Kendall and Rebecca talk with Health and Wellness State Specialist Amy Hollar about the connection between nutrition, overall wellness, and gardening. They discuss the concept of 'food as medicine' and the importance of moderation in consuming various types of sugars. They explore the personal and intellectual fulfillment that comes from gardening, highlighting the joy of growing plants and connecting with one's community, heritage, and land. Amy encourages listeners to embrace imperfection and self-compassion in the gardening process.
Show Notes
Wellness Wheel Assessment: https://extension.unh.edu/health-well-being/programs/wellness-wheel-assessment
National Produce Prescription Collaborative: https://nppc.health/
4-H Plant a Row Program: https://extension.unh.edu/new-hampshire-4-h/pathways/healthy-living/nutrition/plant-row
Kendall Kunelius 0:07
Welcome to this episode of Shared Soil, a podcast dedicated to creating community, honoring challenges and encouraging personal and professional growth for all people in agriculture. My name is Kendall Kunelius and I am a field specialist for agricultural business management with UNH Cooperative Extension.
Rebecca Dube 0:26
I'm Rebecca Dube and I provide technology and communication support for the specialists of UNH Cooperative Extension.
Kendall Kunelius 0:35
Today with us, we have Amy Hollar, who we heard in our Farming with Wellness episode along with Kate Graves. And today we're diving a little bit deeper into some of the things we touched on in that topic. We talked about the wellness wheel, we talked about holistic wellness for you as a person. And now we're very specifically deep diving into food as medicine. So Amy, if you wouldn't mind telling us again who you are and then get started on this topic. Wherever you want to start, I want to talk about it.
Amy Hollar 1:07
Thanks. Thanks for having me back. I'm happy to be here with you guys. It was so much fun on the last episode. I'm Amy Hollar. I am a state specialist with UNH Cooperative Extension. I focus on health and well-being, and my background is that I am a registered dietitian with a focus on public health approaches to nutrition and physical activity. I lead our USDA Nutrition Education program at Cooperative Extension, SNAP ed and FSNEP. And then also work with the rest of our health and well-being team on holistic health and addressing the health of individuals as well as communities and organizations throughout New Hampshire. So yeah, last time we talked about the Wellness Wheel. And that's just one -there's lots of different ways you can think about health and well-being, but it's one way to look at the different aspects of health. There's physical health, which we think of a lot more than nutrition, physical activity; but there's also emotional health and spiritual health and intellectual, environmental, financial, social, occupational health. That's one way you can conceptualize all the different factors in our world and your life that contribute to your own health and well-being. I do focus on nutrition and food, but I like to think of them in the context of that larger environment as well. Food is medicine.
Rebecca Dube 2:26
That's the best tasting medicine!
Kendall Kunelius 2:30
That makes me think of the Mary Poppins "a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine," but vegetables and fruits are so delicious on their own. No sugar added, nothing needed.
Rebecca Dube 2:39
Right, we don't want any sugar!
Amy Hollar 2:42
Yeah, I think everything in moderation, and there's lots of different types of sugars. We do refer to the dietary guidelines a lot, which sometimes get a bad rap, but there's really a lot of good stuff in there. And they talk about nutrition in the nutrition world, that added sugar is different than just naturally occurring sugars, like you find in dairy or in fruits and vegetables, especially fruits, but also in vegetables. Sugar gets a bad rap and there's people that get really extreme with it and "oh, you shouldn't eat bananas and you shouldn't eat corn" and I don't know about that. I do know what I think about that, I think that's a little bit maybe overzealous.
Everything in moderation, but especially naturally occurring sugars that are packaged with fiber and hydration and lots of other health-promoting benefits. It's a little bit different than even the spoonful of sugar which is still fine in moderation.
Kendall Kunelius 3:34
I'm giggling to myself a little bit about when you say everything in moderation because I think the people who love planting yellow squash and zucchini are probably the biggest proponents of that because we all know that at some point - isn't that the joke? Where if you have a zucchini plant, there's a point in time when you're just going to start forcing people to take all your extra zucchini? People just find it on their cars, and there's just a glut of zucchini everywhere and you just can't take anymore, you can't process it. So I'm just laughing about that. I think it's a typical New England kind of joke but New Hampshire I see so much of that going around.
