I am currently reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I'm only one section in but its very interesting so far. It has talked about how the food industry and shaky food science has caused America to have a backwards diet. I think I like it mostly because it confirms that what I am doing is correct. Anybody interested should definitely check it out. It is only 10 dollars on Amazon.
UPDATE: Full review:
There is not much to say about this book. Pollan gives a clear and respectable argument. It definitely has some shocking facts to the average person and I feel everyone should read this book to at least see Pollan's perspective. The writing is very easy to read and enjoyable at some points. You could probably finish it in a week.
The grade I'd give it is 4.9/5 good read
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Dinner the 28th
So today I had a yellow bell pepper, a heart of romaine, and about a third pound of Trader Joe's grass fed beef. I don't recommend the Trader Joe's brand of beef. It was extra mushy on edges and just generally off. I think it caused me heart burn, forcing me to walk to Albertson's while eating my dinner to buy rolaids. Additionally, I forgot to take a picture. As a last comment I have decided that I will not be posting what I am eating unless there are out of the ordinary circumstances such as heart burn or delicious food. I will continue to post updates on my ever changing diet.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Frozen Yogurt
Between today and yesterday, I have eaten a quart of delicious frozen yogurt. Now I have smelly gas proving that frozen yogurt, at least the Trader Joe's brand that I bought, is no good for you, though I still love it despite the stomach aches. This brings to question, is this gas due to lactose intolerance? Or is it the fact that I haven't had any dairy recently and my system was shocked?
I have read many cases of people immediately getting sick when consuming dairy products after year long hiatuses, but these dairy products were usually tall glasses of pasteurized milk void of the natural cultures that would handle the lactose in your body. Also, I have heard the cultures in yogurt work against lactose intolerance. Interestingly enough, store-bought frozen yogurt has been pasteurized to enhance the flavor, which lead me to question the cultures in Pinkberry and the like. I actually just learned this as I was typing this entry. The fact that fact that store-bought frozen yogurt is pasteurized surprised me so much, I decided to email Yoplait, asking about their yogurt's pasteurization. I'll update to this post when I get an answer.
To solve the mystery of my upset stomach, I think it is caused by my lactose intolerance. I think I will start trying out raw milk to test the difference. All in all, ice cream is delicious. I just went out and bought a quart of Cherry Garcia. This time I think I'll pace myself.
UPDATE: So apparently, the yogurt at Yoplait is first pasteurized as milk, then cultures are added so that the yogurt is formed. here is the actual email they sent me.
I have read many cases of people immediately getting sick when consuming dairy products after year long hiatuses, but these dairy products were usually tall glasses of pasteurized milk void of the natural cultures that would handle the lactose in your body. Also, I have heard the cultures in yogurt work against lactose intolerance. Interestingly enough, store-bought frozen yogurt has been pasteurized to enhance the flavor, which lead me to question the cultures in Pinkberry and the like. I actually just learned this as I was typing this entry. The fact that fact that store-bought frozen yogurt is pasteurized surprised me so much, I decided to email Yoplait, asking about their yogurt's pasteurization. I'll update to this post when I get an answer.
To solve the mystery of my upset stomach, I think it is caused by my lactose intolerance. I think I will start trying out raw milk to test the difference. All in all, ice cream is delicious. I just went out and bought a quart of Cherry Garcia. This time I think I'll pace myself.
UPDATE: So apparently, the yogurt at Yoplait is first pasteurized as milk, then cultures are added so that the yogurt is formed. here is the actual email they sent me.
Thank you for contacting us concerning Yoplait yogurt. We appreciate the opportunity to address this matter.
The process of making yogurt is very similar to the way milk is turned into cottage cheese, sour cream or even cheddar cheese. Milk is pasteurized, then yogurt cultures, and/or fruit and flavorings are added. Then the product is heated to allow the cultures to grow. After a period of time, the product is cooled.
