Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Just got word that my pre-ordered copy is in the mail!
  

    

> the book would be a big hit as part of a KQED fundraiser.

Y'know, I have a radio show and I would love to have you on to talk about it!
I'm a music programmer, but Johnny Otis got into health and nutrition in his
later years so I can claim him as a precedent.
  

    

And it is set!  Darya will appear on KPFA's Dead to the World next Wednesday,
May 15, at 8pm Pacific Time.  <http://www.kpfa.org> for the online feed, 94.1
FM in the Bay Area.
  

    
You da man.
  

    
AN early adopter in the summertomato culture is all.
  

    

More publicity for simplicity and good sense. Excellent.
  

    
Nice!  (Suddenly thinking about music for eating better... what might
that be... hmm.)
  

    

<reet> and I wrote a song about shopping at the Farmers' Market. It's called
"The Bounty of the County" and it's on my CD The Ones That Look the Weirdest
Taste the Best:

<https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/ones-that-look-weirdest-taste/id295901308>
  

    
The ones that look the weirdest taste the best! I have that CD!!

Glad you guys are love the book! I'm curious why your wife had decided
not to read it?  

Foodist has a perfect 5-review on Amazon so far! Feel free to chime in
over there, only 10 reviews after 2 days.

Really excited to be on KPFA, thanks for the invite Gans!! I'll be on
NPR's Tech Nation sometime soon as well.
  

    
darya, a more general question: all of a sudden in the last year i started
hearing the same basic dietary advice from very different sources (advice i
dont much disagree with): twice as much plant matter on your plate as
anything else, limit/eliminate sugar to the extent of not so much fruit and
probably no fruit juice.

do you know where or from whom this formulation started?
  

    
I love the idea of using restaurants as a time to eat slowly.

I struggle with eating too much sugar if I eat any at all.  I wonder
if I will ever get past that or if it will always be all or nothing for
me.
  

    
I think my bigger dietary achilles heel is salt.  Being a lifelong
baker and cookie-aholic, I am pretty picky about my sweets, and while I
may eat a bit more than I should of my own, I am fairly resistant to
the shortening-and-sugar icing of the cheap supermarket cake at office
gatherings.  And mine are made with ingredients that my grandmother
would recognize as food. 

But salty snacks--crispy crunchy salty snacks--are harder for me to
improve upon at home, because that fresh crispness is so transient and
they have to be so perfectly thin to be edible without breaking your
teeth.  I have trouble resisting the leftover pretzels or crackers or
chips from a meeting when I'm stuck late in the office doing paperwork.
 
  

    
I'm really enjoying hte book as well!  (Been travelling, and it makes 
excellent reading on planes!  It also starts up all kinds of 
conversations.)  

I recently saw the juicing love letter, FAT, SICK, AND NEARLY DEAD, and 
have been considering doing some kind of juicing (maybe drinking 
vegetable juice for breakfast and lunch, and eating a small meal for 
dinner. Maybe doing some kind of juice fast (5-7 days)  I feel like I need 
to make some kind of drastic change to shake it up.

Any thoughts about juicing or shaking up your routine?
  

    
I distrust juicing as a general strategy, on the principle that liquid
intake is not handled the same as solid--it's a lot easier to overdo
on a cup of orange juice squeezed from 6 oranges than it is to eat
those six oranges whole.  With some vegetables, like carrots, I have to
imagine the same thing applies--but is there data to support benefit
of adding additional juice from low-calorie vegetables to an otherwise
adequate (read:  varied & with abundant plant foods) diet?
  

    

> Glad you guys are love the book! I'm curious why your wife had decided
> not to read it? 

Originally she looked at it quickly and thought "We know all that" - small
plates, farmer's market and so forth. But even for those who know quite
a bit, there are some gems and helpful reminders in your book.
  

    
loris,

Not sure where it started exactly, and I think it's been brewing for
awhile. I know Dr. Lustig's (UCSF) now famous YouTube video about the
dangers of sugar had a big role in it's attention. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
  

    
lark,

I have lots of tips in the book you can try. Do you eat lots of sugar
every day, or have something more like binging episodes.

If you're craving sugar a lot you could have an addictive relationship
with it, and going cold turkey for a week might help.

If you're metabolically compromised, doing the recalibration to
stabilize your blood sugar and glucose could help.

If you're just depriving yourself too often then binging, the "I can
have it later" tactic is incredibly useful.
  

    
debunix,

Salt can ba addictive too, for sure. Salt itself isn't a huge problem,
it's what it's sitting in that does the damage. 

If I were you I'd try to find a substitute for the unhealthy snacks
that you enjoy. I like the Alive and Radiant kale chips, for instance.
Or salted peanuts or almonds are better than chips and pretzels. You
should also be more satisfied if you eat them slowly.
  

    
I don't recommend a juice "cleanse", but I do enjoy green juices these
days. I don't use them as meal replacements, I use them more as a
supplement on days I feel like I need a little extra to keep me
healthy--almost like a multivitamin. 

I like to have green juice once every day or so when I'm really
stressed (like getting married and launching a book in the same
month!), or traveling and will be exposed to lots of germs.

For getting your health back on the right track I recommend the
recalibration in Foodist.

http://summertomato.com/health-recalibration/

I set up something with an app called Lift that may help as well

http://summertomato.com/join-me-on-lift-for-your-foodist-healthstyle-recalibra
tion/
  

    
I don't particularly crave certain types of food, although I am unable
to coexist with a bag of barbecue potato chips. I can eat them slowly,
but I can't eat five.
  

    

<reet> has brought home some green concoctions lately, picked up at The Juice
Shop on Union Street in SF.  Ingredients look fairly reasonable for this low-
carber, but I have been conditioned to avoid liquid nutrition for the most
part (Dr Lustig's excellent vid being a huge motivator).
  

    

I would love to see a conversation between you and Lustig! Have you ever done
somrthing like that?
  

    
actually, it was less the NO Sugar injunction (i have been hearing -that-
since the 1980s) and more all of sudden everywhere i heard the heuristic
'on your plate, twice as much plant [vegetable, salad] matter as anything
else' --- which is a simple thing to do when home or out and fits with your
general food philosophy.

just, i started hearing this -everywhere- (nutritionists for cancer
survivors, anti-inflammation diet folks etc etc) in the last year.
  

    

It was my mother's way of being and I only became acquainted with her in
1946. She did not use added sugar in much of anything at all, felt 
scientifically vindicated when the Yudkin book came out in 1972, and 
always served lots of vegetables, many home-grown, and mostly steamed. 
Yes, in the 1940s and 1950s.

I chased away a little girl who came to dinner when I was five. She 
wouldn't eat lamb chops, beets and chard, brown rice, or fresh fruit. 
Once off our property, I told her that as she did not like my mother's 
cooking, she would never be invited back.

Frankly, both your book and Michael Pollan's books--excellent that they
are--make me sad. I've eaten well my entire life, never owned a scale, never
been on a diet, and weigh five pounds more than I did when I was eighteen.

Apparently I entirely missed out on what went wrong. I did taste 
Campbell's Mushroom Soup when I was a teenager and found it utterly 
repellant as Mama had often made cream of mushroom soup with real cream 
and lots of real mushrooms and butter. Same with commercial mayonnaise, 
which quite literally made me sick. 

I'm not unique. What's the missing piece? Why are people still purchasing 
and consuming food-like items?
  

    

Our culture is awash in bad food and bad information.