Amy Hollar 4:08
No that's so true. And I know we're gonna talk about gardening today a little bit and there's always a question of people who are sort of garden curious but you know, not sure where to start and I do always recommend zucchini. It's so easy to grow and it makes you feel like you are killing it in the garden. They just keep giving and giving. Zucchini is a great place to start because every day you can basically harvest one and it's a good way to build confidence in your gardening skills. And if you plant three or four zucchini, you can donate - there's so many things you can you can do. But yes, they can get a little out of control when they start getting really big and you can go oh my gosh, how much zucchini can I eat?
Rebecca Dube 4:54
Or everything in moderation
Amy Hollar 5:00
Zucchini plants didn't get that memo. They just grow and grow.
Kendall Kunelius 5:05
So I want to take a second to ask this question to Rebecca first and then to you, Amy, so you can keep us on the track here of where you want to talk about this. So Rebecca, when I say the term Food as Medicine, what comes up for you?
Rebecca Dube 5:23
I think of that as food keeps your body healthy. I mean, it's the fuel you need to run your body at its maximum ability. So for medicine, it keeps your body working well and doing the things you needed to do every day.
Kendall Kunelius 5:44
Okay Amy, same question. What comes - and I know you have such a unique perspective, but what comes up for you when I say the term Food as Medicine?
Amy Hollar 5:51
A couple of things come up, the one that if you're in my field that you might think of is sort of this public health terminology that has grown around food as medicine. And sometimes they say food is medicine. And sometimes they say food as medicine. But it tends to, I haven't found out if there's a real difference between those. But there is a sort of of the notion of efforts in our country to try and get like things like if you've ever heard of like a produce prescription program?
Kendall Kunelius 5:51
No, I haven't.
Amy Hollar 5:51
Yeah, there's sort of like cutting edge like kind of different starting to look at food truly as public health and nutrition coming together with the healthcare sector to try and work together on really prevention strategies. And so that's one thing that comes out is very specific terminology and some efforts around that that are gaining traction in our country and other countries too. But for me, it makes me think of really, the reason I became a dietician, and especially the type of nutritionist or dietician that I am, working in public health.
A lot of dietitians work in clinical care, working with people with chronic diseases, like diabetes, for example, or kidney disease, really important work around managing those diseases and how nutrition can play a role. Or even things like surgery, post op. nutrition, there's requirements for a lot of these, cardio, heart disease. And there's this place you get to when you're in school for nutrition, where you're learning about all these things. We spend a lot of time on the clinical stuff, it's very complicated, worth the time. But you see all of this, and/or if you've worked in health care, you know, I think anyone can relate to this. And you see what happens as these diseases develop that we have more and more of, and you get a real passion to "how do I work upstream of this?" We need that work. There's some of us that get very motivated to try to prevent diseases from developing in the first place, or delay those. And that's where public health plays a role. It's sort of upstream of working on medical nutrition therapy. And so I think of food as medicine in sort of like medicine is what we think of when you have a disease and you're taking something to treat that disease. Food as medicine, it can play a role for sure, and it does, but it also can play a big role and where a lot of efforts around it in my field and sort of in public health are, it's using food as medicine before you actually have to take medicine. Using food as preventive medicine, because it's something we do, hopefully, at least three times a day. We're putting food in our body, we're being nourished, and realizing the power of that, in harnessing that for your own well being to prevent you from getting to that next step where food plays a role. But you also might be taking other types of medicine too. And I don't want to shame anyone for having to take medicine or wanting to take medicine. There's nothing wrong with taking medicine, but it's this idea behind reconceptualizing what food means, like you were saying, Rebecca. It's nourishment, and it can be preventive medicine for us so that we can live the lives that we want to live.
