Question of the Week: Are You Eating True Foods This Summer?

It is almost six months to the day since I vowed to eat real food, or what I call true food (a play on my middle name, True). I haven't gorged on mountains of chocolate, as I described in an article in the Seattle Times on April 11, 2008 (my epiphany had occurred on Feb. 18). To tell the truth, I thought that 'going public' through the article, and immersing myself in the real food movement, would be the answer I've sought for decades - the answer to being overweight. It is, and it isn't. First, the changes I have made. I cook more and entertain more, thanks to having a new home with space, so I enjoy having a place to cook. I try and watch my sugar intake - my downfall and 'drug of choice,' as they say. All the organic food in Seattle won't make up for too much Ben & Jerry's or a key lime pie or an entire pizza. I love summer fruits and vegetables and now try and enjoy food rather than trying to fill my stomach and a void in my life with pizza and hamburgers. Now, the changes that come harder: not turning to food when I'm lonely, bored, sad, happy, excited, relieved, anxious, celebrating, mourning. My portions are still too big, and I look forward waaaay too much to eating. But there is a better balance setting in. I wish I could be rigid, or 'good' about only eating real food - sometimes rigid works for me, sometimes it doesn't. I rebel a lot. Maybe my mistake, if I've made one, is to look at this experiement as the solution, instead of what it is: a way of getting healthier, a better way to live a life. How are you doing?

Question of the Week: Are You Part Of Slow Food Nation?

The New York Times reports (July 23) that the organization Slow Food USA plans to throw a little party in San Francisco Labor Day weekend. The lawn in front of City Hall is gone and in its place is a garden. The festival, which is being called Slow Food Nation, is expected to draw 50,000 people. Will it be food's version of Woodstock? The Times writes that planners hope that "a broad band of people will see that delicious, sustainably produced food can be a prism for social, ecological and political change." Organizers are trying to strike a balance between those who live the slow food life, and those who think people in the movement are snobs. The group is even embracing corporate partners for the first time, including Whole Foods, Anolon cookware and the Food Network. What do you think? Any chance you can make the SF party? Where is the slow food philosophy leading us?

Question of the Week: How Do We Celebrate Summer And Still Eat Healthy?

Now, where were we? Oh, yes, we're talking and writing about eating real food. I had a not-fun hiatus moving these last two weeks. But the payoff is I have a kitchen I can cook in, a deck to entertain on (no grill yet, tho), and have already had a few friends to dinner. I grilled kabobs under the broiler (chicken, pork, peppers, pineapple chunks, cherry tomatoes, onion), made rice pilaf similar to how Mom used to make it, and friends brought a green salad. Two flavors of sorbet with fresh raspberries for dessert. (And, I must confess, chips and salsa on the deck before dinner. A guest brought those, and we inhaled them. I probably should have prepared raw vegetables.) There will be lots of parties, cookouts, and get-togethers with friends this summer. How can we eat healthy when the menu veers to potato salad and ice cream? And speaking of my favorite food, did you read the Newsweek article about the most-fattening ice cream flavors? I guess it is obvious, but the calorie and fat count increases in flavors that contain more than just ice cream, the ones that also contain nuts, brownie batter, pieces of candy bars, and more. Newsweek offers some alternatives (including the brands Turkey Hill and Edy's) and compare calorie and fat count for half-cup servings. (Who ever ate a half-cup of ice cream? )
Question of the week: How do you enjoy summer foods and still stick to healthy eating?

Question of the Week: Will You Drink More Red Wine If It Is Shown To Extend Life?

We've read before that red wine has lots of good things for us. Now, researchers say red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan. The most recent news about red wine grew out of the search for longevity drugs. The study is based on dosing mice with resveratrol, an ingredient of some red wines. Studies tested the equivalent of 100 bottles of red wine a day on mice. It extended the lives of the rodents; no word if they had more fun, too.
Would you drink more wine - or take resveratrol in pill form - with hopes it would extend your life? (An aside: my brother and I discuss the desire many people have to live long lives. Who, we wonder, is going to support us? Will we have to work into our 80s or 90s or even longer?)

