Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet

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Tomatoes as nature intended them

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  • Posted on June 15, 2012
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Tomato lovers rave about the lively, distinct taste of genuine fresh tomatoes, which they say is infinitely superior to the hard round red billiard balls you can get at the supermarket any time of year. I can’t vouch for this, not being a raw tomato fan, but there isn’t much debate that conventional tomatoes are hard and tasteless. Here’s what author Barry Estabook said in his 2011 book Tomatoland:

“Perhaps our taste buds are trying to send us a message. Today’s industrial tomatoes are as bereft of nutrition as they are of flavor. According to analyses conducted by the U.S. Department of Agricul­ture, 100 grams of fresh tomato today has 30 percent less Vitamin C, 30 percent less thiamin, 19 percent less niacin, and 62 percent less calcium than it did in the 1960s. But the modern tomato does shame its 1960s counterpart in one area: It contains fourteen times as much sodium.”

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we’re blessed to be near the Central Valley, one of the world’s great breadbaskets. We also have lots of small farms and urban farmers, so those juicy red tomatoes are not too hard to find here. Farmers’ markets can be found in Berkeley, San Francisco, Walnut Creek, Moraga, San Rafael – go here to find one near you. The newest one opened this week in Lafayette.

You can always GROW tomatoes, as they are very forgiving and brown-thumb-friendly. Even a single potted plant can, with minimal human intervention, provide those tasty red tomatoes that are so prized.


Farmers’ markets – sustainable in 3 ways

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  • Posted on June 7, 2012
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Farmers’ markets have grown explosively in the last decade, now amounting to 7,125 nationwide – and that’s just the ones that the USDA is tracking!

What makes them so valuable?  First, you’re buying (usually) directly from small growers themselves, supporting enterprises separate from the gigantic agribusiness industry. This helps us maintain a sliver of independence from the corporations that are responsible for cheap food that harms the planet with monoculture, pesticides, antibiotics – you know the drill.  Second, you can find certified organic produce – and we know how important that is for health of person and planet!  Third, less packaging and less fuel to transport the goods from farm to your kitchen.

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The social benefits are extra. You can meet the people who grow your food, run into your neighbors and make new friends, hear live music (in some locations), purchase prepared meals, and give kids a chance to learn about fresh, healthy food.

The newest one opens this Sunday morning (9 am – 1 pm) in Lafayette (Contra Costa County) in the BART parking lot. Sustainable Lafayette tells us, “The new “year-round” market will feature roughly 60 vendors, and will offer fresh produce, lots of organic items, specialty foods, baked goods, Blue Bottle Coffee, fresh-cut flowers, a pizza oven, freshly prepared crepes and much more. Live music and hand-crafted art will round out the shopping experience.”


Mega-soda ban in New York

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  • Posted on June 1, 2012
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You probably heard that on Wednesday, New York City announced that it would enact a ban on the sale of huge sodas (and some other sugar-heavy drinks) at some public places, namely movie theatres, restaurants, and street vending carts. The Center for Science in the Public Interest applauded the move.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The outcry has been deafening. You can read some of the “comments” appended to the New York Times story here. And as you can imagine, the sugary drinks industry is complaining.

Until recently, I personally have guzzled hundreds of gallons of caffeine-laden colas, some with sugar and some with equally perilous artificial sweeteners, so I think I can offer a somewhat balanced view. Let’s look at three facts:

  •  The obesity epidemic is dangerous to the health of individuals and to the future of our nation’s health care system. (we spend $14 billion a YEAR on obesity-related diseases such as diabetes).
  • Sugary drinks have empty calories.
  • People often don’t do what’s in their own best interest.

It’s the last one that starts the heated discussions. On a radio talk show Wednesday, I heard nutrition expert Liz Applegate criticize the move, saying that it’s a question of personal responsibility. Well, she has an impressive resume, but the “personal responsibility” line is exactly what all the makers of dangerous things (cigarettes, guns, pink slime burgers) say when threatened by attempts to curb their freedom to sell their products.

Two years ago, San Francisco banned the sale of sugary sodas in vending machines on city property. Somehow, the sky did not fall.

As a psychologist specializing in eating disorders for 25 years, I saw first-hand how people struggle to make good on their intentions to be healthy. And that doesn’t even count the people who aren’t even trying to eat healthily. As an academic who has published journal articles on obesity and read the research, I’m alarmed by the danger to our country.