The difference between yogurt and other cultured milk products is the variety of bacterial cultures added to the milk. For yogurt, those cultures are Lactobacillus Bulgaricus and Streptococcus Thermophilus. Yoplait adds another culture, Lactobacillus Acidophilus. The names may be complicated but they are the key to the distinctive flavor and texture of yogurt.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please let us know.
Sincerely,
Jeremy Gold
Consumer Services
Sunday, September 27, 2009
My story so far...
So here's how it began. My dad is... a capricious extremist. He'll always 100% gung ho about anything he does, until he suddenly changes his mind. I swear we ate at this one chinese restaurant, Pan Tao(now under new ownership :(), three or four times a week for a whole month. Then just stopped going because my dad decided the food wasn't "clean." Anyways, he was this way about diet too.
It started with vegetarianism. This lasted on and off for a few months. I wasn't convinced. He would try to go all veg but get extremely sick after a week or so, even when taking the B12 supplements and such. After multiple tries at that, he switched off to vegetarian raw foodism. Why eating vegetables raw instead of cooked would be a game changer was a mystery to me, but I was intrigued. Long explanation short, cooking destroys enzymes and nutrients that help you body process the food you are eating. Of course, your body is capable of producing those enzymes, but that requires resources and energy. By eating raw, you are eating efficiently. Back to the story, we would often have raw adventures. Kombucha, fermented tea, was a crowd favorite. I even got a friend hooked on it. Green Smoothies were definitely ill received at first, but were soon adopted by the whole family. Unfortunately, staying full raw for over a week or so would have exhausting side effects on my dad, but using the raw mentality in our diets was improving my family's health overall.
Next, I left to college. I had learned a lot from my dad up to that point, more than I would care to divulge to most people, and now had to start learning through my own experiences. For the first two quarters of my freshman year, I would eat like any student would, till I was stuffed. I drank... a lot. More than I should have, as my mom would constantly remind me. I still went to the gym quite a bit, (I lead an active lifestyle. Its fun.) but I was continuing to gain weight. One day I looked down at the scale and BOOM. 195. That's huge for me. My regular weight is 180. I had to do something about it, so I just thought about what to do. I didn't look on the internet or consult help. I just thought, what is my best course of action? I have allergies (or hayfever) and in my youth my family told me (and I experienced) that wheat, sugar, and dairy aggravate allergies. In relation to this, I thought to myself, "If these things make you weaker in the spring, why would it be any different in the other 3 seasons?". From there, I decided to remove wheat from my diet because it was the most significant part of my diet at that time. In place, I would try to follow more to the raw foodist's diet with lots of raw fruits and veggies.
My actual plan was to eat only one serving of a wheat based product per week. This meant almost no flour tortillas, bread, pasta, cereal, or pastries. I would even limit rice in my diet. When I told my friend at the time of my plan, they said, "Are you ****** crazy? Wheat is good for you. Why else would it be the large part of the pyramid? You don't even have any solid evidence to do this." I guess he was right about this being more or less a baseless claim, so while I was sticking to my plan, I researched. I found some interesting results. Gluten allergies in 1 of 4 people. Acidity caused by grains. This acidity theory interested me, so I looked further into it. Turns out our bodies are slightly basic and foods that we eat are either basic or acidic in our body. If we eat overly acidic food, like wheat, our body has to work to bring our body acidity back into balance. Inefficient, no? So, in addition to not eating wheat, I decided to also try to eat more basic foods, as acidic foods are prevalent in our society. It was frickin' magic. In the first week, I had lost around 8 pounds. I lost somewhere around 5 in the second. In a matter of two weeks, with a new, not necessarily intense, exercise regimen, I was almost back at my natural weight, and feeling much stronger and healthier. Of course it was hard to stick to the diet for more than a few months, but it has forever changed my take on diet.
