As always, though, before we get to this week’s links I again want to strongly recommend signing up for a free Feedly account. I get absolutely no kickback for promoting Feedly, but I am so appreciative of their product being the best RSS reader on the internet and I encourage everyone to use it. If you are using another RSS aggregator, please consider following JerseySmarts.com at http://www.jerseysmarts.com/feed/. If you are already on Feedly, then you can follow us by clicking here. Thanks!

Have you come across any great articles lately? If so, please share those links in the comments below! And one more time before you go – for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend considering a free Feedly account. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

As always, though, before we get to this week’s links I again want to strongly recommend signing up for a free Feedly account. I get absolutely no kickback for promoting Feedly, but I am so appreciative of their product being the best RSS reader on the internet and I encourage everyone to use it. If you are using another RSS aggregator, please consider following JerseySmarts.com at http://www.jerseysmarts.com/feed/. If you are already on Feedly, then you can follow us by clicking here. Thanks!

One more time before you go – for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend considering a free Feedly account. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

It turns out that I haven’t been to a fast food restaurant in a little bit over 12 years.

No, I’m not “lovin’ it” at all.

There are some caveats to that statement, though. First, I do go to Dunkin’ Donuts for bagels with cream cheese and I do go to Chipotle for tacos. In the last 12 years I have gone to places like Baja Fresh (until it almost killed me) and sub shops like Quiznos and Jersey Mike’s. More than those places, though, I frequent local delis, pizzerias, and sub shops because I like helping small business owners with the few bucks that I allocate to eating out each month. I also go to local restaurants including the chain restaurants like Ruby Tuesday’s and the Brick House Tavern and Tap.

In the last 12 years, though, I haven’t had any McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, or any of that type of fast food. For some reason after my junior year of college (back in 2002), I made the decision to stop eating fast food. I distinctly remember driving by the local McDonald’s and thinking about how the burgers that they serve weren’t really burgers at all. Rather, they were mashed together meat parts formed to look like a burger. It made me sick just thinking about it – and this was before all of the stories and books came out about how eating that fake food is substantially worse for you than our society originally thought.

It was around that same time that I stopped drinking soda, too. I used to love drinking Diet Coke and eventually started drinking Diet Sprite (this was just before it became known as Diet Sprite Zero, which is the same formula as Diet Sprite). And then I just randomly stopped drinking the stuff altogether. I didn’t really miss drinking soda since I’m one of the rare people who loves drinking water regularly. Although, just like I have caveats to the comment above about not eating fast food, my one caveat here is that after my gallbladder surgery in July 2005, my doctor did suggest that I drink a little bit of a carbonated beverage each day for a few weeks so the bubbles would float around my stomach and help things move around. With that recommendation, for about a month after my gallbladder was removed I probably drank a shot glass worth of Diet Sprite Zero each day. It wasn’t much at all and most people don’t consider Diet Sprite Zero to be a real soda since it’s essentially carbonated lemon water, but that’s a different discussion.

Over the last dozen years, I have never missed fast food or soda. I have, though, from time to time (once every 3 to 4 years) wondered whether or not it would make a difference if I started consuming this not-quite-real-food again. In the 12 years that I stopped eating this garbage my weight has remained relatively the same give or take 5 pounds, I became diabetic and am on a ridiculous number of medications to control it, and my gallbladder had to be removed. When you experience these negative medical results years after you stop consuming garbage, it does make one wonder what’s the point of it all.

I understand why I should continue to stay away from fast food. There are both ethical reasons (the way that the animals are treated before they’re processed into food) and biological reasons (let’s face it – most of that “food” is really just comprised of chemicals) to stay away from that stuff. However, when it comes to Diet Sprite Zero – I have to believe that drinking that stuff won’t hurt me any more than not drinking it has hurt me (i.e. my becoming diabetic, not losing much weight, and losing my gallbladder).

That is a question that I’ll continue to ponder since I really don’t have a craving for soda and thus I have no real reason to act to find a final answer. I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether it would hurt or harm me. In fact, I might go another 12 years without drinking any soda before I find out.

