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.