Check out this really cool video by Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. They have seen what the western influence on diet has been, and declared it not good…for anything. The government is pushing pretty hard to return to a traditional Japanese diet. Good for them. I hope they succeed!
Japan Knows What’s Up
by Amy on June 30th, 2010
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Tags: Agriculture, farming, fish, Japan, Obesity, western diet
Tags: Agriculture, farming, fish, Japan, Obesity, western diet
Growing Your Own Food…Anywhere!
by Amy on June 2nd, 2010
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Tags: Agriculture, container gardening, farm-to-table, gardening, Organic Food, organic gardening, vegetable gardens, vegetables
Tags: Agriculture, container gardening, farm-to-table, gardening, Organic Food, organic gardening, vegetable gardens, vegetables
My First Strawberry...click to enlarge
A small trend I am starting to see rising up is a return to growing some of your own food. I find this so thrilling, because what better way to have absolute quality control over what you are putting into your bodies? How else can you best assure that the food you eat came out of soil you trust, with absolutely no additives or chemicals, sometimes minutes before you actually eat it?
But for those of you who think you can’t grow your own food for this, that, or the other reason, believe me when I tell you that you can! And not only are you able to do more than you might think possible with the resources available, you will find it more rewarding than you might assume. Here are some reasons why you CAN do this:
You don’t need a huge plot of land to grow food
I live in a large metropolitan city area – Atlanta to be exact. I don’t have a house. I don’t have a yard. I live in a modest apartment with a covered deck. But on that deck, I have various containers where I am growing herbs like basil, parsley, oregano, and chives…in addition to eggplant, Swiss chard, kale, bell peppers, snow peas, tomatoes, and strawberries. All of these plants, and more, are suitable to grow in containers. So while you may not be able to grow certain foods (there’s way too much corn around, anyways), there is a wide array of plants that will do just fine. Some plants can even grow well in window boxes if you don’t have a porch or deck.
If you are fortunate enough to have a yard, you can convert only a small plot within it to a garden. Separate it from the rest of the yard with a wood border (2 x 4s work great for this) or stone. You can also creatively incorporate fruit bearing plants into your landscape plans – fruit trees or bushes can be great for this. Blackberry brambles love fences.
If you live in an apartment complex or condominium, you can approach the management or board about installing a group gardening location on the grounds or even roof of your building. The tide is turning, and more locations are opening up to such a concept. It never hurts to ask, and even if the immediate answer is no, you’ve contributed to someday making it a “yes.”
You don’t need a magical green thumb
I’ve killed every single houseplant I’ve ever owned. This includes plants that–I was assured–NO ONE could kill, including a hapless cactus. This left me thinking for a long time, obviously, that I was unable to nurture plants. But, I had the benefit of having a small square foot garden in my yard when I was a little girl, where we grew lettuces, corn, okra, tomatoes, etc. One day I was thinking about this garden and wondering – what was the difference? Then it hit me – I was successful with those plants because 1) I could see the whole life cycle from baby to fruit-bearing, and 2) I expected something from them. The houseplants I had tried, and failed, to keep alive hadn’t offered anything in the way of dynamic growth, or yield. Without seeing much change, or knowing there were real results waiting for me at a future point in time, I simply forgot about the plants.
Now, this may make me sound terrible, but I’m being honest about it because I know there are some of you out there that think you have “black thumbs” as well. But have you ever tried growing a plant that has something in it for you? I find it completely different, and I’m always engaged with my food-bearing plants as I am excited to see how they change every day. I also can’t wait to gather a yield from them at harvest time and enjoy the fruits of my labors. There is something so qualitatively different about that, and it feels so sustaining.
You don’t need tons of spare time
Having a vegetable garden may conjure up images of back-breaking labor out in the field, but that’s not really the way it is. Here is the biggest secret: plants WANT to grow – it’s what they do! So don’t over-think it. Sunshine, water, good dirt, and occasional organic plant food is all you need. In my particular situation, I tend to water my plants only every 2 or 3 days. If my porch got more direct sun, it might take a daily watering. Feel the dirt: if it’s still damp, it’s probably ok.
That said, it is important to be realistic about what you are going to grow, and start small. I’m not suggesting you turn your entire yard into a food garden, with a hundred new plants your very first year. Instead, start with only a handful of plants and expand from there. Choose only a couple of vegetables or fruits that you tend to eat often and are suitable for your available gardening space and level of sunlight.