Aside from discovering organic food, I try to make my own breakfast, lunch, and dinner when I have a chance. On that note, I make a pretty delicious oatmeal and berry breakfast. The pictures below detail my making an oatmeal and berry breakfast a few weeks ago. Incidentally, the oatmeal used here is Bob’s Red Mill organic rolled oats mixed with two tablespoons each of Bob’s Red Mill organic ground flaxseed meal and Bob’s Red Mill organic wheat germ. I like Bob’s Red Mill products. The berries are also organic from the produce section of the local Wegmans grocery store.

This isn’t a step-by-step guide to how to make my delicious oatmeal and berry breakfast, but I thought I would take some pictures and show everyone what I do every once in a while to make this delicious meal. The picture above shows the berries mixed together in a large bowl. I just leave them in the bowl until I’m ready to pour the cooked oatmeal on top. In addition to the blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries that you see above, sometimes throw in sliced strawberries, too.

I actually went out and bought this small sauce pot because I didn’t want to make my oatmeal in the small T-Fal pots that I have in my kitchen. I hate when that T-Fal stuff starts to chip and get mixed in with the food. Gross. So I went to Wegmans and purchased that little stainless steel pot that you see in the picture above. Inside that pot is one cup of water (filtered through the PUR filter on my sink faucet), a half a cup of Bob’s Red Mill organic rolled oats, two tablespoons of Bob’s Red Mill organic ground flaxseed meal, two tablespoons of Bob’s Red Mill organic wheat germ, a teaspoon of organic cinnamon (I’ve been using Simply Organic cinnamon and it has a very good taste), and a few twists of freshly crushed sea salt from the container (nothing more than a teaspoon). Once the water boils, I pour the rest of the ingredients in at one time and then bring the temperature down to mid or low.

After the oatmeal is done cooking, I dump it on top of the berries (picture down below), but I’m a huge stickler for keeping a clean kitchen! So once the oatmeal is poured and, on occasion, scraped out of the stainless steel pot, the pot goes right into the sink with hot water in it!

And you’re wasting your time if you don’t put some dish soap in with that hot water. As you eat your breakfast, the hot water and dish soap will eat into any bit of the oatmeal that is clinging to your stainless steel pot like its life depending on it (which, in some ways, I guess it does).

You’re supposed to clean everything! Can you tell how anal I am about keeping a clean kitchen (especially when you cook breakfast)? Here you see my measuring cup and the measuring spoons that I use to measure out my ingredients.

Ahhh… then you have the coup de grâce of the entire effort. This is what the delicious finished product looks like after the berries are mixed into the oatmeal. I’m telling you – if you like berries, oatmeal, and cinnamon, then this is what you want to eat in the morning. Trust me.

Oh, and I usually drink a nice glass of organic milk with my oatmeal and berries. I like Organic Valley’s fat free milk. Very tasty.

And there you have it! This is what I try to eat at least once per week or more often if I have the time to make it. It’s energizing, healthy, and most importantly – it’s delicious!

In fact, I felt good enough to begin a weight loss contest with my roommates. My hope was that the weight loss contest would motivate me to go to the gym more often and, in the process, eliminate some of the nagging nuisances of being so overweight. For example, my joints (knees, ankles, and hips) tended to feel extra stressed after laying on a couch or sitting on my leg (which I do often in my home office area). You know – typically overweight stuff.

Those somewhat nagging physical inconveniences aside, I’m constantly trying to put myself in a situation where I can learn new things about topics that I’m interested in. For the last few months, I’ve been reading up on different diets that focus on simplicity and common sense and I found myself looking at the paleo diet. After a little bit of research I wound up on Mark Sisson’s website (MarksDailyApple.com) and flipping through a sample of his book called The Primal Blueprint. Flipping through that sample made me realize that the trajectory that I’ve been on for the last ten years is pretty much a combination of Michael Pollan’s food rules, the paleo diet, and The Primal Blueprint – so I purchased the eBook version of The Primal Blueprint and began reading.

And you know what? I really enjoyed reading this book.

Sisson goes into detail about his ten rules for living a primal lifestyle. To do this, he uses a fictional, catch-all character named Grok – one of our cavemen ancestors who lived a simple life that consisted of foraging and hunting animals for food and running for dear life when that food started to attack! Conceptually, the entire basis of The Primal Blueprint is built around Grok’s life and how it can translate to today’s world. It’s a brilliant form of writing because by using a fictional character that the entire world can relate to (a caveman), Sisson is able to start each reader of his book (or his website) at a similar “square one.” In other words, in order to understand and accept The Primal Blueprint, you have to understand and accept that cavemen lived simple lives.

