Fat Chance

I was first introduced to the work of Dr. Robert Lustig when he was interviewed for a nutrition course I took on Coursera last year. I was already aware of the dietary evils of sugar, thanks to my sister loaning me her copy of Potatoes, Not Prozac many years ago, so Dr. Lustig's pronouncements against this substance came as no great shock, but I thought he made a clear, compelling and evidence-based case. Later, I watched his 90-minute presentation, which has more than 4 million views on YouTube, and I've read several news stories on his anti-sugar crusade.

So what more could I learn by reading his book? Enough to make it worthwhile to check out from the library. The key point -- sugar is a toxin and likely the primary culprit in the obesity epidemic -- has already been disclosed in the news stories and videos. Fat Chance provides scientific background, practical consumer suggestions, and some public policy recommendations.

The practical suggestions, which will be of the most interest to readers of this blog, are in the shortest section of the book and are general recommendations. This is not a diet book. It doesn't have a 14-day plan or recipes (although a separate cookbook provides those). Dr. Lustig's diet advice resembles what you would get from any certified nutritionist or Michael Pollan: avoid processed food, eat whole fruits and vegetables and foods rich in fiber, and exercise regularly.

At last night's dinner meeting, I resolved on some new personal food rules based on my understanding of Dr. Lustig's book and sound advice from other sources. My new plan:

1. Limit my consumption of sugar, or any food with added fructose, to one day a week.
2. Increase fiber by eating legumes daily, avoiding refined grains, and of course, including vegetables in every meal.
3. Eat an apple a day.
4. Limit alcohol to one glass of red wine a day.
5. Eat all food at the table. If I'm not hungry enough to sit down, I'm not hungry enough to eat.
6. Eat only satisfied, not until full.
7. Eat slowly and chew thoroughly.
8. Eat fermented food daily -- yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, sourdough bread, kimchi, etc.
9. Exercise daily. Cardio every day, yoga or stretching every day, and resistance or strength at least three times a week.

This seems reasonable.

Resolutions

Good morning, fitness friends!

The holidays are over and we can now be guided by our good intentions to eat better and exercise more. According to a poll, the most popular New Year's resolution is to "lose weight," with "exercise" and "eat healthier" as separate goals in the top five. So, odds are, you or someone you know is currently recommitting to a diet and exercise plan.

What works? The team behind the Lift App aim to find out by enrolling volunteers in a quantified diet study for the next four weeks. I'm participating and following the DASH diet, which basically seems to be what I was eating most days anyway. I suppose the trick will be to mindfully follow it every day.

I'm also reading Dr. Robert Lustig's book, Fat Chance, to bolster my efforts to avoid sugar. Sugar isn't a banned substance in my diet, but I've learned to treat it as something I should stay away from most days.

We're blessed or cursed, depending on perspective, to live in an age of information overload, so finding resources to help with your food and fitness goals is easy. Whittling away the nonsense can be challenging. I'll continue to share links here and in my Flipboard magazine from sources I trust (although I will occasionally flip something just because it's interesting and provocative).

One of my favorite blogs for healthy recipes is Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks. If you want to stop reading my blog and just read hers, I wouldn't blame you! Of the many delicious recipes and ideas she shares, I'd like to draw your attention to the kale rice bowl, which makes a frequent appearance in various configurations on my weeknight dinner table. It is easy, tasty and versatile, meaning just about anything in it can be substituted for something similar you have on hand. And it would be considered a complete, balanced meal for most diet plans, except perhaps the grain-shunning paleo. Give it a try!

Turkey Soup

Good morning!

Thanksgiving weekend is over, and as we drag into this first Monday in December, many of us may be feeling a need for some corrective or restorative measures if we engaged in Thanksgiving excess. 

After spending most of yesterday in bed sipping mint tea to compensate for three days of pie, I've vowed to avoid rich food indulgences for, oh, let's say the next two weeks. At least.

