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 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-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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.