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 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.