So it's a good thing my husband made a big pot of turkey and rice soup yesterday. That's the perfect antidote to the Thanksgiving feast. I hope all of you who cooked a turkey saved the carcass for stock. Mine yielded about 7 quarts, half of which went in yesterday's soup and the other half headed for the freezer.

Other good remedies to bring your system back into balance include smoothies you make at home using fruit and vegetables (sweeten with stevia and don't add juice), yogurt, greens, herbal or green tea, and homemade pickles.

What's your favorite post-Thanksgiving restorative?

Matcha Smoothie

1/2 frozen banana
1 cup almond milk
1 tsp matcha powder
1/2 cup yogurt
4 or 5 drops stevia

Blend.

Diet showdown thingie

I flipped this on Flipboard, but in case you missed it, this "diet showdown" looks interesting enough to bring to your attention. I've already signed up for whatever-it-is, primarily because I use the Lift app and like it, particularly the lengthy explanations the developers provide for every minor update.

Soup night

Soup is always in season, but on a chilly fall night, the right soup is especially welcome and can be an ideal supper.

After an indulgent meal with great food, wine and friends last night at Trattoria Stella, my aging digestive system needs a recovery day. Fortunately, dinner is already decided thanks to this lovely gift of turnips and greens from a friend's garden:

So, I'll make them into soup, adapting a recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy to the other ingredients I have on hand. Basically, I'll cook the chopped turnips in a little butter with potatoes, carrots, onion and thyme, then cover the vegetables with water, bring to a boil and simmer until all is tender. I'll whiz the soup to a smooth puree in the blender, return to the pot and add the chopped greens to finish. Delicious recovery!

Nordic Diet course

As some of you know, I've been fascinated with the Scandinavian approach to food ever since visiting the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis and its outstanding FIKA cafe. I wanted more, which back in Traverse City meant I would need to learn to make it myself.

So far, my experiments in Scandinavian cuisine have been guided by chef Trina Hahnemann's book, The Nordic Diet, which describes a healthy approach to eating featuring foods native to the Scandinavian countries and provides 75 recipes.

As of yesterday, I'm ramping up my education and practice in this cuisine by starting a 4-week class on Coursera from the University of Copenhagen, The New Nordic Diet: from Gastronomy to Health. The lectures so far are a little dry, but the course comes with recipes and I'll be trying those. If any of you want to join me in the class, it's free! 

Aside from the deliciousness being achieved by creative chefs reinventing this traditional and long-overlooked cuisine (remember, Noma in Copenhagen is considered the top restaurant in the world), the Nordic diet offers a guideline for those of us in northern latitudes who want to improve our health, but not at the expense of the environment.

Often my dietary plans have conflicted with the contents of the CSA box or the offerings at the farmer's market. For about half of the year, beginning now, root vegetables are the local produce most available, so a low-carb diet isn't a great fit for a northern locavore. I've also often been frustrated by some seasonal cookbooks by chefs who live in places where asparagus and tomatoes apparently appear in the market at the same time.

The Nordic Diet approach helps me merge my locavore goals with my health goals. The primary difficulty is that fish and shellfish are not as available to me as they are to the Scandinavians. Sure, I have fish from Lake Michigan, but concerns about mercury pollution prevent me from making it a significant part of my diet.

I'll be reporting back over the next few weeks with the most helpful things I learn. I hope you like beets!

 

Saving room for dessert

Because sometimes it's your daughter's birthday.

At the last dinner support group meeting, I served celery root soup and crostini. This is, in my opinion, an ideal light dinner. But I rarely restrain myself from offering abundant food to guests (even when it's light and healthy), so I knew my friends would be wondering why they were only getting a cup of soup and a piece of toast.

We were saving room for dessert.

A few days earlier, my husband came home with a bag of apples, noted it was October, and asked me to make his favorite apple cake, a tradition of the season. This cake is delicious, but I don't even dare to run it through a calorie calculator. The recipe is on my knitting-books-film blog, for those interested.