Which is a simple enough concept to grasp, I think!

The core of The Primal Blueprint diet is to reduce the amount of grains that you eat and increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables. That’s about as a boiled down as I can make the discussion about food without getting too technical (for example, don’t eat just fruits and vegetables – eat organic fruits and vegetables). And Sisson – as many health writers are these days – is a big proponent of eating meat (grass-fed, organic). Eating a good portion of meat is part of Sisson’s war on Conventional Wisdom (a defined term in The Primal Blueprint and thus why it is capitalized here). Sisson argues that Conventional Wisdom is what made the majority of Americans fat and overweight while living unhealthy lifestyles with little to no play time or exposure to the sun.

While I was reading this book, I looked at the world around me and it’s very easy to notice that Sisson is absolutely right on many of these anti-Conventional Wisdom points.

In addition to the deconstruction of Conventional Wisdom, the other main point in the book that stuck with me was the attack on Chronic Cardio (another defined term, thus the capitalization). For Sisson, Chronic Cardio is what most of us get engaged in when we say we’re “going to the gym.” You know how it works – you get on the treadmill, steadily increase your pace, stay on for a little while, move on to the elliptical machine, repeat the same procedure, move on to the stationary bike, repeat the same procedure, and call it a day. Sisson argues that this isn’t healthy because it puts your heart beat range in a dangerous, unnatural zone and conditions your body to stop burning calories (i.e. the plateau effect when trying to lose weight). For the anti-Chronic Cardio discussion alone, I’d advise clicking through Sisson’s website or flipping through his book at the local Barnes & Noble (which I did before I purchased the cheaper, more cost efficient NOOK Book version).

One of the annoying parts of reading the book was the constant references to going to Sisson’s website to get more information on a certain topic. Sure, it’s nice that there is a free resource to access additional information on a topic, but I don’t need to be reminded about that free resource every few pages.

Granted, there were a bunch of formatting issues when reading the NOOK Book version of The Primal Blueprint, but none so egregious that I had to stop reading the book at any point. I have to imagine that the reason why there were formatting issues is because this book is pretty much self-published and didn’t have the benefit of a big publishing house to review every format and aspect of the book. No worries, though, the NOOK Book version is very accessible (and very easy to read while I was on the treadmill or the elliptical at the gym).

Those rules seem pretty simple, right?

With yesterday’s entry where I wrote about how I’ve been losing weight (see the weight loss monitor on the bottom right side of the sidebar) I felt compelled to complete this particular entry – which I began writing back in February. But, before I offer just a few comments, I thought that I should provide those seven food rules that Pollan promotes:

1. Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. “When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can’t pronounce, ask yourself, “What are those things doing there?” Pollan says.
2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce.
3. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
4. Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot. “There are exceptions — honey — but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren’t food,” Pollan says.
5. It is not just what you eat but how you eat. “Always leave the table a little hungry,” Pollan says. “Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, ‘Tie off the sack before it’s full.'”
6. Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It’s a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. “Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?” Pollan asks.
7. Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

While Pollan’s rules seem very simple, some folks might think that they are exceptionally hard to follow. Well, they’re not. In fact, they’re very easy to follow. All you have to do is use your head and think twice before you pick up certain items in the grocery store. For example, don’t pick up something that is made with a ridiculous list of ingredients. Instead, opt for some fresh fruit or vegetables (which have a single, rather obvious ingredient). And stay the hell away from fast food joints. Talk about a combination of chemicals and stuff that isn’t really food!

From my perspective, I like the second rule the best because it leads to so many other great rules/laws for eating healthy. If you shop around the perimeter of most grocery stores, you’ll be confronted with fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, milks and eggs, etc. That’s the kind of stuff that you should be eating! Of course, you should always opt for the organic version of each of these foods – and don’t worry about the additional dollar or so that you’ll spend on the organic foods. You’ll make that money back by buying less food overall and saving on costly medical care for overweight-related conditions (what’s up Type 2 Diabetes?!).

Anyway, I don’t really have many comments on the rules above, but I did want to share them with you. And if you haven’t checked out either The Omnivore’s Dilemma or In Defense of Food, you should do yourself a favor and get a copy of those books right away!