Kendall Kunelius 9:06
Totally. And I love what you're saying about that, too. I specifically love what you're talking about with the disease prevention, and early intervention things, and my brain immediately goes to ergonomics, which is something we talked about in the previous episode, which is all about injury prevention. So that brings us back to this idea of the medicine wheel and this holistic vision of food and growing food. And it's not just the action of the harvesting and the eating, it's truly from the planting to the caretaking of it of the plant and helping it mature and then reaping the benefits from our efforts. One of the things that I think of when we talk about this topic is there's a very, very large grower actually in New Hampshire, and one of their advertising campaigns as they started to gain market share and as they started to get bigger was they were giving any garden center that was selling their products shirts, and it said "Dirty hands clean soul". And it makes me think a lot of this idea of where did they come up with that, what what was the sentiment behind it? .And it's this idea of putting our hands in the ground and doing that activity of planting these plants and gaining the benefit from not only the physical activity, but in their case, they do mostly ornamental. So it's the beauty, it's the vision, it's the seeing of the garden. But for many women in ag, people in ag in general, it is the idea that you're growing the things that are nourishing your body. It's kind of like the saying of firewood, it's like wood warms you twice, we're sweating it out in the summer, when you're cutting it up and splitting it and then you're warm in the winter when you're burning it. And that's kind of how I think of food as medicine as well.
Rebecca Dube 10:47
Well, Kendall when you're speaking to the growing of it in the soil, I can't cite the specific study off the top of my head, but we have heard that physically working with soil does have many mental benefits. They think it's some of the chemicals that are given off by good soil and elements of that. So dirty hands gives you a clean soul because it's actually helping you with your mental health as well as the physical activity that you're doing it. So the growing of the food and the whole food cycle is part of that medicine as well.
Kendall Kunelius 11:20
Yeah, I also think there's a community and mental wellness aspect to this. How many people love to get together and how many community gardens are there or people who just love to do gardening as a social activity? I think there is a big aspect to that "medicine" piece. I say medicine with air quotes, but truly the things that are treating us as preventative strategies, and I think that mental health pieces should be included in that.
Amy Hollar 11:46
Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, we often think of nutrition as our physical health and our body, but when you think about the whole process, like you all are saying about growing the food. Growing food and community and everything that can go into growing food, and what that can do for your overall health and well being. It goes far beyond the point where you consume nutrients, right? There's so much that goes into that, that can feed those different parts of the wellness wheel. Like you all are saying, the community aspect, the social aspect, the mood boosting from physical activity and sunshine. Sunshine can make vitamin D in your body, too. So they're back to nutrition. Yeah, the connection with nature. I mean, It's one of the top things, spending time in nature, for boosting your mental health and feeling of accomplishment. I mean, there's just so many things when you get into growing food. It's like the icing on the cake is when you get to eat what you made. But that is not the be all end all of it. That's just the one little piece.
Kendall Kunelius 12:49
Yeah. One thing that I think I'm really appreciating here in our little list of notes. You have noted this spark curiosity within yourself. One of my favorite traits about myself is that I'm not a picky eater. I have some really frustrating dietary restrictions with allergies. But I love food! And I love I love being curious about eating food. And I really appreciate your note here that talks about learning about indigenous plants and trying to grow them. So I'm not as much of a vegetable person to grow plants as much as I love flowers. And I'm kind of in the study of doing gardening with native perennials. But I'm curious to ask you a little bit more about that note that you have there and talk to us about those concepts of indigenous plants and that tying into food as medicine.