I don't believe deprivation is sustainable as a strategy for weight loss, fitness, health or much of anything else. Obviously, abstaining totally from some substances is crucial; a recovering alcoholic doesn't allow himself "just one drink," and a kid with a life-threatening peanut allergy doesn't take a bite of a Snickers bar. But for most people, including those trying to get in shape, arbitrarily eliminating an entire food group isn't necessary and could backfire into binge eating.

So saving room for the occasional dessert need not be the first step on a path to obesity. If sugar is a challenge or trigger food for you (it is for me, and many others), enjoy that slice of birthday cake, and then send it away for a few days or a couple of weeks (the deep freeze, maybe).

The apple cake, followed by my daughter's birthday, was a little too much sweetness for my system, so today I begin a 21-day "no sweets" challenge supported by the Lift app to check my tendency to sugar addiction before it gets entrenched again. I'm not swearing off sugar for life, but I want to get it back to an occasional indulgence rather than a biscotti-with-morning-coffee routine that turns into an afternoon "where's the chocolate?" craving.

Reset

Good morning to all of you who said over the weekend, "I'll start [that good habit] on Monday."

It's Monday!

You should be more excited.

What will you be starting today?

I've been slacking about tracking my food intake, so I'm resolved to log every single bite in MyFitnessPal app. 

And, after watching Anthony Bourdain hang out foraging, fermenting and cooking with best-restaurant-in-the-world chef René Redzepi last night, I'm once again inspired to get some healthy Nordic cuisine going in my kitchen (as well as research Danish immigration policies). This is good timing because the New Nordic Diet course on Coursera starts in two weeks! And I need to finish Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, an excellent novel partially set in Minnesota, the Scandinavian center of the U.S. Isn't it amazing how sometimes the universe seems to be sending a message? The message I'm getting is either, "start that rye bread sourdough," or "move to Copenhagen." Well, one of those things I can do today.

Delicious Scandinavian cuisine from FIKA at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. This was a light, healthy, fabulous day-after-Thanksgiving lunch last year.

Sauced

An easy and time-saving way to pack lots of flavor into simple vegetable dishes is make a batch of a delicious sauce once a week and use it profusely.

As I had a large supply of red bell peppers from the CSA box this week, I made nearly a quart of romesco sauce yesterday, and that became the flavoring agent for the main dish at last night's fitness support dinner.

I adapted Deborah Madison's recipe in Vegetable Literacy (again, I can't stop recommending this book), using what I had on hand. I roasted the peppers by putting them directly on a low flame on my gas stovetop burner, turning them with tongs until mostly charred all around, then letting them sit in a Pyrex bowl with cover on for 15 minutes or so before peeling. I'm not very good at roasting peppers and chilies, and I don't like doing it on the stovetop, but the good news is it doesn't have to be perfect.

The recipe:

Romesco Sauce

Romesco sauce (left); roasted veggies and lentils (right)

1 slice of good bread, preferably sourdough, toasted in 1 tbsp olive oil in a pan
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, or a combination
3 or 4 cloves of peeled garlic
2 red bell peppers, roasted, peeled and seeded
4 roasted Roma tomatoes, or 1 can of Muir Glen diced roasted tomatoes with chilies
handful of parsley
few sprigs of fresh thyme
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
1/3 to 1/2 cup olive oil
salt to taste

In a food processor, pulse the nuts, bread and garlic until finely minced. Add the peppers, tomatoes, parsley, thyme, paprika and a teaspoon or so of salt and blend. With the motor running, drizzle in the vinegar, then the olive oil. Taste and adjust as necessary.

Last night, the sauce was a terrific addition to a dish of French lentils and roasted veggies. Today, I'm thinking I'll make some hummus and use it in place of some of the olive oil.

Romesco is an extremely delicious and versatile sauce, but roasting peppers isn't fast, so you may want to plan this one on the weekend. For an instant "secret sauce" that can be used as a dressing on a tossed salad or added to cooked vegetables, grains and legumes, I give you my 30-second vinaigrette:

Honey-Mustard Balsamic Dressing

1 tbsp honey mustard
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
pinch of salt

Add all ingredients to a small jar and shake. It's that easy. I never measure the ingredients when I'm making it, so this is approximate. Scale it up if you need more.

