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FOOD RULES (an eater's manual) by Michael Pollan

Today was our last day of our "64 DAYS OF FOOD RULES" campaign.  We hope that you have a new and healthier relationship with food now.  Operation Boot Camp Los Angeles selected this particular book as the focus of our "food relationship" series due to the content, easy-to-follow chapters, and the easy-to-understand/implement information.

This is a great book and one that we suggest be part of your personal lobrary.  Continue practicing these very basic, yet common sense rules and you will continue your healthy journey feeling better & looking great! 

For more information, please visit www.michaelpollan.com.  This book may be found online or at a local Whole Foods store.

OBC Food Rules Day 64: Break the rules once in a while

Obsessing over food rules is bad for your happiness, and probably for your health too.  Our experience over the past few decades suggests that dieting and worrying too much about nutrition has made us no healthier or slimmer; cultivating a relaxed attitude toward food is important.  There will be special occasions where you will want to throw these rules out the window.  All will not be lost (especially if you don't throw out rule 60).  What matters is not the special occasion but the everyday practice-the default habits that govern your eating on a typical day.  "all things in moderation," it is often said, but we should never forget the wise addendum, sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde: "Including moderation."

OBC Food Rules Day 63: Cook

In theory, it should make little difference to your health whether you cook for yourself or let someone else do the work.  But unless you can afford to hire a private chef to prepare meals exactly to your specifications, letting other people cook for you means losing control over your eating life, the portions as much as the ingredients.  Cooking for yourself is the only sure way to take back control of your diet from the food scientists and food processors, and to guarantee you're eating real food and not edible foodlike substances, with their unhealthy oils, high-fructose corn syrup, and surfeit of salt.  Not surprisingly, the decline in home cooking closely parallels the rise of obesity, and research suggests that people who cook are more likely to eat a more healthy diet.

Last day and food rule is tomorrow!  Check back for one more great peice of advice regarding living a healthy and fit lifestyle.

OBC Food Rules Day 61: Leave something on your plate

Many of us were told by our parents while growing up that we should always clean our plates-an instruction that in later life we have perhaps taken a little too much to heart.  But there is an older and healthier tradition that holds it is more genteel not to finish every last morsel of food: "Leave something for Mr. Manners," some children were once told, or, "Better go to waste than to waist."  Practice not cleaning your plate: it will help you eat less in the short term and develop self-control in the long.

OBC Food Rules Day 60: Treat treats as treats

There is nothing wrong with special occasion foods, as long as every day is not a special occasion.  This is another case where the outsourcing of our own food preparation to corporations has gotten us into trouble:  It's made formerly expensive or time-consuming foods-everything from fried chicken and french fries to pastries and ice cream-easy and readily accessible.  Frying chicken is so much trouble that people didn't use to make it unless they had guests coming over and a lot of time to prepare.  The amount of work involved  kept the frequency of indulgence in check.  These special occasion foods offer some of the great pleasures in life, so we shouldn't deprive ourselves of them, but the sense of occasion needs to be restored.  One way is to start making these foods yourself; if you bake dessert yourself, you won't go to that much trouble every day.  Another is to limit your consumption of such foods to weekends or special occasions.  Some people follow a so-called S policy:  "no snacks no seconds, no sweets-except on days that begin with the letter S."

OBC Food Rules Day 59: Try not to eat alone

Americans are increasingly eating in solitude.  Although there is some research to suggest that light eaters will eat more when they done with others (perhaps because they spend more time at the table), for people prone to overeating, communal meals tend to limit consumption, if only because we're less likely to stuff ourselves when others are watching.  We also tend to eat more slowly, since there's usually more going on at the table than ingestion.  This is precisely why so much food marketing is designed to encourage us to eat in front of the TV or in the car: When we eat alone, we eat more.  But regulating appetite is only part of the story: The shared meal elevates eat from a biological process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community.

Only 5 Days left of the "64 Days of Food Rules"

Over the past 59 days, we've shared a lot of helpful, useful, and common sense information regarding food and simple, easy-to-follow rules to make your eating an enjoying ans satisfying event that will fuel your body rather than overwhelm your body.

