Living Well

Eat only food that doesn't rot

Michael Pollan, author In Defense of Food of and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals gives some good advice:

"don't eat any food that's incapable of rotting. If the food can't rot eventually, there's something wrong."

He also blames many of our health problems on the "western diet":

we all know what the Western diet is, but to reiterate it, it's lots of processed food, lots of refined grain and pure sugar, lots of red meat and processed meats, very little whole grains, very little fresh fruits and vegetables. That's the Western diet -- it's the fast-food diet -- that we know it leads to those diseases. About 80 percent of heart disease, at least as much Type II diabetes, 33 to 40 percent cancers all come out of eating that way, and we know this.

He blames our society for making bad food cheap and recommends:

You need a farm bill that makes carrots competitive with Wonder Bread.

He goes on to explain how we add preservatives to food so we can transport it and then we spend lots of money (and contribute to global warming) by transporting the food around the world.

Read the whole interview at AlterNet.

Obese Women are Less Likely to Attend College

From the University of Texas at Austin:

Obese girls are half as likely to attend college as non-obese girls, according to a new study from The University of Texas at Austin. The study also shows obese girls are even less likely to enter college if they attend a high school where obesity is relatively uncommon.

How to do low carb the easy way

A lot of people start out on a low carb diet the Atkins way where you count all your carbohydrates and try to keep them under 20 grams a day. If you eat everything out of a package, the counting isn't too hard but keeping your daily diet to under 20 carbs is hard if you are eating all packaged food. If you aren't eating out of a package, it's hard to count. So either way, people starting out on Atkins are likely to quit just because it's too hard to count carbs.

Don't worry about the exact number of carbs you are eating. Just follow these simple guidelines.

1. Cut out all the high carb, starchy foods like:
   
   • potatoes
   • bread
   • rice
   • baked goods
   • sugar
   • pasta
2. Base your meals around a protein (chicken, steak, fish) and vegetables. Some meals we often eat:
   
   • ham and cheese stuffed chicken breast with broccoli
   • steak with asparagus
   • cajun chicken greek salad
3. Make smart choices where ever you can but don't worry about the occasional high carb food. I ate a girl scout cookie this morning - although it wasn't good for me, I didn't have the four or five I normally had. Guilt will often make you give up the whole plan, so just concentrate on all the good choices you have made!

What are your tips for staying on a low carb diet?

Why calories in doesn't equal calories out

Michael Eads in an interview on 4 Hour Work Week tells us why calories in doesn't equal calories out:

The energy balance equation states that the change in weight equals calories in minus calories out.

Δ Wt = kcal in - kcal out

Many people think that the items on the right side of that equation are independent variables. In other words, if kcal in decreases weight will be lost because kcal out stays the same. But it doesn’t work that way because those terms aren’t independent variables - they are dependent variables. If kcal in goes down, often kcal out goes down as well to compensate. If people increase kcal out by exercising, they end up increasing kcal in because they eat more. It’s called working up an appetite. And since exercise doesn’t burn a whole lot more calories than simply sitting on one’s butt, it doesn’t take a lot of food to compensate. This effect is called adaptive thermogenesis. (Here is a full text article that goes into depth regarding the mechanisms involved.)