Food Rules- BUSTED!

Tags

additives, fitness, food rules, health, michae pollan, sushi

I'm fuming. I just had a major food rules boo-boo. The irony, the break in rules occured with sushi. 

FISH. Fish and rice to be specific. Honest to pete, nothing is sacred. 

The set up- I decided that I wanted to kick off the weekend with a little fish. I hit my local H.E.B. grocery store and cruised over to the fish counter. Nothing really jumped out at me. (Which is good given that I didn't really want my food to jump at me.) So I shifted over to the sushi bar. I happen to like sushi. I'm still learning about it, but I've got no issues eating raw fish. Or raw beef. But I digress. 

I did a quick eyeball and bypassed the various California roll options and shifted towards the Deluxe Sushi box. I grabbed a tuna/salmon variant and wandered back up to the front for checkout. Came home, sat down for an early dinner and began to munch. 

As I chewed, I gave a passing thought to the label on my box. I was curious about calorie counts. So I flipped the box over and started reading. I'm running down the label (4g of carbs and 3g of protein per piece for those interested), and my eyes stray to ingredients. 

I see the words, "high fructose."

Big, flashing alarm bells go off. Whyfor is there high fructose ANYTHING in my fishies? 

I start piecing the label that I'd ripped off the box together. High fructose corn syrup in the vinegar. Potassium sorbate. Acetic acid. Aspartame.

… So not only is there fake sugar in my sushi, there's fake sweetener.

Yeah. The vinegar is used to prep the rice, so it's all through the meal. I mean that's the point of sushi. Fishy bits and the spiffy rice. Full of chemicals. One of which I work very hard to not ingest ever.

I know better. I am a devoted reader of labels. This caught me off guard. It's sushi. Not a chemical bomb. Yet within my humble fish I discovered a plethora of chemical non yummy.  

I finished the sushi. I've got issues not finishing meat products I've purchased no matter where they come from. I believe if an animal dies to be on my plate, I need to respect that death and not just throw it away.  So meat doesn't get tossed. But man am I ticked. Yes it's my fault, but yeeish! It's a fresh prepped item, it spoils, and it doesn't glow green in blacklight. It's what I'd tell my clients is a safe food option. 

Amazing how that perspective changes when you actually check what's in your food. 

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Commencement

Tags

colorado springs school, fitness, interlude, mindset

Today the class of 2010 graduated from my high school alma mater. The Colorado Springs School is a small private school in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

What's this got to do with eating better and losing weight? Nothing and everything. You see, CSS is where I learned so many of the lessons that I'm carrying through in my life today. It's the place where I was encouraged to be an active and independent thinker. If that meant being a member of Conservation Committee and also eating meat, that was okay. Little strange, but still okay. 

I look through the images from commencement today (because as Mary Flemke was fond of saying, this isn't the end it's the beginning), I remember my own commencement day. It was a bit cold, typical Colorado late spring. Like all high school seniors I remember thinking that anything was possible.

Kind of like those kids today. 

The lesson I've learned since- Mary Flemke was right. Every day isn't an end, it's just a new beginning. It's never too late to step up and work to make a difference in the world. Some times it seems like that's not possible. You can look at the headlines and think the world is falling apart. It seemed like the same thing was happening back in 93 too. Funny thing, the world is still here. I can't help but think that it's in no small part due to the fact that when I looked out at the world as a senior, I just saw the possible. 

I learned to choose hope, and to believe that my words and actions can and do make an impact. I don't always see that impact. It's not always obvious to me that I make a difference. That doesn't mean I get to quit. That's not what I learned. 

I hope that the class of 2010 learned the same lessons I did. Based on their pictures today, I think they are well on their way. 

Congrats 2010 Kodiaks! 

Believe in the impossible. 

So why get rid of high fructose corn syrup?

Tags

fitness, food rules, health, hfcs, high fructose corn syrup, michael pollan

When last we left our intrepid hero, she was ensuring that the last of her High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) containing items had been removed from the hacienda.

Now thankfully since I've been eating healthy for a good number of years now, the amount of HFCS in my house is minimal. Now odds are good you've been reading the news and watching tv over the last few years. You are aware that HFCS is a bit of a lightening rod food for folks. In some circles it's being touted as the food of the Devil! On the other hand you have the good folks with the Corn Lobby who insist that HFCS is a natural sweetener. Who's right? The answer is both of them.

First things first, high fructose corn syrup is indeed made from a naturally occurring product- corn. Said corn is taken through a series of steps in a factory setting. Those steps include, milling the corn, separating out the starch from other solids, adding naturally occurring enzymes, and finally filtration. 