If you live in northern Michigan or like to order online, I implore you to buy Food for Thought's cherry honey mustard for this dressing. I use this mustard in almost every recipe calling for mustard, and I also use it to make mayonnaise.

More on walking

What a lovely day for a walk in northern Michigan!

In case you need more incentive to get out and take a stroll, check out this article listing eight ways walking can benefit your health. Some of these may be new to you.

I know that I'm particularly blessed to live in a spot friendly for walkers. My neighborhood has sidewalks, pleasant tree-lined streets, and trails by several bodies of water within a couple of blocks of my house: Grand Traverse Bay, Boardman Lake and the Boardman River. I can also walk to downtown shops, the best movie theater in the world, and numerous excellent local eateries. The only downside is winter, when the sidewalks are clogged with ice and snow and walking can be hazardous. Then, I put cleats on my boots and slow down a little.

Hopefully, your neighborhood is conducive to walking, but if not, check out local parks or trail systems. If all else fails, pacing around your house is better than sitting all day. Even with my walk-friendly neighborhood, I resort to this sometimes when the weather is bad, and I always pace when I'm on the phone.

For anyone contemplating relocation, you can use this nifty website to scout out your proposed new home's walkability.

Meetings with friends and food!

Now that I've deposited one child at college and established the other in another year of high school, my schedule is settled enough to begin the dinner/lunch meetings promised in the welcome post.

The dinner meeting already has been happening with a couple of test subjects for a few weeks. The time for that is set at 6:30 p.m. on Mondays at my house. I have room for two or three more, so let me know if you're interested in that.

For those who prefer a lunch gathering, I'm thinking Tuesdays at noon may be a good time, but if another day or time would be better, let me know. It would be a quick, express lunch chat and we could start on Sept. 24.

Food will be light, nutritious, and nearly always vegetarian.

Obviously, this is a hyper-local event. I'm a decent cook, but I'm not good enough to warrant a trip from Russia! Distant readers, I'll post menus, recipes and all of the good suggestions from the meetings.

Portion control

Of all the potential villains to blame for humanity's expanding waistlines, restaurants have so far been pretty low on the totem pole, with the exception of the universally reviled fast-food chains.

Restaurants can be fabulous and worthy of their high approval ratings. Eating out is fun and relaxing. The food may be expertly prepared, and someone else will be doing the work, including the clean-up. What's not to like?

Yet, with more and more meals being eaten in restaurants, we should probably consider what's on those plates. The short answer: way too much.

Restaurant owners say they serve gigantic portions because customers believe large portions offer more value. If a table of four people were to split one restaurant serving, that might be true. Certainly I've been served plates in restaurants that could've come pretty close to feeding my family of four. But usually, few diners are splitting plates with their table mates.

I've tried to get in the habit of bringing my own take-out container when dining at a restaurant, and when I remember to do this, I immediately put about half of my food in it as soon as it's served. When I'm not prepared, I have to rely on restraint, which can be challenging with tasty food before me.

What are your strategies for eating out?

Striiv to walk more

Never underestimate the power of peer pressure. Sometimes you can harness this pressure as the wind in your fitness sail.

I've been using the Striiv device and mobile app for several months, but recent updates to the system have increased its effectiveness, largely due to the motivation of not disappointing strangers in cyberspace.

The new "Relay" feature is simply ingenious. It's an optional mini-game that has two people walk a total of 200 steps, passing a "baton" between them after each 50. So, I start a relay race, walk 50 steps, and the app passes the baton to my partner, who walks 50 steps and passes it back to me. The partner can be a pre-existing friend or, lacking that, it can be a "wildcard" -- a random Striiv user.

What this boils down to is that sometimes I'm sitting on the sofa reading and I get a message on my phone that someone is passing me the baton. So in the middle of a paragraph, I get up and walk 50 steps because "Lou A", whoever that may be, is waiting on me.

