In Defense of Food

In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan: what a book. It took me so long to get it from the library, I kept it after it was due so I could finish reading it and re-read favorite sections. It might even qualify for a purchase.

This book is much more accessible than The Omnivore's Dilemma, focusing on the Western diet, and why it leads to the Western diseases (diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc). It includes summaries of recent research, with many resources at the end. Basically, the message that it's best to eat Real Food: Fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, meat fish. Real, unprocessed food.

To cut to the chase, the author recommends "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants." How to escape the Western diet?? Here's some detail, but you really need to read the book.

EAT FOOD

• Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
• Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup.
• Avoid food products that make health claims
• Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle
• Get out of the supermarket whenever possible

MOSTLY PLANTS

• Eat mostly plants, especially leaves
• You are what what you eat eats too - what this means is that cows are supposed to eat grass. If the beef you eat is eating corn instead of grass, you're not getting the benefit of the leaves that the cow should be eating.
  
• If you have the space, buy a freezer
• Eat like an omnivore
• Eat well-grown food from healthy soils
• Eat wild foods when you can
• Be the kind of person who takes supplements - another explanation is in order: it's not that the supplements actually work, it's that the people who take supplements tend to be healthier in general because they are paying attention to what they eat
• Eat more like the French, or the Italians, or the Japanese, or the Indians, or the Greeks
• Regard non-traditional foods with skepticism
• Don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet - it's the sum of the diet that is healthful, not some specific item in the diet.
• Have a glass of wine with dinner

NOT TOO MUCH

• Pay more. Eat less
• Eat meals
• Do all your eating at a table
• Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does
• Try not to eat alone
• Consult your gut - Americans let external, visual cues determine how much we eat. Rather, stop eating when you are no longer hungry.
• Eat slowly
• Cook and, if you can, plant a garden

Science Fiction

My favorite genre is science fiction, but it is also the genre I despise the most. It's either really good or really bad. There is very little in the middle. It lends itself best to the short story format. Many science fiction authors can write fabulous short stories, but they can't carry the plot through to a full-length book.

This month I read two science fiction books by authors new to me.

• Rollback, by Robert J. Sawyer
• In the Garden of Iden, by Kage Baker

Kage Baker invented a future where the secret of immortality has been discovered, and soon thereafter, time travel was also invented. People travel back in time to find children who can be made immortal, who can act as stewards for stuff that they need in the future. Yes, it is a time travel book - one of my favorite science fiction plot devices. This book has a new time travel rule! You can change the past, as long as nothing has been recorded or remembered. So when the child of a poor family disappears, it is not noted historically, and that child can change other things in the past. For example. It's pretty amusing, an interesting premise. She wrote a series of these books apparently, and I think I will try another one.

But Rollback gives us something to think about. The plot is complex, well crafted, and basically boils down to this: in their 80's, a husband and wife are given the opportunity to biologically return to 25 years old. This is a procedure that maybe 60 or 70 people have gone through, is very expensive, but they have a benefactor who offers them the option. They take the treatment, and within a month, it is apparent that the husband is getting younger and younger: his hair has grown back, it isn't gray anymore, he can run up the stairs again... but the wife, for some unknown reason, does not regress. She stays 87 years old. This couple recently celebrated their 60th anniversary. So, after 60 years of marriage, suddenly she is 87 and he is 25. What happens next? Just imagine. And not only that, there is communication with aliens. The wife has spent her life working on the SETI project.

Great books! I have recommended them to everyone who would listen and I am hoping I will have someone to discuss these books with pretty soon