Food for Thoughts
Weekly Food Thoughts 2/18/2010
Long day today so my thoughts are going to be shorts !!!!
This week I read Michael Pollan's last book : Food Rules. If you dont know him or have not read any of his books (which planet have been living on??) : go buy them all and read them all, the guy is brilliant and his view on our food system is right on target. Now if you know him this littlle book is really good, nothing really new in it but the format is prefect to take around with you as a reminder and if you are not an avid reader it is really small with large print !!!! What I mean is NO excuses !!!
In the meantime I picked a few points he makes that I particularly liked. About nutrition science, according to his research a fairly young science, is today where surgery was in the year 1650 !!! yup ...
And it is on this "science" that processed food is "created". Actually he does not call it food, he calls it "edible foodlike substances", of course I loved it !!!
On a not so funny note he writes about our so-called Western diet, which consist on a lot of processed food, meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains, lost of everyghing except vegetables, fruits and whole grains and he explains that virtually all of the obesity and type 2 diabetes, 80% of the cardiovascular diseases and more than 1/3 of all cancers can be linked to this diet. Four of the top 10 killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet. What an extraodinary achievement for a civilization : to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick !!!
But he also notes that there is a very hopefull fact : people who get off the Western diet see dramatic improvements in their health, good research suggest that the effects of the Western diet can be rolled back and relatively quickly.
So People there is Hope ... that is if you change the way you eat !!!
The first step go buy the book and then come shop at the farmer's market where we sell real food ....
See you All tomorrow ....
The next generation of Laying Girls ...