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 One might think that moderation is an unfashionable idea, outdated since long.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
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Harvesting Little Things
June 24, 2010
Fall is far away – but I did do my first harvesting yesterday: I got my peas off the vine, just in time before they would have been overripe and hard. Did I mention that this year I started vegetable gardening in pots on the terrace? Because I have crammed the garden so much with flowers and berries that not a speck of free soil was anywhere.
The pods yielded about a cup of peas – just enough for the two of us. I sautéed them very shortly with dill and a tad of ghee (butterfat). As you might have noticed, I usually shun dairy. Most dishes improve when you substitute with olive oil but occasionally a recipe calls for butter, and then I use ghee. In butter fat the proteins are skimmed off the melted butter. Since dairy proteins are the main culprits when it comes to inflammation, of all dairy products, ghee is the safest. I am not a purist – at times, I give in to an emotional need for comfort food. So it was yesterday, with the peas.
From the store, we also had dinosaur kale (also called lacinato kale, Tuscan kale) which is a swell way to introduce kids to greens. The kale has this puckered surface which really looks like dinosaur skin - just don’t tell them yet that researchers now discuss if dinosaurs had feathers. A friend had brought me a first bulb of garlic including greens from her garden, and I threw this, cut, into the kale, and added olive oil, some more garlic, pepper, salt.
Served this with red lentils with cumin, and fish with a bit of left-over green sauce from the freezer.
With it, we drank our garden tea, made from stinging nettles, dandelions, mallow, mints, rosemary, sage, chives, a bit of a young burdock leaf, and just a snippet of wormwood (it is toxic in greater amounts).
A simple, everyday meal – but oh, how sumptuous! Read More
Syndrome X Everywhere
June 22, 2010
Nearly half of US adults have diabetes, hypertension, or hyper-cholesterolemia - these three conditions make up Syndrome X. Plus, the definition includes a fourth condition, namely “central obesity”: a big belly.
To make the diagnosis does not take a degree from medical school. One can SEE if people are healthy – or unhealthy. Their "love handles" give them away.
In the study, white people were found to have more often only one of the conditions, whereas black and Hispanics were more likely to have two or all three.
Have you ever seen photos of the Thirties? The people look outright … unreal. Slim. We had the Depression then, granted. Barely anybody was fat. As an aside, look at their faces: They also seem happier. America then was hard at work to get itself out of the bad economical times.
Central obesity is what is also called the “apple form”: Extra weight gathers in the middle, as opposed to dragging down the bottom – which is called the “pear form.” For reasons not yet totally understood, the “apple” is the dangerous one. Probably because the “pear” connotes some genetically programmed weight gain, and the “apple” is all – what shall we call it – cultural fat.
Physicians used to think that slab of belly fat just sits there, unmovable, unchanged, forever. Now they have found out that belly fat is extremely active – like a stealth factory churning out secret molecules that make people eat more and build up more fat. That is why belly fat kills.
Slimmer is not a question of beauty but of health. A disclosure: My father was hefty. I loved it. Still love compact people. But it does not make them healthier. It only means that I will go through the heartbreak to lose them earlier – statistically speaking.
Sebastian Kneipp (1821 to 1891), one of my medical heroes, once said: “Big dinners fill coffins.” He knew what he was talking – he carried a paunch himself. Interestingly, he was a vegetarian. He did himself in with dumplings.
Which brings us to food. I will not give you a long lecture about healthy eating. Avoid high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as a minimum, and stick to vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. Occasionally have some fish and (organic) meat.
We have the best health care system in the world?? Medicine makes us healthy??
We have a disease care system; doctors “manage” diabetes, high blood pressure, lipid abnormalities, and so on, but they don’t cure you. Why should they? They’d lose a patient. So they are going on “managing” your diabetes, high blood pressure, high lipids. If you want health, you have to do it yourself. The old-fashioned way: more sleep, fresher food, cold shower, a daily walk – one step at a time. Read More