OBC Food Rules-Day33: Eat Some Foods that have been Predigested by Bacteria or Fungi

Many traditional cultures swear by the health benefits of fermented foods-foods that have been transformed by live microorganisms, such as yogurt or sauerkraut, soy sauce, kimchi, and sourdough bread.  These foods can be a good source of vitamin B12, an essential nutrient you can't get from plants.  (B12 is produced by animals and bacteria.)  Many fermented foods also contain probiotics-beneficial bacteria that research suggests improve the function of the digestive and immune systems and, according to some studies, help reduce allergic reactions and inflammation.

Your Total Health CHECKLIST - Day 10

Total Health CHECKLIST

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles.

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

You can do it!

Your REST

Gain Sleep and Lose Weight.      Lack of sleep just doesn't make you grouchy, it can also cuase you to eat up to 500 calories more per day.  Sleep is instrumental in recharging your endocrine system, which monitors hormones.  Not getting enough shut-eye has been linked to an increase in the hormone that makes you feel hungry - and decrease in the hormone associated with feeling satisfied after eating a meal.

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

Your Total Health CHECKLIST - Day 9

Total Health CHECKLIST

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles.

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

You can do it!

Your MIND

Do Something New.      Plenty of research shows that learning something new exercises adult brain cells to keep them fit and functional.  Sign up for a photography or pottery class at your community center; invite a group of friends to learn a new card game; or take up a new sport or dance.

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

OBC Food Rules-Day 32: Don't Overlook the Oily Little Fishes

Wild fish are among the healthiest things you can eat, yet many wild fish stocks are on the verge of collapse becuase of overfishing.  Avoid big fish fish at the top of the marine food chain-tuna, swordfish, shark-because they're endangered, and because they often contain high levels of mercury.  Fortunately, a few of the most nutritious wild fish species, including mackerel, sardines, and anchovies, are well managed, and in some cases are even abundant.  These oily little fish are particularly good choices.  According to a Dutch proverb, "A land with lots of herring can get along with few doctors."

Your Total Health CHECKLIST - Day 8

Your Total Health CHECKLIST

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles.

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

You can do it!

Your MIND

Be Thankful.     A number of studies have shown that adopting an attitude of gratitude measureably increases ones feelings of happiness.  Make a concious effort to think about something you're grateful for at least once a week; at the end of each day, write down three good things that happened to you; or write a letter to someone expressing gratitude.  They all work!

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

OBC Food Rules-Day 31: Eat Wild Foods When You Can

Two of the most nutritious plants in the world-lamb's quarters and purslane-are weeds, and some of the healthiest diets, like the Mediterranean, make frequent use of wild greens.  The fields and forests are crowded with plants containing higher levels of various Phytochemicals than their domesticated cousins.  Why?  Bevause these plants have to defend themselves against pests  and disease without any help from us, and becuase historically we've tended to select and breed crops for sweetness; many of the defensive compounds plants produce are bitter.  We also breed for shelf life, and so have unwittingly selected for plants with low levels of omega-3 fatty acids, since these fats quickly oxidize-turn rancid.   Wild animals and fish too are worth adding to your diet when you have the opportunity.  Wild game generally has less saturated and more healthy fats than domesticated animals, becuase most of these animals themselves eat a diverse diet of plants rather than grain (see rule 27).

Your Total Health CHECKLIST - Day 7

Your Total Health CHECKLIST

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles.

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

You can do it!

Your BODY

Buddy up.    Enlist a workout buddy.  Working out with a friend can prompt you to work out longer.  Researchers found that pain tolerance increases when you exercise with a partner.   Better yet - sign up for the next scheduled Operation Boot Camp near you, and have accomplish yesterday and today's total Health checklist items at once.  You'll also meet new friends and achieve better results.

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

OBC Food Rules-Day 30: Eat Well-Grown Food from Healthy Soil

It would have been easier to say "eat organic" and it is true that food certified organic is usually all grown in relatively healthy soil-soil nourished by organic matter rather than chemical fertilizers.  (It also will contain  little or no residue from synthetic pesticides or pharmaceuticals.)  Yet there are always exceptional farmers and ranchers in America who for one reason or another are not certified organic, and the excellent food they grow should not be overlooked.  (And just because a food is labeled organic, does not mean it's good for you:  Organi soda is still soda-a large quantity of utterly empty calories.)

