Transcription of Avery Kamila for the show Good News, #78
Lisa: In the studio with me today, I have an individual that I’ve known for several years in different capacities. I think that’s what happens in Maine is you get to know people in one capacity. Then, they transform themselves into a different being. I really like this individual. This is Avery Kamila, who is a columnist for the Portland Press Herald. She writes the Natural Foodie column. She and I have a lot in common when it comes to how we deal with eating and health. I’m really happy to have you spend time with me today.
Avery: Well, thank you for having me.
Lisa: Avery, why is it that natural food and being a Natural Foodie columnist, why is it that this has sort of captured the interest and imagination of the readers?
Avery: I think that here in Greater Portland, we’re really lucky to have such a vibrant health community and people who are interested in maintaining their health and well-being. We show up on a lot of list of the healthiest communities and that’s great. I feel really blessed to meet so many people who are interested in health. As far as the food goes, there is such growing awareness that there is a real strong connection between what we put in our bodies and our health status. I think that that’s why people … When I hear from readers, that’s what they’re telling me, that they enjoy reading about others who are pursuing similar paths and new research and new books and people who are promoting these ideas out there.
Lisa: You were doing this before it became popular. If I remember correctly, you worked for Switch?
Avery: Yes, yup.
Lisa: You were doing a lot of social media stuff very early on before people even really knew what social media was and blogging.
Avery: Yes, yup. I’ve been a blogger. I’ve been on Twitter and Facebook for quite some time. I remember when I joined Facebook, I think it was, oh my gosh, it had to be 7 or 8 years ago. I remember joining and thinking, “What is this?” I did it because I had to do a story on high school students and need to reach out to them through Facebook. After that, it just took off. I found people that I actually knew on Facebook. It’s an interesting tool. It’s a great tool I think for writers and journalists because you can reach so many people. You can hear what people are up to and kind of get a sense of what’s going on. It’s great to be able to connect with people that way.
Lisa: I believe you worked for Maine Health or Maine Medical Center before you did that job?
Avery: Yes, yup.
Lisa: Did you find it very different between the work that you were doing with communications in a larger health-related institution and more of a popular mainstream type of approach?
Avery: When I worked for Maine Medical Center, I was working on a lot of different things there. One of the programs that I worked on was very much focused on community health. We had a variety of different things that we were doing. We had a cooking program. We had television segments that we did. I found that very fulfilling and interesting because I got to work directly with community members and patients and healthcare providers talking about health and often talking about the relationship between healthy behavior such as exercise and eating right and living a healthier lifestyle. That was great. It certainly is different as far as working for one organization and really talking about what that organization’s doing, whereas now, I’m not just looking at any one particular organization is doing. I’m looking around the community and seeing what’s going on and what variety of people are doing.
Lisa: I do remember that when you were writing for Switch, you were really out and about. I remember a lot of photographs that you were taking of food and places that you were. It seems like that has been a good fit for you, to be, excuse me, out and about and really connecting with people.
Avery: Yeah, I mean I think that I enjoy meeting people and the thing as you kind of sort of mentioned earlier here in Greater Portland is we are all so connected. It is such a small community in a good way and that you run into people that you know at the grocery store, at the video store, on the street. It’s fun to connect and find out what people are up to. I really enjoy that. I enjoy meeting people. I think that there are just a lot of really fascinating people here in the local area. I’m always so charmed when I meet folks who have moved here from other places often with very high-profile careers. They’ve come here for the lifestyle and the fact that Maine is a really special place and Portland is a special place.
We have a certain vibe that people enjoy. There’s a niche for everyone here. I think that they can tap into particularly creative communities whether they’re into art or music or food. It’s all here and available for folks. I do enjoy being out and meeting people.
Lisa: Tell me about growing up. You grew up on an organic farm here in Maine.
Avery: Yes, yes. My family moved to Maine in the early 70’s. My parents purchased a piece of property that they then turned into a farm. This was very early in the health food organic food movement. It was right around the time that the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association was forming. There wasn’t any certification. It was very early days. My parents proceeded to grow huge gardens and a lot of vegetables. They also had chickens and pigs and goats. They sold at a farmer’s market in Augusta. I believe that farmer’s market still goes on, on Water Street in Augusta. As a young child, I was around the farm. I was seeing what it took to grow vegetables, to raise animals, to go to market.
I remember going to the first Common Ground Country Fair which was held in Litchfield which is the town that I grew up in. it’s very different than the fairs that they hold today up in Unity but it had some of the core kernels of what it has become. I had a really early exposure to the fact that you could have a different kind of food than maybe what mainstream America was eating at the time. Now, it seems like so many years later that the sort of stuff that we were doing is becoming much more mainstream and is much more available which I think is really, really wonderful.
