Two Recommended Reads

James McWilliam’s Just Food: Where Locavores get it wrong and how we can truly eat responsibly

Walter Willet’s Eat Drink and Be Healthy

Another list of the healthiest foods, but this time, on the planet!

Forbes published the 12 healthiest foods on the planet! How one can pick 12, not 10 (ala spinal tap’s amp goes to 11 trickery) and decide which of these 12 are the “healthiest” is beyond scientific reasoning to me. And to make it worse, they are the usual suspects on everyone’s 10 top foods list (pomegranate, blueberries, eggs, onions, broccoli, and my favorite one of all “meat” – now that narrows it down). How many of these lists do we need? Am I healthier if I eat a grass-fed hamburger topped with a fried egg washed down with five pomegranate-infused blueberry martinis?

two scary words: swine flu

and if you are wondering why i would post this on my blog and what this has to do with food, think again…

Our pill-popping ways. but its a recession!

There was an article in the NY Times describing how vitamin sales are up with the economic downturn. With unemployment creeping up and health costs following, people are taking their health into their own hands. So why not herbs and vitamins even though people in general have no idea what they are taking and why they are taking them? One consumer “has pared back on fresh fruits and vegetables and stocked up instead on fish oil capsules and antioxidant supplements.” Now that makes a lot of sense.

What this says to me is that people don’t understand nutrition and it is not their fault. It also tells me that we are a pill-popping, self-medicating society grasping at straws. And the recession is a good excuse. That could be their fault. Why do we think that if we take a supplement every day, we will be saved from having to see the big bad doctor? And when does it become a replacement for food?

Some say organic foods and fresh foods are expensive and at times, this is true. But at times, it is actually not. Pills are not cheap – and that is why the supplement industry rakes in over 20 billion a year and there is a GNC store on every corner in America. Popping back your Centrum every day and washing it down with coca cola adds up too, and not just in the cost of your groceries but your health. Now that the economics are out of the way, my best educated guess is that a multimineral/vitamin and Echinacea will not save you from obesity, cancer, heart disease and the common flu. At least the miracle cure for these debilitating circumstances has not been found as of yet. And getting rid of fresh foods, will not save you either.

If you have to make a choice, I would choose the fresh food. And this is why. A fresh stalk of spinach, although rich in Vitamin C, has lots of other nutritive components, particularly when cooked in healthy oils. We don’t know the vast amount of benefits consuming spinach in its whole form provides, but we do know that isolating the vitamin C into a tablet form, has not proven to be a life saver either, at least not beyond the Recommended Dietary Allowance (Unless you a pirate or sailor stuck on a boat without much in the way of fresh foods, and are experiencing scurvy). I don’t think most of us have to worry about that. My question for you is: How has the human race evolved and survived these thousands of years? Much of it is hinged on food, not pills.

So if you want to stay healthy during the ‘recession’, there are some rules of nutrition and health that I don’t think anyone can argue with.

1. Exercise every day. That means rigorously.
2. Eat fruits and vegetables that are green, orange and yellow in color in the whole form every day.
3. Don’t drink soda.
4. Drink water.
5. Avoid sugar, candy bars, gummi bears, candy corn, and other strangely dyed, colorful mushy sickly sweet treats. Just don’t eat them.
6. To add on to number 5, eat food as close to its natural source as possible. Meaning, eat a steak instead of SPAM, eat whole grain bread instead of WONDER bread, eat an orange instead of gulping down an ORANGE JULIUS, drink black coffee or an espresso instead of a FRAPPUCCINO, eat a dark green leafy salad instead of GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE.
7. Consume some sort of protein every day. Beans and nuts are a good choice.
8. Enjoy your food. Think slow food. Take time to eat without checking your blackberry or glued to a TV. Everyone can take time out to just enjoy a meal. You aren’t that important and American Idol is lame.
9. Wash your hands regularly. And wash your food well.
10. Take care of your skin, teeth, and eyes. And that is easier when you are eating fresh foods…

Snacks and Glints

Forging a Hot Link to the Farmer Who Grows the Food – cool article in the Times

Raj Patel wants you to Buy Japanese or at least, live in Japan

Teenagers near fast food = obesity. And Marion Nestle has some ideas on it. And she was in the NY times last week. Go Marion.

The new Food Inc movie. Can’t see it here in Nairobi but see it if it comes to a theater near you…

And another film called “Food Fight”. It is hard to keep up these days…

Best Trattoria in Rome? Let the Debate Begin. God, how I would die to be eating this food every night. Taking slow food to the profound letter. But hell, this the origin of slowness in all its beauty.

Popkin’s View of the World. And it is fat.

Barry Popkin, one of the world’s experts on obesity and the “nutriiton transition”, and a Professor of Nutrition at the University of NC Chapel Hill, has just come out with a book called ‘The World is Fat’. I have yet to read the book but I have read many of his publications and articles. Popkin is known for bringing to light some scary realities about how obese we as a society have become – with 1.3 billion at least overweight – and the impact of obesity on our health and economic systems. Yikes. The Population Reference Bureau interviewed him here and there are some good slides that accompany his views.

Popkin describes the nutrition transition as follows:

“Large shifts have occurred in dietary and physical activity and inactivity patterns. These changes are reflected in nutritional outcomes, such as changes in average stature and body composition. Modern societies seem to be converging on a pattern of diet high in saturated fat, sugar, and refined foods and low in fiber – often termed the “Western diet.” Many see this dietary pattern to be associated with high levels of chronic and degenerative diseases and with reduced disability-free time.”

What are we going to do as a society to tackle this ever increasing prevalence of obesity? Ban softdrinks? Tax food? Whatever we do, we are in for the long haul in paying for huge medical bills of the many who will suffer from the repercussions of obesity – heart disease, diabetes, stroke and all the rest.