Whole, Intact Carbohydrates

I’ve been thinking about the fact that carbohydrate virtually never grows in nature without the fiber attached. Think about meadows, gardens, and orchards — all the vegetables, beans, fruit, and grains that grow in these places grow with their fiber matrix intact.

Why is flour that’s been stripped of its fiber and germ called “refined?” What’s refined about flour? If you look up “refined” in the dictionary you discover that to refine is to remove the course impurities. And that got me thinking.

Why would anyone want to imply that the oil-rich germ and fiber-rich bran are coarse impurities? Continue reading


The Illusion of Variety

Like many people who have been holed up in their homes for the past 15 months or so, this past week I entered a supermarket for the first time in more than a year. Omg. I left with one package of granola bites (treat), one cabbage (food), two kinds of beer (treat), and tonic water (treat–Fever Tree, the best!). Hopefully, I’ll do better next time. The whole experience got me thinking once again about what a supermarket really is, and I decided to share something I first posted a very long time ago. Continue reading


Being Kind to Yourself: A Basic Approach

A while ago, I was having a conversation with my friend Henry. He’s a doc, too, and we enjoy spending time together and talking about practicing medicine, taking care of patients, what it’s like, what we learn from it, and how we can do better. I am very grateful for Henry, and for the fact that we have been having this conversation for almost 25 years. It just so happens that Henry is in quarantine right now, so he’s on my mind. He’s fine in case you’re wondering, just being cautious. Continue reading


Fun is Fine, It’s Just Not Food

There is a very big difference between nutrition and entertainment. Food is nourishing. It’s what goes into our mouths when we choose stuff that’s loaded with fiber and color, like vegetables and beans, nuts, fruits, seeds, and whole grains. Fun, on the other hand, is nothing like food. Fun (which often goes by interesting names like “junk food” or “fast food” or “processed food”) is made with products like white flour, white rice, corn syrup, corn starch, commodity oils (soy, corn, cottonseed) and, of course, sugar, which you tend to find in items that are ultraprocessed. Food nourishes you. Fun entertains you. Sometimes you feel like a little entertainment. That’s fine. Go ahead and enjoy. But it doesn’t go in the plus category. It’s just for fun. Continue reading


Complementary Colors: Nourishing Yourself from the Inside Out (with recipe)

One thing you may not know about me is that one of my casual hobbies is interior decorating. I’ve picked out paint colors for my friends, rearranged their furniture, and weighed in on frame choices, picture positioning, and all kinds of related activities. Have you ever heard of decorating with complementary colors? Have you ever even heard of complementary colors? It’s when you choose two colors from opposite sides of the color wheel, like purple and yellow, orange and blue, or red and green. They usually clash just a little bit, which confers added visual interest. Here are some examples: A pink pillow that makes a pale green couch really SING! Or a wrapped bunch of lavender stalks in a pale yellow vase on a lemon-yellow tablecloth strewn with tiny purple violets. Or a ceramic bowl painted in stripes of turquoise and orange. And that brings me to sweet potatoes and kale. Continue reading


Reversing Winter Insulation in the Springtime

A while back, I received a timely message from a reader: “With the weather warming I am digging out summer clothes and finding that some things are a bit “snug.” My diet is healthy and I run several times a week, but I would love to shed a few pounds around my waist. If my diet is already good, what would you suggest to take a few pounds off?” 

Let’s look at this request from a seasonal standpoint. Continue reading


Commodity-based Eating

A few years ago, Michael Ruhlman shared with me a copy of a truly original and captivating book written by Chef Dan Barber and called The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food. You may have heard of him; in 2009, Time Magazine named Dan Barber one of the 100 most influential people in the world. It took me a long time to get that through book, primarily because it made me think so hard that I could only read a chapter at a time before I had to set it aside and think about what the author had just said. Continue reading


How Much Stripped Carb is Safe to Eat?

Today’s post is about how much stripped (refined) carbohydrate is okay to eat.  Stripped carbohydrate means white flour, white rice, corn starch, corn syrup, sugar. Plus fruit juice and beer. Basically, stripped carbs are carbs (mostly grain, though not only) that have had their fiber and color stripped away. It’s not a coincidence that white flour looks exactly like corn starch and powdered sugar. They’ve all had their color and fiber stripped away, and all that’s left is a pile of white powder.

This post is only about stripped carbs. It is not a discussion about whether carbohydrates are okay to eat. There are people who feel that carbohydrate has no place in their diets, and who manage beautifully on a very-low-carbohydrate diet. I get plenty of comments from readers who eat this way. Someday, we may discover that this group of people share a combination of genes that makes it very difficult for them to tolerate even modest amounts of carbohydrate. For now, I am glad that they have figured out how best to protect their health. So this post is not for them. It is for people who tolerate whole grains, fruit, and beans without any problems. People who feel awful if they skip the vegetables, grains, beans, and fruit. Like Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.

If you look out your window at some growing food, you will notice that there is no such thing–in nature–as carbohydrate without fiber attached. Stripped carbs are relatively recent  inventions. Stripped carbs are derived from raw ingredients — mainly grain and produce (dates and beets) — that are abundant in nature. Human beings figured out how to convert these ingredients to flour and sugar only in the past couple of hundred years or so. We did not evolve to eat these food-like products, and certainly not at the volumes we currently consume them.

How much stripped carbohydrate is it “safe” to eat? Not a lot. But I would not say zero. There’s a certain amount that probably doesn’t matter much, one way or the other. At the end of the day, I think it comes down to a relatively simple equation, one that is probably affected by three things: 1) your genes, which are heavily influenced by your environment, 2) the amount of unmanageable stress you withstand on a daily basis, 3) and the amount of activity in which you engage regularly.  

Stress can be physical, emotional, social, spiritual. It can come from within (fever, anxiety, bereavement, pregnancy) or without (a blizzard, a heat wave, a new baby, winning the lottery). It can be the result of circumstance (a safe falls on your head) or questionable decision-making (skipping breakfast). It can be due to conflict, real or imagined. Agents of stress can be small like a virus, or large like an asteroid. Pain, fatigue, sleep deprivation are serious and common causes of stress.  

And, yes, stress can be caused or exacerbated by eating foods that don’t provide the building blocks your body needs to function optimally. Like stripped carbohydrate. In other words, stress causes stress. That’s one place you do not want to be. So eating more nutritious food, which helps make your brain and body work better, is one way to decrease the amount of stress in your life. 

Are you looking for a number? Okay, here it is. You can have two servings of stripped carbohydrate. But how often, you ask? Well, that depends on you. It could be two servings per day, per week, per month, or even per year. If you are slender, active, comfortable, and quite healthy, you may be able to tolerate as much as two servings a day of stripped carb.

Note that this means not two cans of soda pop, but two ounces. A can of soda with 12 teaspoons of sugar is not one serving. It is 12 servings. Two servings is just one-sixth of a can.

Continue reading



Faux Fruit Foods

If I had just ten seconds to share advice on improving your nutrition, this is what I would say: Eat more fruits and vegetables. And I don’t think that would surprise anyone. We all know these are nutritional powerhouses, and we all know that it’s a good idea to eat more of them, especially since most of us probably don’t eat enough produce to begin with. Continue reading