Question of the Week: Will You Cut Out Organic Food, To Cut Back On Expenses?

A recent series of stories on NPR covered how Americans are cutting back, because of the cost of gas, food, and as the effect of the mortgage loan crisis spreads. Those hit hardest, of course, are people with low or fixed incomes.

But a woman many of us would envy - owner of two houses, both paid for - told the reporter that her 'ah ha!' moment came when shopping at Whole Foods. It was a place she shopped frequently, but a quick trip to buy just a few things had cost more than $130, and reality set in when she realized she hadn't come away with even three meals. She told a reporter that she decided to make some sacrifices, starting with one of the things she loved most: organic food. "I won't buy it right now; it's too expensive," she says.

Will you cut back on buying organic food, as a way to save money? What other changes are you making? (I have cut back on getting coffee at Tullys or Starbucks, and on bottled water. I'm also watching how many restaurant meals I have each week, and I'm keeping a journal to see exactly what I spend in all areas of my life.)

Question of the Week: Is Some Food More Important To Eat Organic Than Others?

A friend told me about a website that gives information about organic vs. conventionally grown food. She said it discusses which foods are most important to buy organic. I don't know if this is the site, but I found a posting on http://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-top-10-foods-to-eat-organically.html that discusses the top food to eat organically. It says it is excerpted from the book Your Organic Kitchen, by Jesse Ziff Cool.

Some of you (especially you gardeners) will know more about this than I do. The posting attributes this list to the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit research group based in Washington, D.C.

High-pesticide food: Strawberries
Healthy alternatives: Blueberries, raspberries, oranges, grapefruit, kiwifruit, watermelon

High-pesticide food: Bell peppers
Healthy alternatives: Green peas, broccoli, romaine, lettuce

High-pesticide food: Spinach
Healthy alternatives: Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, asparagus

High-pesticide food: Cherries
Healthy alternatives: Oranges, blueberries, raspberries, kiwifruit, blackberries, grapefruit

High-pesticide food: Peaches
Healthy alternatives: Nectarines, watermelon, tangerines, oranges, grapefruit

High-pesticide food: Mexican cantaloupe
Healthy alternatives: U.S. cantaloupe grown from May to December, watermelon

High-pesticide food: Celery
Healthy alternatives: Carrots, broccoli, radishes, romaine lettuce

High-pesticide food: Apples
Healthy alternatives: Watermelon, nectarines, bananas, tangerines

High-pesticide food: Apricots
Healthy alternatives: Nectarines, watermelon, oranges, tangerines

High-pesticide food: Green beans
Healthy alternatives: Green peas, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, potatoes, asparagus

Are there other foods that are more likely to be grown with and/or retain pesticides? What alternatives have you found?

Question of the Week: What's A Customer To Think?

We're speaking of the misleading nutritional claims that popular restaurant chains, including Chili's, Taco Bell, Cheesecake Factory and Applebee's, list on their menus. As reporter Isaac Wolf of the Scripps Howard News Service wrote (his story was published in many papers, including the Seattle P-I on May 22), the food at many restaurants contains more calories and more grams of fat than the menus state. Scripps had food tested in eight cities; many dishes were found to have several times as many calories and fat as the restaurants claimed. Here's another interesting point: many of the restaurants did a mea culpa, blaming oversized portions. Can't they coordinate the nutritional information to the portion size? New York, San Francisco and Seattle have policies requiring a menu item be counted as one serving. Do you rely on nutritional information provided by restaurants?

Question of the Week: Why Do We Waste Food in America?

The photograph is stunning. There is bread, chicken and beef, bacon, fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, milk, olive oil and much more. If you haven't seen the graphic, and haven't read the article it accompanied, go on-line to the May 18th New York Times Magazine story on the amount of food we waste in America. The photograph represents the food a family of four throws out each month, an astounding 122 pounds. People around the world are starving. Food banks in America report that donations of food are down, yet the number of people showing up for food has increased. Yet, according to the Times article, reported by Andrew Martin, a study on food waste (from 1997) found that 27 percent of the food available for consumption - or 96.4 billion pounds of food - ends up in landfills. In some cities, including New York, 'food rescue organizations' work to get donated food from cafeterias and restaurants and to people who are hungry - not table scraps, but food that was never served.

