Today I’d like to talk about just one thing, and that is the difference between healthy and nourishing. In 2017, Michael Ruhlman, the noted chef and writer, published a book called Grocery*, in which he reflected on a great many aspects of supermarkets and grocery stores. As part of his endeavor, he asked me to meet with him and share my perspective. Continue reading
Category Archives: Strategies
My Favorite Topic: Real Food
Almost all diets have one particular strategy in common, which is to increase the amount of real food that people are eating while simultaneously decreasing the amount of manufactured calories, including both stripped carbohydrates and the ultraprocessed oils invented in the 20th century.
Stripped carbohydrates are processed to remove the most nourishing parts, including the bran and germ. Other stripped carbohydrates include white rice, corn starch, corn syrup, and sugar. It is not a coincidence that white flour, corn starch and powdered sugar look exactly the same. We’ve removed the original identities of these products, so all that is left is a pile of white powder. Continue reading
Old-Fashioned Gratitude
Many years ago, when I was eleven years old, my parents bought a Corning Cooktop stove, a fancy new appliance whose coils remained white even when they were hot. You simply had to take it on faith — or not. No matter how long I stared at that new stovetop, I could not convince myself that the white coils were hot. And that is why I still remember so clearly, this many years later, the perfectly oval burn on the tip of my right index finger. I touched it only once, but that was enough. It was all it took. I couldn’t take anyone else’s word for it. Continue reading
Nourishing Yourself With Joy
Joy has been in the news lately, and that’s what I want to talk about today.
Eating is meant to be a source of joy, as satisfying as the sunrise. Like listening to music. Talking with friends, or sitting together on a bench at the park. The wind at your back. Trading backrubs. Dancing. Stretching. A hot shower. A book that transports you to the other side of the universe. Walking along the shore.
Eating is deeply satisfying. It speaks to your soul. Eating is sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, umami. Crunchy, soft, toothy, smooth, sticky. Beautiful, colorful, warm, cool, icy, bubbly. Expressive, imaginative. Fun, chaotic, quiet, or peaceful. Continue reading
There Is So Much You Can Do To Make It Better
Sometimes I think this blog should have a category called “It’s worse than you think” or “I’m really not exaggerating,” or maybe just “More scary news.” Sometimes I even get the feeling that people think I may be overstating the urgency of the diabetes epidemic. So I gathered together a few statistics for you. Continue reading
My TEDx Talk
It’s been about ten years since I gave this talk at Ursuline College in Cleveland, Ohio. That’s quite a long time. I remember there weren’t enough spaces for the whole title, so it was changed from Your Health to Our Health. That also works. There’s a lot here that I still use, Continue reading
Fake Fruit Names for Your Breakfast Cereal
A while back I wrote a post about the high profit-margin-to-cost of the breakfast cereal business. Today I have more to say on breakfast cereal, not about the manufacturing process or profit margins, but about the pervasive use of fruit-related words in the naming of these products.
If I had just ten seconds to share advice on improving your nutrition, I suspect you already know exactly what I would say: Eat more fruits and vegetables. And I don’t think that would surprise anyone. We all know that fruits and vegetables are nutritional powerhouses, and we also know that everyone should be eating more of them, especially since most of us don’t eat enough produce to begin with. Continue reading
And the Winner is Real Food
Years ago, the article Can We Say What Diet is Best for Health?, by David Katz and Stephanie Meller from Yale University School of Public Health, was published in the Annual Review of Public Health. A related essay by James Hamblin, Science Compared Every Diet, and the Winner is Real Food, was subsequently published in the Atlantic.
Katz and Meller compared low-carb, low-fat, low-glycemic, Mediterranean, DASH, Paleolithic, and vegan diets, concluding that “A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.” Michael Pollan said, “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” More recent research continues to confirm these findings. Continue reading
Walking With Wellness
Some time ago, I received my first pedometer with which to track my daily steps, and I could not have been more thrilled. Attached unobtrusively to an elastic wrist band, it ventured forth with me every day as I plotted my path, set my course, stepped up, or took a hike. Continue reading
The Effects of Lifestyle on Function
Recently I wrote about a patient I met many years ago. Like most people, he spent a fair amount of time thinking about medical expenses. That was understandable, as his elevated blood pressure required treatment with four medications.
I explained to him that if he could make a couple of lifestyle changes, there was a good chance that he would be able to reduce the number of blood pressure medications he took. Could he take a short walk when possible? Could he cut back on ultraprocessed food items, like Ritz crackers and cheese whiz, and substitute homemade popcorn and a slice of Jarlsberg or cheddar on wasa crackers? What about more fresh fruit and vegetables? Maybe, but he was worried about the cost. Continue reading