Nutrition -What the Body is Built On.

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Have We Forgotten How Remarkable It Is to Have Enough?

There is a moment at Thanksgiving when the food finally reaches the table. After the shopping, peeling, chopping, stirring, roasting, and last-minute rush to get everything hot at approximately the same time, the serving dishes begin to arrive. There may be turkey and stuffing, potatoes and vegetables, cranberry sauce and gravy, followed later by the pie that everyone insists they are too full to eat until the plates appear and somehow there is room. For many families, the sight of that table is deeply familiar. We recognize it as Thanksgiving, and because we have seen some version of it year after year, it can become so ordinary that we barely consider what we are actually looking at.

But take another look.

There is something extraordinary sitting on that table.

We live at a time when many of us have become accustomed to having an enormous variety of food available throughout the year. We can walk into a grocery store in the middle of a Nova Scotia winter and find foods that are not growing anywhere near us and may not even be growing on this side of the world. Refrigeration, transportation, agriculture, preservation, and international trade have changed our relationship with food so dramatically that abundance can begin to feel ordinary. When almost everything is available most of the time, it becomes easy to forget that food availability was once one of the defining realities of human life.

Thanksgiving gives us a wonderful reason to remember.

When the Harvest Really Mattered

Harvest celebrations existed because the harvest mattered. What grew successfully during the warmer months helped determine what people would have available when winter arrived. Foods that could be stored, dried, preserved, fermented, or kept in a root cellar carried families through months when the ground was frozen, and very little was growing. A successful harvest meant something very different when the supermarket was not waiting down the road with produce from several continents.

We do not have to return to that way of living to appreciate what it can teach us. When we look at an autumn table filled with potatoes, squash, carrots, onions, apples, cranberries, herbs, and other foods of the season, we are looking at plants that began with soil, seed, water, and sunlight and eventually became food that a human body can use. If meat is part of the meal, another living system was involved, requiring food, water, land, and care before becoming part of our food supply. Then there are the people involved in growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, selling, and preparing everything that finally arrives on our plates.

Most of the time we don't need to think about all of that in order to eat dinner. Food needs to be part of ordinary life rather than something we analyze at every meal. Thanksgiving, however, is built around appreciation, and it gives us an opportunity to look at something ordinary long enough to recognize that it isn't ordinary at all.

A carrot is so familiar that we can forget what it represents. A plant pulled minerals and water from the soil, used energy from sunlight to grow, and created structures our bodies can later break down and use. The carrot eventually becomes part of a meal, and its carbohydrates, fibres, vitamins, minerals and plant compounds enter an entirely different living system: ours. The same transformation is occurring with every other food on the plate.

We often reduce nutrition to numbers — grams of protein, calories, carbohydrates, milligrams of a vitamin — because numbers allow us to measure things. Yet nutrition itself is much bigger. Food is the raw material from which the body continually maintains, repairs and fuels itself. What began in soil, plants, animals and the environment becomes part of the ongoing work of keeping us alive.

That is worth noticing.

The Nutritional Value of Variety

One of the most interesting things about a Thanksgiving table is something we rarely give it credit for:

There can be tremendous nutritional diversity sitting on one plate.

Nutrition conversations often become centred around individual foods. Which vegetable is healthiest? Which fruit has the most antioxidants? Which protein is best? What is the newest food everyone should be eating? That way of looking at nutrition can make us search for one exceptional food when one of the strengths of a nourishing diet is actually variety.

Different foods bring different things with them. Animal proteins and plant proteins have their own combinations of amino acids and nutrients. Different vegetables contain different vitamins, minerals, fibres and plant compounds. Herbs and spices contribute another range of compounds in much smaller quantities. Even foods that appear nutritionally similar are not identical, and the body does not depend upon one food to provide everything it needs.

This is one reason eating a varied diet matters. We are not trying to find the perfect food; we are creating a broader nutritional landscape over time.

Now look at a traditional Thanksgiving dinner through that lens.

The turkey contributes protein along with a range of vitamins and minerals. Potatoes provide carbohydrate, potassium, vitamin C and other nutrients. Squash, carrots, onions, cranberries, and whatever other vegetables a family traditionally serves each contribute their own fibres, pigments, and plant compounds. Herbs such as sage and thyme are present in smaller amounts but add their own botanical complexity. Even the foods we tend to place in the indulgence category are still made from ingredients that came from somewhere and contain nutrients the body recognizes and uses.

The traditional Thanksgiving dinner does not need to be rescued from itself.

