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Posts Tagged ‘organic food’
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
When you’re constantly trying to lose weight (or, in my case, trying to find the time in your day to just get to the gym), you come across a lot of different diet books, workout regimes, and “quick fixes.” With respect to the quick fixes, I don’t buy into any of that stuff because the quick fix is usually depriving your body of certain essential items (such as fat or carbohydrates – the body needs these things!).
The other day I was watching one of the morning talk shows before leaving for work and one of the guests was a woman that lost a ton of weight. Part of her routine was the Eat-Clean Diet. I’m always interested in what people are doing to lose large amounts of weight. Usually, I’m looking to see if those people are finding success while juggling a crazy professional and personal schedule. In other words, I want to see if anyone can lose 100+ or 150+ pounds when they are busy from 7am through 10pm on most days. I haven’t found that success story yet…
But I digress. I looked into the Eat-Clean Diet for Men and was immediately happy to see that it isn’t so much of a diet as it is a plan to eat natural foods in proper portions. The Eat-Clean Diet for Men, created by Robert Kennedy and his wife Tosca Reno, focuses on creating a schedule of food intake that works for a man to achieve whatever he wants to achieve (be it losing weight, gaining muscle, or maintaining a certain weight). Folks, I’ve been on all sorts of diets and when I did manage to lose 120+ pounds a few years ago (before gaining it back), I did it by staying away from fad diets and, instead, just eating smaller portions and working out more often. That’s what I liked about the Eat-Clean Diet – it’s not a fad diet. Instead, it focuses on eating real foods.
And as it turns out, I’ve been eating the same foods that are recommended by the Eat-Clean Diet for Men for years. I take the supplements that they suggest taking and I eat the food that they suggest eating. My problem for the last few years where I’ve gained the weight back has always been on two issues. The first is portion size. I eat gigantic sandwiches and large bowls of pasta and I shouldn’t do that. I get progressively better at reducing these portion sizes as time goes on, but I still sometimes have portion sizes that are too big. The second problem is timing.
During the college semester, it’s very hard for me to get to the gym for an intense workout. Sure, I can get to the gym and have a half-assed workout at the end of the day for about 30 minutes, but it’s not worth the effort since I’m not achieving anything in that scenario. Between the two hour daily commute to and from my day job, teaching two nights per week, and attending a class on a third night each week, I get pretty tired by the time I get home at night. Further, when I do get home it is usually between 9pm and 10pm after having been awake since 6am.
For me, the Eat-Clean Diet for Men plan doesn’t address how to juggle a ridiculous professional and personal schedule and thus doesn’t add much “new” information for me. In fact, the information presented in the book (which is a very well prepared book, by the way) is nothing new to anyone who has been researching health and healthy lifestyles. In fact, there was nothing new in this book on that front. However, I can see how this book can be a very valuable resource to those people who do not know which foods are good and which ones are bad for improving health.
I’d recommend this book for someone who is in that latter group and for someone who has the time to dedicate to really changing their entire lifestyle for the cause of improving health. For those of us who are over-scheduled from the morning hours through the late evening, the only new thing you’ll find in this book is which foods are good and which are bad. For those of you who already know which foods are good and which are bad and if you’re over-scheduled and trying to find a way to lose weight, then the Eat-Clean Diet for Men might not be for you.
Posted in Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews, Gym Stories | 1 Comment »
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
Sometimes I buy a book and it takes me forever to read the thing. Not because it’s a bad book, but rather because I sometimes just don’t have the time to sit down and read! That’s what happened to me with The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. I bought this book in October 2008 and it took me about a year to get through it.
However, do not interpret that last sentence as a criticism of this book! No, in fact this is one of the best sustainable living/organic food books that I’ve ever read. Pollan is a master at bringing out the larger issues in our food system. In this book, he manages to achieve that success by following the food from its humble beginnings in the field (or on the industrial farm, as it may be) all the way through when we eat it. The book is a really fascinating look at what happens to our meat and produce before it gets to our tables.
But those with queasy stomachs beware. While Pollan doesn’t talk too much about the gore associated with creating the food that we eat, he talks about it enough to allow the reader to infer just what is going on. From chickens getting their throats sliced and drained of their blood to cows being shot directly between the eyes to kill them, this book will tell you about exactly how our ground beef and chicken cutlets come into being before they hit our dinner tables.
But it’s not all dying animals and blood. In fact, Pollan spends a great deal of time talking about the industrial food system and how we’ve changed the base of our diets from a variety of original sources hundreds of years ago (and even decades ago) to a base of corn. Yes, that’s right – corn. Pollan talks about the ways in which corn is broken down into a whole collection of different components and how those components are used to construct any number of new products. One of the facts that I read in this book that has stuck with me is how we now feed our livestock a corn-based diet at industrial farms and how that diet has changed the very meat of these animals. It all makes sense though, right? If you change what you feed animals that you intend to eat, then you are essentially changing what you intend to eat. There is some discussion about our change to a corn-based system leading to the increasing obesity epidemic in America, too.
Combining Pollan’s natural wit and his great storytelling ability, this book presents the type of information that our society needs to know about in order to create a mass change in our diets. If you’re interested in the slow food movement, local organic farming, or any sustainable living topic in general, then I think that you’ll enjoy this book. Use the link above to read more reviews from Amazon!
Posted in Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews, Sustainable Living | 1 Comment »
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
Hey, I know that I hoot and holler a lot about our country getting a better, more sustainable food supply. For those of you that are bothered by this, I’m sorry but it’s one of the things that I feel strongly about these days. I really believe that our countrymen have been put in a bad way because of a lousy food supply that is based more on corn than on natural elements. Seriously, take a read of any of Michael Pollan’s books and you’ll understand how incredible this change has been and how it has effected us as a people.