What can we do to cut down on food waste? I'll admit, there is a banana sitting on my drainboard right now that I would rather toss than eat mushy, and I can't bake tonight. How can we waste less food?

Question of the Week: How Far Will We Go To Include Seafood In Our Diet?

The government and nutritionists have been telling us for years that eating fish and shellfish will make us healthier and smarter. But supplies are shrinking, and farmed fish is said to lack some of the health benefits of wild fish. On KUOW May 13, Taras Grescoe, author of "Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood" recommended....jellyfish. Dried and salted, it is high in iron (and sodium) and protein. There's a lot of jellyfish around the world, so there will be no problem with supplies. And it is low in calories. So what do you think are alternatives to the wild fish we've taken for granted? Let us know, and take the poll. Is jellyfish in your future?

Question of the Week: What Can I Grow On the Deck of a Condo?

I hope to be the owner soon (well, the bank and me) of a condo in Greenwood. It has a deck, and as I told my Realtor, I've waited 25 years to be able to sit outside at my home and have a cup of coffee in the morning. For those 25 years, I lived in what my brother calls 'sardine cans' in New York and Seattle, with no deck and no yard. Yes, I could walk a couple of blocks and be in Central Park, but I just want to be able to stay in my pajamas and at the same time be outside.
I haven't measured the deck (we're still negotiating with the seller on a final price) but I should be able to have flowers plus pots of.....this is where I need your help. What can I realistically grow? What can I grow if I'm not realistic?

Question of the Week: When Do the Farmers Markets Open?

It's cool and rainy. It's warm and sunny. It's spring. And that means Seattle's farmers markets are opening. If you want a handy place to find out where they're located and when they're open, check out the website of The Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance (NFMA). It is a non-profit organization, it says, "dedicated to supporting local farmers and helping to keep local farmland in production. " It helps organize seven farmers markets in Seattle, where farmers direct-sell their produce to shoppers.
They are:
Broadway - open Sundays 11 a.m. -3 p.m. starting May 11
Phinney - open Fridays 3 p.m. -7 p.m. starting May 16
Lake City - open Thursdays 3 p.m. -7 p.m. starting June 5
Magnolia - open Saturdays 10 a.m. -2 p.m. starting June 7
Columbia City - open Wednesdays 3 p.m. -7 p.m. open now - Oct. 22
U-District - open Saturdays 9 a.m. -2 p.m. year-round
West Seattle - open Sundays 10 a.m. -2 p.m. year-round

There are other farmers markets, including on Wednesdays in my neighborhood, Wallingford. Maybe someone can explain how it, and others, are different. Just not part of the NFMA?

What do you most look forward to buying, once the markets open?

Question of the Day: May 5

Well, here's some news we could have lived without.
Obesity researchers in Sweden say that when our fat cells die (and the good news is, they do!) they are replaced with...new fat cells!
Whether we are fat or thin, or lose or gain weight, 10 percent of our fat cells die every year. The scientists say that the total number of fat cells remains the same through our adult lives. They say that losing or gaining weight "affects only the amount of fat stored in the cells, not the number of cells." Now they're trying to learn if it is possible to intervene, and treat obesity by making fat cells die faster than they are born.
Something to ponder as we try and eat healthy.
The finding is published in the journal "Nature."

Question of the Weekend: May 2-4

Do Calories Matter When We're Eating Real Food?

I'm eating real food, cooking, spending too much money at Whole Foods, keeping a food journal and trying to kick sugar. I'm even contemplating exercise! But I'm not losing weight. Much to my frustration - and the frustration of friends I hear from - we still have to consider calories.