We now have a body of research supporting the hypothesis, first advanced by organic pioneers Sir Albert Howard and J.I. Rodale, that soils rich in organic matter produce more nutritious food:  that is food with higher leveles of antioxidants, flavanoids, vitamins, and minerals.  Of course, after a few days of rising cross-country in a truck, the nutritional quality of any kind of produce will deteriorate, so ideally you want to eat food that is both organic and local.

Your Total Health CHECKLIST - Day 6

Your Total Health CHECKLIST

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles.

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

You can do it!

Your BODY

Exercise - Live Longer.   You'll increase your life expectancy by almost two years past the age of 40 by exercising for at least 75 minutes a week.  10 minutes of vigorous exercise is better than none, although one hour of walking a day could potentially increase your longevity by four years. 

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

OBC Food Rules-Day 29: Eat like an Omnivore

Whether or not you eat any animal foods, it's a good idea to try to add some new species, and not just new foods, to your diet-that is, new kinds of plants, animals, and fungi.  The dazzling diversity of food products on offer in the supermarket is deceptive, because so many of them are made from the same small handful of plant species, and most of those-the corn and soy and wheat-are seeds rather than leaves.  The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all of your nutritional bases.

Your Total Health CHECKLIST - Day 5

Your Total Health CHECKLIST

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles.

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

You can do it!

Your FOODS

Avoid the Salty Six.  Salt intake is a big factor in cardiovascular disease.  The six saltiest culprits might surprise you.  Pay attention to sodium levels in bread, cold cuts, pizza, packaged poultry, soups, and sandwiches.

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

OBC Food Rules-Day 28: If you have the Space, Buy a Freezer

When you find a good source of pastured meat, you'll want to buy it in quantity.  Buying meat in bulk-a quarter of a steer, say, or a whole hog-is one way to eat well on a budget.  Dedicated freezers are surprisingly inexpensive to buy and operate, because they aren't opened nearly as often as the one in your refrigerator,  A freezer will also enable you to put up food from the farmers market, and encourage you to buy produce in bulk at the height of its season, when it will be most abundant-and therefore the cheapest.  And freezing does not significantly diminish the nutritional value of produce.

Your Total Health CHECKLIST - Day 4

Your Total Health CHECKLIST

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles.

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

You can do it!

Your FOODS

Try this Green Machine.   There is a reason why kale is getting so much attention in the food press.  Per calorie, it has more iron than beef, more calcium than milk, and 10 times more vitamin C than spinach.   Try a recipe for kale chips, or work it into soup; slow cooking turns it into a tasty filler.

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

OBC Food Rules-Day 27: Eat Animals that have Themselves Eaten Well

The diet of the animals we eat strongly influences the nutritional quality, and healthfulness, of the food we get from them, whether it is meat or milk or eggs.  This should be self-evident, yet it is a truth routinely overlooked by the industrial food chain in its quest to produce vast quantities of cheap animal protein.  That quest has changed the diet of most of our food animals in ways that have often damaged their health and healthfulness.  We feed animals a high energy diet of grain to make them grow quickly, even in the case of rumminants that have evolved to eat grass.  But even food animals that can tolerate grain are much healthier when they have access to green plants-and so it turns out, are their meat and eggs.  The food from these animals will contain much healthier types of fat (more omega-3s, less omega-6s) as well as appreciably higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants.  (For the same reason, meat from wild animals is particularly nutritious; see rule 31).  It's worth looking for pastured animal foods in the market-and paying the premium prices they typically command if you can.

Your Total Health CHECKLIST - Day 3

Your Total Health CHECKLIST

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles.

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

You can do it!

Your FOODS

Learn the Silk Road Secret.  Medicinal properties have long been associated with tea, but it seems that certain components of black tea may help prevent diabetes.  Consider switching out your afternoon coffee for a cup of black tea with honey.

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

OBC Food Rules-Day 26: Drink the Spinach Water

Another bit of  traditinal wisdom with good science behind it:  the water in which vegetables are cooked is rich in vitamins and other healthful plant chemicals.  Save it for soup or add it to sauces.

Your Total Health CHECKLIST - Day 2

Your Total Health CHECKLIST

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles.

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

You can do it!

 

Your FOODS

Change the Oil.  Because cooking oils have different heating points - and heating oil beyond its smoke point can release harmful free radicals-it's best to have a variety of oils on hand.  "Light" olive and sunflower oils have high smoke points, so they're good for searing and frying.  Corn and sesame oils have lower smoke points, so they're best for light sauteing.