Berries - the Breakfast of Champions!

That’s right – I’ve been eating berries every morning for breakfast and they’re delicious! That bag is a mixture of blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries. Each week, I go out and buy a carton of each berry and then put them in a big bowl. Then, every morning I grab a small Ziploc bag and fill it with the berry blend. It’s really pretty good.

If I’m working from home one day, I’ll usually take the berries and put them in a bowl and then pour hot, cinnamon oatmeal over the top of them. That’s a meal and a half right there – let me tell you. And, you might notice from the newly placed MyFitnessPal.com widget on the side of JerseySmarts.com (scroll down), that I’ve lost a few pounds. No, I’m not on any type of “diet” or anything like that (at all). I’m just eating a little bit less and trying to work out a little bit more – which, of course, is the big “secret” to weight loss.

So there you go – just thought that I’d share.

That’s not funny. That’s not a joke. There’s nothing humorous about that statement. Ugh! Horrible marketing.

Anyway, the other commercial that has me at my wits end is the one from Mass Mutual where these business people are in a Chinese restaurant and their waitress doesn’t speak any English. So one of the women at the table speaks Chinese and asks her colleagues if they like dumplings.

Well! The guy sitting next to her has a look on his face that is an interesting mixture of constipation, aggravation, astonishment, disgust, and whatever emotion represents the thought, “What the hell are you, you worthless disaster?” Take a look at a freeze frame of this guy’s face:

Why so angry? Good grief! You're getting dumplings for goodness sake. Cheer up!

I mean what gives?! This guy is going to get some dumplings and yet he has a look on his face like he wants to choke this woman. What’s his problem? He’s about to get dumplings for goodness sake! Cheer up, you dummy! Free dumplings! Gah! Here is a video of the whole commercial so you can see just how creepy and awkward this guy really is in the grand scheme of things.

So remember – the next time you’re in a Chinese restaurant and one of your business colleagues manages to get you dumplings… look appreciative!

The familiar Check Out Hunger tickets

CHECK-OUT HUNGER RETURNS FOR 20th ANNIVERSARY YEAR

HILLSIDE, N.J. – Check-Out Hunger, an annual front-end awareness and fund raiser for the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, will be marking its 20th year milestone this fall. This campaign, which began in New Jersey, is run at supermarket chains across the northeast.

The Community FoodBank of New Jersey reports that need for nutritious food is up 30-40 percent at its partner agencies (soup kitchens, pantries, shelters, etc) this year.

In 2009 Check-Out Hunger crossed the $2 Million plateau for the first time. The campaign raised $2,093,086 for food banks across the state. Since 1992, millions of people have supported the program at food markets and online at www.checkouthungernj.org.

Participating food markets include A&P, Food Basics, Foodtown, Kings, Pathmark, Shop Rite, Super Fresh, Wawa, and Wegmans.

This campaign was developed by the Community FoodBank in conjunction with the New Jersey Food Council and supermarket chains with headquarters in New Jersey. Currently the Community FoodBank of New Jersey administers the regional campaign with 14 chains for 32 food banks and affiliates in 9 states and the District of Columbia.

The Community FoodBank of New Jersey, a member of Feeding America, distributed 35 million pounds of food in the last year to people in need in 18 of New Jersey’s 21 counties. Its staff and volunteers fight hunger and poverty not only through the distribution of food and grocery products, but by education and training, and by creating new programs to meet the needs of low-income people. The Community FoodBank of New Jersey has earned Charity Navigator’s highest honor, a four-star rating.

Here’s how people can help:

• Right in their own neighborhood. Shoppers will find a display of Check-Out Hunger donation slips at the checkout aisles in their local food stores.
• Right in their own home. People can donate through the Check-Out Hunger in New Jersey website at www.checkouthungernj.org.
  Also, just a reminder that the retail partners run the campaign at varying times from late September through the end of January, with the bulk of the food stores running it in November and December. There are a list of participating stores on the website.

So, folks, if you’re at the checkout counter and you see the different colored tickets like in the image above, consider donating a few bucks to help the Community FoodBank of New Jersey out this holiday season. Thanks.

According to my calendar, we have six weeks left for the CSA farm this season. I might try to work my way in there at some point during the off season to see what’s going on and whether they have any other types of organic food that we can purchase. Stay tuned for more pictures from the farm.