Eat FOOD. Not too much. Mostly Plants. | Arthritis Information

 

I've been reading a lot of Michael Pollan lately, a food activist and author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food". "Food."Says the blurb about his book, "There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?
Because most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it -- in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances" -- no longer the products of nature but of food science."


It's really been making me more conscientious of how and what I eat, and what he says makes a lot of sense. Here's a great article he wrote for New York Times Magazine which pretty much encapsulates his philosophy, for the interested. It's HIGHLY RECOMMENDED reading!

Unhappy Meals by Michael Pollanhi gimpy interesting stuff.. saved your link and there is a lot to digest.. Hello Gogo, I've been lurking for a few days but when I saw your post I  decided not to procastinate anymore but register so I could say hey.  "The Ominovore's Dilemna" is on my reading list!  Recently saw a PBS indpendent film called "King Corn" about how our gov subsidizes farmers to grow low grade corn used to make high fructose corn syrup thats in so much of our food--no wonder we have such high rates of diabetes and obesity.  Anyways its neat to find someone with similar interests, sometimes on these RA boards its the same ole thing, and I understand that, but I've had RA for 31 yrs now, so I can only talk about RA for so long, though I empathize with what folks are going through.  Anyways, hello, I'm new here, and its a much different forum than the other RA board I normally visit.  I guess I could have used a smaller font.  :-)   Hi Joie!

Pip!2008-04-23 21:12:15Hi Pip, it's me Joy!  So you know about the film "King Corn?"  Its a documentary, but with a little quirkiness, so not dull.  I grew up on 10 acres and helped my Dad irrigate the corn we grew, so it was sorta nostalgic for me seeing the farmland -- I remember lying in the cornfields, looking up at the sky, just like a scene in the film.  I had to laugh when the old timey farmer says, "I grow crap," and his wife says she doesn't eat the corn they grow, cuz what they grow these days is so void of anything nutritional.  They talk about corn fed cows and how it fattens them up fast -- a continous corn diet would kill them, cattle should be grass fed.

 

There's a book by Frances Moore Lappe, "Diet for a Small Planet," I think--it was popular when I was a "youth."  Talks about how much water and grain it takes to make one pound of animal protein.  What a waste!  And now we are growing corn for biofuel at a time when parts of the world are facing food shortages.

 

Changing subjects, yeah I've had RA for 31 yrs, was diagnosed at 25, so yes that makes me 47.  :-)

 

Check out "King Corn" I think you'll like it, and by the way what's HFCS?

     

Just wanted to Welcome Joie. Welcome.....I like your large font personally. Makes for easy reading. I'm not as young as I use to beOMG Joy!  You came over!  WoooHoooo! Hi Joy! Welcome to the forum. It will be great to have someone else around interested in this stuff.

The irony of bio-fule is with the way corn is grown as a monoculture, artificial nitrogen fertilizer made from FOSSIL FUEL is used to grow corn! Yes, it takes 9 calories of fossil fuel energy to grow one calorie of corn energy.

So much for sustainable clean bio-fuel.

The Omnivore's Dilemma delves into the irony of corn growing quite deeply. Pip is right about HFCS, it's in most processed foods (even fruit and vegetable wax is made out of corn), and it's VERY calorie dense, much more so than plain ol' sugar.

Interestingly, corn has a fourth molecule, and when creatures eat a lot of corn it actually changes their molecular structure. Scientists can look at our flesh and figure out how much corn we eat. Because our food animals are now fed on corn it turns out the average North American's diet consists of about 55% corn (except in Mexico, where it's more like 40%). It's especially frustrating in regards to cattle because like Joy mentioned, they are not at all built to digest corn. That's why they have to be given SO MUCH antibiotics (55% of the worlds total tetracycline antibiotics are used in cow and chicken feed. If they were on a grass diet this would be reduced to 0%). Factory framed cattle still get really sick from this diet, but they are slaughtered young so it's not as big of an issue.