You can safely say that HFCS is made from naturally occurring ingredients, but is not something found in nature. 

Now the research is still in progress about just how much of a negative impact HFCS makes on the human body. The picture is not clear yet that this particular form of sugar is worse for you then other forms of sugar. By that I mean there are not multiple, peer reviewed studies that clearly demonstrate a causal link. What can be stated is that HFCS is a wide spread source of additional sugar in many foods. Sugar is a simple carbohydrate and a source of calories. Ingesting too many calories without enough exercise leads to growing waistlines.

For people looking to improve diet, cutting extra sugars is a great way to do just that. HFCS is also a product that was not on great gramma's shelf. (It was invented in 1957). So if you are looking to shift away from highly processed foods, looking for HFCS is a great way to do that too.

On face that seems easy yes? Did you take a look at your fridge for HFCS containing items?

Things you may have found-

Skinny Cow Ice Cream bars

Nutrigrain bars

Special K cereal

Yoplait Yogurt

Smuckers Grape Jelly

Clausen Pickle Relish

Ben and Jerry's ice cream

That's just a couple of the items you may find in your fridge. We won't even go into your sodas, assorted kinds of kid food, and salad dressings.

You've got a pile of stealth calories in those foods, several which masquerade as healthy food. No go. Just because a product is natural, that doesn't make it healthy. Remember, arsenic occurs in nature too. Not sure that's on my good eats list. 

Again, the research is still out on HFCS being the tool of the devil. At a minimum, for someone trying to eat healthy and lose weight you do not need those added sugars.

The evil that is High Fructose Corn Syrup, also known as Rule 4

Tags

fitness, food rules, health, high fructose core syrup, michael pollan, slow food

Rule 4- avoid products which contain high fructose corn syrup. Period, end of sentence.

We are going to do something a tad different this week. What I'd like you to do right now is go off to your fridge and open it. Pull out any product that is not a whole food item. In other words, if it lives in a bottle or a box, not a whole food in most cases. Now count up how many of those items contain the words high fructose corn syrup?

I'll wait.

In the interests of full disclosure, I've got a bottle of BBQ sauce with HFCS in it.

Now go count. Shoo!

Reply with the total count in the comments area. Any of those foods surprise you?

Apologies and Rule 3

Tags

fitness, food rules, food science, health, michael pollan, rule 3

Guys I seriously apologize. I was hit out of left field with a couple things this week which just really set me off balance. There's no excuse for it. Life happens, and we all need to do the best we can in order to roll with the punches. In this case, the punches have been rolling me.

With that, off to Rule 3- avoid food products that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry. This is actually the "rule" which got me interested in this whole project in the first place. How many normal people would want to keep soy lecithin in the pantry? Odds are not too many. Yet this is an incredibly common ingredient. To the point where I found it in my shampoo!

Lecithin (besides being difficult to pronounce), is a collection of fat containing substances in a wide range of animal and plant foods. It was originally discovered back in the mid 1800's as a component of egg yolks. It's primary role is typically as a lubricant or as an emulsifying agent. For those of us who missed out on Home Ec, emulsification in food is the process of blending two typically unblendable liquids together. The classic example is blending oil and water. Using an egg yolk, you can blend oil together with vinegar to create mayonnaise. I recall doing this as a child with limited success. But I'm told that's how it works.

In the world of food science, adding soy based lecithin to a product can replace egg based emulsifiers. It also helps prevent things from sticking to other things. I noticed this in my non stick cooking spray first. Now, knowing what lecithin does, my first question is, "why do I need this in my cooking spray?" In and of itself, the spray which is oil based should not need any help. Unless there's something about the propellant they are using in the can which prevents it from mixing nicely with the oil. So that indicates to me that the propellant isn't just air. There's something else there. Which is not on my label.

I do not approve.

Now the last time I checked, none of my recipes call for soy lecithin. They call for eggs, butter, or other things along those lines. This is a product we've introduced to the pantry through the back end. 

General rule of thumb, if it ain't in my cookbook, odds are I do not need to add it to my food.

Project Chicken Stock Part 1

Tags

chicken stock, food rules

Today, we are making stock. I have assorted chicken bits, big pot, water, and a pile of veggies.

Toss items into pot, boil, and let simmer for 8 hours.

