Even if you're relatively secure about your health and waistline, it'd be impossible to completely miss the buzz around the major diet trends of recent years. We want to know what to eat and when to eat it, and we sometimes take it to extremes. In Japan, a fad called the "Morning Banana Diet" even set off a banana shortage — spiking banana prices by 20 percent in 2008.
But as we careen from one diet to the next, we’ve been making substantive changes in our eating habits, too. Over the past 30 years, Americans’ per capita consumption of red meat fell by more than 20 lb. per year. We drink less than a third of the amount of whole milk we did in 1980 and almost twice the amount of skim milk. We eat less margarine, less lard, less shortening, and less sugar.
And we keep getting new advice. This week The New York Times reported on another new kind of diet: The Mediterranean Diet. It's designed to be rich in in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even red wine, and the diet is said to extend the lifespan of its adherents.
But is all this nutrition advice actually making us healthier? Michael Moss, author of "Salt Sugar Fat" is an investigative journalist whose new book focuses on the corporate side of what we eat.
According to Moss, one reason we seem to be losing the health battle amidst so much advice and information on the issue is economic disadvantage. Moss quotes Bob Drain, the inventor of Lunchables, in his book as saying "The people who make the processed food don’t eat the processed food. And therein lies the class issue that really goes with the food industry in America."
Moss says of the executives in the processed food industry: "They know better, because salt, sugar and fat are the three pillars, the holy grail, of the processed food industry. The scientists are driving as hard as they can to reach those perfect amounts that will send us over the moon."
Star Trek: Past, Present and Future
The IRS Scandal: Who Gets Tax-Exempt Status?, Depression's Lessons, 'Star Trek: Into Darkness'
From 'Spinal Tap' to 'Family Tree,' the Wild Worlds of Christopher Guest
Senator Gillibrand on Sexual Assault in the Military, Implementing the Affordable Care Act, Responses: Your Most Difficult Boss
'David's Inferno': Depression's Lessons
The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
Major funding provided by:
Comments [11]
The Voting Rights Act (VRA) must be upheld by the supreme court: Discrimination is alive today unfortunately; Liberty and justice for all is openly sabotaged and the Supreme Court is inviting trouble of great magnitudnal proportions if it dares to fail its ultimate mandate: to uphold everyone's constitutional rights. The entire nation will speak against it because the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is not about political parties; the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is about individual rights protection. Bank on it! it is time to review; the Supreme Court's "entitlements" as, it is no longer acting as an unbiased institution and that, your magistrates , can be amended. get up and do your job or we will make it happen! count on it! Now Even if you are dumb enough to believe that all is OK with the world and there are no reasons to have the voting rights law on the books. Then why are the the parties at opposite end's on this ? Why are the Republicans in America trying to keep people from the poles ? Well I will tell you what I think. I think there may be a dozen or two, man and women in America that have the means to buy the power it wants to call all shots in this Country. The only way they can obtain this right now is get the people they went in office. To buy them so to say. But they know they can be stopped at the voting polls.They know the more that get out and vote there chances are reduced substantially. George Will knows this and should be ashamed. He say 47 years old. Is that old ? I don't think so. Look at the constitution, at that II Amendment a lot older right. SS, Medicare, still very new in the big picture. But look at who wants to change them. Not working men and women, no the big bosses. They do not like to mach payments that is what this is all about. They did not like it back in the 1930s and they do not like it now. So Americans do not be fooled and all of you older people that now have this little benefit fight like h--- to keep it just as it is. It just might be all there is between eating and striving !!
About 8 years ago I started converting to an organic, non-GMO largely (but not exclusively) vegetarian diet. My emphasis to use a cliché, is on whole foods. I use organic whole milk (stopped buying 1%), fresh vegetables, organic cheese, make my own bread or buy it fresh, and look for what's in season or what is freshest of what's available. I found I eat less because what I eat tastes better and satisfies more quickly. I lost about 10 lbs. and now weigh about the same as I did when I left college. Added to this is doing a lot of cycling. I take no medication and haven't been sick in many years. I think there's a lot to be said for eliminating as many toxins as possible from your diet.