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

OBC Food Rules-Day 25: Eat Your Colors

The idea that a healthy plate of food will feature several different colors is a good example of of an old wives' tale about food that turns out to be good science too.  The colors of many vegetables reflect the different antioxidant phytochemicals they contain-anthocyanins, polyphenols, flavonoids, carotenoids.  Many of these chemicals help protect against chronic diseases, but each in a slightly different way, so the best protection come right from a diet containing as many different photochemicals as possible.

Your Total Health CHECKLIST

Your Total Health CHECKLIST

 

 

Make a commitment to yourself to make small changes each day to improve your overall health.  

 

Each day we'll post some easy tips for our busy lifestyles. 

 

** Remember small changes on a daily basis result in big improvements long-term **

 

You can do it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your FOODS

 

Fill up with Low-Cal Foods.  Stock your crisper and pantry with low-cal eats and keep them ready for when snack or dinner time rolls around.  There's a load of under 40-calorie options in the produce aisle to choose from.

 

 

Check back tomorrow for more easy tips for your total health checklist.

OBC Food Rules-Day 24: Eating What Stands on One Leg (mushrooms and plant foods) is Better than Eating what Stands on Two Legs (fowl), Which is Better than Eating What Stands on Four Legs (cows, pigs and other mammals)

The Chinese proverb offers a good summary of traditional wisdom regarding the relative healthfulness of different kinds of food, though it inexplicably leaves out the very healthful and entirely legless fish.

OBC Food RULES - Day 23: Treat Meat as a Flavoring or Special Occasion Food

While it's true that vegitarians are generally healthier than carnivores, that doesn't mean you need to eliminate meat from your diet if you like it.  Meat, which humans have been eating and relishing for a very long time, is nourishing food, which is why we suggest "mostly" plants, not "only".  It turns out that near vegetarians, or "flexitarians"-people who eat meat a couple of times a week-are just as healthy as vegetarians.  But the average American eats meat as part of two or even three meals per day-more than half a pound per person per day-and there is evidence that the more meat there is in your diet-red meat in particular-the greater risk of heart disease and cancer.  Why?  It could be its saturated fat, or its specific type of protein, or the simple fact that all that meat is pushing plants off the plate.  Consider swapping the traditional portion sizes:  Instead of an eight-ounce steak and a four-ounce portion of vegetables, serve four ounces of beef and eight ounces of veggies.  Thomas Jefferson was probably onto something when he reccommended a mostly-plant based diet that uses meat cheifly as a "flavor-principle".

OBC Food Rules-Day 22: Eat Mostly Plants, Especially Leaves

Scientists may disagree on what’s good about some plants-the antioxidants?  The fiber?  The omega-3 fatty acids?- but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt.  There are scores of studies demonstrating that a diet rich in vegetables and fruits reduces the risk of dying from all the Western diseases; in countries where people eat a pound or more of vegetables and fruits a day, the rate of cancer is half what it is in the United States.  Also, by eating a diet that is primarily plant based, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods-with the exception of seeds, including grains and nuts-are typically less “energy dense” than the other things youe at.  (And consuming fewer calories protects against many chronic diseases.)  Vegetarians are notably healthier than carnivores, and live longer.

OBC Food Rules - The First 21 Days!

The first 21 days have focused on what “food” is.  The next 22 days will focus on what “kind of food” is best to eat.  If you’ve followed the rules offered thus far you will be eating real, whole food most of the time – the simple key to a healthy diet.  Beyond that, you have a great many options.  One lesson that can be drawn from the striking diversity of traditional diets people have lived on around the world is that it si possible to nourish ourselves from an astonishing range of foods – so long as they are real foods.  There have been, and can be, healthy high-fat and healthy low-fat diest, but they have always been diest built around whole foods.  Yet there are some whole foods that are better for us than others, and some ways of producing them and then combining them in meals that can make a difference.  So the rules in this next  section propose a handful of personal policies regarding what to eat, above and beyond “food”.

Side note:  For your own copy of this great book of food rules, please visit your local book store, Whole Foods book section, or online.

OBC Food Rules-Day 21: It’s Not Food if it’s Called the Same Name in Every Language (Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or Pringles)

OBC Food Rules-Day 20: It’s Not Food if it Arrived Through the Window of Your Car

OBC Food Rules-Day 19: If it Came From a Plant, Eat it; if it was Made in a Plant, Don’t.