I have always tried to buy grass fed beef but after learning more about this stuff I am more committed to that goal.

Here's a great website that can connect people to grass fed meat and sustainable farms in their area:
www.eatwild.comBTW, I don't consider these kinds of topics to be "off topic". I personally believe when you have RA it's part of the healing and staying well process to eat a healthy as possible diet. I really think a lot of these problems begin in the gut.Thanks for the link GoGo! Definitely not off-topic...what we eat can have an impact on the inflammation level in our bodies which is a real problem with RA.  I've been changing my diet pretty dramatically to emphasize foods with anti-inflammatory properties (dark berries, for example) and trying to avoid HFC with a passion...one reason I'm buying as much organic food as I can, and even better, food grown locally available at our farmer's market.  Another good book you might find interesting is "Real Food" by Nina Planck.  She makes a strong case against the bad effects of "industrial" foods.  I found the book very compelling.

Gogo, I agree that this subject is definitely not off topic.  So much is interconnected.  Big corporations pay lobbyists.  Lobbyists influence legislators.  Legislators set policies.  Policies impact our lives.  We see it in agribusiness.  They get gov subsidies to grow corn for HFCS and ethanol, (though in the process they're using a lot of oil based products in its production).  Less food is produced, food prices go up, food shortages develop in 3rd world countries, civil unrest develops, world stability is threatened.  See www.planetwatch.org for some good articles on corn based ethanol, alternative energy and energy policies.

We see it in the health care industry.  The powerful influence of the drug companies, insurance companies, block any significant reforms that would provide affordable health care to all Americans.  Less access to health care, means less healthy people -- people already made less healthy by the cheap, inferior foods pervasive in the US.  Short sighted government policies are compromising people's  health.

 

Perhaps I oversimplified this, or went off in a different direction, but politics not only affects our access to health care, but also what we eat (ubiquitous hfcs) .  So to jump onto my soapbox (and w/ra i should say crawl) we need to become better informed so we can vote wisely, and things like what you posted GoGo help us not only make healthier choices but to be smarter voters.  So thanks!

 

Joy

I buy organic local honey at Granville Island Market, but you could probably get some at any farmer's market. There was actually a guy I heard about that if you let him put a beehive in your backyard he would maintain it and give you half the honey, but since it was all not-quite-legal you could only get a deal like that through word of mouth. So I don't really have a connection for that but I bet you could find a forum for "localvores" that could hook you up with some honey connection.

I can't remember what links I sent you for kefir, but Dom's Kefir site is a good place to start. http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html
You could order grains through him, or from ebay (where you can also get all the accrouments as a "kit"---buy it once and you're set for life), or try the international kefir grain exchange http://www.torontoadvisors.com/Kefir/kefir-list.php
I haven't had any luck getting grains through the exchange, to tell the truth. There was a local lady on Craigslist selling grains, so that's another potential source.

Whatever you do, don't buy kefir starters from the health food store. They are not authentic, and have been commercially treated to wear out after 6 or 7 uses. Real kefir is perpetual.Joy, I'm with you on that. None of us is an island and all these issues are very connected. The reason our edible food-like products are so cheap is because we're mortgaging our future to subsidize them.

If we want healthy sustainable food we will all start having to accept our food should cost a lot more than it does. On the other hand, the quality of that food will be much better.IMO, the main problem with corn syrup is overconsumption.  Let's face it - even if soda was sweetened with sugar, when you drink a 48-ounce big gulp Coke you're getting almost 600 calories.  Whether that's fructose or sucrose doesn't much matter.

