Category Archives: Vancouver

Health and Wellness | The Low FODMAP Diet a Digestive Wonder

April 24, 2019Food & Health, News, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Do you suffer from the occasional bout of gastro-intestinal distress? Most people do, and at best find it to be uncomfortable and discomfiting.
At times, that gastro-intestinal distress can flare up to such an extent, a person becomes bed-ridden, as was woefully the case in February and March with VanRamblings, in the process gravely depleting one’s energy.
Some years back, research scientists at Melbourne, Australia’s Monash University developed an eating regimen called the “low FODMAP diet”. Simply eliminating and reducing specific, high FODMAP foods proved to be such a salutary resolution to the alleviation of gastro-intestinal distress in patients with digestive disorders that many years later, the low FODMAP diet has become the default treatment for most digestive disorders.

High FODMAP foods are not well tolerated by most people’s digestive system, and should certainly not be consumed by persons who suffer with digestive disorders, whereas low FODMAP foods are well tolerated, lessening or even eliminating gastrointestinal distress

FODMAP is an acronym that stands for Fermentable Oligosaccharides Disaccharides Monosaccharides and Polyols.
In plain language?
FODMAPs are specific carbohydrates that are poorly digested by the vast majority of people (that’s you and me). Since these foods are not absorbed by the body, these short chain, sugar-laden carbohydrates travel through the digestive tract where they become fermented, resulting in painful gastro-intestinal distress, severe lower abdominal pain and discomfort, bloating, inflammation and a range of bacterial disorders that cause severe gastric distress in a person’s digestive system, more often than not resulting in discomfiting stomach cramps, bloating and problems with a person’s elimination system. In other words, not a lot of fun.
Twenty years ago, at the strong suggestion of our family physician, we eliminated dairy from our diet (probiotic lactose free yogurt, and Daiya coconut cream yogurt are just fine, though). Brad, our doc for the past 36 years, has also long been on our case to eliminate wheat from our diet — which we’ve now done, fortuitously and much to the benefit of our health.
We’re now consuming products, and baking and cooking at home with foods made with buckwheat (there’s no wheat in it!), brown rice, tapioca, almond and other non-wheat flours. We made a great, fluffy Strawberry Cinnamon Dutch Baby (with organic brown rice flour, eggs, raw turbinado sugar, and almond milk) yesterday morning for breakfast — mmmm, good.

Here’s a pdf of the definitive list of low and high FODMAP foods.
A month ago, VanRamblings had never heard of the low FODMAP diet (you’ll want to watch the Monash University produced video available in the preceding link). Fortunately, VanRamblings’ friend (and saviour, as it happens) Maureen Bayless — we’ll be writing much about Maureen in the months to come, given her pivotal role in seeing us through our seven month cancer journey back in late 2016 and early 2017 (quite simply, we wouldn’t be here without her) — came to our rescue with information on and a suggestion to adopt the low FODMAP diet (which had worked wonders for friends of hers, she said), and one month later, our energy has returned and the symptoms of our digestive disorder have been reduced by 80%; most days, anyway. We really are feeling much, much better.

All and all, the low FODMAP diet has been a snap to adopt, resulting in little change to our daily eating habits. Oatmeal — love it, and that’s still on the menu. Peanut butter on rice cakes. Almond milk rice pudding made in our Instant Pot (which, by the way, is on sale for half price at Best Buy this week, with the sale ending tomorrow, so you’ll want to rush right out to acquire this must, must, must, must have kitchen appliance).

The latest 10-function (with sous vide!) Instant Pot on sale at Best Buy til Thursday