Amy Hollar 13:40
Yeah, I think part of well being is feeling connected to your community, to your history to the land. One of the best ways to do that is to learn about traditional foods or anything that is connected to something you care about, which could be your heritage, it could be the place that you're living, it could be a new place. And that feeds that intellectual part of the wellness field, but also lots of other pieces too, like emotional. When I think of curiosity, it's the first thing I think of. I just think a lot of us love learning, and you never stop learning. Gardens can be a place where oh my gosh, if you'd like to learn - It doesn't have to be a big garden, it can be a little garden. I had a community garden plot years ago where I learned how to garden. It's just little things that you do that are so interesting and feed this cycle. As you learn things, you're like "oh, now I want to do this next!" But you have to wait until the next year the next growing cycle so you get sucked into this gardening culture where you're planning in the winter. It's very exciting, but one thing I can think of is when I first got into gardening and I grew some pole beans, and I was so excited because it was so fun to watch them grow. I made a little teepee for them to grow up like with people have. And then when I went to eat them, they were like stringy and gross. And I was like, oh, they weren't, I didn't realize I didn't know that, I didn't know. I did all this work and I was so proud. And then when I ate them, they weren't really a lot of fun to eat. I'd had to shell them, it turned out and that's not a lot of fun. Or at least it wasn't fun for me. Maybe someone enjoys that. So I researched it. It sparked this -, I'm like, oh, well, what kind of beans can I grow where I can eat them and they're not stringing like this? I just started learning about that. And then I had made the teepees, so I'm like, well, what kind of shade plant could I put in partial shade under the teepee next year? Those are just some little very specific examples. I remember things that I learned that first cycle and then I was getting excited to do the next year and gardening can kind of do that for you. It's a year round process, depending on where you live in the country. But definitely in New Hampshire, we have quite a bit of downtime in the winter, where we can be planning for our next our next year. And then in the springtime, you're getting ready and maybe starting seedlings and stuff like that. So it's a really fun kind of intellectual pursuit. It is, but naturally, it's not like you're taking a class necessarily, it's just like this sort of like what do you get interested in? What what did you happen to mess up in your garden that now you've learned from? I'm sure it's not stringy beans for everyone. But for me, that was a learning moment.
I think gardening can be, it can serve so many aspects of our well being. You can really think of how your garden can take care of you. And as cheesy as that sounds, it goes so far beyond trying to plant all the kale or all the broccoli or whatever. There's no right or wrong way to decide what you want to plant. A diverse range of ways a garden can support your well being is really kind of a fun practice. So you talked about sparking curiosity, through that sort of like lens of compassion for yourself. It can be a time to think about a) what's important to you, what would you like more of in your life to support your well being and then how could maybe a garden serve that that role? So if you want to, what we were just talking about, I want to get inspired to learn something new, to try something new, learn a new hobby. That can be that curiosity piece, which is great. Maybe you want to work on your self confidence, like you were talking about. Plant those zucchini!
Rebecca Dube 17:24
Or indigenous plants, native plants,
Amy Hollar 17:26
Plants that are easy to grow. Native plants, yeah, what plants will grow well in your area? But there's no shame in planting things that are easy. It doesn't have to be, you know, sometimes we feel like... I don't know if some of us are achievers, and it's like, Oh, I gotta plant the hard stuff. And you can, but you don't have to. You can just plant things that are going to make you feel good, like, oooh, look at that grow! Nothing wrong with that. You need that self confidence, we all need that. I think a sense of gratitude, too, being able to donate that produce. That kind of goes along with that first run, kind of like zucchinis. You'll be donating them, or sharing with neighbors and stuff. Or you can even plant an extra row. Something we do in Cooperative Extension along with 4-H is the Plant a Row program where we encourage gardeners. We provide some supplies, and we encourage them to plant an extra row to donate in their community. I mean, that can be a really great way to give back and build in an aspect of gratitude and giving into your gardening and how that fuels your well being. And I think celebrating what you like, celebrating the things you like to eat; thinking about things that you like to eat and planning for that. So if you like to make salsa or if you have a friend and you're jealous, they always have pickled pickled onions or something that they grew in their garden and that they can or jelly. You can be that person right? What do you really like to eat? Whatever you always wanted to, have you always wanted to can your own tomato sauce? You can plan for that. One other thing I can think of just in terms of that overall ways gardens can support well being beyond just nutrition, making your garden really beautiful, if that's something that speaks to you. So again, maybe join a community garden or just visit a community garden. People are so creative. And when I had a community garden plot, there were these people that were growing these plants and they had this archway and the vines were growing all up around them. I thought it was so beautiful. I wanted to make that! So you can do that. Maybe you want to grow purple peppers, because purple is your favorite color. And that's cool, right? Purple bell peppers! You can plan your garden, how many purple things can I plant? That's a totally appropriate and awesome way to use gardening and then how much joy you'll get out of going out there and seeing your purple garden. Purple's my favorite color first of all, I would love that. Maybe not everyone would. Those are all different ways that you can let your garden take care of you.