All information was provided by the book, "Food Rules" by Michael Pollan.  We would encourage everyone to go out and pick up a copy for yourself and your family.  This is good stuff and it's eay to read and follow.  For more informatiotn regarding the author, please visit www.michaelpollan.com

Please feel free to refer back to the previoous food rules and apply them to your life.

Keep checking back over the next 5 days for the remaining tidbits of great information. 

Remember....get healthy, stay healthy.....get fit, stay fit!

OBC Food Rules Day 58: Do all of your eating at the table

No, a desk is not a table.  if we eat while we're working, or while watching TV or driving, we eat mindlessly-and as a result eat a lot more than we would if we were eating at a table, paying attention to what we're doing.  The phenomenon can be tested (and put to good use): Place a child in front of a television set and place a bowl of fresh vegetables in front of him or her.  The child will eat everything in the bowl, often even vegetables he or she doesn't normally touch, without noticing whats going on.  Which suggests an exception to the rule:  When eating somewhere other than a table, stick to fruits & vegetables.

OBC Food Rules Day 57: Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does

American gas stations now make more money inside selling food (and cigarettes) than they do outside selling gasoline.  But consider what kind of food this is: Except for the milk and water, it's all highly processed, imperishable snack foods and extravagantly sweetened  soft drinks in hefty twenty-ounce bottles.  Gas stations have become "processed corn stations": ethanol outside for your car and high-fructose corn syrup inside for you.  Don't eat here.

A View From The Ticket Stock: Well, here we go... BOOT CAMP.

A View From The Ticket Stock: Well, here we go... BOOT CAMP.

A View From The Ticket Stock: Shopping for Food. Meh.

A View From The Ticket Stock: Shopping for Food. Meh.

OBC Food Rules Day 56: Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods

Remember the old taboo against "between-meal snacks"?  Decades of determined food marketing have driven the phrase from our consciousness.  But the bulk of the 500 calories American have added to their daily diet since 1980 (the start of the obesity epidemic) have come in the form of snack foods laden with salt, fat, and sugar.  If you are going to snack, try to limit yourself to fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

OBC Food Rules Day 55: Eat meals

This recommendation sounds almost as ridiculous as "eat food", but nowadays it too goes without saying.  We are snacking more and eating fewer meals together.  Sociologists and market researchers who study American eating habits no longer organize their results around the increasingly quaint concept of the meal:  They now measure "eating occasions" and report that we have added to the traditional Big Three-breakfast, lunch and dinner-an as yet untitled fourth daily eating occasion that lasts all day long: the constant sipping and snacking we do while watching TV, driving, working, and so on.  (One study found that Americans ages eighteen to fifty nearly a fifth of all eating takes place in the car.)  In theory, grazing-eating five or six small meals over the course of the day-makes sense.  Keep your grazing to real food, stick to meals.

OBC Food Rules Day 54: "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper"

Eating a big meal late in the day sounds unhealthy, though in fact science isn't conclusive.  Some research suggests that eating close to bedtime elevates triglyceride levels in the blood, a marker for heart disease that is also implicated in your weight gain.  Also, the more physically active you are after a meal, the more of the energy in that meal your muscles will burn before your body stores it as fat.  But some researches believe a calorie is a calorie, no matter what time of day it is consumed.  Even if this is true, however, front-loading your eating in the early part of the day will probably result in fewer total calories consumed, since people are generally less hungry in the morning.  A related adage:  "After lunch, sleep awhile; after dinner, walk a mile."

OBC Food Rules Day 53: Serve a proper portion and don't go back for seconds

You lose all control over portion control when you have second helpings.  So what is a proper portion?  There is folklore offering sensible rules of thumb based on your size.  One adage says you should never eat a portion of animal protein bigger than your fist.  Another says that you should eat no more food at a meal than would fit into into the bowl formed by your hands when cupped together.  If you are going to break the rule on seconds, at least  wait several minutes before doing it:  You may well discover that you don't really need seconds, or if you do, not as much as you thought.

OBC Food Rules Day 52: Buy smaller plates and glasses

The bigger the portion, the more we will eat-upward of 30% more.  Food marketers know this, so they supersize our portions as a way to get us to buy more.  But we don't have to supersize portions at home, and shouldn't.  One researcher found that simply switching from a 12 inch to a 10 inch dinner plate caused people to reduce their consumption by 22%.