I am undeniably healthier today. I have joined a gym and work out four times a week. I took up bike riding. My diet has more vegetables, almost no red meat and lots of vegetable protein. I have gone off my hypertension medication and lost weight. I'm healthier today when when I was twenty five (a very long time ago).
I thought I was healthy, being vegetarian and eating organic, but I felt terrible and had gained weight. I had to come to terms with the fact that I was still eating too many calories! This year I used an app to count my calories. That made all the difference. Still eating lots of veggies, but less carbs and sugar.
After hearing Mark Bittman's Ted Talk "What's wrong with what we eat" I totally changed the way I eat, it's just healthier, ethically, and environmentally sound to eat more vegetables and fruits and less meat and dairy.
In the last 12 months, my family has moved from Phoenix Arizona to Portland Oregon. Asthma symptoms that cost us more than $125.00 per month to treat, have vanished. The air in Portland is safer to breathe. Also, we have reduced out animal nutrition to under 10% of all our intake. We've got a real 'plant forward' approach to our meals and we've been feeling great. We eat animal foods in nearly anyway - we still emphasize great tasting meals, so we still have home-made fried chicken schnitzel every week. There has been an improvement in my blood pressure and sleep much better as well.
I drastically changed my eating habits last spring by eliminating dairy and sugar and lost 15 pounds right away. I couldn't maintain that lifestyle perfectly but I eat far less meat now, I have fruits and vegetables for lunch, very little sugar, no soda ever, very little dairy, some bread. I have so much more energy than I used to have and I feel so much better. A full-time teacher and mother to 2 small children, I thought I would be exhausted all the time but I am now able to work out at the gym at least three times a week and I have barely been sick this year.
I am healthier because I make an effort to find out what is truly healthy instead of following dieting trends. I became a vegetarian 11 years ago for health reasons but in the past year have come to believe this is actually not the healthiest diet. I found, through studying the research of doctors and nutritionists, that the Food Pyramid and now My Plate that are promoted by the USDA are promoting grains too much. As the reseacrh of doctor Robert Lustig shows, carbohydrates turn to sugar in our bodies and react in the same way as sweets. As a country we have essentially been on a sugar high since the USDA began it's campaign of getting us to eat more grains and thus more carbohydrates. As Walter Willet put it, "The thing to keep in mind about the USDA Pyramid is that it comes from the [U.S.] Department of Agriculture, the agency responsible for promoting American agriculture, not from agencies established to monitor and protect our health, like the Department of Health and Human Services, or the National Institutes of Health, or the Institute of Medicine." Willet's research at Harvard showed we should be eating more protein, vegetables, and fruit and less grains. However, when the USDA adopted the My Plate in place of the Food Pyramid based on the Willet's reasearch, they changed it to include more grains. I don't think they're helping the obesity problem in America. I think they're hurting it.
I think that it is amusing that years ago, when I was a vegetarian, no one was vegetarian. Now I eat more "paleo" style and everyone is a vegetarian. Our ideas of what "health" food is changes so often that people can't keep up. Does your guest have any thoughts on the Paleo/primal take on nutrition? (eating veggies/meats/fruits/limited dairy and avoiding grains/sugar/processed food).
Such an important topic. Thank you for covering this.
After trying so many vegetarian diets including 4 months on the China Study diet (where I couldn't stop eating, gained weight, felt weak and started losing my hair), I changed to the "cave man"/GAPS type diet. Ever since I started eating animal products, including all the fat I wanted, my health immediately improved. Now I never count calories & eat what I'd call Cave Man/Mediterranian, my health is great. All my hair grew back. I lost the pudgy bloated fat and I will never be a vegetarian again.
The key to my diet is avoidance of processed carbohydrates. No flours, no pasta, no bread, NO SUGAR, no cakes, cookies, chips... Only whole foods - tons of fruits& vegetables, moderate portions of grass fed meats -including butter and cheese, and plenty of omega 3 oils (nut and olive).
For me and my family, this is a great way to eat.
Leave a Comment
Register for your own account so you can vote on comments, save your favorites, and more. Learn more.
Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Names are displayed with all comments. We reserve the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the Comment Guidelines before posting. By leaving a comment, you agree to New York Public Radio's Privacy Policy and Terms Of Use.