If Dr. James Levine is correct, these little interruptions to my sedentary ways may turn out to be the magical cattle prod of weight loss. Dr. Levine, a professor of medicine at the famed Mayo Clinic and author of Move a Little, Lose a Lot, suggests the crucial factor in weight management and other fitness markers is how often a person moves, rather than intensity of exercise. In other words, it may be that simply staying out of the chair for most of the day is more effective than an hour on the treadmill.

I'll experiment with this theory and report back later. Gotta go. Pam is waiting for me to grab the baton.

See you in September

This blog will be on hiatus for a few days while I pack my oldest off for another year of college and my youngest back to high school. Look for the next update soon after Labor Day.

My domesticity blog has a new post, if anyone wants to read it.

Enjoy your Labor Day weekend!

Hydrate

One near-universal piece of advice given to weight watchers is to drink more water, with the typical recommendation being about 64 ounces a day. And those who live in dry climates, where dehydration is a concern for everyone, may need to go beyond a half-gallon a day.

Nutritionists and weight loss coaches say people often confuse hunger with thirst, and some suggest first drinking a glass of water and waiting 15 minutes when feeling hungry.

But does "water" have to be water? The answer depends on who you ask.

My research on this question has led me to the conclusion that some flexibility exists in satisfying the 8 glasses per day rule. Sadly, this flexibility does not extend to alcohol; beer, wine, and vodka martinis are certainly liquids, but they are dehydrating, not to mention highly caloric. You may need to drink even more water to counteract the diuretic effects of the alcohol.

I've seen mixed reports on coffee. Although many of my older diet books marked it as a villain and required any consumption of it to be offset with additional water, some more recent findings say it may be counted in your daily water tally. I've decided to split the difference and consider it neutral.

I'm counting tea, particularly green tea. I wrote about this on my foodie blog a few months ago, so click that link if you want to know more.

hydration station

To those fond of those much-maligned fizzy beverages, consider investing in a sodastream or similar device. I bought one earlier this year on the recommendation of several friends and the request of my daughter, who loves soft drinks. Although you can purchase packets of syrup that attempt to imitate popular beverages, I prefer creating my own flavors. The internet has countless recipes for flavored syrups, with or without sugar, but one of my favorite fizzy drink concoctions is just adding a squeeze of lemon and a couple of drops of stevia to the carbonated water.

If I'm feeling slightly more enterprising, I'll make a fizzy version of doogh, a refreshing Persian drink of yogurt and mint. I whiz a little yogurt, salt and mint in the blender, and then add about an equal volume of fizzy water.

Herbal teas, or tisanes, also are an excellent option for getting your water. Most groceries have a decent selection of herbals, and you may have some plants in your yard or garden that are tea-worthy. Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy book, which I can't stop recommending, has some suggestions for tisanes with parts of the plant you may have been discarding (such as fennel fronds).

With so many creative, easy and tasty options available for keeping hydrated, this can be one of the most enjoyable opportunities for improving one's healthstyle.

Cheers!

Educate

Information on weight loss is not in scarce supply. The problem for those who are making an effort to lose weight and/or improve their health through diet and exercise is getting slammed with information, so much of it conflicting, that confusion and paralysis can set in.

New books on weight loss featuring the latest greatest plan hit the shelves at dizzying speed. Most offer a promise that if you can just give up this thing or start doing that thing, you will feel better and the pounds will melt away.

My collection of such books:

Over the years, I've given up fat, severely restricted carbs, eaten grapefruit at every meal, given up all animal products, given up grains, and consumed large amounts of coconut oil. Not at the same time. And most of these efforts lasted only a few weeks, except for vegetarianism. 

The only common message I've found in these books is to avoid junk food. None of them have a plan involving the supersize menu at the drive-up window, and the jumbo bags of chips and bottles of sugary drinks are universally chastised. Opinions vary on everything else.