There has been a tendency in wellness culture to take celebratory foods and immediately begin looking for ways to make them healthier: remove this, replace that, cut the fat, reduce the carbohydrate, change the dessert, and somehow produce a Thanksgiving dinner that barely resembles the meal people were looking forward to eating. There are certainly times when recipes need to be adapted for allergies, intolerances, health conditions or personal preferences, but a traditional Thanksgiving dinner can already contain an impressive variety of real foods.

What most often makes Thanksgiving dinner very different from an ordinary meal is not that turkey, potatoes, or stuffing suddenly became nutritionally unacceptable. It is abundance becoming excess.

There is an important difference between the two.

A Feast Is Allowed to Be a Feast

Thanksgiving dinner is not Tuesday night's supper, and it doesn't have to behave like it.

There are meals in our lives that exist partly because they are celebrations. Birthday cake is attached to birthdays. Certain foods appear at Christmas because they have been part of the family for generations. Thanksgiving dinner may include richer foods, more courses, and dessert even when everyone was already satisfied before dessert arrived. These meals occupy a very small portion of an entire year.

Nutrition is built through patterns. What we eat regularly matters far more than whether one Thanksgiving dinner contained more gravy, stuffing or pie than we would normally eat. When the everyday pattern provides good-quality protein, vegetables and fruits, adequate fibre, healthy fats and a broad range of foods, there is room within that pattern for celebration.

That does not mean our bodies stop communicating with us because it is a holiday. There is still a point at which satisfied becomes overfull, and anyone who has left a Thanksgiving table uncomfortably stuffed knows the difference. Enjoying abundance does not require us to cross that line. We can have the foods we love, go back for something that was particularly delicious, and have dessert without approaching the meal as though this is our final opportunity ever to eat stuffing.

There is freedom in understanding both sides of that. We don't have to fear the feast, and we don't have to prove that it was a feast by eating until we are uncomfortable.

Thanksgiving Does Not Have to Look the Same

Honouring the traditional Thanksgiving table does not mean everybody needs to reproduce it.

For some people, Thanksgiving is the meal they have been waiting for all year. Mom makes the stuffing the way she always has, someone else brings the pie, everyone comes home, the table gets extended to fit another chair, and the food itself becomes part of the reunion. The smell of that dinner can bring back Thanksgivings from decades earlier and people who once sat at the same table. That continuity has value. Food carries memory in a way very few things can.

For someone else, there may be no large gathering this year. The children may be spending Thanksgiving with another part of the family, distance may make travelling impossible, or the household may consist of one or two people who have no desire to cook a large turkey. Another family may have cultural food traditions that look nothing like the familiar Canadian Thanksgiving picture. None of those circumstances requires us to imitate somebody else's table in order to recognize the day.

The nutritional principle remains remarkably adaptable. Variety can come from a pork roast with apples and root vegetables just as readily as it can come from turkey with seasonal vegetables. A vegetarian table can centre around lentils, beans, squash, root vegetables and other plant foods and create an entirely different collection of fibres, proteins and plant compounds. The point is not to find an alternative that wins against the traditional dinner. The point is that nourishment has never depended upon everyone eating the same meal.

There is also something worth appreciating when Thanksgiving is smaller. A person spending the holiday alone may choose one beautiful meal they genuinely enjoy rather than preparing eight dishes. Two people may go for a long autumn walk and come home to dinner without spending the entire day in the kitchen. A family gathering may fill every chair in the house. Each has something the others do not, and continually comparing the day we have with the day somebody else is having can make us miss the value of our own.

That brings Thanksgiving remarkably close to the question we are exploring throughout this week's Wellness Letter: What are we giving our attention to?

When Food Becomes Ordinary, It Becomes Easier to Waste

There is another consequence of becoming accustomed to abundance that deserves attention. When food seems endlessly replaceable, wasting it becomes much easier.

A Thanksgiving table can make this particularly visible because we often prepare far more than the people sitting around it could reasonably eat. Some of that is intentional; leftovers are one of the pleasures of Thanksgiving. Turkey sandwiches the next day may be almost as traditional as the dinner itself. The problem comes when abundance is measured by how much food we can put on the table rather than how well we can use what we have.

Appreciation can change that relationship. If we begin seeing food as something that required resources, time, and work to reach us, throwing it away feels different. That doesn't mean saving food that is no longer safe to eat or forcing ourselves to eat more because we feel guilty about wasting it. It means planning a little more carefully and treating leftovers as food rather than debris from yesterday's celebration.

A portion of the meal can become tomorrow's lunch. Food that will not be eaten soon can often be frozen while it is still fresh. Appropriate bones and vegetable trimmings can become stock rather than going directly into the garbage. Three choices are enough to turn a table that produced excess into food that continues nourishing the household for several more days.