Rebecca Dube 17:32
Well, I love the idea that you said about celebrating what you love to eat and what you love to plant, like a salsa garden, or for a specific food group. And I think you could even if you were an ag seller, you could even package some of your produce that way at the farmers' market and say, here's a kit of vegetables, a bagged kit, salsa kit. And people could buy that all at once, or a salad kit or stir fry or something along those lines. And so you're growing with that specific thing in mind, and you're achieving your goal easily which builds up your confidence. And as you said, to create the beauty for one person, it could be the beauty of the vegetables that they grow for someone else. It could be the flowers and a color range. Kendall, do you have a favorite crop of either flowers or vegetables that you love?
Kendall Kunelius 20:56
Oh, that's such a great question. You know, I truly love flowers. I like veggies, don't get me wrong. But I love - I have a variety of coneflowers or echinacea in my garden and it's called macaroni and cheese. Speaking of food, food as medicine, I like food-named flowers. Yeah, I love it. It's just the most vibrant shade of orange and like cheddar cheese orange, and yellows, like the pasta yellow or like butter. And then there's also a different one, I can't quite remember the name, but there's another echinacea that's just the most delicious papaya color. So I really almost love eating the colors with my eyes as much as I love eating food that I grow. But those coneflowers those echinacea are just spectacular. So to answer your question in a long winded format, that is what I would say I love to grow.
Rebecca Dube 21:52
Well, one of my favorites is actually growing potatoes. The simple act of putting that pitchfork in the ground and pushing it up through and up through the soil. It like emerges through the dark soil, these lovely lighter colored potatoes, so your food is given to you. It's rising up out of that for you. I used to do that as a kid and I just absolutely loved it. So that was one of my favorite crops to harvest is potatoes. How about you, Amy?
Amy Hollar 22:23
So those vines, I was mentioning those beautiful vines that they grew up on that trellis? They were actually connected to sweet potato plants. The sweet potatoes are in the ground and they have these big vines that grow up. So after that I learned to grow sweet potatoes. That's actually a really great, I love that you brought up, it is so fun. It's like treasure hunting to pull your potatoes up from the ground. It's very exciting. If you're a new gardener or if you have very limited space or if you're not sure, you can grow potatoes in a grow bag. You can buy a pretty cheap grow bag to fill with soil, like an old canvas bag, for like no money at all. And that can be a really fun one to do to start out with, to grow potatoes in a little bag. I don't know what my favorite thing to grow would be. I love everything so much. I guess anything purple obviously, I have grown purple peppers, and that was a lot of fun. I grew brussel sprouts and I kind of like the things that are like brussel sprouts. It's so cool. If you haven't seen how they grow, like a big column, they're just beautiful. I kind of like growing anything that - yeah, I guess I get a lot of joy out of the beauty in the garden and seeing how things grow. And I get kind of intrigued by or transfixed when something you've seen in the supermarket all these years, you go and see how it grows. And it's it's very different. It's just a lot of fun. And I love to grow anything that I want to eat.
Kendall Kunelius 23:47
You just made me think too, if you're somebody who loves history, or if you love little factoids, one of the coolest areas of vegetables that I have longed to do like a little personal interest project is heirloom tomatoes. Why would you have a tomato called beef steak or mortgage lifter, or black Krim? There's so many varieties of these truly heritage breed or heirloom breed tomatoes that are so unique in color and taste and use and it really tells you a lot about the culture or the place that they came from. Just looking at the food item itself and thinking about its origins, tells you a lot about the flavors that they go with or the textures of food that they go with. So doing a little exploration into your food and its origins I think is also a great - that'll be a cool school project or a homeschool project or an over-the-summer project is do the history along with the food item itself.
Amy Hollar 23:47
Oh yeah, I think it would be so fun. And it can also be a fun taste-testing thing with kids' classes. We should probably do this. As I'm saying this I'm like -
Kendall Kunelius 24:54
We're brainstorming on the spot!
