The costs and benefits of omega fats and Vitamin D. Getting this right would provide a much bigger improvement to our national health than any government “health care” program. And it’s frightening how retrograde the FDA is on these issues, and how many still take their recommendations seriously.
Of course, a healthy diet isn’t cheap, which is why it’s important to have government policies that promote wealth production, rather than destruction (as things like cap’n’tax, and government health care, would do).
Indeed.
I follow space news, but I think I understand nutrition (as much as anyone does). And it really IS frightening how off base the FDA (and the medical establishment) are. We could prevent 90% of the diseases that kill people in this country with property nutrition. Heart disease just doesn’t exist in cultures that get it right, along with a host of other ailments.
And it’s worse than ignorance on the FDA’s part. Their laws often cause our food to be less healthful, or their display labels allow manufacturers to hide how they’ve taken nutrition out of the food products they sell. And that’s not even getting to how the corn, soy and sugar lobbies have moved heaven and earth to make sure no one fully understands just how damaging their products are. Margarine? Blech.
I would suggest though that a healthy diet IS cheap, relative to all the processed crap you can buy in the store. Just plain eggs, meat, veggies, etc. is dollar for calorie cheaper than Cheerios and McDonalds.
That’s why I get annoyed at the “organic fruits and veggies” people. They’ve convinced people that they’re better off spending their money on fewer organic products than more “non-organic” products. Sorry folks, but more fruits and veggies is more fruits and veggies, no matter what. Stop scaring people from eating perfectly good and healthy food.
(See: Dr. Bruce Ames, who is probably sorry he ever invented the Ames Test. He’s an amazing speaker — it was funny to go with my entire biochem department and listen to all of my profs start discussing how often they eat broccoli…)
Oh, and I seriously hate the way they use the adjective “organic”. I like to point out that non-organic would mean it was just a salt sculpture or something…
I would suggest though that a healthy diet IS cheap, relative to all the processed crap you can buy in the store. Just plain eggs, meat, veggies, etc. is dollar for calorie cheaper than Cheerios and McDonalds.
Right. What isn’t cheap is the time it takes to prepare these things into healthy meals — economies of scale means McD’s produces cooked food more efficiently than you can. Eating healthy means you must prepare 3-squares a day yourself (and for your family/kids) while working/commuting since stay-at-home-parenting is also a luxury.
I can tell you that I’ve lost around twenty pounds since June by changing my diet from large amounts of carbs (pasta, bread, potatoes — supposedly so much “healthier” than bad old meat) to smaller amounts of meat, eggs, and vegetables — mostly raw, as in salads. I’m planning to lose thirty more pounds by New Year’s, and then I’ll weigh about what I weighed ten years ago.
I guess if you ignore the long-term costs to your health incurred by eating McDonalds frequently. Time spent making good food is an investment in health and personal pleasure. Cooking is one of the last artisanal hobbies our culture allows everyone to engage in, and I recommend everyone learns the craft of it just for the sheer joy of it. There are few things as deeply pleasurable as making good things with your own hands.
My personal “economy of scale” though is cooking very large “protein portions” a couple times a week and then mixing & matching with fresh vegetables and some rice or potatoes. I’d take that over fast “food” any day of the week.
The other problem is that most people waste a lot of time in the kitchen with poor organization or lack of skill. Those cooking shows don’t help, since they make everything over-complicated. I make really good food in pretty limited periods of time. And I’m an attorney, so I know what it’s like to work long hours.
Spending a little time learning to prepare food quickly is like investing in the ability to touch-type. It seems annoying, but the payoff in time saved just keeps racking up points your entire like. By example – with a sharp knife it’s often faster for me to julienne by hand than use a food processor.
Andrea,
Just a warning – raw foods don’t have the bioavailability of calories, vitamins and minerals of cooked foods. You’re just starving yourself, rather than getting healthier, and may be suffering from vitamin deficiencies to boot. Weight loss is good, but a lot of that weight being lost is probably lean body mass – bones, muscles, organs. You don’t want that.
