Your nutritional needs, fine-tuned
Consultant focuses on restorative powers of whole foods, herbs
Anne Fischer Silva, center, demonstrates how to shred the cabbage for a sauerkraut recipe she was showing to, from left, Lynne Williams of Vallejo, Pat O'Connell of Santa Rosa, Marcia Rose of Santa Rosa and Karen Phillips of Monte Rio during a cooking class.
Crista Jeremiason / PDPublished: Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 4:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 4:01 a.m.
Anne Fischer-Silva of A New Leaf Nutrition in Petaluma and Cloverdale is not a cookie-cutter nutritionist.
She doesn't wag her finger if you look at butter; she doesn't insist you replace the cream in your coffee with soy milk and she won't try to convince you that cheese, say, tastes disgusting, as one well-known North Bay diet guru popular in the 1990s famously insisted. If you attend one of her cooking classes, she might just teach you how to make simple, delicious cheeses at home.
Fischer-Silva, 55, radiates warmth and calm; she is a serene beauty, with no aura of disapproval for the pleasures of life; indeed, she is an advocate of life's pleasures, especially those that we share -- or should share -- around the table.
At any given time, Fischer-Silva's nutritional consulting service, which she founded 12 years ago in Washington state and launched locally in 2009, has about 30 active clients in various stages of healing. Two concerns, fatigue and stress, account for the motivation of most of the individuals, 90 percent of whom are women, who seek out Fischer-Silva's services.
To begin the healing process, Fischer-Silva recommends certain tests, including blood chemistry and saliva analysis. She studies the results from a nutritional vantage point, looking for those subtle issues -- hormonal imbalances, various deficiencies, blood sugar issues, intestinal infections -- that inhibit well-being.
Her approach is individual, as she understands that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to nutrition. It is a process of fine-tuning each person's unique physiology. The focus, she explains, is to find the underlying causes of dysfunction, adding that conventional medicine masks symptoms, typically without addressing causes. Fischer-Silva works with the natural nutrients of whole foods and herbs that can restore function beautifully and effectively, without side effects.
Fischer-Silva's approach to nutrition is based on how humans have eaten for centuries, until the 20th century turned nearly everything connected to feeding ourselves upside down. Before the modern world intervened, we ate whole, nutrient-dense foods that typically hadn't traveled far before they reached our tables.
Two resources inform much of the foundation of her philosophy: "Pottenger's Prophecy: How Food Resets Genes for Wellness or Illness," co-authored by her mentor Gray Graham, with whom she founded a nutritional training program in Washington state in the 1980s; and the Weston A. Price Foundation, for which she is the local chapter leader. Both the book and the organization emphasize the wisdom of traditional diets untouched by what Price, a dentist working in the early 20th century, called "the foods of modern commerce."
A growing number of nutritionists and other health professionals are embracing these traditional ways of eating, sometimes much to the initial dismay of their clients.
"When I talk about adding more fat," Fischer-Silva says, "I can see the panic in my clients' eyes."
But when clients follow her advice, she explains, they quickly start feeling satiated, mental clarity returns and they start losing weight.
It is impossible, she emphasizes, to thrive without eating healthy fats, which include duck fat, lard, coconut oil and, of course, butter. All hormones -- those that help us deal with stress, those that shape our sexuality -- are built of cholesterol, and the idea that we can have healthy hormones without fat and cholesterol is ludicrous, she says.
She asks each client to keep a food journal, which helps to see dietary habits with a bit of distance.
"We'll often address one thing at a time," she says, "so that the process is not too overwhelming."
The hardest challenge is giving up junk food, especially boxed cereals. Even if advertising heralds the health benefits, she says, all boxed cereals are processed, unhealthy foods. She urges clients to abandon vegetable oils, including canola, so often heralded as a healthy choice, in favor of those saturated animal fats we've been told to shun.
"Vegetable fats oxidize very quickly and the oxidation creates free-radicals, which in turn cause inflammation throughout the body," she explains.
"Most vegetable oils have been subjected to very high heat before they are packaged in plastic, which encourages further oxidation," she continues, "and then we heat them. Only cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil has not gone through this process. The fats I recommend have high smoke points and they do not oxidize when heated."
Changes in diet must go hand-in-hand with other lifestyle changes, she emphasizes. Addressing the underlying issues that cause stress, for example, is crucial.
"Stress is not just emotional," she says, "It can also arise from pain, a gut infection or other physical issues. And stress, in turn, causes hormone imbalance. It is fairly easy to rebalance hormones, but they will not stay rebalanced without addressing the underlying causes."
Fischer-Silva offers more than just her primary healing program. She runs a three-week group purification program, perfect for people who are reluctant to jump into a longer process. At the conclusion of the three weeks, during which time participants drink two or three shakes a day, take supplements, live on vegetables only for 10 days and add fish and chicken for the remainder of the time, people generally feel so good that they are sold on the benefits of change.
She gives free monthly lectures on nutritional topics at The Seed Bank in Petaluma, which provides an ideal opportunity to do outreach for the Weston A. Price Foundation. She teaches cooking classes, primarily in her spacious home kitchen, that focus on the preparation of traditional foods, including how to how to make sauerkraut, yogurt, simple cheeses and naturally fermented sodas. She also teaches gluten-free baking.
Anne Fischer-Silva is also a licensed holistic esthetician; she offers a range of facial skin care services.
For more information about Anne Fischer-Silva's services, visit anewleafskincare.net and anewleafnutrition.net. Contact her directly at 849-3569 or anne@anewleafnutrition.net.
Michele Anna Jordan writes four columns a week for The Press Democrat and cooks frequently with duck fat, lard and butter. E-mail Jordan at michele@micheleannajordan.com. You'll find her blog, "Eat This Now," at pantry.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.
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