Eating tortured sick contaminated animals

If you eat meat (or dairy products), there is a lot you can do to minimize the damage to yourself, your family, the planet and the animal. A new book on this subject (Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer) has gotten a lot of attention, and I have included some key links below.

Despite some controversy, there is widespread agreement that meat produced by factory farms causes a lot of problems, such as astounding energy inefficiency, vast amounts of toxic waste, production of antibiotic-resistant microbes that pose a threat to us, severe pollution, and shocking cruelty and suffering of animals on a massive scale.

And, there is growing evidence that red meat (especially beef, also pork) is unhealthy (see The Real Cost of Red Meat: does it boost your risk of cancer, heart disease, & diabetes?).

What can we do about it? The best answer is simple: Cut back on meat consumption, especially red meat. Even a small decrease will help. And, if you decide to include meat in your diet, at least try to buy meat (and dairy) raised on sustainable non-factory farms. Yes, it will cost more, but you can offset the increase in cost by just eating less meat. Go for quality over quantity.

Here are very interesting and helpful resources to check out:

• Food choices.
• Movie.
• NPR interview with Jonathan Safran Foer.
• New Yorker article.
• Excerpt from Eating Animals.
• Additional resources.
• Lessmeatatarianism and flexitarianism.

In closing, here is a quote from Jonathan Safran Foer:

Two friends are ordering lunch. One says, “I’m in the mood for a burger,” and orders it. The other says, “I’m in the mood for a burger,” but remembers that there are things more important to him than what he is in the mood for at any given moment, and orders something else. Who is the sentimentalist?

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/09/091109crbo_books_kolbert#ixzz0XQ7IpY0d

Lose weight with your iPhone

If you own an iPhone (or iPod Touch), this simple program will help you maintain or lose weight, if that is your goal. Even if you don’t own one of these devices, the basic approach of this program may give you some good ideas. David Pogue of the New York Times writes:

Lose It! This beautifully designed weight-loss app has an astounding number of followers, if the outpouring of enthusiasm on Twitter is any indication. You tap to record everything you eat. It’s actually kind of fun, because the program contains every food item you can imagine, including brand-name packaged food and restaurant-chain menus. For each one, the app lists the complete nutritional information.

You also indicate what exercise you get each day, using a similarly complete list of activities. Finally, you tap in your weight each day. Probably because the app focuses you so well on staying true to your goals, its fans say it truly works. (Free)

You may read the New York Times article here. And you can download the app and read more about it here.

The computing “cloud” – an update

One year ago I posted on my transition from using a Palm handheld to using a Blackberry Curve (here) — this is a follow-up. This will be a very short post, but the main point is that I am happy with the transition. “Cloud computing” remains somewhat controversial, but has been widely accepted as inevitable. I love it.

Now, when I want to save a tidbit of information (such as medical information, travel plans, online purchases, chapters of my book, etc etc) all I do is post the tidbit in “the cloud” and it is saved for me. The best part about this is it is available to me on my iMac, my PC laptop, or any other computer I happen to have in front of me, including my smart-phone (although I would need to get a newer model to get full functionality).

What I want to share with you now is that the most amazing software for saving these tidbits in the cloud is a free program called Evernote. Check out their site for more information (here). I am in no way associated with that company, except as a customer (I upgraded to the premium version which is not free).

By the way, I have not posted lately because I am writing another book (more about that much later).

Ending overeating

A very important new book (The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David Kessler) accurately describes major factors contributing to the obesity epidemic: cleverly formulated manufactured food designed to seduce us into overeating, addictive ingredients (salt, sugar and fat) which act like nicotine in cigarettes to keep us coming back for more, a profit driven system of marketing and government subsidies which works against our best interests, and the loss of boundaries limiting when and how much we eat. It is indeed frightening to think that a 2-year-old’s appetite “knows” to shut down when enough calories have been consumed, but by the time that child is four (in our culture) there is often a loss of that self-control mechanism.

Kessler’s solutions include re-training our minds to devalue unhealthy processed foods loaded with the Big Three (salt, sugar, fat); reforming our policies and practices which encourage this vicious cycle; and doing much more to educate people as to what they are consuming (such as requiring nutritional information in restaurants).

I agree with all this, but take issue with some of the concepts Kessler promotes. My main complaint is he oversimplifies the issue of food containing salt, sugar and fat by using an addiction model. Too much of these ingredients is indeed unhealthy, but a simple addiction model will not work.

