Feeding the Threshing Crew

Recently I saw an old black-and-white home movie my dad had made in the 50s. It was of the threshing crew on my Grandpa O'Hara's farm. Threshing was the process of putting up the harvest. Very labor-intensive work, it was a community event, family helping family, and neighbors helping neighbors.

What amazed me was that my grandpa and the men helping him were all startingly thin. Their bib overalls hung on their sinewy frames. Even the kids running around outside were stick-thin skinny. It is shocking because if you take a look around wherever you are right now, at your work place, your school, maybe even with your family, the norm is chunky if not really overweight. The norm then was thin.

This wasn't for lack of food. What is legend about threshing season were the meals the women folk prepared for the crew. They spared nothing: pot roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, garden vegetables in sauces, butter rolls, and all kinds of homemade pies with real whipped cream.

The people who were consuming these wonderful meals were amazingly thin. And stayed thin. True, I saw that my grandma and the other women were a little bit plump from staying in the kitchen, but none were obese, not by a long-shot. Just grandmotherly huggable.

They weren't following the plans that make the food behave. They ate whatever they wanted without thinking of calories, carbs, or fat grams. Undeniably, they worked hard and burned it off. But, I suspect that they didn't overstuff either. They couldn't. They wouldn't have been able to waddle out to sweat in the field without getting sick. I've found that hard exercise keeps your appetite in check.

We are eating low-calorie, low-carb, and low-fat. Diet pop, sugar substitutes and 100-calorie bites of nothing. Little frozen meals that don't taste great and have a weird chemical aftertaste but which have less than 300 calories. Diets like Atkins that cut out whole food groups. I'd rather eat real food.

I don't do sugar-free, and I really don't pay attention to how much cholesterol or calories are in a thing. I figure if you want half the fat or half the calories, just take half a serving. I eat generally healthy, lots of fruits and vegetables, and very little processed food. Pretty much what God put on the earth for us to eat. I'm not a vegetarian, I'm not a health food fanatic either, and I don't worry much about whether something's organic.

I now eat the way you see kids eat, before we mess them up. Or like people who have been thin their whole lives. I eat until I'm full, and then I stop. That's it. Sorry if that's disappointing, but that's the secret. It's the only thing that really makes sense to me. I don't obsess about food or write in a stupid food journal. I can't tell you how freeing that is.