Food for Thought Friday: Shut Up, Judgey McJudgerson

Humans: we’re a funny, scary, crazy, strange, terrible and beautiful lot, aren’t we?

Case in point:

I was walking along a scenic trail not far from where I live, enjoying the bright blue sky, the greenery, the fresh air, birdsongs, and generally just feeling grateful to be alive, healthy, and strong, when a man jogged past me. Well, it was more of a shuffle than a jog. Before he passed me, while he was still behind me, I could hear his feet scraping along the ground with each step, almost as though the effort to fully lift his feet was too much. I got the sense that he was struggling. It sounded like he was struggling. And when he did pass me, I got a look, and I continued looking for a while when he was in front of me, until he turned the bend and was out of sight. Indeed, it looked like he was struggling.

The man was very thin, and was sporting two knee supports. (The ones that look like thick, rubbery ACE bandages.) He had the physique of the semi-emaciated marathoner: not a lot of muscle mass, skin hanging loosely, pale pallor to his skin. His face struck me almost as gray, in fact. He looked like he had—in the words of that great phrase—“been rode hard and put away wet.”

As he passed me, several ugly, judgmental, closed-minded thoughts crossed my mind:

Idea! -- What Not to Eat

If you are not familiar with the American TV show What Not to Wear (which was based on the British version), you might want to skip this post. Without a thorough steeping in the ins and outs of that show, this post will not make any sense to you. I could take time (and several hundred words) to explain it, but honestly, if I do that, I guarantee the magic of the show will lose something in translation. So if you’ve never seen WNTW, no worries. Just sit tight and wait until I post something else. (If you were hoping to kill some time with one of my super-long posts, take a few seconds and go check out the book Growing Tomorrow, by the author of Gaining Ground, which I reviewed here. Hard to say which one I like more. (Actually, no. It's Gaining Ground.) Frankly, this guy is a friggin’ dynamite writer [and farmer!], and both books are excellent. Growing Tomorrow review coming soon!)

For the rest of you, if you have seen WNTW, I think you’ll agree that I have a million dollar idea here.

Food for Thought Friday: Sandwiches are Stupid

It’s true. They are.

But let’s not even address this from the perspective of low carb eating. Grain flour that’s been baked into some sort of spongy, edible “thing” is a completely unnecessary element in the human diet. Bread, rolls, buns, pita, naan, bagels, panini – carbohydrate, insulin, blah, blah, blah. Old news. It’s Friday, and since I like to have a little more fun with these posts than I tend to let slip in things like the cancer series or the fuel partitioning series, let’s look at the ridiculousness of sandwiches from a perspective that has nothing to do with aspects of carbohydrate that we’ve all heard about a million times over.

How about we tackle the sandwich from a functional and socio-cultural perspective?  

Label Madness Monday: It's So Simple...

It’s time for another round of food label smackdown, folks!

If you’re on the edge of your seat waiting for the next post in the cancer series, get a bigger seat and scoot back for a bit. I’ve been working on a big project and am falling a little behind on those cancer deep-dives. But fear not; I definitely haven’t forgotten about them and there will be more...eventually. In the meantime, let’s take a look at something as “simple” as the vegetable oil spreads that have been masquerading as butter for the past few decades.

First up: “Deliciously Simple,” by the food chemists who bring you I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!® (The company employing these food chemists is Unilever, the same company that brings you all these other non-foods and edible food-like products.

Let’s see just how “simple” this product is:

This Blog Post Will KILL YOU (!!)

Bright lights! Pretty colors! 

Look here, LOOK HERE!

Or save your life! Or help you drop 14 pounds in two weeks!

Here is a sampling of recent blog post and article titles from around the Paleo/low-carb/ancestral health world:

• Is a Low Carb Diet Ruining Your Health?
• How Resistant Starch Will Help to Make You Healthier and Thinner
• Wheat: the Silent Killer (When you click on the link, the actual URL ends with: wheat-ticking-time-bomb/)
• The Cavity Reversing Diet (First sub-header: Is Your Dentist Lying to You?)

Is this what I’m doing wrong? Is this why my blog has just a teeny tiny (yet growing, thank you and welcome, newcomers) readership?

Is it the lack of inflammatory and attention-grabbing titles?

Label Madness Monday (Sort of)

Sorry no label post today. Once in a while time gets away from me. But I didn’t want to leave you completely high and dry on the last Monday of the month, so here’s a quick laugh for ya.

I was at Whole Foods the other day, and as I was walking past the bakery section, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Call it a Freudian slip, or, rather, a Freudian vision, or chalk it up to where my imagination was at the time, considering the immediate environment, but I am not kidding when I tell you I honestly, truly, thought this said “Blood Sugar Bomb.” I literally had to do a double take and that’s when I saw what the label really says:

Remember: Amy Berger, M.S., NTP, is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

Label Madness Monday: Is Nothing Sacred?

Today’s label post takes a look at chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Not the world’s most common ingredient, I grant you, but there’s a method to my madness. I’ll be writing a few blog posts here and there with tips on creating homemade versions of your favorite sauces, dressings, and condiments. Some will be Paleo, some will lean more toward Primal, some will be low-carb, but one umbrella they’ll all fall safely under is REAL FOOD.

So I went looking for these smoked jalapeños in an attempt to make my own chipotle aioli. (Okay, it wasn’t really an aioli because I can’t be bothered to make my own mayonnaise, so I was going to finagle something with sour cream and yogurt. Also: does anyone reading this watch Throwdown with Bobby Flay? Am I wrong in thinking that any time one of the dishes involves an aioli—especially one with jalapeños or poblanos, the judges should pretty much be able to guess it’s Bobby’s?  [Also: anything with blue corn.])

Aaaanyway, on to the label.

Label Madness Monday

Hey everyone! Another seven days have gone by, and you know what that means: a new food label to look at and start the work week with a laugh—or possibly a cry, depending on how much this stuff either amuses or bothers you. Today’s labels are such egregious examples of wacky marketing that we don’t even have to look at the list of ingredients. The manufacturers have saved us the trouble of going to that extra step by kindly putting all the ridiculousness right out front and center. So here goes.

Take a good look at this milk carton. I mean a really good look. Read all of it.

Label Madness Monday

After yesterday’s less-than-cheerful post, I figure I ought to lighten things up a bit. So I offer today’s label dissection in the spirit of serving you up a smile today. And the humor starts before we even get a look at the thing. Because I came across this label not at a supermarket or health food store, but in a department store. That’s right, the kind that sells clothing, toys, housewares, electronics, and cosmetics. Some department stores sell food. This one wasn’t one of them. Or so I thought.

Wednesday 'Round the Web

Hey Everyone!

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means: our weekly dose of link love to get us over the hump. Today we’ve got some great recipes for using more of summer’s produce bounty, a surprising take on fiber (and why more is not always better), and a couple of things to make us laugh. After all, laughter is a nutrient! I guarantee you’ll be healthier and happier if you get in a good guffaw now and then. Good ol’ vitamin L— it’s almost impossible to overdose on, no matter how much of it you get!