Tag Archives: nutrition

My Favorite Topic: Real Food

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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 →

The Art & Science of Magical Fruit

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On the occasion of my ninth birthday, half a lifetime ago, my beloved Uncle Lenny gave me a book called The Human Body, which still has a place on the shelves that hold my important books. I called it “The Body Book,” and carried it everywhere I went until I had memorized everything in it, cover to cover. I was fascinated not only by the descriptions and illustrations, but also by the idea that each part of the body was uniquely designed to do exactly what was required of it. Form followed function, and I couldn’t get enough. That, parenthetically, was also the year I decided I was, someday, going to become a doctor. Continue reading →

Nourishing Yourself With Joy

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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 →

A Greens Perspective on Nutrition

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Have you ever noticed that a great many different cuisines incorporate dishes that pair some type of green leafy ingredient with some type of fat-rich ingredient? In the Mediterrean it might be simply green leafy lettuce and olive oil, parsley salad with tahini dressing, or sauteed greens + pignola (pine) nuts, not to mention pesto itself (basil + pignolas, traditionally). In Northern or Eastern Europe you might find cabbage and mayonnaise (cole slaw), or spinach with bacon dressing. In the far East it might be deep-sea fatty fish and seaweed (sushi). If you take the time to look, you will find green leaves combined with fats over and over again in cuisines the world over. 

This cannot be a coincidence. I am going to predict that someday we will discover that eating greens with fat increases the availability, perhaps by gut absorption, of certain nutrients in the greens. Or maybe the fats. Or maybe both. Continue reading →

Stripped Carbs: The Emperor’s New Clothes

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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 →

What’s the Best Way to Eat?

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An article entitled Can We Say What Diet is Best for Health? by David Katz and Stephanie Meller, from Yale’s School of Public Health, was published in the Annual Review of Public Health a few years ago. A story about the article was published in the Atlantic by James Hamblin, who called it Science Compared Every Diet, and the Winner is Real Food. I would have edited out the word “Real” and simply called it “Food.” Then I might have presented a review of the differences between Food (With a Capital F) and manufactured calories. Continue reading →

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry (plus one glorious recipe!)

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An article on the obesity epidemic once ran in our local paper with the headline “Eat, drink, and be sorry.” Eat, drink, and be SORRY? The actual quote reads, “Eat, drink, and be merry, so that joy will accompany him in his work all the days of his life.” And herein lies the problem. Continue reading →

Fruit: Friend or Foe?

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Here is how this all got started:
Last month I received an email from a friend asking about whether it was okay to eat a lot of fruit every day. She had seen an article in the NYTimes, “How to Stop Eating Sugar,” in which she read that fresh fruit is a good way to satisfy a sweet tooth without resorting to processed items with their excessive (absurd even, I would say) amounts of added sugar. Without specifying exactly how much was too much, the author included a warning… … Continue reading →

What About Weight Watchers?

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A while ago I got a letter from a reader named Emily, who reported that she had joined Weight Watchers some time back, and found it especially helpful for portion control. Having watched the movie “Fat Head,” read Gary Taubes’s book “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” and read Your Health is On Your Plate, she wants to know if she can follow my recommendations and Weight Watchers at the same time. Plus, she wants to know what I eat. Continue reading →