Film at 11…

8 quarts of water

Carrot

Onion

Celery

Tarragon

Rosemary

Turnip

Chicken bits (chicken neck, back, assorted wings,skin, bits of chicken)

Real Reasons Why Local Sourcing Can Be a Problem

Tags

drought, fish, food rules, local sourcing, michael pollan, oil spill, seafood

It's easy to lose sight of one reason we shifted away from locally sourced food in the first place. Nature does not generate consistent results when it comes to growing and temperatures. Drought like conditions have existed across large chunks of the country for the last few years. Without modern pest control and modern irrigation systems, we would start running into issues keeping people fed if we relied on local sourcing. Being able to truck food in from places that are not having growing issues helps keep food supply high. (For the moment we are going to ignore the corn/soybean surplus since that's another issue. I'm talking about straight up reliance on local food. Five years of drought can destroy production in an area and ruin farmers.

Now we can go back and forth on the whys and wherefores. The fact remains, you take out genetically modified crops, modern pest control, and modern chemical preservation techniques and things can get tricky. Don't believe it, check out Africa where many starve because they refuse to accept genetically modified foodstuffs.

Shifting back to the local food movement, I'm going to spend a good part of my summer wrestling with a food sourcing issue. This past weekend, an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico sank. It's now in the process of leaking oil out into the Gulf. For me, the Gulf falls into my "local sourcing" pile. I've got a big circle which includes Central Texas, and I ooch the Gulf in to that circle since it's my closest source for seafood. I've been looking for recipes that feature fish common to that area.

Now I've got an environmental disaster in my food backyard. As of today, the experts are saying that there shouldn't be an impact on the marine life so long as the oil slick doesn't hit land. I'm pretty sure that is not the case. I'm recalling information from previous oil spills which describes the impact on marine life. Saying there's no impact is a stretch.

So I'm looking at a bit of a conundrum. Do I go with local seafood to honor the intent and spirit of my challenge or do I shift to seafood sources which are safer? I've got the luxury of choice. There are many in the world who do not.

Once upon a time, there was no choice. If the harvest was bad, you starved. If there were diseases which wiped out the shellfish population, you had no shellfish. One of the benefits to non local food is not being a prisoner of this particular cycle.

Something to ponder and something I need to figure out before I start buying my gulf shrimp.

A Year In the Dilemma- A Personal Trainer’s Journey

Tags

fitness, food rules, health, michael pollan

Is it possible to achieve high level fitness results using the ideas and concepts highlighted in Michael Pollan's New York Times best selling books?

That's what I'm looking to find out. I've been living a healthy and fit lifestyle over the last 5 years. Using the principles and concepts of the Body for Life program, I dropped 60 pounds, got into amazing shape, and essentially changed my life. These days I'm a personal trainer. I know all about the science and technique required to help get someone from fat to fab. If you'd asked me two years ago what was needed to reach the goal of a healthy and fit body I'd have rattled off several different nutritional supplements and given you specific food ratios and types. I'd have told you to cut back on some foods, eliminate others, and use protein powders and meal replacements. In the last year and a half, my views have changed. I still have no problem suggesting supplements and meal replacements, but I find myself wondering…is that the only way?

Sure, we know that you can follow a wide variety of diet plans to achieve different types of fitness results. You can go vegan, you can go high protein, you can go moderate this and low that. But can you achieve high end results eating things that the fitness industry doesn't consider healthy? 

I've been rolling this idea around my head for a while now. I've gotten increasingly frustrated by fitness gurus who insist that you can't eat bananas if you want to lose weight. I roll my eyes at folks who insist that there's only one way to do this. I just doesn't seem right.

In late January of 2010 I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food." It was an eye opener. He summarized a lot of concepts that I'd been mulling in my head for a long time. This prompted me to pick up a copy of Omnivore's Dilemma. Which is where the title of this project comes from. Can I live a year in the "omnivore's dilemma", integrating actual food? Not relying on the things we've created in labs, things like protein powders, low fat this and reduced fat that. With my knowledge of what is needed to achieve specific body aesthetics, can I put together real food meals that accomplish that goal?

This isn't being done as a political protest. I like meat. I know where my meat comes from. I'm not hollering that we need to roll back technology and all food science. I don't feel the need to render my own lard from pig fat. I live in an apartment, so it's not like I'm going to go out and grow my own produce in bulk. I'm also a personal trainer. This means I'm not rolling in cash. So I have to figure out how to make this work on a budget. 

The guideline for the project is going to be Pollan's "Food Rules- An Eater's Manual". It's a selection of 64 guidelines that help simplify eating. Note, simple doesn't mean easy.

The basic rule is simple. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

The goal- eat food, not too much, mostly plants, end up with a six pack at the end.

365 days starts now.