Beyond frustrated at trying to reconcile all of these differing recommendations, I decided to improve my ability to evaluate health advice. I took an online nutrition course offered by the University of California at San Francisco. By no means did this six-week class make me an expert; rather, it inspired me to continue learning. I've since completed a course on food and sustainability, I'm working on one about nutrition and physical activity, and I'm excited about a course on the Nordic diet that begins in a couple of months.

Don't worry, dear blog readers: I'm not suggesting you all sign up for nutrition classes! I'll report back any relevant information I learn. Although if any of you are inclined to sign up for a class, let me know and we can make a study group.

Challenge: neighborhood bar and food trucks

I suspect it's little coincidence my weight loss started to stall about the time Little Fleet opened in the neighborhood. For the first time in my life, I want to sit at a bar all day.

I haven't been there that much. But I want to be. It's possibly the most perfect hang-out in the world, and it's only two blocks from my house.

If I walk by in the evening, I will likely see someone I know, and it's so very easy to join a table, or stop to chat by a food truck, and before I know it, I'm ordering something.

If I walk by in the afternoon, it's so very easy to decide I really don't want to cook that day, especially if Roaming Harvest is there. Or I may be tempted by the amazing and decadent dirty fries at the Anchor.

Across the street from Little Fleet is my favorite restaurant, The Cooks' House. For better or worse, it's also Mario Batali's favorite restaurant, as well as hundreds of other people's, so tables are always booked in advance, preventing me from succumbing to any walk-by temptations. But of course, I start mentally counting the days until we have a special occasion to call for a reservation.

Directly across the other street is an excellent cupcake shop and the best new casual restaurant in town, Georgina's. Then, if I'm headed downtown, before I've walked another block, I'll pass the always-hopping Bubba's, the fabulous Morsels coffee shop, and Northern Natural cider house.


That I've had anything to eat or drink at home this summer is nothing short of a miracle. If I didn't like to cook and feel compelled to stay on budget with food and money, I would basically live within a block of Front and Wellington. I'd head with my laptop every morning to Morsels to caffeinate and write, grab lunch at one of the many excellent eateries in the vicinity, then drop by Little Fleet for happy hour and walk home later to sleep. I won't name names, but I suspect some people I know are basically doing that. And if one of you is reading this, and wants to have lunch at my house, let me know.

What are your local challenges and how do you handle them?

Nordic Diet menu

My apologies for not posting yesterday. Sadness at the news of the passing of a dear one made all else seem trivial.

On Thursday evening, we enjoyed a dinner of Norwegian fish cakes, long bean salad and roasted potatoes. I've had a fascination with new Scandinavian cooking ever since visiting the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis last Thanksgiving, and the primary outcome has been an exploration of the "Nordic diet". Emphasizing the traditional foodstuffs of Scandinavia -- rye, oats, cold-water fish, root vegetables and leafy greens -- the diet is touted as equivalent to the Mediterranean Diet in health, and it provides those of us in northern climates a guideline for eating well with foods more likely to be produced locally.

I've been using Trina Hahnemann's cookbook, "The Nordic Diet," with excellent results so far. I have yet to try her recipe for rye and beer oatmeal, but I'll get to it!

For Thursday's dinner, I served a version of her fishcakes recipe. She recommends salmon for this traditional Norwegian comfort food, although most other recipes I've seen use cod. I've made it both ways and I think the salmon version is tastier. She also incorporates grated vegetables into the batter, which add flavor and nutrients while reducing the calorie count.

I used a recipe from Crescent Dragonwagon's Bean By Bean cookbook for the long beans, and the roasted potatoes were basically this method described on the Chocolate and Zucchini blog, with a little olive oil and butter instead of the duck fat.

potatoes, pole beans and fish cakes

Fish Cakes

(adapted from The Nordic Diet)

1 lb or so of skinless, boneless fish

1 tsp sea salt

2 tbsp rolled oats

2 tbsp flour

1 egg

1 small carrot

1 small zucchini or summer squash

1 tbsp fresh thyme (or herb of choice)

1 tbsp oil

1 tbsp butter

In a food processor, pulse the carrot and squash until minced, then add the fish and pulse until it's all meal-like but not a paste. Add the oats, flour, egg, salt and thyme and pulse until it's a coarse batter, not completely smooth. You can use a box grater for the vegetables, mince up the fish on a cutting board and mix it all in a bowl if you don't have a food processor.