Cantaloupe, pineapple, strawberries (organic, of course, cuz non-organic strawberries are at the top of the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list of pesticide-ridden, cancerous foods), blueberries and every other berry, save blackberries, are also on the approved low FODMAP list.
There are a great many low FODMAP beverages that are readily available. Lots of approved low FODMAP sweeteners are also on the list.
SPUD.ca have hundreds of gluten free / low FODMAP foods available. Save On Foods carries dozens of gluten free products, and has in fact dedicated a whole long aisle and refrigeration case to gluten free and low FODMAP foods. The same is true for Real Canadian Superstore, and most bulk food stores (for years, we’ve visited regularly at Kitsilano Natural Foods, now located at 1st Avenue and Yew, open 365 days a year, with a friendly staff).
We sorta miss apples, and have found a way to get around not being able to eat garlic (which we love!) and onions — most recipes that require garlic and onions also require oil, so we just cook the garlic and onions in the oil, infusing the oil with the taste we love, then remove these allium foods. It’s a small price to pay to not eat celery, cauliflower, and some mushrooms — when, in fact, if one is careful, one can eat small amounts of each of these foods, including wheat-based foods (but only one slice of bread a day).
Still, long term use of the low FODMAP diet is not recommended, even by those who developed the diet at Monash University, and as you’ll read in the article by respected holistic nutritionist, Julie Daniluk.
In fact, Monash University scientists make changes to their recommended list of low FODMAP foods weekly, while suggesting that one acquire their low FODMAP app to stay on top of their latest findings, and as a helpful and necessary aid when out grocery shopping.
Their scientists also recommend adding back high FODMAP foods, one by one, after 8 weeks on the diet to determine their impact on your health.
Monash University scientists are also big proponents of adopting a vegan diet, and eliminating sugars, as Ms. Daniluk recommends. As a supplement to the low FODMAP diet, VanRamblings’ doc also recommends a regimen of Align Probiotic, should one’s digestive disorder rear its ugly head.
So that’s what been happening on the health front in VanRamblings’ life since the beginning of the year. Fortunately, we’re now feeling much better, and as we’ve written earlier, as long as our health holds out — and we’re doing pretty darn good, we think — our intention is to continue to publish daily on VanRamblings through the end of June, more sporadically in the summer, while ramping up our federal election coverage full steam ahead throughout the months of September and October, until year’s end.

2019: The Year of Living Ferociously | Fight Back!

January 22, 2019#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Broadview Co-op, Canada, Politics, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

ferocious
Definition: a raging of the soul, living with fierceness, determination, gravity, deliberate intention and intensity.

And so it will be in 2019, a year of progressive change unlike any other in a generation, across Canada, in British Columbia, in our little burgh by the sea, in the United States, across Europe and across the globe.
Make no mistake, though, necessary progressive change for the better will not come should we fail to band together to fight the forces of regression.

Justin Trudeau has said that the 2019 federal election will be the ugliest in Canadian history. Make no mistake, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer will make it so — aided by Maxime Bernier, the leader of the so-called People’s Party of Canada, who will force the Conservatives further to the right — focusing as former Prime Minister Stephen Harper did on “fear of the other”, as Trump has done in the United States, demonizing the Muslim population and “illegal immigrants”. According to a recent Angus Reid poll, two-thirds of Canadians believe the influx of asylum seekers into Canada is a “crisis”, with 84% of Canadians who voted for the Conservative Party of Canada of the belief that “there are too many people claiming asylum and that Canada is ‘too generous’ toward them;”
In British Columbia, voting in the Nanaimo by-election to replace former BC NDP MLA Leonard Krog (who was elected Mayor of Nanaimo this past November) starts today. In late January, it’s a neck-and-neck race, with B.C Liberal candidate Tony Harris focusing on the botched roll-out of the government’s Speculation and Vacancy Tax, which forces every British Columbia homeowner to register their home with the government — failure to do so could result in a payout of thousands of dollars for unsuspecting, unregistered homeowners. If Harris wins, we’re looking at a late winter / early spring B.C. election, which bodes ill for any progressively-minded British Columbian & a return to the bad old days;
In Vancouver, we’re sitting pretty, with a largely progressive City Council (notice the number of unanimous or near-unanimous progressive votes — on transit, affordable housing, 58 West Hastings, a renter’s office, our current climate emergency, and much, much more). The success of our City Council, though, is almost wholly dependent on a federal Liberal government, complemented by a provincial NDP government — which, for instance, have set aside $52 billion dollars on the affordable housing file alone, monies which would most assuredly be withdrawn by a right-of-centre / “the market is always right” do-nothing Conservative government, and their B.C. kin, Andrew Wilkinson and the B.C. Liberals.

Closer to home for me will be the fight in which I engage throughout 2019 against the forces of repression, intolerance, despotism, racism, homo-and-transphobia and hatred of “the other” that has defined that portion of my life, resident in the housing co-operative where I have dwelled for 35 years.
2019 is the year to fight back, to demand better, to organize, to recognize that — as is evident in the time of Trump across the United States, and across Europe — that in 2019 all of us are in for the fight of our lives.

