When your dad is Dr. Jozef Krop you grow up immersed in understanding and doing what makes you healthy. If I wasn’t my dad’s daughter – I don’t know if I would have come to know the basic principles of health so easily.
I’m healthy because we lived the principles of environmental health growing up. So let me share what that is – so you can have the same benefits.
- No sugar. My dad was super strict about this. We were the family of no dessert. My grandma thought this was crazy and would sneak kitkats in her purse for us to rummage though. But generally on a day to day basis – we did not eat sweets of any kind. We never drank pop. Mixing watered down cranberry juice with orange juice was considered a treat. We drank water or herbal tea.
- No Junk food. Snacks were apples or celery. My mom would cut an apple to look like a sunshine. I’m still partial to cutting my apples like this today. It’s not that we didn’t eat junk food or sugary things when we were at friends’ houses or kids’ birthday parties – we did. But at home that food was just not kept in the house at all.
- No white bread. We ate the German style rye bread. We were not gluten free at that point in time, but I don’t remember eating a lot of bread in general.
- No scented products. That meant no air fresheners. No perfume. No scented lotions. No scented cleaners. No scented laundry products. It was a bit tough to navigate the perfume craze as a teen with this restriction – but I knew that perfume gave me bad headaches and brain fog – so it was not that hard to stick to this. I can only imagine what meds I’d be on had I not known the cause of my headaches.
- No Toxic Exposure. My dad would petition the school to not paint during the school year (wait till summer) so that students (all children – not just us) would not be exposed to harmful fumes. He railed against the use of smelly markers in class. He brought flyers about pesticide dangers to our neighbours who sprayed their lawns. Before my parents implemented whole house water filtration, my dad would specially fill the baby tub with filtered drinking water to bathe the babies. Our home always had an extra air filter on the furnace. We were already toxin-free but my dad still filtered the air because outdoor toxins come indoors.
Anytime we got furniture, or clothes or toys – they’d go through the smell check. If they were at all stinky with chemicals (and most of them were) – they’d immediately be washed or off-gassed or sealed. To this day I still use a toxin-free sealant on all my furniture so I don’t get off-gassing in my home.
When I was looking for my first off-campus housing in college the first thing my dad told me was, “Make sure the house is mold-free and safe – use your nose!”
If we were around some toxic fumes – like driving behind a stinky car, or driving my a farm that was being sprayed with pesticides, or smelling diesel fumes when on a plane – my parents would give us lots of Vitamin C or Alka Seltzer to counter the toxicity. Some moms keep gum in their purse – mine kept AlkaSeltzer.
6. We ate according to the Rotation Diet. Basically all foods are divided into 4 days’ worth of groupings. It is a rotation of foods meant to prevent food sensitivities from forming. Our favourite day was “beef” day – that was spaghetti, meatballs, cheese, sauce was on the menu. “Fish” day was not so popular and I admire my mom for concocting lunches we’d actually be able to eat school without garnering too much attention for our weird food.
I don’t remember taking many supplements as a kid – except when the we’d start to get the flu – our family remedy is: oregano oil, loads of vitamin C, loads of vitamin D, zinc, garlic, magnesium, vitamin A – as soon as you feel a tickle in your throat. I think I get a bad flu maybe once every 4 years. I have never gotten the flu shot. If we were sick, my dad would chase us around the house to get a throat swab – because he needed to check if it was something bacterial or not to prevent the use of unnecessary antibiotics.
If anyone of us had a bad mood – acting out, being moody – the first thing my parent would ask was – “What did you eat? Have you been exposed to?” It made us aware of the impact foods and toxins have on our health – which included symptoms like headaches, rages, and crying spells. When I was a teacher from 2000-2010 I would see so many kids who’d act out. Screaming and kicking. When you have lunchroom duty you see what kids are eating – a lot of it is processed, sugary foods. You smell the fabric softener on their clothes or the perfumey scent of their personal care products. It always upset me because some slight changes – no sugar, no junk, no scents – could have a profound impact on improving these kids behaviour – because it wasn’t their behavior that was the problem – it was the neurotoxic effect of foods and chemicals. It was sad because it didn’t have to be that way – but environmentally aware way of living is out of most people’s paradigm and certainly not on the radar of the school behaviour assessment committees.
I really think my good health as an adult is 100% because of my dad implementing these healthy living principles as part of our family life. It’s not that hard to do. The environment we create to live in is the single most important thing we can do for being and staying healthy.
🙂 Joanna