Getting rid of the overly refined carbohydrates is great (see T. L. Cleave, The Sacharine Disease) but I think you should consider putting some unrefined starch (potatoes, yams, fresh corn, rice, etc.) and good fats (butter, coconut, olive) back into the diet. Weight loss will slow down, but you’ll be healthier for it. “Total weight” is far from the best indicator of health.
And cook your vegetables, even if only a quick saute to brighten their green. It helps so much.
I guess if you ignore the long-term costs to your health incurred by eating McDonalds frequently.
That’s exactly what people do. q.v. Americans’ inadequate retirement savings (in the concrete) and time preference (in the abstract.)
I recommend everyone learns the craft of it just for the sheer joy of it.
Naturally. I recommend it, too, even though I hate every minute of it and do as little as possible. Same goes for dental hygene and every other dull human chore.
If you take Vitamin D as a supplement make certain it is Vitamin D3. Vitamin D3 is what is produced by the skin when it interacts with UV light. Some studies show that vitamin D2 doesn’t produce the same level of benefit as D3.
After hearing about how long Icelanders and Mediterranean folk live I’ve always believed that it was all the oily fish they ate. I’ve taken fish oil supplements for years now. Although I would say to take them with something to eat. Otherwise, you start to get fishy tasting burps if on a empty stomach.
I was at the bar awhile ago (as in yesterday) and a lady I was talking to referred to me as a kid to one of her friends. I said, “KID! I’m 34, I work for a living,” and her jaw dropped. She pegged me for not being a day over 26 she said — she was 38.
We could prevent 90% of the diseases that kill people in this country with property nutrition.
Er…Brock, although I agree completely with you about the importance of sound basic nutrition, and doing it in your own kitchen to boot, may I inject a note of realism here?
We’re all going to die of something, and not too many years different from the canonical fourscore and ten. You are not going to prevent most people from ultimately dying of heart disease and strokes and cancer through any amount of nutritional changes — because that’s just the way we’re designed, that’s how we fail. The best you can hope for is that more people live healthier lives up to their ultimate demise, and that more come closer to reaching the canonical limit.
Indeed, this has been the historical trend. For example, the life expectancy at birth in the US has increased from 38 in 1850 to 76 in 2004, which sounds very impressive. But that’s largely the result of staving off premature death. Success at staving off death in old age has been far more modest: an 80 year old man in 1850 could expect to live 6 more years. In 2004 he could expect to live 8 more years — not what you’d call a roaring success for 155 years of medical advance (and taking into account that an unknown fraction of that increase is simply better nutrition, clean water, central heating in wintertime, et cetera, it’s not clear medicine has achieved anything at all for the very oldest).
I am not by any means sneering at the goal of living as well as you can and as long as you can. These are very worthy goals. But let us not start thinking we can maybe simply not die at all, if we all eat right and exercise. Not going to happen, and thinking otherwise may actually be a dangerous delusion, inasmuch as recognition of our individual mortality is one of those things that impels us to more social behaviour.
In fact, I’m going to take issue a bit with Rand’s point. I don’t think there is all that much that can be done, outside of medical miracles, to improve the general health of Americans. It’s already pretty much the case that Americans, regardless of their economic class, mostly approach as close to the canonical lifespan as is reasonable to expect in a free society. Yes, lifestyle changes might alter that a bit for the better — but given that people are already threatened with premature death by not implementing them, it’s hard to see what further can be done by way of incentive, and short of instituting a police state and removing the voluntary nature of such changes, they’re not likely to happen.
I mean, look back at those life expectancy stats again. Here’s the age to which you can expect to live, given the age you are now, in 2004:
just born: 76
age 10: 76
age 20: 77
age 30: 77
age 40: 78
age 50: 79
age 60: 81
age 70: 84
age 80: 88
It doesn’t go up very much. That means there’s not a whole lot of premature death going on, although without question there is some (accidents, AIDS, childhood leukemia).