Lisa: You’re a vegan I believe.
Avery: Yes, yup.
Lisa: I think you’ve been a vegan from my remembering of all of your writing, you’ve been a vegan for a very long time.
Avery: Since I would say 1991 so I guess that translates into about 20 years.
Lisa: It was before it was popular, it was before there was lots of people doing it before people … there were cook books, before there were resources. Why did you make that decision?
Avery: I had been a vegetarian already. I became a vegetarian in high school. It was actually sort of interesting. I wanted a job in high school. I didn’t have a car at the time. The only job I could get to was a fast food restaurant that was on a highway. But because where we lived, we had sort of a back road access to the back way into this fast food establishment. I could get job there because I could ride my bike. I had this job there and was very quickly exposed to a very different sort of food than what I had grown up eating. I remember a number of eye-opening situations, one being a chicken sandwich that I bit into and all this bluish whitish stuff started oozing out. I like “okay that’s a little disturbing”. So all of that coupled with a project that I had to do for my sophomore English class and I wrote about animal rights.
I knew about animals. I had grown up with animals. What was most shocking to me in the research that I did was the information about factory farming which I was blissfully unaware of having grown up on a small farm. I’d seen animals. I’d seen animals slaughtered. I knew that’s slightly unsettling but on a small scale, it’s very different than what happens in the factory farming setting. That was really … I just couldn’t stomach it. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I became a vegetarian at that point which, again, it was not a trendy thing to do back at that time. Then, when I went off to college, I went to Syracuse University. My roommate was also a vegetarian. She and I joined a campus vegetarian group and through that, I was introduced to John Robbins’ writings, Diet for a New America specifically. That book was also eye-opening to me. He was an heir to the Baskin Robbins ice cream family business and didn’t really want to go into that because he had found out himself about some other aspects about dairy and animal proteins that aren’t … that they maybe are not the best for us in the quantities that Americans eat them.
At that time, because I was eating in a campus dining hall that was very vegetarian and vegan friendly, it was really easy for me to make the switch. I knew other people there who were doing the same thing. It was easy for me. I have to say when I stopped eating meat, I didn’t really notice any difference physiologically but when I stopped eating dairy, I noticed a big change. I had a lot more energy. I felt lighter. I felt a lot different. Personally, I think that if I needed to make any changes again, dairy’s probably something that I would never really go back to which is sort of ironic because my grandfather had a dairy farm that he operated after he retired. It was sort of a hobby farm.
I grew up also very exposed to commercial dairying and how that works and having a lot of dairy products around. I don’t think I’m allergic to dairy. I just don’t think that they sit that well with me.
Lisa: When I was growing up, I also became a vegetarian pretty early on and at a time when other people weren’t vegetarians. I was in high school also. One of the things that I remembered was actually my grandfather, my Pepe, my French grandfather from Biddeford, kind of wondering why would you do that. Here’s some perfectly good food and he came from the generation where you eat what was put in front of you and it almost seemed ungrateful that … Here you are coming from a family with a grandfather’s got a dairy farm and how did your family respond to your dietary changes?
Avery: I think that in general, my family both older and younger generations, tend to be pretty open-minded. That said, like any family and like your experience, I encountered the same sort of things like, “Really? You’re not going to eat this?” A lot of the older generation, they went through the Great Depression and really valued whatever you could have for food. I think that the other thing that I’ve noticed, not so much in my family but often with other folks is that there is a real emotional reaction when people hear that you’re a vegetarian.
I completely understand that. I mean food is very emotional. It’s tied to our families. It’s tied to tradition. It’s tied to culture. When you see someone who’s doing something different, even if they’re saying … even if I’m not saying you should do this or I’m trying to make people do what I’m doing. It’s just what I’m doing personally, I think people can feel as if they’re being threatened in a way and that the overall message is that they should do what I’m doing. If that’s what they feel, I can’t really change their feelings but I can completely understand because food is such an emotional experience for us. It’s tied to family. It’s tied to memories and specific dishes evoke certain times and places in our lives. I wouldn’t want to take that from anyone or change anyone.