There is a practical kind of gratitude in using what we have well.

What Does the Body See When It Looks at Thanksgiving Dinner?

We look at the Thanksgiving table and see the foods we recognize. We know which stuffing is Mom's, which vegetable we hope nobody finishes before we get seconds, and which pie we have been waiting for since last October.

The body doesn't know that it is Thanksgiving.

It receives amino acids and fatty acids, carbohydrates and fibres, vitamins and minerals, water and thousands of naturally occurring compounds from the foods we eat. It takes apart what was once a potato, a cranberry, a piece of turkey or a carrot and begins deciding what can be absorbed, transformed, stored, used or passed along.

That may be one of the most remarkable parts of nutrition. We do not have to understand every biochemical process for it to happen. We eat the food, and an enormously complex living system knows what to do next.

The variety on a Thanksgiving plate therefore represents more than a colourful dinner. It represents many different materials arriving together, each contributing something different to the nutritional whole. No single vegetable has to do everything. No individual meal has to provide everything. No Thanksgiving recipe needs to earn the title of “superfood.”

The value is in the pattern, the variety, and having enough.

When Abundance Means Enough

Thanksgiving is associated with abundance, and somewhere along the way abundance can become confused with more. More dishes, more food, more dessert, more expense, and more leftovers than anyone could reasonably eat.

But abundance does not have to mean excess.

Abundance can be looking at a table and recognizing how many different foods are already there. It can be knowing that there is enough to feed the people who came through the door and enough left for tomorrow. It can be a traditional dinner made from recipes that have travelled through the family for generations, or a completely different meal made because that is what the people at this year's table wanted to eat.

There is something powerful about realizing that

Enough is not the absence of abundance. Enough is abundance recognized.

That may be one of the most fitting nutritional thoughts to carry into Thanksgiving. Before deciding that the meal needs another side dish, another dessert or a larger serving, take a moment to look at what is already there. Look at the colours and the variety. Think about where those foods began and how many hands were involved before they reached yours. Consider what your body will be able to take from them and what a privilege it is to have choices about what will go on your plate.

If your Thanksgiving includes the familiar turkey dinner and a house full of people, enjoy what has returned to your table for another year. If this year brings a smaller gathering, a different meal, or a day spent on your own, there can still be nourishment, pleasure, and abundance in what is available to you.

The Thanksgiving table does not have to be enormous to represent plenty.

Sometimes we only need to look again at what is already in front of us and recognize that we have enough.

This Week's Recipe

Maple-Mustard Pork Roast with Apples & Root Vegetables

This is not intended as a “healthier replacement” for Thanksgiving turkey. It is another autumn meal entirely, built from pork, apples, root vegetables and herbs that belong beautifully together at this time of year. It can become the centre of a smaller Thanksgiving dinner, a new family tradition or a meal worth making on an ordinary October Sunday.

Serves approximately 6

Ingredients

· 3–4 lb boneless pork loin roast

· 3 medium carrots, cut into large pieces

· 2 parsnips, cut into large pieces

· 2 apples, cored and cut into thick wedges

· 1 large onion, cut into wedges

· 3 cloves garlic, minced

· 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

· 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

· 1 tablespoon olive oil

· 1 teaspoon dried thyme, or 1 tablespoon fresh thyme

· ½ teaspoon dried sage

· Salt and freshly ground pepper

· ¾ cup apple cider or unsweetened apple juice

· ½ cup chicken or vegetable stock

Method

Heat the oven to 375°F. Place the carrots, parsnips, apples and onion in a roasting pan, toss them with the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place the pork roast in the centre of the vegetables.

Combine the Dijon mustard, maple syrup, garlic, thyme and sage, then spread the mixture over the pork. Pour the apple cider and stock into the bottom of the roasting pan, keeping most of the liquid around the roast rather than washing the glaze from the top.

Roast until the thickest part of the pork reaches an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C), then remove it from the oven and allow it to rest for at least three minutes before slicing. Depending on the size and shape of the roast, this may take approximately 60–90 minutes, so let the internal temperature rather than the clock determine when it is ready.

While the pork rests, check the vegetables and return them to the oven for a few minutes if you would like additional browning. The liquid in the roasting pan can be spooned over the sliced pork as it is, reduced on the stovetop for a stronger flavour, or thickened into a light gravy.

Serve with a green vegetable or salad. For a larger Thanksgiving table, roasted squash or mashed potatoes would fit beautifully alongside it.

For a meat-free table: the autumn flavours in this meal also work well with a lentil and root vegetable bake or a substantial stuffed squash, giving you another way to build a varied seasonal Thanksgiving meal without trying to reproduce the traditional turkey dinner.