Coincidentally, my dad came to the same conclusion upon different paths at around the same time. He found the paleo diet. And it actually works for him and the rest of my family. Me as well. Paleo diet is basically eating as a caveman would. Whole foods(Foods which are whole, not the store). Fat based diet. The way I looked at it was this: In order to have a sustainable( in the sense that I could sustain it for a long time. Not "green") diet, I would need a primary source of calories. For calorie heavy nutrients, that left fat and carbs. I believe fat, not carbs, is the right choice to make. Not most fats that we use today though. Olive oil is cool, but the kind of fats I started consuming were generally animal fats(including butter). The paleo diet was definitley a worthy venture. (A side note: a two or three years before that, I saw something about the paleo diet in school and told my dad, thinking it was a good idea. He said it was stupid... capricious)
So, to sum it all up. I am a rawpaleoist, with a mind for acidity, trying to optimize my diet even further. I enjoy cooking and eating, and like to think that I'm darn good at it too(both cooking and eating). I hope people read this and that I can keep it up. Thanks.
It started with vegetarianism. This lasted on and off for a few months. I wasn't convinced. He would try to go all veg but get extremely sick after a week or so, even when taking the B12 supplements and such. After multiple tries at that, he switched off to vegetarian raw foodism. Why eating vegetables raw instead of cooked would be a game changer was a mystery to me, but I was intrigued. Long explanation short, cooking destroys enzymes and nutrients that help you body process the food you are eating. Of course, your body is capable of producing those enzymes, but that requires resources and energy. By eating raw, you are eating efficiently. Back to the story, we would often have raw adventures. Kombucha, fermented tea, was a crowd favorite. I even got a friend hooked on it. Green Smoothies were definitely ill received at first, but were soon adopted by the whole family. Unfortunately, staying full raw for over a week or so would have exhausting side effects on my dad, but using the raw mentality in our diets was improving my family's health overall.
Next, I left to college. I had learned a lot from my dad up to that point, more than I would care to divulge to most people, and now had to start learning through my own experiences. For the first two quarters of my freshman year, I would eat like any student would, till I was stuffed. I drank... a lot. More than I should have, as my mom would constantly remind me. I still went to the gym quite a bit, (I lead an active lifestyle. Its fun.) but I was continuing to gain weight. One day I looked down at the scale and BOOM. 195. That's huge for me. My regular weight is 180. I had to do something about it, so I just thought about what to do. I didn't look on the internet or consult help. I just thought, what is my best course of action? I have allergies (or hayfever) and in my youth my family told me (and I experienced) that wheat, sugar, and dairy aggravate allergies. In relation to this, I thought to myself, "If these things make you weaker in the spring, why would it be any different in the other 3 seasons?". From there, I decided to remove wheat from my diet because it was the most significant part of my diet at that time. In place, I would try to follow more to the raw foodist's diet with lots of raw fruits and veggies.
My actual plan was to eat only one serving of a wheat based product per week. This meant almost no flour tortillas, bread, pasta, cereal, or pastries. I would even limit rice in my diet. When I told my friend at the time of my plan, they said, "Are you ****** crazy? Wheat is good for you. Why else would it be the large part of the pyramid? You don't even have any solid evidence to do this." I guess he was right about this being more or less a baseless claim, so while I was sticking to my plan, I researched. I found some interesting results. Gluten allergies in 1 of 4 people. Acidity caused by grains. This acidity theory interested me, so I looked further into it. Turns out our bodies are slightly basic and foods that we eat are either basic or acidic in our body. If we eat overly acidic food, like wheat, our body has to work to bring our body acidity back into balance. Inefficient, no? So, in addition to not eating wheat, I decided to also try to eat more basic foods, as acidic foods are prevalent in our society. It was frickin' magic. In the first week, I had lost around 8 pounds. I lost somewhere around 5 in the second. In a matter of two weeks, with a new, not necessarily intense, exercise regimen, I was almost back at my natural weight, and feeling much stronger and healthier. Of course it was hard to stick to the diet for more than a few months, but it has forever changed my take on diet.
