Livin' on the Edge

As part of the 'pre-training' phase of the marathon, we've been trying to keep running consistently in this sauna as well as eat better in order to lay a good base for the fall.

On my 3.5 hour trek last week, I listened to a good portion of In Defense of Food.

Most of the book can be summarized on the front cover: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Maybe I'm easily amazed, but I was amazed at what the government, food lobbies and 'nutritionism' (his term, not mine) had done to the average American diet. We obsess more about what we eat than any other country, yet we are still some of the most overweight and sickest people in the world.

Rather than getting our nutrients from fresh foods, we settle for processed foods with the same nutrients added in at processing. Instead of getting fiber from apples, we get fiber from cereal bars with added fiber.

It really made me think differently about the way I eat, and isn't that the purpose of books on tape, to make you think?

Enter grocery shopping and the farmers market. We made more of an effort this week to shop the edges of the store, where all the fresh food makes its home, and bought a good amount of vegetables at the farmers market this weekend.

Last night's dinner- baked eggplant, roasted broccoli, pole beans and mashed potatoes.

The roasted broccoli changed me.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not tossing out the ghiradelli brownies, pizza and snickers bars with the bathwater. Everything in moderation, including moderation. Life's too short to go without Snickers.

Pollan wrote a follow up book "Food Rules" that's a very short read that encompasses a lot of the lessons of the first book. I HIGHLY recommend it. Here's a few favorites:

1. Eat foods that will eventually rot.


2. It's not food if it has the same name in all languages (thing Big Mac and Cheetos)

3. Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.

4.. Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third‐grader cannot pronounce.

5. Finally, break the rules once in a while. Obsessing over food rules is bad for your happiness, and probably for your health, too. There will be special occasions when you will want to throw these rules out the window. All will not be lost. What matters is not the special occasion, but the everyday practice - the default habits that govern your eating on a typical day.

See? I didn't totally make that part up about the Snickers.