This week a rule was to go into effect in New York City, requiring calorie counts to be posted alongside prices in some restaurants. The rule has been delayed by a court challenge brought by the New York State Restaurant Association.

City officials maintain that consumers will make healthier choices if they know how many calories are in each item. Any chain with at least 15 outlets nationwide would have to display calorie counts on menu boards, menus or food tags. Some restaurants in New York City — among them Starbucks, Subway, Quiznos and Chipotle — have already posted calorie counts.

Do you count calories? Do you find it helpful, or only another reminder of 'dieting?' If a restaurant displayed calorie counts, would you read them?

Question of the Day, April 28-29

Are You Worried About the Cost of Food?

There was another great radio hour Monday morning on KUOW (94.9 fm). If you missed it, you can hear it at kuow.org. The discussion was about the cost of food, and I found it truly scary. While food shortages approach a critical point in many poor countries, the World Bank says global food prices have gone up 83 percent in the past three years putting huge stress on some of the world's poorest nations. In Haiti there has been rioting over higher prices for staples like rice and beans. Food prices in America went up four percent in 2007 (although you wouldn't know there's a problem by looking at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's website; a January, 2008 news release is titled: American Food: Still the Best Deal in the World - it probably is). Costco is rationing rice, and speaking of prices, there's a new record for the price of a gallon of gas in Seattle ($3.71 as of Saturday, although I paid $3.83 in Wallingford).

As the Boston Globe reported on March 9, 2008: After nearly two decades of low food inflation, prices for staples such as bread, milk, eggs, and flour are rising sharply, surging in the past year at double-digit rates, according to the Labor Department. Milk prices, for example, increased 26 percent over the year. Egg prices jumped 40 percent.
Escalating food costs could present a greater problem than soaring oil prices for the national economy because the average household spends three times as much for food as for gasoline. Food accounts for about 13 percent of household spending compared with about 4 percent for gas.

Are you worried about the cost of food? Will food staples price us out of being able to buy organic?

Seattle Times article by Rebecca Morris, April 14, 2008

Pinning her hopes for weight loss and health on "real-food" philosophy of "In Defense of Food"
By Rebecca Morris
Special to The Seattle Times