Amy Hollar 24:59
With kids we will often do different varieties of something, maybe four or five different types of apples, try them. It gets them trying the food. We all like choices, and we all like like to decide how we feel about things and stuff. So you could grow a bunch of different heirloom tomatoes over the years, decide which ones are your favorite, be intentional about that and try a bunch of things and learn about them. That can be fun when you have different varieties of that to then have like a taste test and decide which one's your favorite, or why, or weight them in different ways. That's fun, kids like to do that. You'll do all the tastings with kids, and always give them a space where you can ask them "how do you feel about this and why?" That can be really fun to do at home with with kids or in a classroom setting. Let them explore how they feel about the food and what they've learned and stuff.
Rebecca Dube 25:56
So we see food as medicine in so many other aspects beyond just the eating of the food. The growing of it, the physical interaction with the planting and growing, the social interaction with communities we can pull together. So lots of different ways that food can be medicine in our lives, and a preventative medicine at that. I love your concept of being upstream, preventing any of these diseases for as long as possible, and in many ways. So are there any other final aspects of food as medicine that you want to touch on today, Amy?
Amy Hollar 26:34
Yeah, thank you for asking, and thank you for having me, this has been so fun. I'm like a repeat guest now. So check that off my bucket list. Right. But I think I would want to mention that, because I know that this podcast is geared at women and women in agriculture, I think everyone can experience this. But I know when I talk to women, it tends to really resonate with this role that often we take on, or we at least see ourselves as this caretaker role. And when you think about your garden, it can sound like a really great idea, like a lot of things. I know we've talked about all these ways that can like support your health, but it can also very quickly become overwhelming or another thing that you have to take care of. And then that can stop the joy out of it. Remembering that it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be anything. You get to decide what your reasons are for gardening, what is fulfilling for you and keeping that in mind as you're doing that and checking in with yourself. What were my goals with this? Definitely, I think a lot of us who have gardened in the past, have had multiple times where we've had a season and it's just kind of gotten away with us. And we're like, "okay, I planted way too-" But halfway through the season, we're like, "I got way too ambitious with this, and I am struggling now." And that's very normal, if that happens to you. I think that will happen inevitably, at some point. But just remembering it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be huge. The point is not for it to become something else that's "Oh God, I gotta take care of that now." It can be a place that we find joy. And so setting goals for our garden around some of the things we talked about today. What aspect of your well being do you really want to foster - your sense of gratitude or your self confidence? Or do you just want to learn about something? Or do you want to make salsa at the end of the summer? Those are great reasons to do this. I think it's important to check in with yourself, and realize that when it does get away with you, and it does inevitably become something on your checklist, that it's okay, that happens to us. You're gonna have another season where you can cut back next year. Do your best it is what it is. Reframe it when you can, and don't let that perfectionism take over. That it's got to be perfect, because really those, that perfectionism, that rigid thinking about things, of them becoming these big things. That really saps a lot of the pleasure and joy out of gardening and many other things. So just remembering that that can definitely seep into gardening. As women, we feel like oh, we've got to do a good job taking care of everything. And that, no, your garden can really take care of you and you can decide what your goals are for that garden and what you're hoping to achieve with it. And there's no right or wrong answer.
Kendall Kunelius 29:22
So I want to jump in here and add something to that idea that perfectionism is like the weeds. Did you know that the definition of what a weed actually is is any plant growing in a place you don't want it to grow? So technically, you could have a great plant, you could have a plant that you've planted somewhere else and it just got transplanted or walked a couple of seeds over somewhere else and you're like, I don't want that there. Well then it's a weed. So if you like dandelions, just leave them. You don't have to pull them out. They get a bad rap, but they're great for pollinators. So don't get overwhelmed. I'm totally in agreement with you are in agreeance with you about don't get overwhelmed. If you're okay with the way that your garden looks, there's no need for perfectionism for the sake of that social pressure that you feel, like your garden has to look a certain way or it has to be perfect in everything, a perfect little rose. If you like the way that it looks, dandelions and all, then don't change it, just leave it. Enjoy it.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
