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!

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 Barnes and Noble!

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.

Only weeks ago Michael Pollan’s bestselling book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma was kicked off campus at Washington State University until you raised your voice “In Defense of Michael Pollan”. In less than 2 hours over a 1,000 citizens had raised their voices through emails, and 150 phone calls were made to WSU’s president’s office defending academic freedom.

Thanks to you – and the generosity of food safety lawyer Bill Marler – all 4,000 incoming freshman at WSU will now have the opportunity to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and learn how their food is produced.

I’m proud to say that I sent an e-mail to Washington State University’s President to express my displeasure at the university’s removal of this book from the Freshman reading list. My gripe was that some younger people don’t really understand how what they typically eat is not food, per se, but rather a bunch of things that used to be food and are now broken down into various parts and then thrown back together. I’m telling you, when I read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, I changed my mind on a lot of the food that I was eating. Sure, I had begun eating more organic foods before reading the book, but learning about how the food industry is set up and in bed with the government is definitely an eye-opening discovery for most people.

Anyway, for those concerned about the food that we eat, I suggest heading over to Food Democracy Now and signing their petition. It’s one of those things that will likely be worth it in the long run.

Thirty-five years ago, the F.D.A. did annual inspections of about half of the nation’s food-processing facilities. Last year, the agency inspected just 7,000 of the nearly 150,000 domestic food facilities, and its oversight of foreign plants, which provide a growing share of the nation’s food supply, is even more spotty.

Experts have long debated whether the F.D.A. should increase inspections or rely instead on private auditors and more detailed safety rules. By calling the limited number of government inspections an “unacceptable” public health hazard, Mr. Obama came down squarely on the side of increased government inspections.

These pieces of information – garnered from a recent New York Times article – show just how low America’s food safety standards have become. We’ve gone from inspecting 50% of the nation’s food processing facilities to inspecting just 4.6%. Come on. That’s clearly not acceptable by any stretch of the imagination.

And what do you get from this type of lackadaisical approach to food safety? Well, for one, you get the gigantic peanut recall that the country is now experiencing. The New York Times article also commented that some, “76 million people in the United States are sickened by contaminated food, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized and about 5,000 die.” That’s no joke. Hey – I was one of the people who got food poisoning over the last year, too.

I hope that President Obama radically alters our current food safety system. If you’re interested in getting better quality food as a government mandate, think about sending your own message to President Obama</a> on this topic.

This country is being confronted with a severe crisis and we are losing the battle, miserably. No, it’s not the economy and no, it’s not our place in international affairs. Americans are losing a battle in their own homes!

We are losing the battle for food.

New York Times op-ed columnist Nick Kristof wrote an interesting piece the other day on the topic of the next Secretary of Agriculture. In the op-ed, he cites Michael Pollan – author of In Defense of Food –:

“We’re subsidizing the least healthy calories in the supermarket — high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil, and we’re doing very little for farmers trying to grow real food,” notes Michael Pollan, author of such books as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.”

The Agriculture Department — and the agriculture committees in Congress — have traditionally been handed over to industrial farming interests by Democrats and Republicans alike. The farm lobby uses that perch to inflict unhealthy food on American children in school-lunch programs, exacerbating our national crisis with diabetes and obesity.

But let’s be clear. The problem isn’t farmers. It’s the farm lobby — hijacked by industrial operators — and a bipartisan tradition of kowtowing to it.

Kristof suggests that Obama rename the Secretary of Agriculture to the Secretary of Food, since it encompasses more Americans. Further, he suggests that we take a second look at what is really being accomplished for the agribusinesses that are bringing in these government subsidies.

I’ve read Pollan’s book and it’s eye-opening. I knew that there was a strong food lobby in Washington, but I had no idea of the extent of their successes. Did you know that at one point, the food companies could not name individually wrapped pieces of cheese “individually wrapped pieces of cheese?” Instead, they had to call them an imitation. There used to be a law against putting out imitation products and calling them anything other than imitations.

It’s shocking to think about how many things are no longer pure food and if this really is a time of change in American government, then why not change America from the bottom up – literally? Head over to FoodDemocracyNow.org to sign an online petition urging President-Elect Obama to choose the next Secretary of Agriculture wisely!

• Only eat whole foods. The concept may sound weird, but Pollan makes a good point in his book – most of the food that we eat today is some variant of the original product. In other words, we go to the supermarket and buy bread that is created from overly processed wheat grain whereas people used to just go to the local grocery store and buy a loaf of bread. In the search to create more “nutritious” food, we’ve actually created less healthy food products.
• Nutritionism is a red herring. Pollan does a good job of describing the governmentalization of our food. He talks about how the lobbyists for the food industry managed to get regulations that are heavily in their favor during the 1970’s and 1980’s. For example, there was once a time when if a food producer made an imitation product, they had to label it as an imitation. Through creative lobbying, that restriction was removed and now we buy fruit juice that has less than 2% real juice. Scary.
• Stay away from high fructose corn syrup! Pollan goes back to this point over and over again in the book. This is one of the worst forms of excess sugar that is found in many of the processed foods that we eat.
• Eat leaves. No, don’t go outside and feast on your pine tree. Instead, when you make a meal you should be sure to have it consist mostly of leaves. For centuries, the human diet was based on hunted meats and gathered leaves and fruits. It was a leaf-based diet – which also includes the fact that the hunted meats usually grazed on leaves. Today, we eat a diet high in seed-based foods. This hasn’t been good for us as you can see by the increasing levels of poor health in society. Eat leaves!
• Eat with other people. Pollan talks about how eating used to occur three times per day, but how in today’s diet there is an odd fourth meal that takes place throughout the day – snacking. Without diving too much into the sociological aspect of eating, Pollan reminds the reader that families used to gather around the dinner table and socialize during dinner. This also provided an opportunity for parents to set a proper example for their children in terms of what to eat and how much to eat.
• Beware of health claims. One of the main messages of the book is that if you’re in a grocery store and you see something that claims to be low-fat or that it has some percentage of needed nutrients, you should run away! Pollan brings up the point that I have believed for quite some time now – that if a product has to publicize whether it’s good or bad for you, then it likely is not a real food (instead it is probably some processed food product) and it likely is not good for you at all (lowering the amount of fat in a product but increasing other unhealthy aspects).

Another thing that I picked up from reading this book was the existence of community supported agriculture (CSA). With CSA, a consumer pays a set dollar amount to buy a “share” in the farm’s produce; their share comes in the form of a weekly or monthly box of produce that are grown at the farm. This is a good idea for a variety of reasons including the freshness of the items, supporting the local economy, and creating a sustainable method of getting food on your plate. Check out the link above to see if you have a CSA in your area.

Overall, I enjoyed reading In Defense of Food and I was intrigued by many of the points that Pollan raises throughout. For those who are interested in healthier eating, I highly suggest getting this book from your local library or spending the $20 to purchase the book. This is the type of work that I hope people would share with their friends after reading it (thanks to my co-worker for lending me her copy).