It was a cascade of oozing chocolate. I thought of tilting my head under the waterfall and opening my mouth, as if I were drinking from a kitchen faucet.
This Sunday brunch was, metaphorically speaking, my last supper. There was the chocolate fountain with marshmallows and fruit for dipping. There were oysters, cheesecakes, eggs Benedict, pounds of bacon and sausages, rooms of pastries and bowls of white fluff (we didn't know what that was but ate it anyway).
The buffet mirrored my own years of excess. I had not been paying attention to the toll eating and weight were taking on my health. That day — Feb. 17 — I had just finished reading Michael Pollan's best-seller "In Defense of Food" and made a vow to eat real food for one year.
Goodbye Ben and Jerry, Sara Lee and frozen pizza. Hello blueberries, arugula and wild fish.
Pollan says the processed and refined stuff most of us eat isn't food but rather "edible foodlike substances." His manifesto: eat real food, not too much, mostly plants.
Also, don't eat food your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize, avoid foods with more than five ingredients or with ingredients you can't pronounce, and stay away from food products that make health claims.
In other words, as 93-year-old fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne says, "If man makes it, spit it out."
After 45 years of dieting — everything from Weight Watchers (numerous times) to Optifast, calorie-counting, prescription "uppers," cognitive therapy, hypnosis, and yes, exercise — I am ready for a new way of living.
At least three times I have lost 50 pounds or more. But each time I return to old habits, eating sweets (especially) when I am happy, sad, worried, fearful, optimistic, busy, bored, lonely or even in love. I learned young to cope and calm myself with food.
I am tired of being tired, would like to have more energy, and hope to lessen my arthritis and sciatica. My original goal was to lose 100 pounds while eating real food for one year. I have sliced that to 80 pounds; the weight doesn't fall off as it did when I was younger.
I went to the guru himself, Michael Pollan. Interviewed by phone from Berkeley, Calif., where he is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at U.C. Berkeley, Pollan says while there is no guarantee that eating healthfully will prevent heart disease, cancer or other diseases, he calls the research "striking."
"What we know about food that is highly processed is that it is responsible for diet- related diseases," Pollan says. "There is evidence that you can roll back diseases."
As every reader of his books must wonder, what does Pollan eat? Since 1998, when he met farmers in Idaho who refused to eat their own potatoes because of pesticides, Pollan and his family do a lot less shopping in grocery stores and more in farmer's markets.
Pollan does embrace comfort foods; they're just a little different from yours and mine. "My greatest weakness is bread. And I like pasta," he admits, "whole-grain pasta." But what if your ancestors — like mine — didn't come from Italy? "It doesn't literally have to be your great-grandmother," he explains. "It can be what someone's grandmother ate 75 to 100 years ago." (Thank goodness, because otherwise I would be eating haggis and little else.)
In restaurants, he orders seafood or vegetarian dishes. He'll eat a pizza if the crust is made with whole-wheat flour. For a snack he'll have a handful of dates and almonds.
He calls junk food and desserts "weekend food." "They're for banquets, holidays, special occasions," he says, not every day.
Beware "novelties" aisle
Others are on the real-food bandwagon. In her memoir "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life," novelist Barbara Kingsolver writes about her family moving to a family farm in Virginia to grow their own food and support local farmers. Others are planting gardens and trying to eat locally. Unfortunately, my studio apartment doesn't even have a windowsill where I can grow an herb. So mine will be the urban attempt at eating real food, dependent on chain grocery stores, Whole Foods and farmers markets.
I have spent decades calculating calories and fat grams on food labels. But deciphering the other ingredients can give you a headache worse than, well, than any ice-cream brain freeze.
For example, Oroweat Whole Grain & Flax bread with Omega 3. Sounds super-healthy. But it contains 30 ingredients, with high-fructose corn syrup listed second. I looked at frozen low-fat meals: Lean Cuisine's salmon with basil has 17 ingredients and South Beach Kung Pao chicken has 50, although counting becomes difficult because there are often ingredients within the ingredients. South Beach whole-wheat crackers, in handy 100-calorie snack packs, has 18 ingredients, including two kinds of syrups.
Pollan advises staying out of the middle of the supermarket where processed foods hog the center aisles. My favorite sign hangs above a frozen-food aisle in the middle of a Bellevue supermarket: "Frozen Novelties." I'm pretty sure God didn't make frozen novelties during his busy six days.
Real food — fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat and fish — is found on the periphery.
"What we know is that calories matter, but vitamins, minerals, how much saturated fat we eat matter, too," says Sallie Dacey, a Group Health family-practice physician at Northgate Medical Center. Dacey is 57, fit, slender and a swimmer, runner and walker who also does Pilates and uses an elliptical trainer. She has been my doctor for almost three years.
"Unprocessed food is better," she says. "There is more data coming in about its benefits."
She's not sure that we need to follow all of Pollan's advice. "The point is to pay attention." Her philosophy is confirmed by research that finds even a 10- or 20-pound weight loss for an obese person decreases the risk factors for serious disease.
"It's never too late"
How am I doing eating real food? The first few weeks went well. I lost 9 pounds and my blood pressure dropped significantly.
Then, my mother died; it wasn't unexpected, she was 97 years old. But within 24 hours of her death, I was consoling and distracting myself with ice cream (at least 37 ingredients) and pizza (who knows?). I stopped writing down what I was eating, and even stopped taking my supplements. I got sloppy and regained several pounds.
And here's another lesson: real life happens. Enthusiasm carried me in the early days of this dramatic new way of eating, but what I lean on now is my commitment to a healthy future. Even on the days that I slip into old habits.
While Dacey calls me at age 58 "relatively young," she says my weight and lack of exercise increase my risk of contracting heart disease, diabetes, stroke or certain cancers earlier than I might otherwise.
"It's never too late," she tells me. "We can improve our health almost to the end."
We'll find out. She'll be helping monitor my weight and health this year, as I learn what real food is, if it costs more to eat it, and how to find it and cook it.
For more on eating real food, on books I'm relying on, and to share recipes and your own efforts to eat healthy, see my blog, TrueFoods.blogspot.com.
Rebecca Morris has been a broadcast and print journalist for 34 years. She teaches journalism
at Bellevue Community College.