I encourage you to read about organic gardening and basic organic pest control. Simple things like planting marigolds alongside your veggies, installing a fake hawk to keep pesky birds away from your berries, or buying a bunch of ladybugs to live in your garden (they love to eat bugs that could ruin your food), can be enough.
So what are you waiting for?
I’m not suggesting that you grow all of the food you eat, or even that it’s possible or compatible with your lifestyle. Even a small yield is more than nothing – and when you get to cook and eat a vegetable you grew yourself, it’s both an incredible sense of accomplishment and an incredible boost to your nutrition.There is no shorter distance from farm to table than when something grows in your own back yard.
I encourage you to branch out and give it a try, even if you grow only one plant this year. It’s not too late to start. You can read about vegetable gardening online, or get advice from your local nursery or gardening supply center about what plants you might choose for your first time out and your particular situation. I’d love to hear what plants you decide on or answer any questions you might have.
My Results So Far
It’s early in the season, so most of my plants are still just baby seedlings. But, the strawberries are already starting to come in. I took the above picture of my very first strawberry last night. I picked it and ate it about 10 seconds later, and let me tell you, it was SWEET in every sense of the word.
More pictures of my new plants (click to see larger):
 Eggplant |
 Swiss Chard |
 Snow Peas |
 Kale |
 Parsley |
Buy Organic: Pesticides in Kids Linked to ADHD
Excerpt from an MSNBC article:
Exposure to pesticides used on common kid-friendly foods — including frozen blueberries, fresh strawberries and celery — appears to boost the chances that children will be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, new research shows.
When will we stop putting poison on our food? And what ELSE might these pesticides be doing that we don’t know about yet?
Buying organic produce as much as possible, while completely necessary, is only part of the battle. You should also avoid processed foods that use non-organic ingredients that could have been exposed to pesticides or other chemicals.
If you can’t buy everything organic, at least make sure you follow the guidelines put forth by the Environmental Working Group, which identified the “Dirty Dozen” – the foods that absorb the most pesticides.
Mahi Mahi Tacos with Mango Pineapple Salsa
These mahi mahi tacos are an excellent and tasty way to incorporate fish into your diet. This is a great dish for summertime because of the cooling sour cream sauce and fruity salsa. It’s delicious and very easy!
Ingredients
- 16 oz mahi mahi fillets
- 12 corn tortillas, warmed
- 1 cup fresh cilantro, torn
Sour Cream Sauce:
- 1/2 cup low fat sour cream
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 2 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger root
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- Kosher Salt & Black Pepper
Salsa:
- 1 large mango – peeled, seeded and diced
- 1 cup diced fresh pineapple
- 1 large or 2 small avocados – peeled, pitted and diced
- 1 jalapeno pepper, minced
- 1 red onion, diced
Directions
- Whisk together the sour cream, lime juice, ginger, cumin, cayenne pepper, turmeric, salt and pepper to taste; set aside.
- Gently combine the mango, pineapple, avocado, onion and jalapeno in a bowl.
- Heat 1 TBSP of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Season the mahi-mahi with salt and pepper. Cook the fillets in the hot oil until the fish is golden brown on each side, and no longer translucent in the center, about 4 or 5 minutes per side.
- Divide the mahi-mahi fillet into 4 portions and loosely flake into pieces. Distribute each portion into the center of 3 warmed tortillas. Drizzle with a spoonful of the sour cream sauce, then place a scoop of the mango salsa onto the fish and finish with a generous pinch of cilantro.
NOTES:
I don’t actually measure anything in the sour cream sauce. The above measurements are estimates. In general, here’s how I do it: I just take 2 or 3 generous scoops of sour cream, squirt in lime juice, pull a knob (about the size of a gum ball, maybe a little bigger…but smaller than a golf ball) off of a ginger root, peel it and grate it right into the bowl, and then dump each spice into my hand to eyeball the amount and then toss it in the bowl, one at a time. After whisking it all together I taste it and adjust.
You can make both the sour cream sauce and the mango salsa up to a day ahead of time; the extra time will let the flavors mingle more…but this isn’t necessary. It does however make the dish seem like it takes almost no time to make on the day of, because all you are doing is cooking the fish, heating the tortillas, and assembling.
I suggest heating the tortillas in a pan, for a minute or 2 on each side. They should be hot and starting to cook, but still flexible.
A Month of Easy Meals Can Lead to a Lifetime of Good Health
Chef Michael Ruhlman, famous for his methods of preparing everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING, right down to curing your own bacon, baking your own bread, growing lettuce and tomato in the garden, and making your own mayo for a BLT), offers a departure from his usual stance with this sentence:
“I don’t care where you start, only that you start.”