Another problem is his use of the term “real food” (see NPR interview) which is a vague concept, at best. Many seemingly real foods contain salt, sugar and fat (either naturally, or because of the way they are produced), and not all “manufactured” foods are bad (e.g., some fish farmed in a sustainable way are better for us than some “wild-caught” fish). I can buy a chicken that has been doctored with added salt and fat, or I can buy one (usually smaller and more expensive) which has been grown almost organically. To the average consumer, both seem “real.” Also, I can buy “sea salt” and “unrefined real sugar” and think I am getting something healthier than standard table salt and corn syrup, but the bottom line (sodium and calories) may be exactly the same.

Finally, he promotes a black vs. white dichotomy between a disease-like state we cannot directly control (“conditioned hypereating”) and old fashioned willpower, telling us “it is not our fault” that we overeat. Fault, per se, may not be the issue; rather, we should learn ways to increase our resistance to external cues and marketing, educate ourselves about nutrition and portion size, and practice coping skills to enhance self-regulation. I have written about this at length elsewhere.

Learning self-control and delay of gratification

A now classic psychology experiment from the late 1960s demonstrated that four-year-old children who were able to delay the gratification of eating a marshmallow became more successful in later years than children who could not exercise as much self-control. In an update of the research on this topic, Jonah Lehrer (writing in The New Yorker recently) quotes the original researcher and many others discussing how we learn to control our brains when it comes to resisting temptation and applying ourselves to a task (such as controlling what we eat or exercising more).

The marshmallow researcher, Walter Mischel, says, “Once you realize that willpower is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.”

Teaching children (and adults) simple ways to master their thoughts and behavior (through “strategic allocation of attention”) may be a crucial ingredient in increasing success in many activities.  For example, the children who were successful in resisting the marshmallow temptation

distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”

Mischel and other researchers are very interested in studying the people who have become “high-delaying adults” (exercising self-control) even though, as children, they failed the marshmallow test.

Some researchers (e.g., John Jonides at University of Michigan, and others) are focusing on the exact locations and functions in the brain associated with self-control and delay of gratification:

Yale University researchers found that delaying gratification involves an area of the brain, the anterior prefrontal cortex, that is known to be involved in abstract problem-solving and keeping track of goals.  … The brain scan findings from 103 subjects suggest that delaying gratification involves the ability to imagine a future event clearly, said Jeremy Gray, a Yale psychology professor and coauthor of the study in the September [2008] edition of the journal Psychological Science. You need “a sort of ‘far-sightedness,’ to put it in a single word,” he said. [reference]

Mischel, the original marshmallow researcher, adds:

The key to delaying gratification may lie in the ability to “cool the hot stimulus,” he said in a telephone interview.

Over and over, research is showing that the trick is to shift activity from “hot,” more primitive areas deep in the brain to “cool,” more rational areas mainly in the higher centers of the brain, he said.

There are many ways to cool a hot stimulus, said Mischel, who is president of the Association for Psychological Science. Say you are determined to resist the chocolate cake at a restaurant. You must distract yourself from the waiter’s dessert tray. You can also focus on long-term consequences and make them “hot” – by vividly imagining your future tummy and hip bulges – or think of the cake in the cooler abstract, as a thing that will make you fat and clog your arteries.

In the marshmallow test, he said, “the same child who can’t wait a minute if they’re thinking about how yummy and chewy the marshmallow is can wait for 20 minutes if they’re thinking of the marshmallow as being puffy like a cotton ball or like a cloud floating in the sky.” [reference]

A large-scale study is now underway, involving hundreds of schoolchildren in Philadelphia, Seattle, and New York City, to see if self-control skills can be taught.

More resources:

• watch a brief video of the marshmallow test;
• listen to a Public Radio discussion of the New Yorker article (45 min.);
• check out sayyestono.org, an organization devoted to increasing self-discipline in children;
• read the article in The New Yorker and this Boston Globe article.
• in one recent study, obese women were found to have less ability to delay gratification than obese men and normal-weight people.

It takes a village to impact obesity epidemic

The results of the latest (and so far best) research on diets are in:  most people won’t stick to them. The New England Journal of Medicine (2/26/09) published the study which has now been widely reported in the news.  Over 800 men and women were followed on various diets for 2 years; the average weight loss was modest (about 9 pounds) and those who attended counseling sessions (an indirect measure of motivation) lost the most.  No one adhered to the diet closely, despite frequent monitoring and much support.  The conclusion is that eating less (calories) is what matters, not the specific content of the diet (in terms of low fat, high protein, low carbohydrate, etc).

