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
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
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.
I am THRILLED to announce that my #TED talk is up and ready to go! Many thanks to my family, friends and colleagues, especially Gina Messina-Dysert and Melissa Celko, for their unwavering inspiration and support!!
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
My kitchen counter is once again covered with pumpkins and onions, so it must be getting close to November! Here are two unusual and extraordinary recipes to use up your pumpkins and onions. If you have time, try to make the onions the day before, because as good as they are, they taste even better the next day! And they are great recipes for holiday celebrations, too. Continue reading
Here is why it’s important to use less insulin: The fact is that insulin is not your friend. You need it to live, but you want to use as little as possible. You want the levels of insulin in your bloodstream to stay as low as possible. Like sugar. The lower the better (within reason, say 80 to 99 for fasting blood sugars). When it comes to insulin, you want your levels to remain as low as necessary to do the job, not zero of course, but on the low side. Why is that? There are a number of reasons. Continue reading
Some time ago, Gene [not his real name] the computer guy showed up at my office for the first time in a while. Right away, I knew something had changed. I said, “You’re looking very well! How are you doing, Gene?” He responded with an uncharacteristic grin, and answered with an observation that all of us know, but few believe (despite numerous confirmatory personal experiences!). I sat up fast when he said, “Diets don’t work.” Continue reading
I want to speak once again about a massive misconception, namely that obesity is an overindulged state. It is not. If obesity were an overindulged state, then diets would work. The reason that your appetite increases right along with your waistline is that the bigger you are, the more malnourished you become. And the more malnourished you are, the hungrier you get. Obesity is caused by malnutrition.
Have you ever said to yourself, “Why, oh why, did I drink so much olive oil?” Have you ever heard someone say, “Wow, I shouldn’t have eaten so much fruit salad!”? Of course not. Foods that are nutritious send signals to our brains to put the brakes on automatically when we’ve had enough.
In contrast, items without nutritional value send no such signal. So it’s easy to eat too much candy, too many potato chips, half a pan of brownies, a sleeve of Thin Mints, and two full orders of deep-fried whatever. Even on the same day.
That’s why the solution to overweight is not to eat less but to eat better. It’s why I want a lot of peanuts (or edamame or walnuts or almonds or chickpeas) in my salad. Because that salad is going to fill me up and stick to my ribs a lot more if I add plenty of nutritious oils and protein to that gorgeous, colorful salad. And I also want the salad dressing to be made with something rich and nourishing like olive oil or tahini, either of which will make the salad taste fabulous and satisfy me for hours. Fat-free salad dressing is not food. Neither is anything else made with corn syrup.
Portion control is a separate issue from nutritional density. Eat more nutritious food, and there is a good chance that your portions will begin, slowly, to take care of themselves. This means that portion control is not a solution, but rather a consequence of improving your nutrition. It happens by itself when you begin to eat in a way that supports your good health. The more nutritious food you eat, the better nourished you become, the more weight you “release,” the better your pants fit, and the more reasonable your appetite gets. What you weigh is a reflection of the choices you make. You don’t get to choose your weight. You don’t get to dial in what you want to weigh every morning. But if you begin to improve the nutritional value of the things you choose to eat, your weight begins to reflect the new choices.
I promised a friend that I would write another post about stripped carbs and processed edibles. Sometimes stripped carbs are called simple carbs, but there’s nothing simple about them. Stripped carbs include white flour, white rice, corn starch, corn syrup, sugar, fruit juice, and beer. It’s not that you can’t eat them at all; it’s that Americans are drowning in them. Continue reading