He said this in an article where he confessed to, in his earlier days, using Knorr powder to make Alfredo sauce. His point here is that you do not have to start cooking perfectly, but you just need to start cooking, period. Many people in America relegate cooking to the bottom of the priority list, topped by many not-so-good-for-you things like hours of TV watching per night. Well, we see where that’s gotten us, and it’s not exactly a great place.
But even if you have to cheat a little to get a rhythm down and realize that, “hey, this cooking thing isn’t so bad and I CAN do it,” it’s worth it because in the end even semi-homemade is better for you than something out of a box.
I’d like to share with you something that helped get me started on the path to regular (and that’s key) healthy cooking and showed me that it’s not so impossible to plan meals and grocery lists and even cook a real meal every single day. I subscribe to RealSimple magazine, and last October their cover story was “A Month of Dinners, Done!” Intrigued, I flipped immediately to the article, where I found a whole month of meals planned out, including the accompanying grocery lists. I turned to Josh and said “Let’s try this!” It really worked to get us where we are today, and here’s why:
It showed me that cooking every day is, in fact, possible (and even enjoyable!)
It is not enough to prepare one awesome meal a month (or even a week) and then eat like crap the rest of the time. Yes, it is admirable that you go that extra mile every now and then, but overall it’s not consistent enough to even begin to chip away at the processed food problem we face as a nation. Whether you care about that issue or not, it’s not enough to make a difference in your health or lifestyle, either. To truly support your body with natural, whole foods most or all of the time, you really need to prepare your own food. Every day.
This may sound like an insurmountable task, but I promise you that it isn’t. I know this because it used to seem that way to me, too. But after following the “Month of Meals” plan, preparing food seemed like it just…wasn’t as big a deal as I made it out to be. Coming home and knowing exactly what meal I was supposed to have, and having all the ingredients right there on hand, made it feel much easier than before.
It showed me how to plan our week’s meals efficiently
One of the things I loved best about this “Month of Meals” is that they planned out the meals one week at a time, using the most perishable foods first and letting the meals at the end of the week consist of items that could last all week in the fridge, the pantry, or even the freezer in some cases. This was like a revelation to me, because—probably like many of you—I’ve experienced the frustration of buying lots of delicious food that has quickly spoiled before I was able to use it. I think this, more than any other thing, leads people to think that buying fresh food is too expensive, because it can more than double your actual food costs to pay for food at the grocery store and then turn around and have to order in or eat out in a restaurant anyway.
But with a plan that I had nothing more to do than to follow, rather than scratch my head over, I learned how you can have fish and pork and bok choy and green beans and Brussels sprouts all in the same week without anything going bad. By observing how these weeks of meals were structured I was able to internalize how long certain foods lasted, and then replicate this type of plan by swapping in my own recipes or new ones that I’d found online, and still achieve successful results. The positive reinforcement of that success has kept me going farther and farther ever since.
It showed me that it’s easy to incorporate a wide variety of foods into your diet
I don’t know about you, but before this plan came along, I ate a lot of chicken. Chicken is America’s go-to meat, lauded to be both good for you and fairly easy to prepare. While our national reliance on this meat has caused plenty of problems on the industrial farm (such as overcrowding, de-beaking, and heavy use of antibiotics to control the consequences of the former items), it has also left us with no imagination when it comes to the kitchen.
I have to admit that at first, I was very unsure about a lot of the dinners in the RealSimple plan. I either hadn’t tried things like them before, or I had tried something similar and been unhappy with the results. But I made a commitment to follow the plan in good faith—after all, it’s only a month, right? And in the end I was surprised by the results: some recipes I was sure I wouldn’t like at all turned out to be my favorites, and still show up in our meal rotation to this day…and some meals that I was sure that I would enjoy turned out to be “just ok” and not worth repeating. And then there were the cases where I’d like only part of a meal, and I ended up “mixing and matching” later on.
So in the end, this plan got me out of my comfort zone, giving me license to try things I wouldn’t have normally, and I ended up with the realization that there is a much wider variety of food out there that I actually do enjoy and am quite capable of cooking. Humans evolved to eat a wide variety of foods, and this variety is key to our health. Now I am less fearful of branching out and trying new recipes and unfamiliar ingredients.