What do you think? Obesity costs YOU in the form of your health insurance premiums, even if you aren’t overweight or obese. Should this ban proceed?


Fun with food

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  • Posted on May 12, 2012
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Diversity in our food choices is a good thing. As I wrote in my book,

“The Earth provides an astounding variety of edible life forms. Do you know what a red daikon is? (A delicious mild radish). Have you ever heard of feijoa? (A fruit, also called pineapple guava). Not so long ago, kiwis were unknown in America, and now they are familiar fruits. Many other foods are just waiting to reach your table.  Yet we’re putting all our eggs in a few genetic baskets. Three quarters of the world’s calories consumed by humans come from seven crops (wheat, rice, corn, potato, barley, cassava, and sorghum). The genetic diversity of even these few crops is rapidly disappearing, as their native habitats are being destroyed and fewer varieties of each species are being cultivated.”

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Choosing a wide variety of foods is good for you. The vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other nutrients we need are best consumed from food, not pills, since we evolved to eat things in the combinations that nature gives us. Science, on the other hand, operates by eliminating as many variables as possible in order to identify if factor X caused condition Y. That works in many situations (such as tracing the source of a food poisoning outbreak) but not always with regard to diet. That’s one reason we get so much conflicting health advice!

All this is to introduce today’s fun topic, food varieties. Did you know that there are over 4,000 edible varieties of potato? Most of these are found in the Andes Mountain areas of South America. The one pictured here isn’t an unusual variety, just an odd shape. If you’ve ever grown food, you’ll know that not everything is perfect in shape and color. Here’s a link to some really fun and beautiful oddball apple, eggplant, bell pepper, and other familiar fruits and vegetables. The other photos are of beautiful or unusual fruits and vegetables that I discovered while writing about food diversity. So liven up your plate and your palate by finding and buying some new foods.

Where to find them? In Berkeley, where I used to work, there’s the Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market. Please add to the comments and tell us some other places you find wild and exciting foods.


The Green Foodprint: Finalist in Next Generation Indie Book Awards!

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  • Posted on May 9, 2012
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The Green Foodprint: Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet was named a Finalist in the Science/Nature/Environment category for the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. The Next Generation Indie Book Awards is the largest Not–for-profit book awards program for indie authors and independent publishers whose purpose is to “recognize and honor the most exceptional independently published books”.

Wondering what The Green Foodprint is all about?

Click below to read the first chapter of The Green Foodprint, and learn how you can help save the earth with your food choices.

 Book Sample: The Green Foodprint

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Reducing food waste

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  • Posted on May 5, 2012
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You’ve heard that in nature, there’s no such thing as waste. Yet in America, the amount of food that we waste every year is staggering. A study found that we waste millions of tons of food a year — 29% of all we produce – at many points, from farm, to packer, to store, to table.

Given that there are so many hungry people in this country, that’s a tragic loss. But the study pointed out another consequence that I hadn’t thought of before: the entire life cycle of growing, packaging, transporting, and disposing of all this waste produces 2% of our greenhouse gas emissions, over a hundred million tons of carbon dioxide a year. Meanwhile, a staffer for the Natural Resources Defense Council found that the average American family of four loses up to $175 a month in wasted food, and included some interesting charts she gleaned from the report mentioned in the first paragraph.

We can stop this waste and eat healthily and creatively. An article with the provocative title “That’s Not Trash, That’s Dinner”  gave several ideas for using those thick broccoli stalks: peel and chop them to make soup, or shred them to put into broccoli slaw, or shave them and top with lemon zest and Parmesan cheese.

What you can do:

  • If you buy a new or special ingredient on impulse (and that’s not a bad thing, since diversity in diet is good for us and for the earth), be sure to use it right away.
  • Enjoy leftovers. This is your chance to learn new recipes, or put on your creative hat and invent something original. My own theory is that some of our favorite dishes evolved from the combination of leftovers and necessity.
  • Compost the scraps that aren’t salvageable (heavy cauliflower leaves and stalks, for instance, and the odd bits you scrape off your plate after dining). Once you see the beautiful black rich soil that food scraps turn into in the compost bin, you’ll be amazed you ever thought of food scraps as garbage.

Or you could check out The Green Foodprint, which I published last year (2011).


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