OBC Food Rules-Day 18: Don’t Digest Foods Made in Places Where Everyone is Required to Wear a Surgical Cap

OBC Food Rules-Day 17: Eat Only Foods that have been Cooked by Humans

If you’re going to let others cook for you, you’re much better off if they are other humans, rather than corporations.  In general, corporations cook with too much salt, fat, and sugar as well as with preservatives, colorings, and other biological novelties.  They also aim for immortality with their food products.  Note:  While it’s true that professional chefs are generally humans, they often cook with large amounts of salt, fat and sugar too, so treat restaurant meals as special occasions. 

The following rules, over the next several days, are a few useful variants on the human-cooked-food rule.

OBC Food Rules-Day 16: Buy Your Snacks at the Farmers Market

You’ll find yourself snacking on fresh or dried fruits and nuts-real food-rather than chips and sweets.

OBC Food Rules-day 15: Get Out of the Supermarket Whenever You Can

You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market.  You also won’t find any elaborately processed food products, any packages with long lists of unpronounceable ingredients or dubious health claims, anything microwaveable, or, perhaps best of all, any old food from far away.  What you will find are fresh, whole foods harvested at the peak of their taste and nutritional quality-precisely the kind your great-grandmother, or even your Neolithic ancestors, would easily recognize as food.  The kind that is alive and eventually will rot.

OBC Food Rules-Day 14: Eat Foods Made from Ingredients that you can Picture in their raw State or Growing in Nature

Read the ingredients on a package of Twinkies or Pringles and imagine what those ingredients actually look like raw or in the places where they grow:  You can’t do it.  This rule will keep all sorts of chemicals and foodlike substances out of your diet.

OBC Food Rules-Day 13: Eat Only Foods that will Eventually Rot

What does it mean for our food to “go bad”?  It usually means that the fungi and bacteria and insects and rodents with whom we compete for nutrients and calories have got to it before we did.  Food processing began as a way to extend the shelf life of food by protecting it from these competitors.  This is often accomplished by making the food less appealing to them, by removing other nutrients likely to turn rancid, like omega-3 fatty acids.  The more processed a food is, the longer the shelf life, and the less nutritious it typically is.  Real food is alive – and therefore should eventually die.  (There are a few exceptions to this rule: For example, honey has a shelf life measured in centuries.)  Note:  Most of the immortal foodlike substances in the supermarket are found in the middle aisles.

OBC Food Rules-Day 12: Shop the Peripheries of the Supermarket and Stay Out of the Middle

Most supermarkets are laid out in the same way.  Processed foods dominate the center aisles of the store, while the cases of more fresh food – produce, meat and fish, dairy – line the walls.  If you keep to the edges of the store, you’ll be much more likely to wind up with real food in your shopping cart.  This strategy is not foolproof, however since things like high-fructose corn syrup have crept into the dairy case under the flavored yogurts and the like.

Food Rules-Day 11: Avoid Foods You See Advertised on Television

Food marketers are ingenious at turning criticisms of their products - and rules like these - into new ways to sell slightly different versions of the same processed foods.  They simply reformulate (to be low-fat, have no HFCS or transfats, or to contain fewer ingredients) and then boast about their implied healthfulness, whether the boast is meaningful or not.   The best way to escape these marketring ploys is to tune out the marketing itself, by refusing to buy heavily promoted foods.  Only the biggest food manufacturers can afford to advertise  their products on television.   More than 2/3 of food advertising is spent promoting processed foods (and alcohol), so if you avoid products with big ad budgets, you'll automatically be avoiding edible foodlike substances.  As for the 5% of food ads that promote whole foods, common sense will, one hopes, keep you from tarring them with the same brush - these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Bogus health claims and faulty food science have made supermarket particularly treacherous  places to shop for real food, which suggests the next 2 rules.

Food Rules-Day 10: Avoid Foods that are Pretending to be Something They Are Not

Imitation butter-aka margarine-is the classic example.  To make something like nonfat cream cheese that contains neither cream nor cheese requires an extreme degree of processing; such products should be labeled as imitations and avoided.  The same rule applies to soy-based mock meats, artificial sweeteners, and fake fats and starches.

