In Defense of Food

I finally finished it tonight and I really liked it. He uses the word "nutrition" a bit too much for my liking but other than that it was a good book that brings up some interesting points. The basic premise is that we barely eat food anymore because everything is so processed. After reading it I started looking at the ingredients in some of the foods I have in my cupboard...don't do it. I can barely understand half of them. He also talks about different 'fads' that scientists have gone through. At one point they said that carbs were bad, then it was protein, and now it is fat. I guess the overall point is just that scientists have tried so hard to break food down into the different nutrients that make them but you just can't do that. You have to look at the whole food and you have to look at what other foods are eaten in the same meal. He talked about how any traditional diet (French, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Japanese) works better than our "Western diet" as he coins it. They all eat things that we consider to be fattening and bad for you yet they have lower disease rates for every major disease that can be linked to diet. And, further, as soon as they adopt our diet they get the same diseases we do from it. He talks about how there are nutrients that are the "nutrient de jour" if you will. They are deemed to be a good nutrient so the food scientists inject it into every food. The problem is that they have to take out something that is in there and often times that can be worse for you. Omega-3s are the popular one right now. Listen to commercials...everything from bread to yogurt to whatever have Omega-3s added. They discovered that these are good for us and are actually replaced by Omega-6s because of the way our farming (animals and plants) are done...so now they are adding them back in. Weird huh. Oh, and supplements almost never work...but, people who take them do tend to be healthier, he says it is because people who would take the time to buy supplements are probably already health conscience.

It is just a really good read and you can wade through what you want of it. I recommend it. Especially for all you with children. I sort of had this thought the other day of where our eating goes wrong. Most of you read the books about what to give your baby when in their development and knew how different foods made their bodies react...fruit makes you poop, stuff like that. Well, where do we lose that knowledge and how much do our bodies really change if we didn't force them to change by putting more processed food into them? I don't know the answer, but it just got me to thinking. So, in the last few days I have cooked all my meals and I am trying to use up the processed foods I have by mixing them in with whole foods. After that I am going to see if I can just mostly eat whole foods. The general rule the guy in the book gave (those he has many other rules) was that if your great-grandmother (or great-great-grandmother) wouldn't recognize it as food then you should pass. The example he gave was that your great-grandmother would recognize yogurt, but wouldn't know what the heck Go-gurt was. Craig's mom gave him her old breadmaker a while back so this weekend I am going to attempt to make bread :-) I went to the store tonight and found whole wheat flour (and then I found it at Kroger too) so I am going to use that and see how it turns out. Sadly I only have 14 more days here before I travel for an eternity again but for those 14 days I am going to try to only eat out (or processed in general) once or twice...one being on the 4th :-) I am sort of interested in how hard it will be and if it will be costly or not. I think that now would be easy with all the cheap and yummy friuts and veggies at the stores, but what about the winter?

Anyway, sorry to ramble, let me know if you are interested in the book. In other news, the neck is finally improving. Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I think that I am going to look into a massage tomorrow or Friday....now, do you guys go to spas or the chiro? Think it makes a difference in this case? Also, thanks Molly for the pillow and desk suggestions...I did change how I have been sleeping and I think that has helped. As for the desk, that is a hard one since I am never in the same place and most of the time I am stuck in a conference room or am sitting on my couch, but I will try to work on that one...I need to improve my posture, maybe some yoga classes will help. I went to spin class tonight and it hasn't seemed to affect the neck too negatively. I tried not to lean on that arm at all and took it a little easier than normal. I nearly laughed when the teacher said you burn 600-800 calories in her class (maybe if you are a lot bigger than me but I only burned 411 :-))

I feel like I want to have a contest, and for a good prize, but I just don't know what the contest should be.....