Tag: diet

Replied to Navigating my way into veganism by Bryan Alexander (bryanalexander.org)
For the past month I’ve been I’ve following a vegan diet.  So in a brief pause from my focus on the future of education, I’ll share some thoughts about this experiment. It’s…
This is excellent Bryan. It’s something I ought to look into in more depth myself, but reading about your experience actually points out to me that I’m eating a lot more rice and beans in the last few years. Having a rice cooker means I almost always have cooked rice on hand with a fraction of the effort it had taken before. I also make about 4 cups of beans every week, so those are always hiding in the refrigerator. I also bought a tortilla press and making those is far easier and they’re far tastier than those in the stores and for a dramatic fraction of the price. I’ve taken to having a lot more fresh fruits and vegetables in the house, and I find it’s easier to grab an apple, banana, orange or something than it is chips or other junk food of which I’m starting to keep almost none around the house.

Another shift that I’ve found somewhat useful is that I became lactose intolerant in the middle of last year, so diverting around large amounts of dairy has likely been helpful.

One of my other shifts in the past few years is that I truly love a great pastry. As a result, the level of what I consider good pastry and other treats has risen dramatically. Now I find that I either have to make my own or get them on demand at local shops. This has prevented me from eating a lot of inferior and rather tasteless junk food as a result. Girl Scout Cookie season is upon us, and I just can’t bring myself to eat such dreadful snacks anymore when I could have something much tastier and likely healthier. Of course as part of all this, I’m also making a lot more of my own bread now too. It isn’t nearly as difficult as I had thought it would be to make fresh bread every couple of days.

In sum, I hadn’t really noticed it until you’ve pointed it out, but I’ve largely taken to the diet you’ve outlined. The primary difference is that I’ve come around to it in a much different fashion.

🎧 How much does a nutritious diet cost? | Eat This Podcast

Listened to How much does a nutritious diet cost? by Jeremy Cherfas from Eat This Podcast
You can eat a perfectly nutritious diet for a lot less money than the US government says you need. But would you want to?

Jeremy Cherfas interviews Parke Wilde, an agricultural economist at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.


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I love that Jeremy raises the question of preparation time in discussing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It’s something that doesn’t seem most people would consider, but which in the modern world has become a major consideration. To some extent a lot of the growth of obesity in the U.S. is as a result of people going to restaurants and eating less healthy food out, but justifying it for the savings in time and the general convenience.

Some of this discussion reminds me of a talk I saw back in August by Sam Polk, co-founder and CEO of Everytable, a for-profit social enterprise that sells fresh, healthy ready-to-eat meals affordable for all, and founder and Executive Director of Groceryships, a Los Angeles non-profit working at the intersection of poverty and obesity. He was also the author of the book For the Love of Money: A Memoir of Family, Addiction, and a Wall Street Trader’s Journey to Redefine Success.

As I’m listening, I’m curious what these types of programs look like in other countries? How does the U.S. compare? Do those countries leverage the same types of research and come up with similar plans or are they drastically different? I’m thrilled that in the very last line of the episode, Jeremy indicates that he may explore this in the future.

I’ll also guiltily admit that while listening to this episode, I was snacking on M&M chocolate candies while drinking a sugary supplemented beverage. Perhaps I’ll pay my penance later by baking a fresh loaf of bread.

🎧 Neanderthal Diets | Eat This Podcast

Listened to Neanderthal Diets from Eat This Podcast, April 29, 2013
Neanderthals did not descale their teeth regularly, for which modern scientists can be very thankful. Embedded in the fossilized calculus, or tartar, on teeth from the Shanidar cave, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and elsewhere are some remarkable remains that are beginning to shed far more light on what Neanderthals ate. I don’t want to give too much away just yet. Let’s just say that if, like me, when you think of the Neanderthal diet you think of a bunch of cavemen and women sitting around chewing their way through a woolly mammoth, you’re in for a surprise.

My guide through the recent discoveries on Neanderthal diet is John Speth, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Amanda Henry’s research clearly points to moist-cooked starch grains in the mouths of Neanderthals (but did they swallow?). Archaeologists, however, have found almost no evidence of Neanderthals using the hot-rocks boil-in-a-bag method of modern people who lack fire-proof containers. And surprisingly, they didn’t know what John Speth discovered while watching TV in a motel room: that it is perfectly possible to boil water in a flimsy container over a direct fire. In the interests of time I had to cut his fascinating description of an experiment to make maple syrup by boiling the sap in a birch-bark tray over an open fire, which concluded that it was “both efficient and worthwhile”. So, now that they know it can be done, how long before they discover it was done?

There is evidence that Neanderthals ate moist-cooked starch. There is evidence that one can moist-cook without fire-proof containers and hot rocks. All we need now is evidence that Neanderthals used similar techniques, and the palaeo-dieters can add a nice mess of potage to their daily fare.

Notes
  • Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium). (A scientific paper.)
  • National Geographic’s early report on Amanda Henry’s discovery of plant remains on Neanderthal teeth and a more recent report from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
  • More on Neanderthal diets at John Hawks’ weblog.
  • Photograph of the Regourdou Neanderthal mandible used by permission of the photographer, Patrick Semal, and the Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord.
  • Intro music by Dan-O at DanoSongs.com.
  • Final music played by Ljuben Dimkaroski on a replica of a Neanderthal bone flute found in a cave in western Slovenia.

While I’ve read lots of research surrounding this area, this is the kind of area which more mainstream food journalists, entertainers, and educators could and should be covering. Aside from a semi-regular appearance of Deb Duchon, a nutritional anthropologist, appearing on Alton Brown‘s Good Eats, this may be one of the few places I’ve seen such an interesting interview of this type.