That’s why I joined the Food Democracy mailing list – so I could use whatever voice I have in this world to advocate on behalf of bringing our food system back to basics. Part of that change – and make no mistake about it, this is the change that I voted for – is removing from the government those organizations that have an interest in mass producing quick, low-cost sources of food. With that in mind, this is the latest e-mail that I received from Food Democracy:
Dear Friends,
Speak up to stop Big Ag.
President Obama has found himself with some strange bedfellows lately.
While on the campaign trail in Iowa, Barack Obama boasted, “We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s not the Department of Agribusiness. We’re going to put the people’s interests ahead of the special interests.”1 Despite that promise, it seems that ConAgra’s friends at Monsanto and CropLife are still finding their way into the USDA.
Last month, President Obama nominated two “Big Ag” power brokers–Roger Beachy and Islam Siddiqui–to key agency positions, putting agribusiness executives in charge of our country’s agricultural research and trade policy. Please join us in telling the President that this isn’t the change we voted for. We don’t want Big Ag running the show any more.
Siddiqui’s confirmation hearing is set for next week. Please help us reach our goal of 50,000 signatures to make a real impact.
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/65?akid=35.18844.xoo-6g&t=1
Obama’s first agribusiness selection is Roger Beachy, to be head of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Beachy is the founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO. It may sound innocuous, but the Danforth Center is essentially the non-profit arm of GMO seed giant Monsanto; Monsanto’s CEO sits on its board, and the company provides considerable funding for the Center’s operations.2
As the head of the USDA’s new research arm, formerly known as the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CREES), Beachy is responsible for deciding how U.S. research dollars will be spent in agriculture.3 Translation: more research on biotech, less research on how to scale sustainable and organic agriculture.
Unfortunately, Beachy has already started work at the USDA, but the next nominee—Islam Siddiqui—still must be confirmed by the U.S.Senate. Siddiqui, the Vice President of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America, was recently nominated to be the Chief Agricultural Negotiator at the Office of the US Trade Representative.4 Amazingly, when Michele Obama planted her “organic” garden on the White House lawn, Siddiqui’s CropLife MidAmerica sent the First Lady a letter saying that it made them “shudder”.5
During his career, Siddiqui spent over 3 years as a pesticide lobbyist, an Undersecretary at the USDA and a VP at CropLife. In defending Siddiqui, the White House has stated that he played a key role in helping establish the country’s first organic standards.6 What they neglect to mention, though, is that those original organic standards would have allowed irradiation, sewage sludge and GMOs to undermine organic integrity! The standards were so watered down that 230,000 people signed a petition for them to be changed, which they eventually were.7
Fortunately, the organic community stopped Siddiqui and his cronies then, and we need your help now to do it again. If Siddiqui’s nomination is allowed to go through, then agribusiness will continue to control the seeds, the science, and the distribution of global food and agriculture.
Please join Food Democracy Now! and a broad coalition of other groups, in calling on President Obama to keep his campaign promise of closing the revolving door between agribusiness and his administration.
Please click here to add your voice.
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/65?akid=35.18844.xoo-6g&t=1
Thanks for standing with us and our coalition partners from across the country, including: The Pesticide Action Network (PAN), National Family Farm Coalition, Food & Water Watch, Farmworker’s Association of Florida, Institute of Agriculture & Trade Policy, Greenpeace and the Center for Food Safety in calling for President Obama to live up to his promises to put people’s interests ahead of special interests
As I’ve said in previous entries on this topic, it takes less than a minute to send a brief message to the White House. Please take some time and, if this issue interests you, send a message to the White House. I’m realistic. I know that changes today won’t effect the food supply tomorrow, but I do think that changes in the food supply will help future generations of my family and our country eat more natural foods and thus be healthier people.
Posted in Sustainable Living | No Comments »
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
Many of you know that I go to a farm each Saturday morning (actually, this coming Saturday is the last visit to the farm until next season) to get my produce. The food that I get from the farm is literally “farm fresh” and organically grown. It tastes delicious – much better than the produce that you find in the stores.
I’ve signed up to be on Food Democracy Now’s e-mail list so I can help advocate for better food policies for all of us. The latest advocacy effort is asking Agriculture Secretary to help organic farmers get more land to grow their crops. Below is an e-mail I received from Food Democracy Now – give it a read.
It’s time to end the bureaucratic squabbling at the USDA and put beginning and minority farmers first.
What new and minority farmers need most is access to affordable land — unfortunately USDA officials are stalling a potential solution.
A new program created by sustainable agriculture advocates in the 2008 Farm Bill, called the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Transition Option, offers incentives to land owners enrolled in the CRP to sell or lease the land to beginning and minority farmers using sustainable or organic practices at the end of CRP contracts.
Currently, 4.3 million acres enrolled in CRP are about to leave the program and this land is badly needed by the next generation of farmers to overcome the greatest obstacle to new farmers – affordable land.2
Unfortunately the USDA’s bureaucratic wrangling and fear of lawsuits is holding up implementation of this vital program. Rather than release the land as it should be under new Farm Bill rules, the USDA is holding it up with an unnecesary environmental impact study. Any further delay will deny beginning and minority farmers the opportunity to get access to the land they need in the next 2 years.3
Please join Food Democracy Now! by asking Secretary Vilsack to implement the Conservation Reserve Program Transition Option now.
Our beginning and minority farmers don’t have a moment to waste.
Interesting information, huh? If you’re interested in sending a quick, online message to the Secretary, click here. If you believe that quality food provides a large benefit to our society, then I encourage you to send the Secretary a message.
Posted in Sustainable Living | No Comments »
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