Here’s where the historical record is such a contrast. Here are the numbers from 1850:
just born: 38
age 10: 48
age 20: 60
age 30: 64
age 40: 68
age 50: 72
age 60: 76
age 70: 80
age 80: 86
Here, there’s clearly a lot of premature death going on, because each year you survive the winnowing, your expected lifetime rises. The really steep increase between birth and age 20 suggests much of the premature death was in infancy and childhood.
Sure, let us continue to agitate for folks to live better, eat better, pay attention to their lifestyle, and let us continue to research it. But let us not fool ourselves that these things will change our lives utterly — let us each count on reaching 100, for example. The only way that is going to happen is following major breakthrough discoveries in biology and medicine.
Which, by the way, are not going to happen if we “reform” health care so there is no longer gobs of money to be made in the field.
OK, one more comment. One of the flip sides of erroneously thinking that chronic disease (heart disease, cancer) can be staved off reliably by diet ‘n’ exercise and omega 3’s or what-have-you is that there comes the possibility (and with some folks the probability) of contemptuous and uncharitable attitudes towards those who do suffer from these diseases, and at a younger age than we expect.
I mean, a woman gets breast cancer in her late 30s and starts thinking What did I do wrong? That kind of remorse and guilt — generally completely undeserved — can be a hefty burden to add to the disease itself, particularly if other people callously join in. Oh, that’s why I always eat plenty of broccoli. Did you forget to eat broccoli?
Then there was Cathy Seipp, who wrote for NRO, who contracted lung cancer in her late 40s and died of it. She wrote about the weird fact that folks would wonder: oh, so you smoked? No, never. Didn’t exercise? Nope, vigorous aerobic exercise every day. Bad diet? Nope, healthy vegetable eater et cetera. So why’d you get lung cancer? Who knows? These things just happen.
I’m not suggesting anyone here is guilty of uncharitable thinking. But I am warning that the flip side of promoting the idea that you can reliably control your chances of contracting chronic disease is a culture of contempt for those who nevertheless contract it. This is worth pondering.
There are some food to live with and other to die for. What I am making right now:
Easy Jambalaya
1 lbs chicken breast cubed
1 lbs kielbasa sausage sliced
1 large yellow onion diced
1 large green bell pepper diced
2 stalks celery diced
2 cloves garlic chopped
2 cups long grain white rice
3 cups hot chicken broth
1 tsp Old Bay seasoning
1/8 tsp cayenne powder
3 bay leaves
2 Tbls Worcestershire.
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Brown the chicken the in a cast iron dutch oven — salt & pepper to taste. I dare say cast iron is essential but not necessary. Just something oven safe that has tight fitting lid.
3. Add diced vegetables and garlic. Pour 1/4 cup of broth into pot, put lid on, and sweat the vegetables down till vegetables are tender and liquid is nearly reduced — stir occasionally. Add sausage till it is warmed through and begins to render.
4. Pitch the rest of the broth, rice, seasoning, and bay leaves into the pot. When broth reaches full boil cover tightly and put into 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Pull pot out of oven and LET IT SIT (no heat) for another 20 minutes WITH THE LID ON (no peeking).
5. Gently toss rice out of dutch oven onto a serving platter and lightly toss in 2 Tbls of worcestershire. EAT!!!
I like my rice on the al dente side so I use the minimal amount of water to cook through. If you like yours more glutenous then use the regular 2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice approach.
Jeez I’m a crappy editor.
Forgot the 2 tbls of oil to brown the chicken in. Canola is best if using cast iron. Less free radicals absorbed out of the iron than say, Olive Oil.
Also, when I dice the vegetables I usually make 1/2 inch peices. Hence the reason I steam the vegetables in 1/4 c of broth for a bit to make them tender first. If you are a picky vegetable eater than dice the vegetables finer. Omit the 1/4 cup of broth all together and just use the moisture off the chicken to soften up a bit. I’ve cooked it before for people that were not fans of onion used a finer dice, and it disappeared by the time I served it and they didn’t even know.
