Not buying packaged foods = not buying bogus health claims

This morning I read a rant on Michael Ruhlman’s blog about corn syrup hidden in his fat-free half-and-half. (Ruhlman also rightly pointed out that there’s no such thing as fat-free half-and-half; one of the “halfs” refers to cream, and what’s the point without the fat?)

This led me to a New York Times editorial about misleading food labels making all kinds of claims, from boosting immunity to preventing cancer. That reminded me of this article, which described the bad-tasting results when unhealthy salt levels are reduced in processed foods.

Once again, I am reminded of Michael Pollan‘s tenet not to believe any health claims made on food packaging, even claims that the food is healthier because it’s low in fat or salt. The best way to ignore these health claims is to buy food with no packaging at all. I’m talking about whole fruits and vegetables, foods sold in bulk, meats butchered and packaged at the store. I even buy my milk products in label-less glass bottles; it comes from a local dairy farm, no corn syrup included.

Of course, this strategy isn’t possible for all foods, but it is available for more foods than you might think. And some of the packaged foods you can probably live without. So don’t buy into the bogus health claims. Don’t buy them at all.

Misleading Food Labels (Michael Ruhlman)
Snake Oil for Breakfast (New York Times)
The War on the Cheez-It (National Review Online)

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School Doesn’t Allow Processed Foods

A grade school in Arizona doesn’t allow kids to bring any processed foods for lunch, including products made with refined sugar and white flour. Are they going too far? Perhaps their restrictions are a little strict; a home-baked treat every once in a while is not a bad thing. On the other hand, they do allow Fritos as a whole-grain snack, which I would still define as a processed food.

I have to applaud the school’s effort on this, especially when we see public schools giving kids frozen pizza, strawberry milk, and french fries as vegetables, and calling it a healthy lunch (as shown on Jamie Oliver‘s Food Revolution). A school’s mission is to teach, and lunchtime presents a great opportunity to teach young kids about nutrition, good food choices and how to enjoy a healthy, balanced diet. It provides parents a chance to learn how not to rely on the crutch of processed foods, as well.

However, it is healthy to give yourself a treat every now and then. No one needs to eat Oreos every day for lunch. But we also shouldn’t be such a slave to rules that we don’t allow ourselves to take pleasure in our food. I follow Michael Pollan‘s rule and make my own treats. That way, I know that I really deserve them!

No-Oreo Zone: Kids at school can’t bring processed foods

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The Challenge: Avoiding Processed (or Packaged) Foods

It seems that all the healthy eating guidelines, whether from Michael Pollan or Mark Bittman or my doctor, include the admonition to “avoid processed foods.” I started thinking about this recently. What would it entail to avoid processed foods? What kind of impact might this diet change have on health, weight or the pocketbook?

First, what are “processed foods,” exactly? Generally, we think of processed foods as stuff like frozen meals, hamburger helper, chips, cookies and crackers from the grocery. But a processed food is any food that has been altered from its natural state. Frozen and canned foods are processed, as is pasta, bread, cheese, yogurt, juice and milk. Olive oil, soy sauce, mustard and vinegar can be considered processed foods. So can bacon, sausage and smoked salmon. Even flour and sugar are processed foods.

Obviously, not all processed foods should be put on the “bad” list, and I don’t think that’s what the people giving this advice intend for us to do. It’s not practical to eat a diet consisting entirely of whole foods, especially in seasons when fresh fruit and vegetables aren’t as abundant. In fact, I admire human ingenuity when it comes to food processing, which has enabled us to preserve our foods long after they would have otherwise gone bad through techniques such as curing, pickling, drying, canning and freezing.

I think “packaged foods” is a better way to think of the kinds of processed foods that should be avoided. These are foods that come in a package with brand names, health claims and unpronounceable ingredients on the sides. So I am challenging myself to reduce, as much as I can, packaged foods in my grocery shopping.

For me, a packaged food is anything that comes pre-packaged in the grocery store. Part of this challenge is to get myself to make more things at home that I would normally buy. So here are my rules for this challenge:

• If I can buy it in bulk (grains, beans, nuts) or I can put it in a package myself (locally baked bread) or the store packages it for me (meats, cheeses, dried fruits), then I consider it “unpackaged.”
• If the packaged item is a staple ingredient/food that I can’t easily make at home, I will continue to buy it. This includes condiments like soy sauce and mustard (but not mayonnaise or bottled sauces), pasta, yogurt, cheese, wine, tea and coffee.
• I will make an exception for vegetables that have short growing seasons whose packaged versions are superior for most of the year. These include canned tomatoes and frozen peas, soybeans and corn.

