Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

<wickett>, you articulated something i have long felt: that there is
something about -taste- that has gotten lost. if you buy eat fresh + local +
organic i.e. food that tastes like something, it is a shock to eat
commercial food as produced by big ag: to me that all mostly tastes like
cardboard painted with (depending on whether susposed to be sweet or savory)
grease + salt or sugar. and too salty and too sweet to boot, as substitute
for having real flavors.

it's been sad, to go retaste foods i liked as a kid --- and realize that
-now-they taste too much of salt and sugar and not enough of what they are
supposed to taste of.

i have observed overweight friends addicted to their diet cokes --- which to
me taste like sweetened dippity do --- and when i wondered 'why dont you
just drink flavored sparkling water? or sparkling fruit juice [yes this is
sugary]?' and inevitably i would get snarled at, as gettting between an
addict and his/her substance.

my totally irrational hunch is that real food does make us feel gratified
and satiated the way factory food does not --- so it's easy to keep eating
way too much of it, desperately craving the real thing that the food is
supposed to br providing but does not.

my mean social science experiment along these lines for decades was to take
folks not from the bay area (this, before artisan/local became such a trend)
to greens, saying 'i am going to take you to a zen vegetarian restaurant'
(and of course they are envisioning wallpaper paste and stinky limp
vegetables reminiscent of horrors from high-school cafeterias). of course,
they are all blown away by how yummy and satisfying real food in reasonable
portions can be.

i am a chocolate addict --- and that requires sugar. and in the summers i
live on organic ginger ale (also requires sugar). but sugar qua sugar?
nah...but then years ago i worked at cocolat, an early gourmet ghetto fancy
french bakery. people used to ask 'why arent you fat? i would get fat
working there' --- but i am not so sure. small portions of good-quality
sweets, available as you might like --- dont make people fat.
  

    
I have noticed that, too, Paulina. Since I went low-carb I find that when I
encounter sugar, a little goes a LONG way.
  

    
yeah, i thiink of sugar as a -potentiator- or seasoning; as in, i would want
a little in a fresh fruit pie --- but not so much as to obliterate the taste
of the fruit.
  

    

not to hijack darya's bool topic further, but a few more thots on sugar and
real food:

- in santa cruz, there are now -two- local artisan organic ice creameries.
one, penny creamery, has complicated flavors (as one would get served in a
good bay area restaurant), jack daniels + raisins + goat milk. the other,
mission hill (now served at the monterey bay aquarium), has more homey
flavors. i got to talking with the founder of mission hill, who said that in
the 1970s, ice cream recipes became 30 percent sweeter. and that many people
experience what i experienced: that mission hill tastes like -food- and
penny creamery tastes like -candy-.

as folks here can imagine, penny creamery is more popular.

which brings me to another point, about portion size:

- so often in restaurants the dessert size is way too big --- all i want
after a decent dinner is the palate-cleanser equiv of an andes mint. this of
course doesnt pencil out for the restauarants, as desserts are where they
make their money.

same same with the two ice cream parlors mentioned above: their smallest
serving is twice as much as i want. i eat sweets for a bit of sweetness in
my life, not as a substitute for a meal.
  

    

Re #75: "Our culture is awash in bad food and bad information."

Yes, and how did we arrive here? With our mouths and wallets. 

I cannot imagine eating anything out of the center of any grocery store. 
My homemade bread, yogurt, jams, stews, mustard, soups, pesto, condiments  
are *so much tastier* that I simply would not consider eating 
manufactured simulacra, much less spending money on them. 

So, why did we, our generation, our parents, our children and 
grandchildren arrive at this ghastly juncture? Many people can't cook, 
apparently can't taste, spend lots and lots of money on food substitutes 
and--worst of all, I think--believe the claims on food packages or in 
advertising or in stories or fads about the latest and greatest non-food 
item.

Trust tongue and taste buds, trust how your own body feels after eating.  
If more ravenous after eating than before, if sluggish, bloated, 
uncomfortable in some way, if unable to think clearly, isn't that fairly 
good evidence that whatever was just consumed wasn't really compatible 
with the body that ingested it?

And--sniff your food before eating!
  

    

Psst, loris: homemade ice cream. I've recently started making it. I put in
hardly any sugar at all. Real, heavy cream is sweet, so is coconut milk.
  

    
agreed about homemade icecream --- i used to make it. i simply dont eat a
lot of it, so for my once/month when-i-am-downtown treat, i figure
an ice cream float made with strawbery syrup from local organic sc farms ---
and organic chocolate sorbet --- is ok.

it would be too easy to hijack this topic to talk about food politics +
subsidies for corn and soy...
  

    
Darya I eat a lot of sugar every day.  I know I need to just stop
eating it for a while and I know it is addictive for me and I am having
trouble just DOING IT.  Probably the subject of a different book!

I was brought up to eat well, my mom cooked from scratch with a lot of
olive oil and fresh ingredients, I knew from high school on that sugar
was bad, and I hated the idea of frozen or prepared foods.  But
somehow over the years I just lost my way.

Darya, what don't you like about juice fasts?  Does it help if it's
vegetable and not fruit?  What do you think of those master cleanse
things, especially if only done for a day?  (Water, lemon juice, maple
syrup and a little cayenne pepper.)
  

