According to the Vitamin and Supplement guide:

Can you get enough vitamin D from sunlight alone to avoid vitamin D deficiency symptoms?
If you live north of 40 degrees north latitude (about the latitude of New York City) or south of 40 degrees south latitude (about the latitude of Wellington, New Zealand), for at least half of the year, you can’t.
In Boston, Massachusetts, for instance, there is insufficient ultraviolet radiation in the sunlight for skin to make adequate amounts of vitamin D from early November to early March. On the South Island of New Zealand, vitamin D deficiency is a real risk from early May to early September. In Calgary, Alberta, residents don’t get enough vitamin D even if they get daily sun exposure from October until nearly April. And in northern Europe, Alaska, and Russia, the problem is even worse.

Go ahead and do a Google search on Vitamin D and you’ll notice a lot of new research that points to D being important on a number of levels and indications that it can help safeguard against many maladies (fatigue, chronic pain, cancer, MS, obesity, stroke, etc.) can be found all over the net.

All that said, I am taking supplements because I went to a doctor and was tested and prescribed 5,000 IU, daily. DO NOT take my word for it, especially if you’re on any medication. However, if you find yourself down in the dumps, getting frequent colds or just want to make sure you’re as healthy as you can be, go to your doctor and get your vitamin D levels checked. I’ve only been on the D for a few days and I’ll let you know how I feel in a couple of weeks!

Laissez les bon temps roullez!

First of all, let me welcome you to our new blog, Eating is Fundamental or EiF, for short. Eugene Hernandez and I met almost 17 years ago at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, setting off a long friendship and a sewing the seeds of what would become indieWIRE.com, the groundbreaking independent film publication. Nine years after indieWIRE and I parted ways, I’m happy to say Eug and I have found another joint passion to indulge: food. Where it comes from, where to eat it and how to cook it. In the coming weeks, months and hopefully years, Eugene and I, along with what we hope will be an ever growing group of writers, chefs, farmers and restauranteurs will endeavor to bring you varying perspectives on the world of food and the food of the world.

Eug will tell (or has told, depending on what order you’re reading these intro posts) you of his particular passions and reasons for starting EiF but for me this is a long time coming. My love for cooking and eating and experiencing food began, as is often the case, at home. My  mother was an excellent cook and lover of all sorts of ethnic cuisine while dad was far more of the latter than the former (although he was a master of breakfast). I, however, was a picky fucker. My steak had to be well done because I didn’t like the pink stuff in the middle (but, paradoxically, I had no problem mopping up the juices flowing from their medium rare steak with my dinner rolls). I liked spaghetti but not linguini, liked clams but hated scallops and most eggplant still gives me the willies as do roasted peppers and most offal, but I’m learning to like new things and I hope our blog will help you to expand your palates, as well.

All that said, this past year has been one of tremendous change for me. In March, 16 months after he passed away, my father’s estate was finally settled and I sold and moved out of the apartment that I had called home, off and on, for more than 30 years. I rented a car and went on a 9 week, 7,200+ mile road trip around the south, visiting, among other places, Memphis (twice), New Orleans (twice), Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama; Oxford, Mississippi and Charleston, South Carolina. Food meccas all, even though some may be more familiar to you than others.

I am a committed omnivore (who once went 18 years without eating red meat…I call them the dark years) who has recently taken a serious interest in sustainable farming, aquaculture and livestock raising and the Slow Food, Locavore and Farm to Table movements that are, with varying success, gaining footholds in communities around the country. So much of our food supply is tainted either at the source, in the processing or both, that we are becoming less and less healthy and putting ourselves at risk, every time we go to the supermarket. That said, it’s really not very difficult to eat well, even if you don’t cook and I hope we can do something about helping you down the path to eating safely and well. Of course that’s not to say I won’t wax rhapsodic about the joys of a Devil Dog and a cold glass of milk from time to time!

Eug and I also have the travel bug, as do some of the other contributors who you’ll meet along the way and so we will, from time to time, be posting from some far-flung corner of the world, bringing you the tastiest eats and drinks from around the world.

I hope you enjoy the blog!