Christmas to New Year’s The Busiest Film Week of the Year

December 24, 2018A & E, Cinema, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

The week of Christmas to New Year’s is the biggest box office film week of the year. More people go to the movies on Christmas Day through New Year’s Eve than attend films in the entire months of April and September.
In that one week last year, box office topped $500 million dollars, every seat was sold out, the line-ups were long, and chances are that if you didn’t purchase your ticket online in advance, you weren’t going to find a seat in the theatre for the movie you wanted to see. Count on the same in 2018.
The question remains, what to go and see at the theatre? Many people rely on Rotten Tomatoes, the film critic review aggregation site, although many others prefer MetaCritic, given that the site features only the most erudite, professional and trusted film critics on their better curated aggregation site.

Rotten Tomatoes: Top Movies on the Weekend Before Christmas 2018

Box office on the weekend before Christmas looked like this …

Okay, okay, enough of this folderol. Time to get on with why you’re here perusing VanRamblings today. Let’s start with …

Currently sitting at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, the latest film from 2018 Best Picture Oscar award winner (Moonlight), Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk, here’s what The Telegraph’s lead film critic Tim Robey has to say: “If proof were needed that Barry Jenkins’s directing achievement was far from a one-off, it pulses and dances through every sequence of his follow-up, If Beale Street Could Talk, in all its gorgeous romantic melancholy and sublimated outrage.” Opens Christmas Day.

Although reviews for the new film from Adam McKay (The Big Short) are decidedly mixed, with a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, USA Today’s Brian Truitt writes about Vice, “Exquisitely crafted … It’s a strange little amalgamation that totally works: a vicious Shakespearean satire about power-hungry mind-sets, stealth corruption, American ambition and the current state of divided affairs in America, but also a quasi-fictional go-for-broke biopic about a political leader we really don’t know at all.”
Lots of Oscar buzz, though, most particularly for Christian Bale and Amy Adams, and even if it’s revisionist history — painting a far too rosy picture of the Bush administration — the film looks like fun. In the era of Trump, we need all the fun we can get. In this case, Vice may be just the ticket.

Here’s what the critics have to say about Bumblebee …

Bumblebee is, again and easily, the best Transformers movie released to date. Heck, it’s probably the only genuinely good Transformers movie, with nary a caveat to be found. But it’s also a lively and earnest 1980s nostalgia trip, made with affection for the era and its characters and its soundtracks and its storytelling styles and, yes, even its toys.

What Bumblebee does best is remember that this is a franchise for the young, and embrace that fact without any shame while also still delivering on the action. There’s no self-importance, no grafting of ultra-patriotism and too-dense mythology onto what should be a simple narrative.

There’s a lot to like here, particularly Hailee Steinfeld’s performance.

Box office the weekend before Christmas doesn’t presage how a movie will do Christmas week: here’s betting that Bumblebee triumphs. Doesn’t really matter, though: Bumblebee’s foreign box office will easy double or triple the domestic, North American box office. Bumblebee seems recommendable.

With Shoplifters, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s enchanting, subversive masterpiece takes on family values & bourgeois pieties through a Japanese crime family that is not what it seems, proving that Tolstoy got it wrong and Shoplifters gets it right. All happy families are not the same. Winner of the Palme d’or at Cannes this year, probable Best Foreign Language Oscar winner, currently playing at Cineplex International Village.
Note should be made that with Shoplifters, Kore-eda works in a beautiful register that feels both detailed and genuine at the same time, allowing us to get to know these characters so deeply that it is heart-wrenching, the film wise and insightful always, delicate, modest, skillful, compassionate, piercingly intelligent, poignant, memorable, and unexpectedly powerful.

Now, I’ve already written about the Best of 2018 at the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Vancity Theatre, the comfiest, friendliest and most welcoming cinema in Vancouver, this superlative year-end series programmed by the peerless Tom Charity. The 10 films in the series start their run on Wednesday, December 27th, and concludes eight glorious days later on Thursday, January 3rd. Not to be missed. See ya at the Vancity.
For more info on VIFF’s Best of 2018 series just click on the links.

And, oh yeah — don’t forget: Alfonso Cuarón’s probable Best Picture Oscar winner, Roma, continues to play to sold-out houses each day, exclusively at the Vancity Theatre. Gorgeous and moving, and also not to be missed.