Question of the Weekend

As We Think, So Do We Eat?

Did you hear Dr. Alan Marlatt on KUOW (one of Seattle's NPR affiliates) Friday? If not, you can listen on-line at kuow.org. He was a guest on "Sound Focus" at 2 p.m. Marlatt is a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, with a focus on addictive behaviors. In the 1970s he began studying college students who were heavy drinkers. He was using meditation to lower his blood pressure, and found that teaching the students to meditate and be mindful reduced drinking rates by 50%. Since I am always on the lookout for ways to ease my tendency to eat impulsively, I plan to read whatever I can find about his work. During the radio interview he described imagining our urge as an ocean wave and our breath is the surfboard that moves us through it. He says 'urge surfing' will make the craving subside. Do you use your mind to help you eat healthy? As we think, so do we eat?

Question of the Day: April 23

How Did We Get So Hooked On Sugar?

We'll be posting a new poll this week (thank you, all 193 of you who voted on how important eating healthy is to you). The new one is about the foods and drinks that are hardest to give up. For me, the most difficult cycle to break is my dependency on sugar - primarily ice cream but any dessert. I know that there are homemade desserts with five ingredients or fewer (re: Michael Pollan), but the problem is that, like a potato chip, I can't eat just one.

In the last 20 years, our annual sugar consumption has increased dramatically, from 26 pounds per person, to 135 pounds per person. Some think we eat even more.

When I don't eat refined sugar, I'm more likely to eat healthier in all other areas of my eating. Now, when I would usually be downing a pint (not of beer, of Ben and Jerry's) I eat fruit, including figs, plums and dates. And I love putting frozen fruit, especially cherries, in a blender with skim milk or non-fat yogurt.

How did sugar (and high fructose corn syrup) come to be such a staple of the American diet?

Question of the Day: April 22

How Are You Spending Earth Day?

It is incredible how the celebration of Earth Day has grown since 1970. Here in Seattle, we'll soon be charged for plastic bags at grocery stores (incentive to not forget the Trader Joe's or Whole Foods cloth bag lost in the back of the car or stuck in a home closet). I feel the city is a little hypocritical, in that construction, traffic and the cost of living here are issues not being addressed.

I'm still a carnivore and not a 100% locavore but I'm working at it. I'm sure I underestimate my carbon footprint.

Do we make changes because they're good for the planet, good for us, or good for our pocketbook? How did you spend Earth Day?

Question of the Day: April 21

What Are Your Favorite Recipes Using Real Food?

For the first time in years, I'm cooking! Since I began my quest to eat real food and improve my health, I've been experimenting with a slow cooker. Every Sunday I make a pot of vegetables with either chicken or stew meat, and throw in rosemary or basil and other good stuff.

Clearly, I could use some new ideas.

What are you cooking? Post your recipes under the comment section and we'll add them to the blog.

Question of the Weekend

As We Eat, So Do We Vote?

Talk about putting voters – and their food - under the microscope. According to a story in the New York Times (“What’s for Dinner? The Pollster Wants to Know,” by Kim Severson, April 16, 2008), what we eat is a clue to how we vote.

People who take polls want to know everything about us. In this presidential election year, when it appears every vote may count (at least in the primaries) pollsters want to know what we eat. It’s called microtargeting.

The researchers say that Republicans drink Dr. Pepper, while Democrats drink Pepsi, white wine and Evian water. Clinton supporters are likely to have butter and Fig Newtons in the kitchen. Obama supporters buy Bear Naked granola. And McCain fans? Pizza all the way.

What do eating patterns say about us? If we are what we eat, does that extend to how we vote?