It showed me that I’d been eating too much of the wrong thing
A favorite recipe of mine used to be pork chops breaded and pan fried, then doused in Campbell’s mushroom soup and oven baked, and served with mashed potatoes and gravy, some pathetic vegetable (usually canned or frozen), and some kind of bread or roll.
*Shudder*
There is a LOT of fat, a LOT of salt, and a LOT of “bad” carbs in the above meal. Not to mention that the actual flavor of the pork is drowned out by the din of all that…mess.
When I started using the RealSimple recipes, they seemed almost too…simple (ha!). Simplistic, even, in some cases. But as it turned out, I ended up liking the straightforward methods of preparation better, and it even made the food taste better (I think that’s called a win-win). Maybe not every recipe is a gourmet foodfest, but you don’t really need that for your daily meals. You just need some simple nourishment.
And you don’t need the traditionally large American meal complete with a truckload of meat, lots of carbs, a veggie, AND a dinner roll. The portions of the RealSimple dinners is small, but appropriate. I was concerned at first that I’d be hungry, but honestly I wasn’t, and after a week I didn’t worry about it anymore. After the whole month, I realized I’d been eating too much all along.
It showed me how to think about grocery lists and food shopping
If you are like me, and most other Americans, you don’t really like going to the grocery store. It is, quite literally, a chore. I used to avoid food shopping as long as possible because it just seemed to take. so. long. It didn’t help that I didn’t really know what I wanted before I arrived. I’d wander aimlessly up and down the aisles, casually chucking lots of snack foods into the cart and ending up relying on boxes of macaroni and cheese and frozen meals to get me through mealtime.
Ironically, once I started actually cooking regularly with real ingredients, the amount of time I spent in the grocery store decreased a lot. No longer did I feel lost and confused—I had a list! And it was done for me! I easily zipped around, finding the food I needed and then getting out of the store and on with my day in record time.
The benefit to the RealSimple plan was that the month of meals were divided into weeks, and having the list for the all necessary food meant only 1 shopping trip per week. Going shopping once on the weekend and being fully prepared for the entire week ahead was a real time saver. Since moving on to other meals, I’ve begun creating my own lists. It’s easy to do now – having that month of lists provided for me showed me how to read the recipes I’d chosen in advance and quickly identify what I already had on hand vs. what I needed to buy. It’s gotten even easier now that I use an app on my Android phone to create my lists. When 10 minutes worth of work to assemble a week’s meal plan and a list can save an hour of wandering around the grocery store, the trade off really seems worth it.
So, just do it?
To echo Michael Ruhlman’s sentiment, it doesn’t matter how you start cooking, it only matters that you do it. The RealSimple month of dinners may not be the finest collection of recipes known to man, but it will get you started cooking. If you are out there struggling with the challenge of transforming your diet from processed to fresh food, I highly recommend this as a starting point. It was definitely a strong catalyst for my life. Who knows where it will lead?
Low Fructose Diet: The Aftermath
So, I didn’t have a whole lot to say about my 2 week low fructose diet experiment while it was underway. The truth is, at the time it didn’t seem all that remarkable, although I did feel great during that 2 weeks. What DID seem very remarkable was the week after. For various reasons ranging from regimen relaxation after the accomplishment of a goal to the fact that it was a busy week including attending a conference for work, last week saw a return to a “normal” diet for me…only my reaction to it was anything but normal.
By “normal” what I mean is this: last week (being the week after my 2 week low fructose diet period was over) I:
- Did not restrict my diet in any way, calorically or nutritionally.
- Indulged in various sugary items including sodas, yogurts, cookies, etc.
- Most notably: did not prepare my own food, but rather relied on food prepared by the conference center or restaurants
Honestly, I didn’t really think about it that much, and I didn’t really think that I would have much of an adjustment. I’ve never been noticeably affected by sugar. I’ve eaten high quantities of it my entire life, ranging from treats given to me regularly by my grandmother all the way up to the 8-12 Cokes I would drink PER DAY in college, or the cookies and sodas and snacks I would graze on at work. However, I was wrong. After just 2 weeks with a sugar-restricted diet, even small amounts of sugar have had a great impact. During the past week, I have experienced a very unhappy tummy, skin breakouts, lethargy, food coma and sugar headaches!
I went to the movies on Saturday night and helped myself to a frozen cherry drink and some Twizzlers. Josh also got some Reese’s Pieces so I had some of those too. What’s crazy is that a few weeks ago I could have ingested every bit of that and not thought twice about it. However, this time I could barely finish half my drink, and only ate a small amount of both candies before I was suffering from an intense headache and felt all gross and shaky. For the first time ever, I just stuffed the unfinished bag of Twizzlers into my purse and left them there. I threw them all out yesterday.