Those are all of the rules. I see this challenge as a way to get myself and my family to eat healthier, but also to stretch myself more in the kitchen. Instead of buying bread, stock, mayonnaise and crackers, I will need to make them myself when I want them.

For any of my family members who might be reading this, I am not planning to enforce this challenge on you. You will still be able to have your white bread and cheesy bunnies, at least until you decide to join in the challenge with me.

If you decide to take on a similar challenge, please let me know in the comments. I’d love to follow your progress.

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Food Rules & Homemade Soup from the Refrigerator

Cover of Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

I read Michael Pollan‘s new book Food Rules last night. He says you can read it in under an hour, and he is absolutely correct. It’s a fun little book with 64 easy-to-remember rules about buying, preparing and eating food. The rules are all intended to be clarifications of Pollan’s three main food rules:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

If you are interested in food and cooking, and you think a lot about what you’re going to eat, then you are probably, like me, already following many of these food rules. I have a few food rules of my own that fit into Pollan’s ethos and that have served me well. They are:

1. Keep the 4 C’s out of the house: cookies, candy, chips and cola. This helps prevent mindless snacking.
2. Designate special occasions for special foods. For instance, I make a big breakfast on Sundays — only on Sundays. I pick a holiday or other special day once a month or so to make a dessert, but otherwise stay away from sugary treats altogether.
3. In the restaurant, opt for a seafood or vegetarian entree. I find that my choices are generally healthier this way.
4. Be a half-vegetarian. We eat vegetarian meals at home about half the time (3-4 nights a week on average).
5. It’s okay to eat french fries every once in a while. I love french fries!

Once I started following these rules last fall, especially #1 and #2, I have managed to maintain my weight at a number that I am pleased with, even through the holidays. And I am sure I am eating well. For instance, I am snacking a lot more on fruit, nuts and yogurt now that I don’t have any junk food around.

Soup is probably the dish that makes it easiest to stick to the food rules. Broth-based soups are low in fat and calories, are generally full of vegetables or totally vegetarian, and must be enjoyed slowly, sitting at the table (unless you are more adept than I at not spilling hot liquids on the couch). Hot soup is also very satiating, so when you eat soup at the start of a meal, you eat less overall.

Once you know the basic procedure for making soup, it is a simple matter to throw one together whenever you’re at a loss for what to make for dinner. Last night, I was cooking for one, since my husband still isn’t feeling well in the whole GI area. In less than a half-hour, I threw together a vegetable soup using an onion, a few small potatoes, some green beans, a can of whole tomatoes and a container of chicken stock. I always grate some Parmesan on top for the extra umami it brings. Extremely yummy, simple to make, and the leftovers will make a nice lunch or freeze well for later.

More on Michael Pollan’s Food Rules:

• Interview with Pollan in The New York Times
• A week from Pollan’s food diary

Michael Pollan’s Recent NYT Article

First up: Michael Pollan had a doom-and-gloom article in last Sunday’s NYT Magazine predicting the extinction of cooking. I think Pollan is a terrific and persuasive writer, and I enjoyed this article, even if I think he went a bit too far in his predictions. There are a lot of people cooking, obviously, or there wouldn’t be so many food bloggers, but I think some of his points, especially linking cooking to health, are very salient. I especially enjoyed the photographs that accompanied the article, which were like anti-food styling.

Here are some responses to the article from Michael Ruhlman and Tigers and Strawberries, which are both worth reading as well.

For the record, I didn’t take Pollan’s article as sexist. I think we have to make a distinction between the historical role that women have played as home cooks, which is factual, and the cultural role that is often assigned to women. I think Pollan was referring to the historical role when he drew the link between women entering the workforce and the decline in home cooking, and he also went on to attribute the decline to other factors beyond that obvious one. Also, I never got the sense that he was advocating a return to the kitchen by women, but rather by anyone who wants to cook. Obviously, he does a lot of the cooking in his family. So I think cries of sexism may be overblown.

Beyond Pollan, here are several other recent food articles that are well worth your perusal:

• When a Chef Gets Famous by Grant Achatz (Atlantic)
• When the Chef Is Trying to Kill You (The Faster Times)
• Tossing Out the Diet and Embracing the Fat (NY Times)
• Adventures in Blueberry Picking (yours truly)

Review: Food Matters

Cover via Amazon

Food Matters by Mark Bittman (2009)

In Mark Bittman’s latest book, he claims he has discovered a method of eating that can help you lose weight, improve your health, save money and stop global warming. It sounds too good to be true, but his commonsense approach to food — as if it “matters,” hence the title — can do all of those things. It did for him.