When I was a kid, we got pop MAYBE once a week at Grandpa's house, and it was a 7-ounce bottle.  Even my parents only drank a single 8-pack of Coke (the 16-ounce glass bottles) per week.  When I worked at Dairy Queen back in high school, the largest drink we sold was a 20-ounce cup, and most people chose the 12 or 16 ounce cup.  It seems like the cups are bucket-sized now.  Fast food was an occasional outing when I was little; many people now dine several times a week at McD's and other places.  An occasional cheeseburger, fries and a Coke isn't going to hurt you... but when you eat that crap every day, you're going to have problems.  No matter if the cows ate corn, the fry grease is trans-fat-free or if the pop is made with sucrose.  And it's not cheap to feed a family at McDonald's either.  It's much cheaper to cook at home.
Jasmine, quanitity issues are definately touched on in the article (you should read it!), but it's not the only issue when it comes to nutrition and eating well. While we all should be eating less we should also be eating better quality, sustainably farmed food. Cultures which eat a lot of meat can actually be quite healthy if the meat is grass fed (or whatever the animal natuarally eats) and a little probiotic food is consumed with it. The dillema is which is better to eat? Salmon or beef. Salmon, of course. But what if the salmon is farm grown and full of antibiotics, and the cow is a free range, grass fed, medicine free cow? Then the issue gets a little more murky. We have to not look at only how much we eat, but what are we actually eating?

In the recap at the end of the article, Pollan writes:
“Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. “Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Food abundance is a problem, but culture has helped here, too, by promoting the idea of moderation. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called “Hara Hachi Bu”: eat until you are 80 percent full. To make the “eat less” message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don’t know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

Food sustainably farmed or even industrial organic is healthier and fuller of nutrients than food which is factory farmed. Fruits and vegetables grown locally and picked when ripe are more healthful than foods grown hundreds of miles away, picked unripe, irradiated, and sprayed with a ripening chemical.

So while eating less and preparing your own food is good advice, and a good start, the issue of what we eat goes much deeper than just that.


I agree that overconsumption is part of the problem, and with the increase in awareness of hcfs and transfats and the health related problems they contributed to -- diabetes, heart disease and obesity -- the fast food industry made changes, they stopped pushing super sizing, they started to offer healthier choices.

 

But the problem of unhealthier Americans is not solely a matter of bad personal choices, but also a reflection of our government policies.  Government subsidies support corn production way beyond market demand.  So now, instead of cattle grazing on grass, they are fed corn, which produces fattier beef, and high fructose corn syrup is in nearly everything -- sodas, ketchup, fruit juice, cereals, tomato sauce.

 

Government farm subsidies of corn create an imbalance between healthy foods versus unhealthy food.  In the 1990s, the price of fruits and vegetables rose 40 percent.  By 2000, the price of many sodas and other junk foods had dropped to 80 percent of their price in 1985.

 

If interested in looking into this subject, see the article Gogo mentions, or for info on how farm subsidies impact our food choices see:

 

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/bushels.html

              

Just finished reading Michael Pollan's essay, "Unhappy Meal," that Gogo references.  His first few sparse lines,   "Eat food.  Not too much. Mostly plants." aren't indicative of the rest of his essay.  :-)  He has a lot more to say.  I'm posting an excerpt that I felt was relevent:

"It might be argued that, at this point in history, we should simply accept that fast food is our food culture. Over time, people will get used to eating this way and our health will improve. But for natural selection to help populations adapt to the Western diet, we’d have to be prepared to let those whom it sickens die. That’s not what we’re doing. Rather, we’re turning to the health-care industry to help us “adapt.” Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick. It’s gotten good at extending the lives of people with heart disease, and now it’s working on obesity and diabetes. Capitalism is itself marvelously adaptive, able to turn the problems it creates into lucrative business opportunities: diet pills, heart-bypass operations, insulin pumps, bariatric surgery. But while fast food may be good business for the health-care industry, surely the cost to society — estimated at more than 0 billion a year in diet-related health-care costs — is unsustainable."