And, finally, there’s this, an amalgam of films screening around Vancouver, or set to come to the Vancity, or opening near you, during the course of the next month, including a few Best Foreign Language Oscar nominees.

Arts Friday | Best Cinema of 2018 | VanCity Theatre

December 7, 2018A & E, Cinema, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

As occurs each December, Tom Charity — one of the kindest, most thoughtful and erudite men of our acquaintance, a great lover of film and who, as it happens, has long acted as the absolutely superb programmer of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s year-round Festival cinema venue, the Vancity Theatre, once again, this year, for your edification, enjoyment and just plain delight presents the Best of 2018, one time only, year-end, must-see screenings of the very best 2018 cinema had on offer.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, Thursday, Dec. 27th, 8pm, Vancity Theatre.

Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times arts critic, writes, “Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” casts a remarkable spell; it wraps around you, like a delicately scented cashmere shawl woven from music and color and astonishing faces.” Absurdly pleasurable to watch and to listen to, with its effortless display of poise, as Chicago Sun-Times film critic Richard Roeper writes, “Anderson shoots and paces Phantom Thread almost like a 1950s mystery, and there ARE some dark elements of intrigue in the story — but this is not a Hitchcockian tale of lust and betrayal and murder. It’s a fascinating examination of an obsessive-compulsive, maddeningly self-centered, magnificently talented man.” Captivating, unsettling, entrancing.

Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, Friday, December 28th, 8pm, at the Vancity Theatre.

Here’s what we wrote about Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace last Friday …

Far and away the strongest and most affecting independent film of 2018, director Debra Granik’s first outing since 2010’s multiple Oscar award nominee, Winter’s Bone (in which Jennifer Lawrence made her début, gaining a Best Actress Oscar nomination), Leave No Trace tracks a father and daughter living precariously off the grid, introducing us to an incandescent 17-year-old Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, who lives a tranquil life sheltered with her loving, PTSD suffering father, Ben Foster, in an urban Oregon woodland, in perfect harmony with one another, despite all. Uncompromising, authentic, raw, heartbreaking, brilliant, haunting, full of grace, and riveting throughout, Leave No Trace is a multiple Gotham & Indie Spirit Award nominee — including Best Actor, Supporting Actress, Director and Feature — and a must-see Best of 2018 film screening.

This past week, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie was designated as the National Board of Review’s Breakthrough Performance award winner!

Make sure you catch The Death of Stalin on Saturday, Dec. 29th, 8pm, Vancity Theatre.

This past spring, recently-elected Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick and her husband, renowned actor Garry Chalk, caught a screening of Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin at the Fifth Avenue Cinema, and came out of the theatre raving about the film to all who would listen. High praise, indeed, from persons of conscience in our community who cherish film as the critically important art form of our age.
Says New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis, “The Death of Stalin is by turns entertaining and unsettling, with laughs that morph into gasps and uneasy gasps that erupt into queasy, choking laughs,” Iannucci’s take-no-prisoners directorial style perfect for this blackest of farces, political satire of the first order, and a farcical, frightening and a timely reminder that things could always be worse — which in the time of Trump is going some.

Part of a double bill, Mandy on Saturday, December 29th, 10:10pm, Vancity Theatre.

Says CineVue’s Tom Duggins, “Mandy is not just hideous, hilarious and thrilling — although, it’s all of those and then some — it’s also a meditation on personal grief which loses no poignancy for all its blood-soaked insanity and eye-melting psychedelia.” Not enough praise?
Try this, from the Austin Chronicle’s Marc Savlov, “Mandy, though, is flat-out orders of magnitude a more emotionally adept and shockingly powerful film in virtually every department, from the dazzlingly insane cinematography and lysergically-inclined production design to what I can only believe is Nicolas Cage’s single best performance to date.”

Multiple award winner, Foxtrot, on Sunday, December 30th, 8pm, at the Vancity Theatre.

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 74th annual Venice Film Festival, says the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday, “Samuel Maoz’s award-winning Israeli film is graced by superb performances, especially from Lior Ashkenazi and Sarah Adler, this gentle, dreamlike but admirably process film offers a devastating portrait that bursts with integrity and tough honesty, even in its most lighthearted moments,” and as the Los Angeles Times’ lead film critic Kenneth Turan writes in his review of Foxtrot, “An intricate, dazzling cinematic dance, Foxtrot goes both deeper in and further out than standard-issue cinema. It’s profound and moving and wild and crazy at the same time, simultaneously telling a specific story and offering an emotional snapshot of a country whose very soul seems to be at risk.”

