables, milk and milk products, and seafood. IN other words, a wholesome diet could be written from the four basic groups of foods.

The dangers of processed sugars are known to all, yet heeded by few. This is one of Brian’s strongest complaints--the inability of people to have any self-control over their sugar intake. most processed foods contain incomprehensible amounts of sugar, which can be found situated high in the foods list of ingredients (meaning a greater quantity in weight than any ingredient following). If our breakfast cereals are to be the one meal to load up on vitamins and minerals that might not otherwise be obtained, then how can the cereal manufacturers slaughter that synthetic nutrition by placing sugar as the first or second ranking ingredient, as in the case with most popular cereals sold today?

The subject of bread is another tricky misconception. As author Dr. David M. Rueben notes, bread used to mean wholesome loaves of raised dough made of milled grain, yeast, salt, eggs, and other natural ingredients. The ingredient panel from today’s white “breads” reads like a page from the ordering catalog of the Ohio Scientific Chemical Company. The information should not be in the form of a guessing game as to its’ derivation, but rather like a pleasing conglomeration of nutrition.

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