 

    

What I see missing in all of this is personal responsibility.  Who makes the call to hit the drive through?  The health care industry? The government?  Last time I checked, I had control over what I eat, what I feed my family and how we spend our money.  I drive past the drive through every single day.  If their wasn't a demand for big macs, their wouldn't be big macs.  It's to the individual to practice self control and take care of their own self. Linncn2008-04-24 18:24:47Gimpy, Pip and Joy, thank you so much for this most interesting information.  We are so brainwashed!  Sad isn't it? 
Welcome Joy!  Anxious to hear more from you.
It's my same complaint, Linda.  We get part of the info, not all, so we can't make good decisions.  And Linda - I don't think she's talking about you!  I didn't really think she was talking about me personally.  I was thinking the general public which I am part of.  People have at least a basic knowledge of what's healthy and what isn't.  No one thinks a big mac is better than an apple.  A profit driven society won't work unless their is a demand for what is being sold.  If no one's buying, their is no profit.  It seems to me that their is an idea that their should be someone over us telling us what is best for us and making those calls for us.  I'm glad that I have a choice between a big mac and an apple.  I don't want the government telling me what I can and can't eat in the name of protecting me from myself. But did you know about HFCS on fruit?  Or oil adhesive pesticides so that Big Agri can keep the cost of veggies low - but the pesticides aren't good for us and can't be washed off?  Or genetically modified food stuffs that are patented?  It's getting late and I might not be able to post tomorrow, but I just wanted to say there's a local food movement happening.  People want to eat better, so they're shopping at farmer's markets, and supporting small, local farmers, not some big agri corporation or some farm operation in another country.  In Inner cities, communities are taking over empty lots and growing gardens.  As a result they not only are getting better quality produce, but aren't contributing to the problem of global warming, since the food they're buying hasn't  been shipped to them by truck or plane.

 

Yes, everyone knows an apple is better than a burger, but one piece of fruit can cost almost as much as a burger; and in many cities, there aren't  grocery stores in your neighborhood to buy fresh food, but there sure are a lot of fast food places.  And, yes, its a matter of choice, but some of us have many more choices than others.

 

I'm not against people making money, but I am against corporate greed.  I support for profit  businesses that are socially responsble.  I do not support huge gov subsidized agri corporations that put small farmers out of business and produce inferior food that contributes to poor health, especially when 47 million Americans lack health insurance -- but thats another issue . . . . :-)

        

"LIKE WOW!" Actually I've extensively researched these issues before but have added these books to my reading list. Perhaps these books should be required reading for our younger generations because most of them don't know how to cook and don't have a clue as to what real food is.   [QUOTE=Linncn] I didn't really think she was talking about me personally.  I was thinking the general public which I am part of.  People have at least a basic knowledge of what's healthy and what isn't.  No one thinks a big mac is better than an apple.  A profit driven society won't work unless their is a demand for what is being sold.  If no one's buying, their is no profit.  It seems to me that their is an idea that their should be someone over us telling us what is best for us and making those calls for us.  I'm glad that I have a choice between a big mac and an apple.  I don't want the government telling me what I can and can't eat in the name of protecting me from myself.

[/QUOTE]

Personal responsibility and choices are certainly part of it, and in fact the idea of eating food, not too much, and mostly plants is definitely aimed at the individual consumer, but there are many, many other factors beyond the individual consumers control. The fact is, some of the factors ARE a secret. Genetically modified foods are not labeled as such, nor are irradiated foods. Foods which are picked unripe and sprayed are not identified. Foods which are hydroponically grown or grown in artificially, fossil fuel based nitrogen fertilised soik are not labelled as such. Often it is extremely difficult to determine where a food originated from. In BC we have many produce items with labels that say "BC Produce", leading the consumer to believe the produce was grown in BC. But in fact, BC Produce is the name of the comapany, and many of the items they sell come from places outside of BC, sometimes from as far away as Mexico. The consumer would have to be a full time researcher just to be able to shop in a way they deem personally responsible.