Brock: I eat plenty of cooked vegetables, and didn’t say anything about cutting fat out of my diet (I eat plenty of butter and olive oil too). I’m not one of those raw food freaks, I’m just eating more salad instead of filling up on bread or cookies the way I used to. And I also eat rice and pasta — just not in the mass quantities I used to. Really it all comes down to portion control. Instead of eating, like, a whole chicken breast and leg at one meal, I’ll just eat the leg. And I’ve cut sodas out of my life — those have a lot of calories. (I refuse to drink diet — I’d just rather go without.) Of course I still have to have my coffee and tea — I need some vices. But I’m by no means deprived of vitamins.
Another thing: stay away from fast foods. I think they inject that stuff with extra fat. I was eating a lot of Wendys and what-have-you when I lived in Florida. Also it was so hot there most of the year I never went outside if I could help it. I’m in Virginia now and getting a lot more exercise just walking up the hill and the three flights of stairs to get to where I’m living now. But in any case — it doesn’t take that long to make a meal at home. Cooking isn’t some intricate operation that only people with food shows on tv should try. I can make a decent meal in less than half an hour. Just think of how long it takes you to go to the fast-food restaurant (getting up, getting into your car, driving to the place, waiting in the drive-thru or parking and going inside to wait in line, driving back home… and you will have to deal with traffic and idiot drivers, people in the line who can’t make up their minds what to have, or want something specially prepared because people have forgotten what “fast food” means, trying to understand the person behind the speaker in the drive-thru, having to count out your money… etc. etc. etc.) — so much for convenience, and now your blood pressure is through the roof as well.
“Their laws often cause our food to be less healthful, or their display labels allow manufacturers to hide how they’ve taken nutrition out of the food products they sell.”
Or require them to be extremely careful how they promote it when there *is* good stuff in it (or added to it), even where substantial supporting data exists…
A basic healthy meal can be prepared in less than 15 minutes. I should know – I do it all the time.
One very useful tool is the “George Foreman” grill; it not only reduces fat in the food cooked on it but also cooks a lot faster as well – a pork chop cooked from frozen in about 9-10 minutes, for example. It also doesn’t matter whether the thing is completely full or almost empty, unlike a microwave oven.
Set the grill on, put on your meat or fish of choice, put a pan of lightly salted water on to boil, wash and chop assorted veggies and chuck them into the pan which should by now be boiling. Wait a few minutes, serve. If you want a little pasta with this, that can be cooked at the same time – taking maybe 7-8 minutes or a little longer for wholemeal.
This takes a lot less time than going out for a takeaway, and about the same time as putting something pre-prepared in the microwave. The meal won’t be special, but it will be healthy and reasonably tasty.
And it’s cheap, too. Why typical Brits (and by the sound of it, typical Americans too) prefer processed junk as a steady diet is beyond me.
As an aside, one way to help the health of the nation (yours or mine) would be for basic cookery lessons to be put back into schools.
Josh,
Your jambalaya sounds great, but I’d steer clear of the canola oil. Any of the processed vegetable oils, really. Corn, soy, ‘vegetable’, and canola oil just aren’t natural. In addition to their being chemicals (rather than food) with no historical precedent, they’re 50% Omega-6 fat by volume. Overdosing on PUFAs is probably one of -the- worst things about the modern industrial diet. Don’t worry about the free radicals as much, but if you’re going to fry chicken I like lard and coconut oil.
Andrea,
It sounds like you’re doing it right. Good job.
Carl,
Yes, we will die of something, but no – it won’t be heart disease. Are we not “just built that way.” Heart disease (and heart attacks, and diabetes, and many cancers, and osteoporosis, and … a really long list) just doesn’t exist in cultures that get it right. Even the smokers (smoking imported cigarettes) live a long time without heart disease if they continue to eat the traditional diet.
My maternal grandfather is currently 83, and I don’t expect him to die any time soon. He’s hanging in there. But he’s been (essentially) under house arrest for years because of his health and cannot get out. That’s not going to change. And he’s on more medications than I can count to manage all the problems his poor diet has brought crashing down on his metabolism. My father on the other hand is 70, and he still sails most days and volunteers for the Coast Guard rescue teams off Cape Cod. He takes an aspirin a day and some vitamins, but that’s it.