Paddington 2, on Monday, December 31st at noon (New Year’s Eve!), Vancity Theatre.

Probably the most enthusiastically reviewed film of 2018 — and this from a usually cynical crowd of film critics — here’s just a bit of what’s been written about Paddington 2: “An exquisite reminder of the wondrous things that can happen when a storyteller of boundless imagination avails himself of some rigorous discipline (Justin Chang, L.A. Times); and from Time Out London film critic, Helen O’Hara, “It’s a family adventure that’s the right sort of heartwarming, delivering real human emotion through the medium of a small bear.” Others have written about Paddington 2: exemplary, beguiling, enchanting, whimsical, heartfelt, humane, delightful, heartwarming, and “a sequel that surpasses the superb original.”

First Reformed, on Tuesday, January 1st at 7:45pm (New Year’s Day!), Vancity Theatre.

Perhaps the best reviewed art film of 2018, a comeback film for Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver), winner of the prestigious New York Film Critics Circle & Gotham Awards for Best Actor for Ethan Hawke — the prohibitive favourite for a Best Actor Oscar — as well as Best Screenplay for Schrader with both critics’ organizations, critic Godfrey Chesire writing, “A stunning, enrapturing film, a crowning work by one of the American cinema’s most essential artists,” while Roger Moore in Movie Nation writes, “A powerful, disturbing crisis of faith drama that takes on the raiments of a thriller, and a tour de force for the understated acting of Ethan Hawke.” Not to be missed.

Edge of the Knife (Sgaawaay K’uuna), on Tuesday, January 1st at 10pm, Vancity Theatre.

The first feature film to be spoken entirely in the Haida language, Sgaawaay K’uuna is based on a popular Haida legend, Gaagiid/Gaagiixiid (Wildman), the 19th century set film relating the tale of two families who gather together for their annual Haida Gwaii fishing camp.
A man, Adiits’ii (Tyler York), flees into a forest and transforms into a Gaagiid/Gaagiixiid (Wildman) after experiencing a tragedy. Throughout, Sgaawaay K’uuna offers mythic, human scale storytelling, where every life is sacred and no one is beyond redemption, as riveting a tale of survival and forgiveness as you’ll see this year, or any other year.
Sgaaway K’uuna, or Edge of the Knife is derived from the Haida saying: ‘The world is as sharp as the edge of a knife; as you go along, you have to be careful or you will fall off one side or the other.’

Sorry to Bother You, on Wednesday, January 2nd at 8:25pm, at the Vancity Theatre.

One the best reviewed comedies of the summer of 2018, Sorry to Bother You offers a roiling mix of wry race comedy, economy-grade dystopian speculative fiction, and inspired/demented midnight-movie Silicon Valley satire — it’s also as funny and as caustic as hell. Oh, and did we say that Boots Riley’s début feature film is also a welcome hand grenade of subversive power that is all at once incendiary, hilarious, alarming, anti-capitalist, infectious, absurdist and provocative? Gosh, I think we just did.

Support the Girls, on Thursday, January 3rd at 8:25pm, at the Vancity Theatre.

Saving the best for last, writer-director Andrew Bujalski’s heart-of-gold film offers a fresh perspective on the lives of marginalized people, in a story about sex, race, class, and age, all without ever coming off as preachy or lecturing, even given its winking/earnest double entendre of a title.
Here’s what respected film critic John Anderson had to say in the Wall Street Journal …

The unlikely, bittersweet, bristling comedy Support the Girls is easily one of the best films of the year, and the most sympathetic to women, despite having been made by a man. How can this be? Luckily, Andrew Bujalski’s remarkable movie — with its killer performance by Regina Hall (who just won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, and is a lock for a Best Actress Oscar nod) is not just about women. It’s about men being idiots. And no one is arguing ownership of that narrative.

Humble, restrained, breezy, heartwarming, never hectoring, delicate, cogent, tender, tough, empathetic, controlled, victorious, tumultuous, brilliant, bracing & utterly phenomenal, you need to see Support the Girls.