And if we agree the individual consumer has a responsibilty towards their purchasing choices, can't we agree that the corporation needs to take responsibility for their production choices? Take a cow feedingc factory farm. Cows are fed on corn instead of grass and instead of living on the range live in corals with about a foot of cow poo on the ground. This poo, which would be valuable fertiliser on a sustaionable farm, becomes pollution, seeping into the ground and poisoning the water table for miles around with its very high nitrogen content. And yet the corporation who owns this cow feeding factory is not held personally or financially responsible for this pollution. Rather, it becomes society's problem, even if individual members of that society have chosen not to eat factory farmed meat and have been given no say in how the CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) is run. Does that seem equitable? Why is the corporation not held accountable for the choices it makes but the individual is?

It's fine to say it's up to individual choice, but the fact is we don't exist as individuals. Society can only exist as a co-operative effort. We are not lone wolves. We're more like an ant hill or a bee hive. What one ant does affects all the other ants. None of us can survive without the input of others.If a corporation decides to grow only corn, and monoculture farming destroys the soil of the food basin, how can the city dwellers individual food choice stop that? Especially when a lot of the information about what that corporation is doing is not available to consumers? How can an individual choice stop Monsanto genetically modified corn from blowing into an organic corn field and contaminating the whole crop? Certainly if enough individuals make the same choice as me I might get somewhere, but me deciding to buy an ethically grown nutrient dense apple won't make one suddenly appear for purchase at my local supermarket. My deciding not to eat genetically modified foods won't make those foods suddenly be labelled for identification

As Pollan writes in the article cited : "Our personal health is inextricably bound up with the health of the entire food web.
(From Complexity to Simplicity. If there is one word that covers nearly all the changes industrialization has made to the food chain, it would be simplification. Chemical fertilizers simplify the chemistry of the soil, which in turn appears to simplify the chemistry of the food grown in that soil. Since the widespread adoption of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers in the 1950s, the nutritional quality of produce in America has, according to U.S.D.A. figures, declined significantly. Some researchers blame the quality of the soil for the decline; others cite the tendency of modern plant breeding to select for industrial qualities like yield rather than nutritional quality. Whichever it is, the trend toward simplification of our food continues on up the chain. Processing foods depletes them of many nutrients, a few of which are then added back in through “fortification”: folic acid in refined flour, vitamins and minerals in breakfast cereal. But food scientists can add back only the nutrients food scientists recognize as important. What are they overlooking?)

Government already dictates many of our personal food choices. GMO's do not have to be labelled. Milk products must be pasteurised. Joel Salatin is a famous sustainable farmer who has written many books and articles on the subject (and is extensively featured in Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma". In the book he describes how he can not produce his beef products 100% on his land because he MUST send the cows to an industrial slaughterhouse for slaughter, a place which he is not allowed to enter and he can not therefore know what happens to his meat in between time of delivery and receipt, to cite just one example of government regulation as it pertains to food. He has writen a new book "Everything I Want to do is Illegal" outlining his daily regulatory challenges as he tries to grow his traditional food.

Furthermore, the cards are totally stacked against sustainable farming and "real" food. Corn is sold far below it's market value (to the HUGE financial benefit of corporations like Coco-Cola and McDonald's---corporate welfare, anyone?), and the farmers are topped up with government subsidy money. So there is a HUGE glut of corn which is then added to, well, just about everything, and little of anything else. But if a farmer tries to grow some sustainable chickens or something, he has to pay big bucks to meet government regulations and no subsidies are forthcoming.

The individual consumer who wants to make responsible choices and buy "real" food has to be prepared to spend a lot of money buying the food, and big time researching and tracking down sources of this food. people with less time and money resources just may not be up to the task. The choice is not as simple as apple vs. Big Mac. The issue is not as simplistic as "it's all about personal choice".

The good thing about the personal choice part, though, is that is the part (not so easily) within the individual's grasp. What is needed is a paradigm shift in the way society thinks about food. That's why I think it's so important to share what I've learned from these articles and promote discussion about this topic.Gimpy-a-gogo2008-04-25 14:11:41Big Mac...  Apple Pie  hmmmmm Good Post