Even if I only get my four score and ten, I know which of those men I’d rather be until the end.
Crud. I meant “We are not built that way.” It wasn’t supposed to be a question.
A. Men.
Andrea, in proper quantities those are NOT vices. The health effects of tea (both black and green) are well documented, and the latest data I’ve seen on coffee are very positive.
Bravo Carl, particularly your third comment. The disdain with which far too many people treat those who don’t follow their own particular lifestyle and the arrogance of those who know exactly how everyone else should live is quite sickening in itself sometimes. Especially as each new contradictory study comes out.
I appreciate how people look for control in their lives, and since religious immortality has gone out of fashion then steps towards secular immortality are welcome, but the pious certainty of the true believers can be a bit wearing at times.
One very useful tool is the “George Foreman” grill; it not only reduces fat in the food cooked on it but also cooks a lot faster as well – a pork chop cooked from frozen in about 9-10 minutes, for example. It also doesn’t matter whether the thing is completely full or almost empty, unlike a microwave oven.
That thing is a marvel.
“but I’d steer clear of the canola oil”
Ah, but you can never underestimate the high heat handling capabilities of Canola. Canola doesn’t start breaking down until 435 degrees. Unlike your extra virgin olive oils, shortenings, and coconut oils which reach their smoke point at 325-350. Carcinogens can begin to form in burnt oils as well as a rancid flavor brought to the food. Plus if you stick to just using a couple of tablespoons things should be fine. All good things in moderation. Plus Canola is cheap compared to Peanut oil, light olive oil, or safflower oil.
I’ll even go out on a limb and say that deep frying isn’t as bad as it is made out to be. Use a clean fresh oil that has been preheated to its proper frying temperature and don’t over fry the food. Alton Brown did a Good Eats show where he weighed his food prior to cooking, then deep fried it, and then weighed it again and the whole batch of food only gained a couple of teaspoons of oil. Deep frying doesn’t really cook the food in oil. It instead heats up the water content in the food itself and literally steams it. The food only really becomes oil logged if you over cook it. As long as there is steam out gassing from the food then the oil isn’t really touching the surface of anything. Many fast food joints fry with liquid shortening which is loaded with yummy tasting triglycerides. I like deep frying with Canola since it is cholesterol free. I also use ‘Smart Balance’ oil quite often as well though it is pricey.
+1 to the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Grillin’ machine. It’s amazing how quickly you see the fat rolling out of the side of the thing.
Alton Brown is great, I’ve learned more stuff watching him than I can remember. I remember once he was doing a roving reporter kind of thing on Iron Chef and mentioned something technical about what Bobby Flay happened to be doing and Flay looked at him and said “I didn’t know that!”. I’ve been deep-frying my Thanksgiving turkeys for going on 10 years now (peanut oil at 350), I will never go back to baking that.
Canola is also good from an Omega 3 standpoint, as the article points out. I use it to fry catfish.
It’s poison at any temperature, and so is “Smart Balance.”
I’d also point out that “cholesterol free” is a boogey-man. A false monster. Your body makes more cholesterol in a day than you could eat in a week because cholesterol is good for you and necessary for every function of life. Your body uses cholesterol to make everything from brain cells to testosterone. (And the brain cells issue is a real one – rat pups fed Canola oil produce malignant brain growth at the cellular level).
It’s oxidized, small particle LDL cholesterol which is a problem, but normal (healthy) LDL cholesterol is large-particle and H saturated. Consuming high quantities of PUFAs (such as Canola oil) is what creates desaturated cholesterol, allowing oxidized (rancid) fats to build up in your system and eventually leading to congestive heart failure.
++ Alton Brown. I love that guy. But he doesn’t know much about nutrition either. But so few people do.
I am not a fan of the George Foreman Grill though. I understand the convenience, but I don’t like the results compared to more traditional methods (grilling, frying, baking, searing, etc.).
I am not a fan of the George Foreman Grill though.
Racist!
And the darker skinned one may be, the more Vitamin D will be an issue:
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=09-P13-00035&segmentID=3