Refrigerate for at least an hour. When ready to cook, heat the oil in a skillet on medium-high. Spoon out a scoop of batter, shape it into a patty, and cook it in the pan, repeating with the remaining batter until your pan is full. Cook for about 5 minutes on each side.

If you'd like, make a quick topping of yogurt with some herbs to serve with the cakes.

4 servings of approximately 300 calories each.

Long bean salad

(adapted from Bean by Bean)

1.5 lbs mixed green beans and yellow wax beans

2 tbsp prepared mustard

1 tbsp honey

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tbsp minced fresh parsley

dash of ground cloves

salt and pepper to taste

Wash the beans and trim the ends, if you like them that way. You can also cut the beans in smaller pieces if you prefer. Bring a large pot of water to boil and blanch the beans by dropping them into the water for 2-3 minutes, or until they're almost but not quite done. Your cooking time will vary depending on the type of bean and it's freshness. Keep pulling one out to test.

Drain the beans and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking. 

Mix the remaining ingredients in a bowl, then add the beans and toss. Serve warm, at room temperature, or chill and serve later. It will be good any way!

6 servings of approximately 37 calories each. 

Raw food

Several months ago, I read a fascinating book by Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. In one of those mysterious little coincidences the universe occasionally throws at us, the very next book I read was Cooked, by Michael Pollan, who cites Wrangham's research extensively in his first chapter.

Safe in the knowledge that this blog is far too obscure for Professor Wrangham to ever read it and suffer horror or outrage at the way I'm about to mangle his thesis, I'll do my best to summarize the key point of interest from a weight loss perspective.

gazpacho is raw

Wrangham makes a compelling case that the practice of eating cooked food was the key adaptation that enabled the evolution of homo sapiens.  Calories from cooked food are more efficiently absorbed and utilized by the body, thereby freeing energy for the development of the brain. In a nutshell. Wrangham notes that even modern humans, who benefit from technology such as blenders that eliminate the work of chewing, have difficulty consuming enough calories on a raw food diet to maintain their weight.

Hmmm. So, if a person wants to lose weight, eating more raw foods might be the way to go? Professor Wrangham doesn't say so (not his area of concern), but other researchers have made that recommendation.

Anyone contemplating a raw foods diet should research it diligently, and by that I mean gathering more information than the introduction chapter of a celebrity's raw foods cookbook. Many physicians and nutritionists praise the diet for its emphasize on vegetables but caution that adherents are likely to miss important nutrients.

Eliminating a food group -- or an entire category of food (cooked) -- when it isn't warranted by a medical or ethical concern is usually unsustainable and, in some cases, may cause adverse health effects. But simply increasing the proportion of raw foods in your diet could be very effective for weight loss without risking nutritional deficiencies.

Flipboard is on!

I've started a magazine for this group on Flipboard which you can find here or, hopefully, by searching for TC Fitness Pals on the app, if you have it.

What's Flipboard? It's a cool free mobile app for collecting most of your news stories, as well as your Facebook and Twitter feeds, in one place. I especially like using it for Twitter because if someone tweets a link, you get the story or photo in magazine format without having to click to it. Yeah, I know, clicking isn't a huge chore, but with the magazine style, you can visually scan enough of the story to know if you'd want to click on it anyway, thus speeding your web-surfing.

You can create your own magazine for your personal use or to share with others. I've made magazines to organize interesting articles I want to save to re-read or read later.

If you'd like to contribute to the TC Fitness Pals magazine, let me know. I can add you as an editor and you can also "flip" on-topic articles to share.