Here’s the thing: this is a NATURAL response. This is what is SUPPOSED to happen when we eat sugar. We aren’t supposed to have the high quantities of it that we’ve been trained to ingest. It’s supposed to be an occasional, small, treat.
Now, I might have gone a little overboard this past week by eating things that are known sugar bombs, but there is still a point to be made when we look at how much food contains sugar that we’d never even know about. For example, a turkey and cheese Oscar Meyer Lunchable has more than twice the sugar content of a serving of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream! The truth is that food manufacturers load up their products with sugar because it makes things taste good, makes us crave them, and makes us crash harder so that we need to eat MORE of it, more often. And even things we might think of as “healthy” often times are not, if they are coming out of a box.
So the moral of this story is that it is always healthier to prepare your own food, so that you can increase the nutritional value of your food by including fresh vegetables, using intact grains instead of processed/refined carbs, and decrease the amount of hidden sugar and preservatives. Maybe I won’t teetotal it quite as much as I did for my 2 week experiment, but in general I’m going to save the sugar for an occasional treat only. There is tremendous value in preparing your own food so that you know exactly what is in it. And that’s just what I am going to do, if for no other reason than because it makes me feel so much better physically. And in the end, isn’t that the best reason of all?
Vote to Ban High Fructose Corn Syrup at Jason’s Deli!
by Amy on April 23rd, 2010
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Tags: Coca-Cola, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Jason's Deli, Real Sugar, soda
Tags: Coca-Cola, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Jason's Deli, Real Sugar, soda
So today, I needed a quick lunch – something I could just dash in and out and pick up – but I still wanted something reasonably healthy. At times like this, I always turn to Jason’s Deli. Because I was going to be crunched for time while out and about, I visited their web site and placed my order online…but that’s not the interesting part. What really captured my attention was their message about all of the artificial ingredients they have made a concerted effort to strike from their food.
There is a survey on the web site where you can weigh in with your opinion on HFCS in sodas served at Jason’s Deli. They readily admit that the soda fountain is one of the last big hurdles they face in ridding HFCS from all of their products. Please do your part and vote to replace sodas containing HFCS with sodas sweetened with cane sugar instead. You can vote here.
Also, while I don’t want this post to be a big ad for Jason’s Deli, I kind of enjoyed watching this video message from one of their founders. I do have to say I admire this man’s apparent passion for serving high quality food, and I think they are farther ahead than other quick-service restaurants. Hopefully, this is the start of a trend.
You Are Being Fooled By Your Food
“So, what did you eat for dinner last night?”
This was the question my chiropractor would ask me every time I went to him complaining of headaches and a general feeling of tiredness and irritability. My answers invariably led to the discovery that I had ingested monosodium glutamate, commonly known as MSG. Until then, I had always assumed that MSG was something that had been in Chinese food in the 80s but was not readily available in food products today. It turns out that MSG is in almost all fast foods, many products used by sit-down restaurant chains, and scores of products sold in grocery stores.
No studies have conclusively found that MSG causes adverse reactions in humans. However, the FDA has gathered anecdotal reports from many people pertaining to adverse reactions including headaches, flushing, sweating, a feeling of tightness or pressure in the face and/or chest, tachycardia, chest pain, nausea, and numbness, tingling and burning in various areas of the body, mainly the face and neck.
So why is this stuff in our food if it apparently makes many people feel like crap? It’s because MSG makes any food, savory or sweet, taste better. It’s known as a “flavor enhancer”, but the way it enhances flavor is to trick your brain into thinking you are eating something more satisfying and flavorful than it really is. This reaction is known as excitotoxicity, and the “toxic” part is in there for a reason. The end result of high levels of glutamate being taken up by the glutamate receptors in your brain is nerve damage and the eventual death of those nerve cells- the kind of nerve damage and death involved in diseases like ALS, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis.
A consumer who wants to avoid products containing MSG needs to be extra-vigilant, because simply reading labels for the words “MSG” or “Monosodium glutamate” will not keep glutamates and free glutamic acid out of your diet. Products which proudly proclaim “NO MSG!” on their brightly colored labels still contain hidden MSG under the names “Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein”, “Yeast Extract”, “and other clever phrases describing the process by which MSG is manufactured. On an average trip to a grocery store where I live in the Midwest, it is nearly impossible to find a canned soup, flavored snack food such as barbecue potato chips, or processed meat product like hot dogs or Polish sausage that does not contain one or more of these ingredients.
