Food Choices for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet

All posts tagged health


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?


Restaurant discovery in Dunsmuir

In Food, Food to Try, Recommended Company, Uncategorized, Useful tools,
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  • Posted on May 27, 2012
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On a trip north to Lassen and Shasta, I discovered a brand-new little restaurant that was amazingly sophisticated for its out-of-the-way location. Dunsmuir is a tiny town (population about 2,000) on state route 5 near Redding, with railroad tracks running down the center. There are boarded up empty storefronts and a little place called Dogwood Diner. It’s only been there a few months and doesn’t even have its own website yet – but it’s growing by word of mouth and garnering raves on the reviewing sites.

What makes it sustainable? Well, the chefs choose as many organic ingredients as possible and offer many creative meatless options, such as arugula salad with red quinoa, toasted almonds, and grape tomatoes with a lemon vinaigrette. You can order sweet potato gnocchi. I had a stuffed acorn squash with mixed grains and curried lentils – delightful! The papardelle noodles come with walnut pesto, broccoli rabe, kale, and parmesan.  So the biodiversity mantra to go beyond the half-dozen obvious foods  (“eat wider on the food chain”) is honored here. Fried portabella mushrooms came with cashew gravy and a puree of white beans and cauliflower – also tasty and memorable.

Our waiter showed us a really unusual touch: since the building was erected long ago on top of a creek, the owners have punched out a square hole in the floor and covered it with thick glass, making a window you can look through to see the flowing water underneath.

Dogwood Diner, 5841 Sacramento Avenue, Dunsmuir CA  (530) 678 3502.


Meat glue — smart or yucky?

In Food, Food Politics, Food to Avoid, In the News, Toxins and Pesticides, Uncategorized,
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  • Posted on May 16, 2012
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Not since kindergarten, when some of us ate the library paste, has a more yucky food ingredient been brought to our attention, with the obvious exception of pink slime. (You’ll recall that pink slime is made of the sweepings from the slaughterhouse floor, washed in ammonia, and mixed with ground meat). This newly revealed substance is called “meat glue” and has been around for a while. A powder made of transglutaminase (an enzyme) and beef fibrin can be used to stick together odd bits of meat to form them into apparently whole prime cuts.

It may surprise you to learn that I don’t totally condemn this practice – in concept, anyway. Waste is a terrible thing to do to food, and anything that can reduce food waste is worth considering. On the other hand, meat itself is a huge waste (of grain, water, land, etc.), not to mention the cruelty involved, and if the concept of meat glue turns you off eating meat, that is a good thing!

Of course, when meat glue is used deceptively, to falsely upgrade less desirable parts of the carcass, that is dishonest and should be stopped. There’s another problem: bacteria from the surface of different pieces of animal flesh are now in the middle of the final product and less likely to be killed during cooking, possibly causing food poisoning.

What do you think?


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.”

[slideshow]

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.


Kitchen gadgets you don’t need

In Excerpt from Book, Recommended Reads, Uncategorized, Useful tools,
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  • Posted on May 10, 2012
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credit exfordy on flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was writing The Green Foodprint, I checked out some of the quaint devices you can buy to make cooking “easier.” I located the following:

  •  Microwaveable ice cream scoop
  • Cherry pitting device
  • Home cotton candy maker
  • Oddly shaped pan that bakes brownies with more edges
  • Gadget that cuts up a hot dog to look like an octopus.
  • Microwave s’more maker
  • Avocado knife

While one might applaud the ingenuity, I shook my head over the waste of metal, plastic, packaging, trucking, and electricity that go into manufacturing, distributing, and using these ridiculous toys. But wait! There’s more! You can also get a stainless steel lobster fork, a toaster with a Darth Vader design, a voice-recognition electronic grocery list organizer (for a mere $150), and an espresso machine that (I kid you not) recognizes your fingerprint so it will make your drink just the way you like it, without all that exhausting pushing of buttons on regular espresso machines. This toy will set you back $3,200.

Seems I’m not the only one scratching her head at this technology gone wild. A New York Times reporter also found people who confessed to having purchased an automatic polenta maker, escargot tongs, milk frothing machines, and a panini press. It appears that Rube Goldberg is alive and well in the design department of manufacturers desperate to part you from your money.

Here’s the main advice I give in The Green Foodprint: Use your muscles to chop, stir, peel, and all the rest. You’ll be healthier for it – and so will the earth.


GMO is getting even more dangerous

In Food Politics, Food to Avoid, GMO's, In the News,
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  • Posted on May 2, 2012
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Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s excellent reporter Carolyn Lochhead published an article on genetically engineered food crops  (GE, also called GMO for genetically modified organism).  She pointed out that GMOs have been linked to human diseases and environmental damage, including catastrophic losses of monarch butterflies. It’s gotten so bad, she writes, that even the food manufacturers are worried that the latest “improvements” to corn planted for biofuel might ruin their own GMO crops!

Did you know that Dow wants to start selling a corn variety bred to be resistant to a pesticide that contains an Agent Orange chemical? In case you’re too young to remember the Viet Nam War, Agent Orange was sprayed widely over that country to kill its rainforests, to make its soldiers easier to target. Besides inflicting unthinkable environmental damage, Agent Orange harmed many Vietnamese and Americans.

The chemical (2,4-D) has been implicated in cancer, Parkinson’s disease, liver disease, reduced sperm counts, endocrine (hormone) disruption, and damage to nerves and the immune system. Its makers hope growers will buy tons of it and spray it on their crops to keep bugs away.  I don’t want it used to produce my food. Do you? Personally, I’d rather eat a bug.

Besides, bugs evolve (whether creationists like it or not) and have become resistant to pesticides, so more and stronger pesticides are applied, creating the well-known “pesticide treadmill” that farmers can’t escape once they’re on it. One expert quoted by Lochhead calls it “a chemical arms race.” Fortunately, lots of people are not fooled – over 140 groups and over 360,000 citizens stated their opposition  to 2,4-D during the public comments period during the approval process.

And in more hopeful news, in California we will soon have a ballot measure that requires food makers to label their products that include genetically modified organisms. So get ready for November and cast your vote FOR freedom of information

A t-shirt I saw at a recent Earth Day event said it all:  GMO?  OMG!


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