Here is his solution: Eat a lot less meat and dairy. Drastically reduce how much junk food you eat. Cut back on refined flour. Three simple rules, easy to remember and follow. And you don’t have to sacrifice anything, just cut back a lot. Think of meat, flour and sugar as “treats,” and treat yourself daily. But mostly eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The way Bittman does it is by eating mostly vegan during the day (I think he allows himself some yogurt and cheese), and then have whatever he wants for dinner. By making this simple change, he has lost weight and lowered his cholesterol. Plus, he just plain feels better.

In the first few chapters, Bittman explains how the meat industry and big agriculture impact the environment and our waistlines with a myriad of negative results. He describes how advertising and government have colluded with these industries to create an unsustainable demand for meat, produce monocultures of corn and soy, and convince us all that we need to eat these things to be healthy. The hypocrisy of a government that tells us we’re all too fat on the one hand but subsidizes the production of high-fructose corn syrup on the other is staggering when you think about it. I’ve certainly heard these arguments before — in fact, Bittman authoritatively quotes one of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan, frequently — but Bittman’s style is straightforward, commonsensical and convincing. So much so that not only do I want to follow his advice (which, truthfully, won’t be much of a lifestyle change for me), but I want everyone I love to read this book and become convinced as well.

The biggest sacrifice for me would not be reducing my consumption of meat and dairy, which I eat in very small quantities anyway, but cutting back on junk food and refined flour. I do like my bread, and “junk food” is defined as any processed foods with more than five recognizable ingredients. That’s an easy enough rule to remember, but take a look in your pantry and you’ll see how difficult it is to put in practice. Still, treats are allowed, and Bittman emphasizes making slow, gradual changes.

He provides a lot of useful advice that will help. For instance, he advocates cooking more than you need whenever you cook vegetables, beans or grains, and tells you how to store and reuse the extras. This is a technique I’ve already put into practice, so that I’ll have plenty of healthy choices for lunch and snacks when I don’t have time to cook.

The last half of the book is taken up by recipes. I haven’t tried any of them yet, but leafing through them, I see an assortment of useful “master recipes,” emphasizing vegetables, fruits and grains, that can be endlessly varied to suit what you have on hand and what you like to eat. These are my favorite kinds of recipes, the kinds that after you make them once or twice, you don’t really need the recipe anymore.

As someone who loves to cook and eat, I do think that “food matters.” And I would love it if everyone would read this book and implement at least some of Bittman’s advice.

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Ways of Eating: Mark Bittman’s New Diet

Recently, I have been reading about the changes Mark Bittman has been making in his diet. He describes it in his new book, Food Matters, which I have not read, but which has been described as a practical application of Michael Pollan‘s treatises on how to eat in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food.

Essentially, Bittman is trying to eat vegan until 6 p.m., when he has a more traditional kind of dinner. He also avoids refined flours and sugars during the day. Following this diet, he has lost weight, boosted his energy level and improved his health. He keeps a food diary and has shared one week of eating (on the road, no less) here.

I admire this way of eating, but I don’t think I could do it. The vegan part is what would trip me up. Also, it is not ideal for me to have my heavy meal as the last meal of the day. If our culture permitted it, I would eat a large lunch, European-style, when I have the rest of the day to metabolize it and take advantage of the energy it produces. I hate going to bed feeling over-full after a large dinner. This, plus being under a baby curfew and therefore unable to go out for late dinners, has led my husband and I to going out for lunches or cooking nice brunches on the weekends, and then eating very light for dinner. I really enjoy it, and I wish I could eat that way every day.

But regardless, I couldn’t go vegan all day. I would have to allow at least yogurt and cheese. Plain yogurt is very good for you, and I find cheese to be just the right amount of protein and fat to satisfy me. I usually try to apportion it out ahead of time so I don’t eat too much.

Here is what my ideal day would look like, keeping Bittman’s principles in mind:

Breakfast: oatmeal with fruit, granola with yogurt and fruit, or vegan waffles with jelly; I allow myself one small glass of juice and 2 cups of coffee with sugar and half-and-half.

Work during the morning. Start cooking lunch around noon. Eat around 1 p.m.

Lunch: As the main meal of the day, it should include protein (meat, eggs or cheese), carbs and vegetables. Glass of wine.

Afternoon walk. Work during the latter part of the afternoon. Take care of chores and errands. Drinks during the day: tea with honey and water.

Snack (if needed): Small amount of cheese with whole-grain crackers; fruit; sliced avocado or tomato; nuts or trail mix; dip such as pesto or bean dip with raw veggies.

Light dinner: Preferably vegetarian and fast to prepare. Meal ideas include: salads; vegetarian stir-fry; vegetable soups; bean or vegetable cake; pasta and vegetarian sauce; bruschetta; spread such as hummus or guacamole on whole-wheat bread.

On most days, though, I have to switch the dinner and lunch because of work, and it doesn’t make sense to cook a big lunch just for myself. Naturally, I tend to snack more on those days.