In my experience, the best way to avoid excitotoxins like MSG, as well as dangerously high levels of sodium and fat, is simply to avoid processed, packaged foods altogether and adopt a diet based on whole foods which are prepared at home by hand. Yes, it is more labor intensive than running to the grocery store or even the so-called health food store (believe me, I have read the labels and all of the popular “health-conscious” brands at your local co-op or healthy-lifestyle-promoting chain store have the same hidden MSG ingredients as a bag of ranch potato chips from a gas station!) and throwing convenience foods into a cart. However, since I have learned to recognize the symptoms I experience after ingesting MSG and identify the foods that cause them, I have been more than willing to deal with some inconvenience in order to avoid the discomfort and pain that these excitotoxic foods cause for me.
Today’s Recipe: Minestrone
A delicious tomato-based soup with plenty of healthy ingredients. If you use canned items, beware the BPA linings, but it’s much faster to prepare.
Ingredients
- 1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes*
- 1 32-ounce container organic free range chicken broth
- 1 sweet italian sausage, cooked and crumbled
- 1 15-ounce can cannellini (or other white…this time we used butter beans) beans*
- 1 15-ounce can red kidney beans*
- 16 oz short pasta (Farfalle, Fiori, Rotelle, Orzo, or my preference, Stelle)
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried crushed bay leaves
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
- 1 16-ounce package frozen green beans
- 1 5-ounce bag fresh spinach or one 10-ounce box frozen spinach
- 1/2 cup (2 ounces) fresh Parmesan, grated
Directions
- Cook sausage over high heat – crisp/blacken both sides. (cast iron works awesome for this) and cut into bite sized pieces.
- In a large pot, over medium heat, bring the tomatoes and their liquid to a simmer. Cook for 2 minutes.
- Add the sausage, broth, white beans, and kidney beans and bring back to a simmer. If using frozen spinach, add the block now. Cook until thawed.
- Add the salt, pepper, spices, and dry pasta. Simmer until pasta is tender, about 15 minutes.
- Add the green beans and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. If using fresh spinach, add this now and stir until wilted.
- Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with the Parmesan.
*For canned items, there is a wonderful line of Italian beans and tomatoes available at the Dekalb Farmers Market. Barring this, I highly suggest canning your own (they taste better), or you could try cooking down about 6-8 fresh tomatoes, and using fresh or dried beans, although that greatly reduces the practicality of this recipe.
To make this a vegetarian recipe, omit the sausage and use vegetable broth in place of chicken.
Low Fructose Diet for the Next 2 Weeks
by Amy on April 19th, 2010
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Tags: Coca-Cola, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Obesity, Real Sugar
Tags: Coca-Cola, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Obesity, Real Sugar
As you know, I have a minor campaign against HFCS which includes eliminating it from my diet. I’ve mostly been successful with this, although there have been a couple of times when my dedication to the cause sadly gave in to my addict’s cravings (I just HAD to have a fountain Coke at a Mexican restaurant for example).
However, it’s time to step it up a notch. I’ve been taking in information on studies of fructose–not just high fructose corn syrup–and really, it’s not that great for you. Yes, this is a sugar that naturally occurs in most fruits but I’m not as concerned about its presence there – there are a lot of intrinsic benefits to eating whole fruit (fiber, for one) that you don’t get from its processed counterparts. For example, eating an orange is better for you than a glass of orange juice. Another issue is that sugar is everywhere, added unnecessarily to all kinds of foods because it just makes things taste better, makes people crave them, and makes them buy more. It’s this sinister sugar lurking in the shadows that I want to avoid.
SO, how am I doing this? Well, it’s not too much of a stretch from my typical diet lately, which is probably the only reason I’ll be successful. Essentially the things I am avoiding are, well, anything with sugar in it, no fruit juices, no honey, etc. I am allowing a small amount of bread simply because, while breads are made with sugar, yeast generally eats most of this sugar.
I am having to reformulate the sauce I was going to make for a stir fry later in the week though – the sauce calls for hoisin (and the kind we have is full of unfermented sugar) and some brown sugar.
In general though, just the small act of focusing my diet on vegetables, grains, legumes, and meats I hope will be gratifying. I’ll keep you posted throughout. I think two weeks of such limitation is a good amount, and I’m attending a wedding reception at the end of the period where you better believe I am going to relish a big fat slice of cake.