Food Rules-Day 9: Avoid Food Products with the Wordoid "Lite" or the terms "Low-Fat" or "Nonfat" in their Names

The 40 year old campaign to create low and nonfat versions of tradition foods has been a failure:  We've gotten fat on low-fat products.  Why?  Becuase removing the fat from foods doesn't neccessarily make then nonfattening.  Carbohydrates can also make you fat, and many low and nonfat foods boost the sugars to make up for the loss of flavor.  Also, by demonizing one nutrient-fat-we inevitably give a free pass to another, supposedly "good", nutrient-carbohydrates in this case - and then proceed to eat too much of that instead.  Since the low-fat campaign began in the late 1970's, Americans have actually been eating more than 500 additional calories per day, most of them in the form of refined carbohydrates like sugar.  The result:  The average male is 17 lbs heavier, and the average female is 19 lbs heavier than in the late 1970's.  You;re better off eating the real thing in moderation than binging on "lite" food products packed with sugars and salt.

Food Rules-Day 8: Avoid Food Products That Make Health Claims

This sounds counterintuitive, but consider:  For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat, it's more likely to be processed rather than a whole food.  Then, only the big food manufacturers have the wherewithal to secure FDA-approved health claims for their products and then trumpet them to the world.  Generally, it is the products of modern food science that make the boldest health claims, and these are often founded on incomplete and often bad science.  Don't forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to contain more transfats that give people heart attacks.   The healthiest food in the supermarket-the fresh produce-doesn't boast about its healthfulness, because the growers don't have the budget or the packaging.  Don't take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.

Food Rules-Day 7: Avoid Food Products Containing Ingredients that a 3rd Grader Cannot Pronounce

Basically the same idea, different mnemonic.  Keep it simple!

Food Rules-Day 6: Avoid Food Products that Contain More than 5 Ingredients

The specific number you adopt is arbitrary, but the more ingredients in a packaged food, the more highly processed it probably is.  Note 1: A long list of ingredients in a recipe is not the same thing; that's fine.  Note 2:  Some products now boast, somewhat deceptively, about their short ingredients lists.  Haagen-Dazs has a new line of ice cream called "five".  Great-but it's still ice cream.  Sames goes for the three-ingredient Tostitos corn chips advertised by Frito-Lay - okay, but they're still corn chips.  In such cases, apply rule 60 for dealing with treats and special occasion foods.

Food Rules-Day 5: Avoid Foods that have Some Form of Sugar (or sweetener) Listed Among the Top 3 Ingredients

Labels list ingredients by weight, and any product that has more sugar than other ingredients has too much sugar.  (For the exception to this rule, see rule 60, regarding special occasion foods.) Complicating matters is the fact that , thanks to food science, there are now some 40 types of sugar used in processed food, including barley malt, beet sugar, brown rice syrup, cane juice, corn sweetner, dextrin, dextrose, fructo-oligossaccharides, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, sucrose, invert sugar, polydextrose, turbinado sugar, and so on.  To repeat:  Sugar Is Sugar.  And organic sugar is sugar too.  As for noncaloric sweeteners such as aspartame or Splenda, research (in both humans and animals) suggests that switching to artificial sweeteners does not lead to weight loss, for reasons not well yet understood.  But it may be that deceiving the brain with the reward of sweetness stimulates a craving for even more sweetness.

Food Rules-Day 4: Avoid Food Products that Contain High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Not because high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is any worse for you than sugar, but because it is, like many of the other unfamiliar ingredients in packaged foods, a reliable marker for a food product that has been highly processed.  Also, high-fructose corn syrup is being added to hundreds of foods that have not been traditionally sweetened-breads, condiments, and many snack foods-so if you avoid products that contain it, you will cut down on your sugar intake.  But don't fall for the food industry's latest scam:  products reformulated to contain "no HFCS" or "real cane sugar."  These claims imply these foods are somehow healthier, they they are not.  Sugar is sugar.

Food Rules-Day 3: Avoid Food Products Containing Ingedients that No Ordinary Human Would Keep in their Pantry

Ethoxylated diglycerides?  Cellulose?  Xanthan gum?  Calcium Propionate?  Ammonium sulfate?  If you wouldn't cook with them yourself, why let others use these ingredients to cook for you?  The food scientists' chemistry is designed to extend shelf life, make old food look fresher and more appetizing than it really is, and get you to eat more.  Whether or not any of these additives pose a proven hazard to your health, many of them haven't been eaten by humans for very long, so they are best avoided.