Coincidentally, my dad came to the same conclusion upon different paths at around the same time. He found the paleo diet. And it actually works for him and the rest of my family. Me as well. Paleo diet is basically eating as a caveman would. Whole foods(Foods which are whole, not the store). Fat based diet. The way I looked at it was this: In order to have a sustainable( in the sense that I could sustain it for a long time. Not "green") diet, I would need a primary source of calories. For calorie heavy nutrients, that left fat and carbs. I believe fat, not carbs, is the right choice to make. Not most fats that we use today though. Olive oil is cool, but the kind of fats I started consuming were generally animal fats(including butter). The paleo diet was definitley a worthy venture. (A side note: a two or three years before that, I saw something about the paleo diet in school and told my dad, thinking it was a good idea. He said it was stupid... capricious)
So, to sum it all up. I am a rawpaleoist, with a mind for acidity, trying to optimize my diet even further. I enjoy cooking and eating, and like to think that I'm darn good at it too(both cooking and eating). I hope people read this and that I can keep it up. Thanks.
Recipe: Mango Ginger Smoothie
Ingredients:
1 bag of frozen mangoes (12 oz)
2 medium sized bananas
1 tablespoon Coconut Oil
2 teaspoons honey
1 piece of ginger about half the size of your pinky
1.5 cups of water
To make green: add as much of your choice of green to the smoothie.
Directions: Combine all of the ingredients save the ginger in a blender, then grate the ginger into the blender. Blend until smooth and enjoy!
Comments: I am currently working on this recipe to enter in a recipe competition. Any feedback would be great!
1 bag of frozen mangoes (12 oz)
2 medium sized bananas
1 tablespoon Coconut Oil
2 teaspoons honey
1 piece of ginger about half the size of your pinky
1.5 cups of water
To make green: add as much of your choice of green to the smoothie.
Directions: Combine all of the ingredients save the ginger in a blender, then grate the ginger into the blender. Blend until smooth and enjoy!
Comments: I am currently working on this recipe to enter in a recipe competition. Any feedback would be great!
Recipe Template: Green Smoothies
I just mentioned green smoothies in my last post and would like to go into more details with it. Firstly the contents. The main ingredient of a green smoothie is, as implied, greens. I prefer to add dark greens like kale, collard greens, spinach, but any greens will do. I also add frozen fruit, banana, spirulina (an algae), coconut oil, water, and sometimes some flavors like ginger and honey. I highly recommend mango ginger green smoothies. Greens are a very important part of my diet and supply me with most of my vitamins and minerals. I also add fruit for that same reason. The banana is neccessary to take the bite out of the greens and the spirulina is also for important nutrients that are hard to find like chlorophyll. Coconut oil is a recent addition. I add it because fats are a stable way to stay full. It will fight against the sugars in the fruit to keep my blood sugar balanced. Also, the ratios of the ingredients in these smoothies are completely dynamic to fit each individual's need. What tends to happen in the beginning is that there is a lot of fruit and very little green, but as time goes on and you become more accustomed to the flavor, I think you'll find yourself having a smoothie made almost entirely out of greens. A green smoothie will typically keep me full only 3 to 4 hours but it makes me feel more aware than a normal breakfast cereal or the like.
Breakfast
So, in my mind last night I was going to take a picture of my meal today but I forgot. In any case, today for breakfast I ate a whole cantaloupe with a half carton (about a pint) of frozen yogurt. It was extremely delicious because the tartness of the yogurt balanced out with the sweetness of the cantaloupe very well. In fact, the sweetness of the cantaloupe was near overwhelming. I had bought it yesterday at the farmers market, 3 for 5. Such a good deal that I'll probably do it every Saturday. I also bought some organic carrots, bell peppers, and pears. I'm going to try to remember taking a picture of lunch.
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