OBC Food Rules Day 51: Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it

This is a pretty good metrix that honors the cook for for the care you or he or she has put into the meal at the same time that it helps you to slow down and savor it.

OBC Food Rules-Day 50: "The banquet is in the first bite."

Taking this adage to heart will help you enjoy your food and eat more slowly.  No other bite will taste as good as the first, and every subsequent bite will progressively diminish in satisfaction.  Economists call this the law of diminishing marginal utility, and it argues for savoring the first few bites and stopping sooner than you otherwise might.  For as you go on, you'll be getting more calories, but not necessarily more pleasure.

OBC Food Rules: Day 47: Stop eating before you're full

Nowadays we think it's normal and right eat until you are full, but many cultures specifically advise stopping well before that point is reached.  The Japanese have a saying-horah hachi bu-counseling people to stop eating when they are 80 percent full.  The Ayurvedic tradition in India advises eating until you are 75 percent full; the Chinese specify 70 percent, and the prophet Muhammad described a full belly as one that contained 1/3 food and 1/3 liquid-and 1/3 air, i.e. nothing.  (Note the relatively narrow range specified in all this advice: somewhere between 67 and 80 percent of capacity.  Take your pick.)  There's also a German expression that says: "You need to tie off the sack before it gets completely full."   And how many of us have grandparents who talk of "leaving the table a little bit hungry"?  Here again the French may have something to teach us.  To say "I'm hungry" in French you say "J'ai faim"-"I have hunger"-and when you are finished, you do not say that you are full, but "Je n'ai plus faim"-"I have no more hunger."  That is a completely different way of thinking about satiety.  So ask yourself not, Am I full? but, Is my hunger gone?  That moment will arrive several bites sooner.

OBC Food Rules-Day 46: Eat Less

This is probably the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do-regardless of whether you are overweight-is compelling.  "Calorie restriction" has repeatedly been show to slow aging in animals, and many researchers believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention.  We eat much more than our bodies need to be healthy, and the excess wreaks havoc-and not just on our weight.  But we are not the first people in history to grapple with the special challenges posed by food abundance, and previous cultures have devised various ways to promote the idea of moderation.  The rules that follow offer a few proven strategies.

OBC Food Rules-Day 44: How should I eat? (Not too much)

The rules in the previous two sections deal primarily with questions about what to eat; the ones in this section deal with something a bit more elusive but no less important:  the set of manners, eating habits, taboos and unspoken guidelines that together govern a person's (and culture's) relationship to food and eating.  How you eat may have as much bearing on your health (and your weight) as what you eat.

This may well be the deeper lesson of the so-called French paradox: the mystery (at least to nutritionists) of a population that eats all sorts of supposedly lethal fatty foods, and washes them down with red wine, but which is nevertheless healthier, slimmer, and slightly longer lived than we are.  What nutritionalists fails to see in the French is a people with a completely different relationship to food than we have.  They seldom snack, eat small portions from small plates, don't go back for second helpings, and eat most of their food at long, leisurely meals shared with other people.  The rules governing these behaviors may matter more than any magic nutrient in their diet.

The rules in this section are designed to foster a healthier relationship to food, whatever it is if you're eating.

Stay tuned for more Food Rules tomorrow.....

OBC Food Rules-Day 43: Have a glass of wine with dinner

Wine may not be the magic bullet in the French or Meditterranen diet, but it does seem to be an integral part of  these dietary patterns.  There is now considerable scientific evidence for the health benefits of alcohol to go with a few centuries of tradtional belief and anectodal evidence.  Mindful of the social and health effects of alcoholism, public health authorities are loath to reccommend drinking, but the fact is that people  who drink moderately and regularly live longer and suffer considerably less heart diseases than teetotalers.  Alcohol of any kind appears to reduce the risk of heart disease, but the polyphenols in red wine (resveratrol in particular) may have unique protective qualities.  Most experts reccoommend no more than two drinks a day for men, one for women.  Also, the health benefits of alcohol may depend as much on the pattern of drinking as on the amount.  Drinking a little every day is better than drinking a lot on the weekends, and drinking with food is better than drinking without it.  Someday science may figure out the complex synergies at work in a traditional diet that includes wine, but until then we can marvel at its accumulated wisdom.