These findings are not surprising, but what is most interesting is the accompanying editorial which describes a study in France where entire villages were used to counteract the obesity epidemic.  Here is the summary from the NEJM editorial:

A community-based effort to prevent overweight in schoolchildren began in two small towns in France in 2000. Everyone from the mayor to shop owners, schoolteachers, doctors, pharmacists, caterers, restaurant owners, sports associations, the media, scientists, and various branches of town government joined in an effort to encourage children to eat better and move around more. The towns built sporting facilities and playgrounds, mapped out walking itineraries, and hired sports instructors. Families were offered cooking workshops, and families at risk were offered individual counseling.

Though this was not a formal randomized trial, the results were remarkable. By 2005 the prevalence of overweight in children had fallen to 8.8%, whereas it had risen to 17.8% in the neighboring comparison towns, in line with the national trend.¹¹ This total-community approach is now being extended to 200 towns in Europe, under the name EPODE (Ensemble, prévenons l’obésité des enfants [Together, let's prevent obesity in children]).¹²

Like cholera, obesity may be a problem that cannot be solved by individual persons but that requires community action. Evidence for the efficacy of the EPODE¹² approach is only tentative,¹¹ and what works for small towns in France may not work for Mexico City or rural Louisiana. However, the apparent success of such community interventions suggests that we may need a new approach to preventing and to treating obesity and that it must be a total-environment approach that involves and activates entire neighborhoods and communities. It is an approach that deserves serious investigation, because the only effective alternative that we have at present for halting the obesity epidemic is large-scale gastric surgery.

The NEJM research article is here: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/9/859.

The editorial is here: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/9/923.

FDA Warns Consumers About Weight Loss Pills

The FDA has issued an updated warning about tainted weight loss pills. See the details here.

Become a “lessmeatatarian” and help the planet

One thing we can easily do now to help ourselves and others is:  eat less meat and dairy. Meat (especially beef) and dairy farming generate a huge amount of greenhouse gas and are unsustainable.  Like food writer Mark Bittman, we should all become “lessmeatatarians,” and try going vegan daily until 6 pm (dinnertime).  Bittman discusses this and related topics on public radio here.

Mark Bittman: Conscious Eating

Food writer and home cooking guide Mark Bittman is a hero in many American kitchens. His “How to Cook Everything” has put a lot of meals on a lot of family tables.

Now, Bittman is taking up a bigger cause than dinner: The way Americans eat, he says, is killing themselves and the planet. Too much meat. Too much junk food. Too big a footprint.

Just a little change, he says — vegan ‘til 6pm, ‘til dinner — could save our waistlines, our health, and the planet.

This hour, On Point: A save-the-Earth manifesto — with recipes — from food maven Mark Bittman.

Academy awards

I have seen all five movies nominated for best picture, so will post my impressions of them (in alphabetical order).

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  Very entertaining and a good stimulus for thinking about aging, life and death.  Pretty well-acted, but for me it is a distraction when superstars are in movies.  Not Brad Pitt’s fault, though.

Frost/Nixon. About much more than a particular slice of history (with modern day implications).  Also about a life/death struggle between two interesting and flawed men.

Milk.  Excellent docudrama with superb acting by Penn.  In this case, his star status did not detract (or distract) from the movie.  It is about historical events (which are well worth knowing about), but also about a very hot current issue.

The Reader.  Superb acting by the main characters, and gave me a lot to think about –  such as the consequences of our decisions to act, or to not act, in certain ways.

Slumdog Millionaire.  Entertaining and, for me, a bit jarring, with the rapid pace, time shifts, and intrusive (but excellent) soundtrack.  A gritty look at a very important social problem, with a silly romantic story to help the medicine go down.

My personal preference for the winner:  Milk. All of the others were also excellent and worth seeing.

Do not — DO NOT — deprive yourself

In Woody Allen’s very  funny movie Sleeper (1973), he plays a health food store owner who travels to the future and discovers everything that was bad for you (smoking, fast food) is now good for you. I have often wondered whether, in such circumstances, I would change my long-standing eating preferences (which now happen to be “healthy”) so that I would eat heavy desserts, creamy sauces, sweets, McDonalds food, etc.  Now I dislike such foods, but if it turned out they were good for me, would I learn to like them?  The answer is, probably yes.

Over the last two decades, I have absorbed the culture of healthy eating to the extent that I PREFER to eat this way.  I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that I have brainwashed myself.  Which is a good thing.  There is ample and growing evidence that we can control our likes and dislikes to a great extent (it takes time and practice).

What I know does NOT work for me or many other people is to change the way I eat just to be “good” or “healthy.”  If I do that, I feel deprived, and will get angry, resentful, and ultimately go back to eating what I like.

The same is true for exercise; do it because you want to, not because you “have to.”   You will be happier, and healthier.  What’s the point of being healthy if you’re not happy?