    
I've always thought the problem with juicing, of any kind, is that you're
throwing away all the fiber and not working your jaws and teeth -- not
EATING in any realistic sense. Not to mention the equipment needed and the
waste created.

As for cleansing, it's a false notion.
  

    
I've always thought that if your kidneys and liver aren't doing the
job, you're way past maple syrup and cayenne pepper.
  

    
I think one of the interesting things about trying to figure all of this 
out is all of the inter-related apps. If I want to record what I eat, 
wherever I am, do I take a physical journal? Sign up for yet another 
app? Do I need FitBit or something else (yet another app) to track what 
I actually do during the day? Do I need reassurance/community support 
from yet another app (Lift?)

Obviously, not. It would be like waiting to make a first bike ride until 
one has all the gear one can imagine. But it starts to feel complicated 
quickly.

Darya, what steps do you find actually work for people? I'm coming to 
this as an obese person. It's not as if I get no aerobic exercise, or 
that I eat only junk, but it is fair to say that there is a long way to go.
  

    

I'm not Darya, but I woiuld say SIMPLIFY. Delete processed and packaged foods
from your life and concentrate on fresh, whole ingredients.
  

    
right. adhering to these heuristics:
- gorging on fruits and vegetables
- considering, 'is this worth the carbs?' i.e. yes, am out to dinner, fabu
artisan bread, yay. no, cheetoes
- comsidering, 'is this worth the fat?' i.e. homemade ice cream, yay. no,
again to cheetoes.
  

    

Has the link between lack of sleep and obesity been discussed yet? Along
with a food diary, I would add a column for sleep.
  

    
Sorry for the delay! It's been a crazy week for me.

Gans,

I've never done a talk with Lustig, though I think we'd just sit
around agreeing with each other :) He's from UCSF, so we've crossed
paths a few times. I have a ton of respect for him.
  

    
As do I!  I suppose it would be a terribly agreeable conversation.
  

    
loris,

Not sure the original origin, and I doubt there's any serious data
behind it, but it sounds like good advice to me.
  

    
wickett,

I agree it is very sad that people need to be taught to eat again. You
were very lucky, but I blame the food industry for most of it.

The food industry did a great job of convincing us all that cooking
was too mundane and old-fashioned for us high-tech Americans. They made
it seem too time consuming and difficult, and we loved the idea of
spending less time on it. Nobody really understood that we were trading
our health for the "convenience."

Luckily the message seems to be getting out now. Better now than
never, I suppose.
  

    
loris, 

Totally agree with your point on taste. That was the biggest
revelation for me. I thought healthier = sacrifice, when the opposite
was true.

Sadly though, I went to Greens recently and it has gone way downhill
:(
  

    
loris,

Also, funny about the portion thing. I saw a discarded tub on the
street the other day that clearly contained ice cream at some point.
And all I could think of was the tiny scoops of gelato I relished when
living in Italy, and how disgusted the Italians would be with the
American portions. It's so obvious why we're overweight!
  

    
lark,

Sugar is really tough. I used to struggle with it BIG TIME, eating
huge bags of trail mix (with chocolate--this was my "healthy" dessert)
AFTER dinner, probably adding 600+ calories per night.

What helped me was eating more slowly digesting carbs during my meals.
Oatmeal for breakfast, beans and lentils with lunch or dinner. This
let me cut down a lot. 

Do you have Foodist? Have you tried the "I can eat it later" trick?
This is tremendously more powerful than "I can never eat dessert"
mentality.

I don't like cleanses because they haven't been shown to help with
anything, and I believe they waste willpower (an exhaustible resource)
that could be used to do more useful things like create new healthy
habits. I spend 3 chapters explaining why restrictive dieting of this
kind does more harm than good for health. I think you can read most of
it in the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon :)
  

    
ari,

I hear you. The apps can get overwhelming quickly. My particular
audience (tech geeks) tend to love them, but they are certainly not for
everyone.

I recommend a food journal for two weeks. Like you, I prefer pen and
paper. 

I do like the Fitbit, because it's a lot easier to not notice when you
move too little. I tell a story in the book (you can read another
version here:
http://summertomato.com/how-to-burn-more-calories-without-breaking-a-sweat/
) about how I was still going to the gym daily but hadn't noticed that
I had slipped from 12K steps per day to 7K (because of a job change).
It was easy to fix once I realized the problem, but it took the Fitbit
to get me there.
  

    
jmcarlin,

There is a strong link between lack of sleep and tendency for weight
gain. My number one piece of advice if you suspect this is an issue is
to try to eat and sleep at the same times each day. Your body/brain are
very sensitive to circadian rhythms, and sleeping and eating tell it
when to expect certain behaviors. When you're all over the place in
this regard, your brain has trouble making sense of it all and you have
less internal guidance for when to start and stop eating. It'll also
make you crave more calorie-rich foods.
  

    

I really like your proposition that "willpower" is a finite resource.

My wife <reet> turned me on to a very useful technique: take one bite of that
rich dessert and pretend it's the last bite and you ate the whole thing.  It
actually works!
  

    

By the way I also want to commend you for an accurate and appropriate use of
the word "hack" in the book.