OBC Food Rules-Day 42: Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism

Innovation is always interesting, but when it comes to food, it pays to approach new creations with caution.  If diets are the products of an evolutionary process in which groups of people adapt to the plants, animals, and fungi a particular place has to offer, then a novel food or culinary innovation resembles a mutation:  It might represent an evolutionery improvement, but chaces are it doesn't.  Soy products offer a good case in point.  People have been eating soy in the form of tofu, soy sauce and tempeh for many generations, but today we're eating novelties like "soy protein isolate," " soy isoflavones," and "textured vegetable protein" from soy and partially hydrogenated soy oils, and there are questions about the healthfulness of these new food products.  As a senior FDA scientist has written, "Confidence that soy products are safe is clearly based more on belief than hard data."  Until we have the data, you're probably better off eating soy prepared in the traditional Asian manner than according to the novel recipes dreamed up by food scientists.

OBC Food Rules-Day 41: Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.

People who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than those of us eating a modern western of processed foods.  Any traditional diet will do:  If if it were not a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn't still be around.  True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economics and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others, Inuit not so well as Italian.  In borrowing from a food culture, pat attention to how a culture eats as well as to what it eats.  In the case of the French paradox, for example, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and white flour?!) as much as their food habits: small portions eaten at leisurely communal meals; no second helpings or snacking.  Pay attention, too, to the combinations of foods in traditional cultures: In Latin America, corn is traditionally cooked with lime and eaten with beans; what would otherwise be a nutritionally deficient staple becomes the basis of a healthy, balanced diet.  (The beans supply the amino acids lacking in the corn, and the lime makes niacin available.)  Cultures that took corn from Latin America without the beans or the lime would up with serious nutritonal deficiencies such as pellegra.  Traditional diets are more than the sum of the food parts.

OBC Food Rules-Day 40: Be the kind of person who takes supplements - then skip the supplements

We know that people who take supplements are generally healthier than the rest of us, and we also know that in controlled studies most of the supplements they take don't appear to be effective.  How can this be?  Supplement takers are healthy for reasons that have nothing to do with the pills.  They're typically more health conscious, better educated, and more affluent.  They're also more likely to exercise and eat whole grains.  So to the extent you can, be the kind of person who would take supplements, and then save your money.  (There are exceptions to this rule, for people who have a specific nutrient deficiency or are older than fifty.  As we age, our need for antioxidants increases while our body's ability to absorb them from the diet declines.  And if you don't eat much fish, it couldn't hurt to take a fish oil supplement too.)

OBC Food Rules-Day 39: Eat all the Junk Food You Want as Long as You Cook it Yourself

There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking a soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we're eating them everyday.  The french fry did not become America's most popular vegetable  until industry took over  the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes-and cleaning up the mess.  If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they're so much work.  The same holds true for fried chicken, chips, cakes, pies, and ice cream.  Enjoy these treats as often as you're willing to prepare them-chances are good it won't be every day.

OBC Food Rules-Day 38: Favor the Kinds of Oils and Grains that have Traditionally been Stone-Ground

When grindstones were the only way to refine flour and oil, four and oil were generally more nutritious.  In the case of grain, more fo the germ and fiber remains when its ground on a stone; you can't get white flour from a stone.  The nutritional benefits of whole grains are impressive:  fiber, the full range of B vitamins; and healthy oils, all of which are sacrificed when the grain is refined on modern roller mills (as mentioned, highly refined flours are little different from sugar).  And the newer oils that are extracted by modern chemical means tend to have less favorable fatty acid profiles and more additives than olive, sesame, palm fruit, and peanut oils that have been obtained the old-fashioned way.

OBC Food Rules-Day 37: "The Whiter the Bread, the Sooner You'll be Dead"

This rather blunt bit of cross-cultural grandmotherly advice (passed down from both Jewish and Italian grandmothers) suggests that the health risks of white flour have been popularly recognized for many years.  As far as the body is concerned, white flour is not that much different from sugar.  Unless supplemented, it offers none of the good things (fiber, B vitamins, healthy fats) in whole grains-it's a little more than a shot of glucose.  Large spikes of glucose are iflammatory and wreak havoc on our insulin metabolism.   Eat whole grains and minimize your consumption of white flour.  Recent research indicates that the grandmothers who lived by this rule were right:  People who eat lots of whole grains tend to be healthier and to live longer.

