If the Government would ask me for my opinion of redesigning the food pyramid – which they won't because they go the food industry – this single principle would guide my food choices: Freshness.
There actually is no other food than fresh food; everything processed, enriched, manipulated, enhanced, improved, ready-made is not food but inferior food substitute. “Food ersatz” cannot build and repair cells as fresh food can – the outcome is stunted development and disease in the long run.
If you think you are doing yourself a favor by eating, for instance an apple-flavored nutritional bar – think again. That bar has too much sugar and salt, to start with, promoting obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure – cornerstones of the metabolic syndrome. Its ingredients are made to have a long shelf-life. Why would you want to eat something even mold doesn’t want to touch? Its oils a hardened to make them not go rancid quickly – and in turn those hardened fats will harden your arteries. Its apple flavor is artificial and does not what a daily apple does so well: Keeping the doctor away.
Good health is very easy: Move a bit every day, eat well and get enough rest. Then, love a bit – and you are all set.
The devil of course is in the fine print. What does “eat well” mean? Your mind starts spinning if you listen to all the advice in books, online and on TV. But all you have to know is: freshness. Go to a supermarket aisle and buy four different vegetables. Preferably organic (But organic is second on the list; freshness is first). Prepare a meal today with two of the veggies; another meal tomorrow with the other two.
Here is what we had for dinner yesterday: red beet salad (made from scratch, of course), Chinese baby bok choy, cod with cilantro and dill, split peas; frozen blueberries for desert. Today we will have red chard with garlic and olive oil, butternut squash puree, hake fillet with green sauce, red quinoa; pineapple mousse for desert. Tomorrow I will slow braise grass-fed ribs and white cabbage and parsnips with caraway, and serve it with cauliflower and chana dal; for desert the rest of the pineapple.
None of this takes long cooking (the green sauce I have frozen from last time). But we will have a great dinner every single evening. Ordering a pizza would not give my family the same health benefits. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Always Eating Time
June 25, 2010
Good chance that I bore you to tears - but: There is an obesity epidemic. Already little children are overweight; many young people are rejected by the military because they are not passing muster. Our future lies in the hands of these children who go into life already burdened with extra weight.
School lunches are atrocious: pizza, spaghetti with meatballs, subs, hamburger, sandwich, lasagna – the usual menu.
Did you notice that these are not really different foods? They are the same foods disguised: always wheat, cheese, tomato, beef. None of the four items is especially healthful (yes – I know, tomatoes contain decent lycopene. But to eat tomatoes as the only vegetable, is not good. To eat them daily, is asking arthritis in your body. Tomato belongs (with potato, eggplant, bell and hot peppers) in the nightshade family, and should be eaten sparingly.
So, children eating wrong foods. But a bigger problem is that food is constantly offered (and bought). We as a culture teach the children that one needs always to eat. Times away from the table seem to ask for a snack, and times at the table are accompanied by TV. It seems there is a constant need to be fed, to be entertained, to be rewarded, to be cajoled, to be kept quiet – always with food.
The message is: It is always eating time.
If one eats constantly, the body is always busy with digesting, and has not time for repair and rebuilding – that is especially true at night. We call our first meal breakfast, don’t we? Meaning: You break the nightly fast. If one raided the fridge in the wee hours, one never fasts.
Nature has laws. One is about ebb and flow. Constant eating is like always having high tide. One might think that moderation is an unfashionable idea, outdated since long. But our bodies are old – ancient even. They live and function by the old laws of Nature.
If the body all the time is busy with digestion, it cannot run well, sleep well, think well … live well. Read More
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Sleepless - And Unrepaired?
April 20, 2010
Can’t fall asleep? Toss and turn? Wake up at three and never be able to get some more winks?
Research about circadian rhythms has borne out what our grandmother’s told us: Sleep before midnight matters. The major repair work in the body happens from around eleven pm to one am. Repair means: Mending muscles, replacing worn-out cells, rewiring brain connections, restoring broken DNA before cancer can develop.
That repair will not happen if you are not in bed, not asleep.
Try basic sleep hygiene:
• Go to bed latest at ten. It helps to read some books – uplifting books rather than thrillers. But whatever works for you.
• Do not eat after dinner – preferably not after six pm. Because, if your body has to digest your stomach contents, it has less time for repair.
• No stimulants after noon (coffee, tea, coke, chocolate, etc.).
• Sleep with window open (if your neighborhood is not too noisy). Indoor pollution is usually worse than outdoor pollution, and you don’t want to re-breathe you own spent air all night.
Second thought: If we don't get enough sleep, we are stressed out the next day. Fact is that the quality of every day of your life is decided the evening before: Did you get to bed in time? Stress elevates cortisol in our body, and high cortisol makes us ravenously hungry. The stress hormone cortisol links poor sleep and obesity.
Last thought: When we were still living in caves, in the darkness, without electricity, we would be confined to our communal sleeping on and under bear skins for about twelve hours a night. Obviously, nobody can sleep that long. So, we woke up after four hours and had a little sex (took about five minutes). Then we would lie awake a while. Toward morning, we would sleep another four hours.
Question: What did we do during those unused three hours fifty-five minutes? We would think. Think a bout the meaning of the lingering dream that the Gods had sent. What did they want us to learn from this dream?
Nowadays we want to sleep effectively: eight hours per night, without waste of time. But something got lost along the line: The reflecting.
Next time, you can’t sleep, think about what is good in your life, and how you can do better. Remember what you wanted your life to be when you were a kid. Dare to dream! Read More