A quick background. My mother, who is also a dental hygienist, is a complete and total health nut. Our family joke is reminiscing over my 7th birthday party when my mom filled my Big Bird pinata up with sugar free suckers, bananas, apples, and oatmeal cookies. (Luckily, my dad found out before we started beating the thing, and damaging the fruit, so we quickly swapped it out with a candy filled one). As kids, we never had sodas or processed foods in the house, had to eat our greens before we could leave the table, and were allowed only a small scoop of ice cream for desert. So instead, when I would go to friends' houses, I would pig out on all the "good food" like Lucky Charms and fruit roll ups. ;)
Today, I am incredibly contentious about the foods I eat, and I give my mom so much credit for what she didn't allow her kids to have. Even after plugging my nose to drink veggie smoothies and crying because I couldn't stomach finishing my spinach, I know she was raising us the way her mother did, and so the cycle in our family is going to continue....:)
That being said, my mom put these 2 books in my stocking for Christmas last year, which I just got around to reading today:
I'm going to touch more on the first one to begin with, "Eat this, not That." For me personally, this didn't spark my interest, nor did my mom give these to me, with the idea of losing weight. I am naturally thin, both my parents are too, so I was blessed in that department. BUT, skinny people do get flabby, noodly, and suffer from heart conditions too. The #1 reason? Their diet. For those people trying to eat healthier and lose weight, these authors swear this is the book for you. The Author, David Zinczenko, is magazine's Men Health, Editor in Chief. (I'd say that's a pretty good source, have you seen those guys?!) The only downfall I have with this book is that it compares TONS of fast food and chain restaurants, both of which I hardly eat. (my guilty pleasures being In-N-Out and PF Changs... both of which are loaded with calories***(there are GOOD calories) and sugars). I obtained the greatest benefits by learning the definitions for "whole grain", "Natural", and "low sodium"... all which are usually bogus.
The bottom line is that during the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the US. The Center for Disease Control only graphs till 2009, but check out this map that timelines obesity rates from 1985-2009. Very wild.
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html
A couple more disturbing stats:
American men eat 7% more calories than they did in 1971
American women eat a whopping 18% more calories (an additional 335 calories per day- enough to pack on a pound of extra flab every 11 days!)
American kids average 150 daily calories more than they did just 20 years ago.
Did our stomachs get larger? Did our mouths expand? Of course not. WE haven't changed. The FOOD has. -ETNT
I simply can't get into enough detail this book has to say, but here are the previews and I hope it will encourage you to buy this book and read more!!! (Or, if you're in San Francisco, you can borrow it from me).
*We've added extra calories to traditional food.
*We're Super-sizing our lives.
*We're eating things our bodies aren't supposed to eat.
*We absorb more calories than would have been humanly possible just a few decades ago!!!
*Resturants and Grocery stores have made smart nutritional choices harder and harder to discern.
(Borrow this book from me to read into these individual topics... or rent FOOD INC. from your local Red Box).
I will get into a little more detail when it comes to the most "Misleading Labels". Please stop buying something because it says REDUCED FAT or ALL NATURAL!
Reduced Fat: Splashed across too many packaged goods to count. This actually means that total fat grams have been reduced by at least 25%. Sounds amazing, right? Problem is, the reduction in fat often comes with an increase in sugar and sodium and ultimately, no net nutritional gain what-so-ever. :-/
Multigrain: means that more than 1 type of grain was used in processing (wheat, rye, barley, rice, etc), but doesn't make a single claim about the way the grains are processed. Also, beware of the equally misleading "wheat bread," a claim that simply means the loaf was made from wheat flour, which might very well be refined and colored with molasses to appear darker. The only trustworthy claim for whole grains is "100% whole grain!"
Natural: Natural, what? With the exception of meat and poultry products, the USDA has no definition set and imposes no regulations on tue use of this term, making it essentially meaningless. So please, stop allowing this word to be a decision maker in weather you put it in your cart or not. ;)
(Way more worthwhile definitions in ETNT).
So what CAN we eat? I'll get into that in future blogs to come... :)
This preview is slightly difficult to relate to unless you have a pretty deep understanding of the gain in highly processed foods and ingredients that are being pumped into our daily diets. But if you know even a tad about this, you're probably wondering just like I am, how the debate over nationalized health care could simply be a portioned solved if we weren't so tainted by calorie-laden junk, we wouldn't be spending one in every five health care dollars supporting Americans suffering from Type 2 diabetes. Please know that eating too much food isn't the problem. Our society is eating too many foods that aren't actually food! But instead, preservatives, additives, and chemically enhanced "foodlike substances".
And I feel compelled to mention that it's not just the calorie number that one should be paying close attention to on the food label. Instead, if you see a word under the ingredients that is 15-20 letters long and is excruciatingly hard to pronounce, Don't eat it! If your grandmother can't tell you what that "so-called-food" is, don't put it in your mouth!
In reality, food -REAL FOOD- is a good thing. The kind of food that comes from the earth and not labs. The kind of food that obtains magical properties and amazing abilities to PREVENT and even HEAL many of our physical and emotional woes.
I realize this post is a bit jumbled, but my goal was to just give a preview of stats and unhealthy eating tactics. I can't possibly cover everything I want to in this small intro, but here's my start. Please stay tuned for some yummy recipes that Adam and I have personally tried and love so much!
~Eat This, Not That. By: David Zinczenko
~cdc.gov/obesity