I think that everybody has to make their own decisions about what they’re going to eat and what’s right for them. I don’t think there’s any one particular way. There’s definitely a lot of research out there about plant-based eating and its health benefits. That said, I don’t think that that necessarily is 100% plant-based diet is what everybody needs to do. I think everybody should be eating more plants and fruits and vegetables and nuts and grains. I think that those are all in their whole form are good for folks but that’s not to say that people have to do that exclusively. I think that the problems that we’re encountering in health and maintaining health and the prevalence of disease in our society have more to do with people eating way too much animal protein, too much meat, too much dairy and way too much processed food.
If people can move away from those and move towards more plants in their diet, they’re going to be doing a good thing for themselves. I don’t think that everybody needs to become a vegetarian if that’s not what they want to do.
Lisa: That’s what I read when I see your columns in the Portland Press Herald or online is that you’re presenting information in informative and interesting way. You’re giving people other options. You’re not judging or saying you have to be what I am. You interviewed Dr. Kevin Strong who also has been part of our show. He’s doing Dunk the Junk. You’ve interviewed Jeff Peterson who’s a sportscaster. He’s done vegan eating. But you’re not saying you have to do these things. You’re just providing a possibility.
Avery: Right. I think that it’s interesting that there’s so many people in our community who are doing interesting things. With Jeff Peterson, people know him from Channel 13 in watching the news. He has this other side to him. It’s his own personal choice. At home, he and his wife and their kids, they eat a certain. They’ve had a lot of success with that. They’ve lost weight. He’s improved his cholesterol. He’s been very vocal about that and sharing that story with people that I think that’s an interesting story.
I’ve talked to other folks who’ve had similar stories. I think that people need to hear that sort of thing that it’s not … you don’t need to always get a pharmaceutical drug to cure your issues. There are other ways that are less expensive, less taxing on your body and are probably going to have a better overall outcome in the end. That’s what I try to share with people is other stories and research that supports that.
Lisa: What have some of your favorite stories been?
Avery: Oh gosh, it’s kind asking like who’s your favorite child right?
Lisa: Yeah, I know.
Avery: One of the stories that I wrote recently, it was a funny story. Our Food and Dining section runs on Wednesdays. This past Halloween fell on a Wednesday. I knew that I had to have some sort of Halloween-themed story. I was joking around with some friends at work. One of the running jokes is that people will mention something about food. I was like well, do you really know about the behind-the-scenes story of this food product. It shocks people. They said, “You should really do a haunted house tour of some of these foods.” I said, “Okay that’s kind of a funny idea.”
In a tongue-in-cheek command, I did a tour of a supermarket basically saying that I don’t need to go to a haunted house to be scared on Halloween, I can just go to my local supermarket and have all sorts of scary sights to see. I talked about different things. There’s been a recall of peanut butter, a lot of it organic peanut butter which people would think would be good but produced in a factory and contaminated. I talked about that. I talked about the recent issues that consumer reports has uncovered with rice and arsenic levels. I talked about the factory farm meat and particularly hamburger when that’s ground, it’s really ripe for pathogens and various other things.
That story provoked a lot of response. We got all kinds of letters to the editor, both people saying, “Oh great, thank you for running this,” and people saying, “This is not true.” It was really interesting. I’m happy to have people write in and say that they don’t agree with me. I think that’s great because it continues the debate. I think that people should be talking about this. They don’t need to agree with me. I just think that people should be examining these issues and looking a little bit more deeply into what they’re eating and where it’s coming from. I thought that was fascinating that this … To me, it was just going to be this funny story. It sort of really provoked a lot of response in the community.
Lisa: Yeah, you never know when you put something out there in written form, what’s going to come back and how people are going to respond to it.
Avery: Exactly, exactly, yeah.
Lisa: Avery, how can people read more of your work?
Avery: Well, my food column appears in the Wednesday Food and Dining section of the Portland Press Herald. I often write in other sections as well. Folks are certainly welcome to friend me on Facebook. I do post my stories on there. If they don’t live within a place where they can get the Press Herald or have easy access to it, I do post stuff on there. They also can follow me on Twitter. I like to post links to my stories on Twitter but I also … There’s so much being written these days about health and food. I like to post links to things that other people are writing and interesting studies and that sort of stuff. I often post that information on Twitter as well. That’s another way people can connect with me.
Lisa: And the Press Herald website is?
Avery: Is pressherald.com.
Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Avery Kamila, who is a columnist for the Portland Press Herald and the Natural Foodie writer. We’ve really enjoyed spending time talking about your background here in Maine, not only as a child of a farm but also child of parents who live on a farm, I should say, but also someone who’s really spend a lot of time thinking about food and its impact on your own personal life and the community. Thanks for coming in and …
Avery: Thank you for having me. I’ve really enjoyed it.