Here’s another good tip that I need to implement soon: Get rid of all candy, chips, cookies and ice cream in the house. Make those things special. You either have to leave the house to get them (and they should be high-quality, if so), or you have to make them yourself. Either way, it takes some effort, so you will naturally eat less of the sweet stuff. We still have way too much candy left over from Christmas, but it is almost gone now, and I am definitely not buying any more.

New York Times Magazine Food Issue

The New York Times Magazine this week is all about food and food politics. I’ve spent a lazy Sunday morning reading it, and I have found it to be very inspiring. Here are some of the highlights:

• Mark Bittman‘s introduction: “Why Take Food Seriously?”
• William Safire takes a look at new food words, including locavorism
• Michael Pollan’s long letter to the next president on food policy, “Farmer in Chief”
• “Food Fighters,” inspiring short profiles of advocates trying to change food industry
• “Flipping the Bird,” hilarious short piece about Shopsin’s General Store in New York City

Another Entry in the Obnoxious Commercial Files

Image by nafmo via Flickr

I haven’t seen this commercial personally on TV, but saw it on the Interwebs via Strollerderby. It is a commercial extolling the virtues of high-fructose corn syrup of all things. What I find most obnoxious is that the mom who is concerned about the kids eating healthy comes off as a shrewish buttinsky, while the mom pouring the hideous bright red punch is all smug about feeding her kids junk. (Clinton vs. Palin?)

The commercial points us to more pro-corn syrup propaganda: sweetsurprise.com.

Hey, corn syrup industry! We object to your product because you put it in every-freaking-thing and it’s making us and our kids fat. It’s a whole lot easier to avoid — and treat yourself occasionally to — sugar than it is to avoid high-fructose corn syrup. And any Coca-Cola addict (like my husband) will tell you that Coke with sugar tastes better and is more satisfying, so even soda-heads might find it easier to consume in moderation.

I guess it’s a good thing that this propaganda campaign has been launched, because it means that people are listening to Michael Pollan and others, and avoiding the dreaded corn syrup. Maybe we can use it to run our cars instead.

More Encouragement to Get Gardening

The ever-eloquent Michael Pollan strikes again. Check out the interview with him on Yale Environment 360: “Michael Pollan on What’s Wrong With Environmentalism.” There are a lot of good take-home messages here, including more encouragement to get out in the garden:

I don’t know exactly what percentage of greenhouse gas we would reduce if everybody planted a garden, but it would be a percentage and it would be a help. If you go back to the victory garden moment in American history during World War II when the government strongly encouraged us all to plant gardens because we were reserving the output of our agricultural system for the troops and for starving Europeans — within a year or two, we actually got up to producing forty percent of our produce from home gardens. No food is more local, no food requires less fossil fuel, and no food is more tasty or nutritious than food you grow yourself. So it’s not a trivial contribution.

The process of growing your own food also teaches you things that are very, very important to combating this problem. One source of our sense of powerlessness and frustration around climate change is that we are so accustomed to outsourcing so much of our lives to specialists of one kind or another, that the idea that we could reinvent the way we live, change our lifestyles, is absolutely daunting to people. We don’t know how to do it. We’ve lost the skills to do it. One of the things gardening teaches is that you can actually feed yourself. How amazing, you’re not dependent on a huge, global system to feed yourself. I think where climate change is taking us is to a point where many of us will need to take care of ourselves a little better than we do now. We will be less able to depend on distant experts and distant markets. We will need to re-localize economies all over the world because we won’t be able to waste fossil fuel, like having our salmon filleted in China before we bring it to the United States from Alaska. These long supply chains are going to have to get shorter.

The writer Wendell Berry was right a long time ago when he said the environmental crisis is a crisis of character. It’s really about how we live. The thought that we can swap out the fuel we’re putting in our cars to ethanol, and swap out the electricity to nuclear and everything else can stay the same, I think, is really a pipe dream. We’re going to have to change, and the beginning of knowing how to change is learning how to provide for yourself a little bit more.

Before I quote the whole thing, go read it yourself. It’s definitely worth it.

Our garden is bursting. I have been harvesting and eating fresh herbs all week: basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, lavender and sage. There are green tomatoes on most of our bushes, and teeny-tiny eggplants and cucumbers. There are also a couple of volunteers, either squash or melon, from the compost. Watching your garden grow and produce over the summer really is a lot of fun.

If you want some help getting your garden started, check out Food Not Lawns. They provide lots of resources for turning “your yard into a garden and your neighborhood into a community.”

Finally, you should really go check out the Presto Pasta Nights roundup over at Chew on That. I took part, submitting a pasta recipe featuring fresh herbs and greens for more garden goodness.