In my short few decades on this Earth, most of which spent woefully ignorant of anything having to do with good health, I’ve seen some trends ebb and flow in the marketing of food. When I was growing up, fat was evil, and everything had to be low fat. Cholesterol got it’s turn, along with trans fats, carbs, and now the enemy du jour is gluten. Nutritional information is slow to get to the masses, and good information is hard to come by. Marketing, however is faster than Usain Bolt running for the restroom after eating at one of my local Taco Bells. But anyway, to the point.
Marketing plays on emotion, not science. And in our no-attention-span-having society, the shorter the message, the better. Go to your supermarket and read some labels. You’ll see “Fat Free”, “0% Trans Fat”, “Cholesterol Free”, “0 Calories”, “Gluten Free”, and more. On the other end of the spectrum, you have foods that have “good things” added. Vitamin C. Fiber. Calcium. So, when a food is labeled as being free of one of the bad guys, or having extra good guys, it must be healthy, right? Wrong. Come take a photo tour of my local supermarket with me.
Continue reading »
Rather than take some pictures and write up an update on what I’m doing with my little garden, I figured I’d make a video. I hope it gives you a better idea of how things are coming along.
After making the video, I did take out all 3 squares of broccoli and replaced them with 1 square of radishes (16 plants) and 2 squares of spinach (9 per square). It will be interesting to see how the plants do being started by from seed outdoors as opposed to started indoors from seed in the peat pods then transplanted. I also took out one of the squares of cabbage. In it’s place I started a square of mesclun mix. I also started another shoebox of mesclun. I want to see how they 2 different areas compare as far as growing is concerned. I used a seed starting mix (Miracle Gro brand) in the shoeboxes. In spite of the drainage I drilled, the seed starting mix seems to drain poorly. So, I’m sort of comparing soils with that.
Do you remember playing “war games” as a kid? Not the ones that involved connecting yourself to your TV, but the ones where you grabbed your coolest toy gun (or even an appropriately shaped stick) and headed outside with your friends to run around screaming “Pow! Pow!”. “Pow” would be followed inevitably with “I have a force field”. Of course that would be followed with “I have force field penetrating bullets”.
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do.”
It would carry on like this until someone got the bright idea to play kickball or dodgeball, or until everyone went home to tell their parents how stupid the other kids were.
There’s a similar thing going on in legislation, I think.
You may have heard of some communities wanting to ban the sale of toys with kids’ meals in restaurants in an effort to curb the obesity epidemic. This is, of course, a noble cause. It’s not the best way to go about doing it, however. Some things shouldn’t be legislated, and while I agree that the obesity problem needs to be addressed, I disagree that placing restrictions on how restaurants are allowed to market their food is the way to do it.
Here in Arizona, we’re so intent on not having any silly communist legislation telling us what we can and can’t do, that there is legislation in the works to ban legislation that would ban having kids’ meals sold with toys. If that twists your head in knots, I’m right with you. It’s like we’re kids again. Here’s a link to an article that goes into (slightly) more detail than I.
“I’m banning something I don’t like.”
“Oh yeah, well I’m gonna ban your ban, ‘cuz banning is stupid.”
It’s positively ridiculous.
I have an idea. Let’s spend time educating people, and empowering them, so they can make healthy choices for themselves. Let’s teach kids to WANT healthy food, toy or not. With the time, effort, and money spent on legislation and enforcement, couldn’t we do better by our kids? Couldn’t we give them healthier school lunches instead of lunches that are on par with a toy-enhanced fast food fat fest? Couldn’t we invest in community gardens? There are so many better ways for the government to invest it’s resources for real change.
Or, we can let the legislators sit around trying to protect us from ourselves, or to protect us from those who would protect us from ourselves… If only I had a force field to keep all of that silliness at bay…
When striving to live the Paleo lifestyle, and reap all of the health benefits associated with it, a lot of discussion is devoted to eating locally sourced food. The benefits of it are clear. Nutritional content isn’t lost in shipping, and fewer preserving agents are used. The carbon footprint associated with the logistics of transporting food thousands of miles is reduced significantly. It’s good for the local economy.
You can’t get any more locally sourced than your own back yard. Lots of paleo folks have begun gardening, or animal husbandry where they have the room to do so. What if you live in an urban environment? How about if you live in an apartment complex, on the second floor, with no yard, in the desert? That’s my predicament, and I’ve been giving some thought on how I can still cultivate some veggie goodness for my family. Today I stared that project, and I want to share my progress and pitfalls with you in hopes that it will get you thinking of ways in which you can positively impact both your body, and the environment.
Today’s tasks involved simply planting the seeds. Loosely following a planting guide I found at the Community Food Bank’s website, I chose to purchase seeds for
Continue reading »
Today, January 31, 2011, the FDA released its new nutritional guidelines. These guidelines, the 2010 Dietary Guidelines, are intended to address the growing number of overweight and obese adults and children in the United States. 2010, eh? Well, it’s only 31 days later than 2010. I’ll cut the FDA some slack, I suppose.
Real fruit is an important part of proper nutrition.
This document can be viewed by clicking here. I’ll warn you, it’s 112 pages of what is probably the most boring thing you’ll read for a while. I’ll be kicking it around over the next couple of days and try to give you a distilled summary of it when I’m done.
I’d like to be optimistic. However, I fear that it will be laden with much of the same crap that has been coming out of the FDA for some time now. If the government really wants to put forth a recommendation that will lead to a healthier society with less incidence of chronic disease, then there’s going to have to be a disconnect between legislation and lobbyists for the companies that are producing some of the food that is contributing to the problem. But that’s a rant for another day and another blog post. For now, I just wanted to give you the heads up. You can read the press release here.
If you want a more simple way to look at nutrition that doesn’t involve 112 pages of reading, then just consider this. If it wasn’t alive within the past week or so, then do your best to avoid it. Food is something that was once alive. Dead things don’t stick around too long unless their processed in such a way as to have potentially harmful ingredients. Like Taco Bell’s pseudo-beef. Click here if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
As always, I encourage you to learn about your body, and what does and doesn’t work for you. I’m not a nutritionist, so I won’t tell you what to eat, (though I may tell you what NOT to eat, cough cough, taco bell, cough cough…) but empowering yourself with knowledge is never, ever a bad thing. There is plenty going on in the world of nutrition research right now. I’ll do my best to keep you abreast of things as they change.
Until next time. Live Dangerously, but eat safe!