OBC Food Rules-Day 36: Don't Eat Breakfast Cereals that Change the Color of Milk

This should go without saying.  Such cereals are highly processed and full of refined carbohydrates as well as chemical additives.

OBC Food Rules-Day 35: Eat Sweet Foods as you Would Find them in Nature

In nature, sugars are almost always packaged with fiber, which slows their absorption and gives you a sense of satiety before you've ingested to many calories.  That's why you're always better off eating the fruit rather than drinking it's juice.  (In general, calories taken in liquid form are more fattening because they do not make us feel full.  Humans are one of the very few mammals that obtain calories from liquids after weaning.)  So don't drink your sweets, and remember:  There is no such thing as a healthy soda.

OBC Food Rules-Day 34: Sweeten and Salt your Food Yourself

Whether soups or cereals or soft drinks, food and beverages that have been prepared by corporations contain higher fat levels of salt and sugar than any ordinary human being would ever add-even a child.  By sweetening and salting these foods yourself, you'll make them to your taste, and you will find you're consuming a fraction as much sugar and salt as you otherwise would.

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.

Food Rules-Day 2: Don't Eat Anything Your Great-Grandmother Wouldn't Recognize as Food

Imagine your great-grandmother (or grandmother depending on your age) at your side as your roll down the aisles of the supermarket.  You're standing together in front of the dairy case.  She picks up a package of Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt Tubes - and hasn't a clue what the plastic cylinder of colored and flavored gel could possibly be.  Is it a food or is it toothpaste?  There are now thousands of foodish products in the supermarket that our ancestors simply wouldn't recognize as food. 

The reasons to avoid eating such complicated food products are many, and go beyond the various chemical additives and corn and soy derivatives they contain, or the plastics in which they are typically packaged, some of which are probably toxic.  Today foods are processed in ways specifically designed to get us to buy and eat more by pushing our evolutionary buttons-our inborn preferences for sweetness & salt.  These tastes are difficult to find in nature but cheap & easy for the food scientists to deploy, with the result that food processing induces us to consume more of these rarities than is good for us.  The great-grandma rule will help keep most of these items out of your cart.

Note:  If your great-grandmother was a terrible cook or eater, you can substitute someone else's grandmother-a Sicilian or French one works particularly well.

The next several rules refine this strategy by helping you navigate the treacherous landscape of the ingredients label.

Food Rules-Day 1: Eat Food

These days this is easier said than done, especially when seventeen thousand new products show up in the supermarket each year, all vying for your food dollar.  But most of these items don't deserve to be called food - I call them edible foodlike substances.  They're highly processed concoctions designed by food scientists, consisting mostly of ingedients derived from corn & soy that no normal person keeps in their pantry, and they contain chemical additives with which the human body has not been long acquainted.  Today much of the challenge of eating well comes down to choosing real food and avoiding these industrial novelties.

64 Days of Food Rules Starts Monday, April 29th

Eating doesn't have to be so complicated.  In this age of ever-more elaborate diets and conflicting health advice, Food Rules brings a welcome simplicity to our daily discussions about food.  Written with clarity, concision and wit, this indespensible handbook lays out a set of straightforward, memorable rules for eating wisely, accompianied by a concise explanation.  It's an easy-to-use guide that draws from a variety of traditions, suggesting how different cultures through the ages have arrived at the same enduring wisdom about food.  Whether at the supermarket or an all-you-can-eat buffet, this is the perfect guidefor anyone who ever wondered "What should I eat?"

Make a note now to follow each day to learn, what you will find to be, easy, sensible, honest and quick rules to view your food choices going forward!

Bring on the Raspberries!

Food for Thought:    

’Tis the season to stock up on juicy, ripe raspberries. These ephemeral delicacies are hard to resist, especially since they are teeming with healthy nutrients.

Health Benefits. Raspberries are rich in folate, vitamin C, iron and potassium. The fruit also contains soluble fiber pectin, which may help control cholesterol levels, while the seeds provide a lot of insoluble fiber. Raspberries are a good source of cancer-fighting antioxidants, especially ellagic acid.

read on....