Did you guys see this book? Someone suggested it to me and I bought it thinking it was about "diet" as a noun (what we are eating today versus in the past) as opposed to "diet" as a verb (meaning some plan of action.) It is sort of a little of both, but I was hoping it was more of the first idea and was bit disappointed when I discovered it to be a split between the two. The book is focusing a diet plan around research that suggests the food we eat now (even veggies & meat) doesn't have the same nutritional make up as it did 50 years ago because of all the engineering we are doing to our food sources. Nothing new in the idea, the whole Omnivore's Dilemma and all those books hit the same topic. The book suggests eating certain foods only if they are organic, and certain others are ok if they are "conventionally" grown, so meaning they don't have to be organic. The whole gist (and I am only in chapter 3--I bought the dern thing I am going to read it now even if it wasn't what I was expecting) is that the engineering we've done to make cows fatter and plants grow faster and produce more is impacting our own abilities to manage our bodies. The chemicals and antibiotics, etc, hinder our cells ability to utilize nutrients that are fewer and far between in our food. It goes into detail on some of the cellular stuff; I won't lie--my eyes glaze over when the "words" are seemingly random sequences of letters and numbers. At that point I skim for the main idea :-)
On one hand I am not totally sure I buy into the ideas, but on the other I can see where the book is making a point, and it certainly does offer some explanations to my own weight loss struggles now as compared to how I was when I was younger. I never struggled with weight loss during high school--I was a little heavy, but still quite fit cardiovascularly, etc. The majority of the food we ate was also grown on my dad's farm, and he was as anti-chemical as they come. So I figure I'll keep an open mind and give the book the benefit of the doubt. I don't suspect it will hurt to attempt some of the suggestions. The first one is to avoid high fructose corn syrup like it is the plague. The person who recommended the book is much farther along in it than I am, and she said she discovered HFCS was all over the place, including in her bread. So I'm going to start hunting for it like a werewolf looking for vampires...LOL. I'm reading that STUPID Twilight series in parallel for something mindless that puts me to sleep.
Anyways, I've had an active couple days, but without formal exercise. I'm headed back to the Body Pump class tonight.
2 comments:
Over the years I've gotten HFCS out of my diet -- mostly from greatly reducing my bread intake. Some stores highlight bread without HFCS -- Wegmans is one. I also avoid aspartame and gave up yogurts with it and nixed my diet coke habit.
Now that I've nixed the real and fake sugar I get a pretty good rush every time I eat anything with sugar in it.
Salad dressings are horrid. If you go to the conventional SD aisle and look at all the different kids, low sugar, salt, no fat or whatever you are losing one thing and gaining another -- no fat is loaded with extra sodium. Have a look.
I've tried to go as pure as possible -- fruits and veggies and plain yogurts and if I eat meat I try to get some without antibiotics. It certainly makes me feel better.
Like I said, the book has some interesting points. it doesn't advocate ditching sugar altogether; just moderate intake of actual sugar over any of the substitutes, including the "healthier" kinds. It also doesn't tell you to avoid anything that is "real" food--if you want french fries, make sure they come from an actual cut up potato as opposed to the some sort of processed-potato-french-fry-shaped food.
And I agree--salad dressings are atrocious! I was looking yesterday at Pot Belly sandwich shop's nutritional info. (This is the single place I can walk to easily in the West Baltimore ghetto where I work) and it is much better to get a skinny turkey on wheat with cheese than it is to get ANY of their salads. They have an incredible flash tool for their nutrition info--you check boxes based on what you'd get on the sandwich or salad and it adds everything up for you. It still amazes me that some restaurants don't post their nutrition info. I've suggested to Peter that we avoid those places altogether; they are clearly hiding something.
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