Lately I've been seeing a fair amount of advertising and other information floating around the internet talking about acidophilus.  Manufacturers seem very excited about it…..

More than just acidophilus…

When taking antibiotics it's important to also take probiotics.  This is because the antibiotics will kill both beneficial and not-so-beneficial bacteria in your gut.  In order to remain healthy it is important…

I haven't been writing much in the last couple of days because I've been busy playing with this lovely new graphic.

Some time back one of my friends, Darbi, started asking “What would Mira eat?”  She took it one step further and started sharing that question with other friends.  It became a fun joke with my friends.

But it also highlighted for me one of the challenges of being a Nutrition Educator.  Going out to eat with other people.  The situations sometimes go something like this:

1. They wait until I order because they want to see what I'm going to eat and then they order the same thing whether they want it or not.
2. They order something telling me to avert my eyes because I'm “not going to like it.”
3. They order something they don't really want (different from what I order) because they're afraid I will disapprove.
4. If I want a cookie they are shocked [don't be, I'm human and yes, I do, occasionally, eat cookies.]

I'm so thrilled to be able to share the following video.  I studied about Nutrition Education at Bauman College of Holistic Nutrition and Culinary Arts.  A couple of months ago I was invited to do an interview and this is the edited product that Chris, the very talented Videographer for the college, put together.  It's live and online.

Because of how it's been put up online I'm not able to embedd it but you can click on the link to take a peek.

Bauman Interview

A number of folks have asked me about the guy who lost weight eating the junk food diet.  Is it true?!?  Can you really eat junk food and still lose weight?

Here's my understanding of what happened.  Mark Haub, a Nutrition Professor, wanted to prove a point about how we make choices in food.  He went on a month-long diet to lose weight by eating junk food.  Taking a multi-vitamin, a protein shake, one serving of vegetables a day, and restricting his calories, he did lose weight.

But, and this is a very important, he did it to prove a point.  He wanted people to think about the choices they make.  He also wanted to highlight food costs and how that sometimes drives choices.  Yes, you can lose weight eating garbage; however it is a very unhealthy, unsustainable way to do it.  People got so excited about the headline that they failed to read the article(s).  Within 36 hours of starting his diet Mr. Haub began to not feel well.  Now that this 30 day phase is done he plans to continue his experiment by gaining weight through eating healthy foods.

While eating excessive calories, even healthy ones, can cause you to gain weight, eating junk food is not a good idea as a weight loss plan.  This way of eating is nutritionally deficient (even with protein shakes and vitamins); if we deprive our bodies for an extended period of time we will eventually begin to have accumulated health problems.  Is a calorie just a calorie?  I truly do not believe that is true.  Perhaps on a superficial level it is true but on a deeper level we need to remember that our bodies require whole foods and balanced nutrition to be healthy.

What's more important, at least to me, and I'm sure other nutrition professionals, is the response the publicity about this experiment created.  So many people were very excited.  They wanted to eat the junk food.  They failed to read that he ate 600-800 less calories per day than his body needed.  They also failed to read that he did this as an experiment to see how people would respond.  People went straight to the idea of junk food as a way to get what they wanted.

When I work with people to help them lose weight we almost always begin by avoiding the body weight scale.  We work instead on changing what they are eating.  On learning how to make healthy substitutions and how to recognize what, how, when and why they are eating.  As they begin to eat foods that provide more nutrition to their bodies people frequently find they begin to feel better.  Many folks find they may even be losing some weight without even trying.  This could be a factor of breaking the addictive cravings for sugar and fat.  It is frequently also learning to recognize the signals your body sends.

This experiment certainly provided a good conversational base and is definitely “food for thought.”

photo:  Larry D. Moore | Wikimedia Commons

Okay, that's a song title.  But lyrics are just poems set to music and it's National Poetry Month. This got me thinking about all the poems that mention food, and there are oh so many of them. My first exposure to food poetry was this little treasure my Grandfather taught me:

I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But it keeps them on my knife

As a young child I found this very entertaining and it was, I believe, my first memorized poem.  More food poems began to find their way into my life from Shel Silverstein's Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout to Lewis Carroll's The Walrus and The Carpenter or Turtle Soup.   These were followed by Robert Frost's Blueberries, Victor Buono's The Fat Man's Prayer, Ogden Nash's The Clean Platter, and Jack Prelutsky's Deep In Our Refrigerator.  There's also Pablo Neruda's offerings, Ode to an Onion and Ode to Salt.

And more and more and more, the list goes on.  Food is such an elemental part of our life that it is no wonder that so many poems have been written about it.

So take a moment to read or write a poem about food.  I'd love it if you'd share your favorites in the comments below.

I just checked in to my gmail account. I was dismayed to find that somehow when folks emailed me instead of going to my correct email, mdessy@grainsandmore.com, it went to my mostly defunct google email. I think it had something to do with the merger between google and blogger. I have three months worth of email questions to catch up on. If you haven't gotten a response from me and were wondering why I was so worthless at answering questions….there's your answer.

Going through the emails as fast as I can. I'll look into the settings and see how to fix this but in the meantime I'll be more diligent about checking gmail.

As a side note, if you leave a comment on the blog it does go to the correct email, that's really the best way to get in touch. But I'll fix the other.

Be well

Care2.com is running a contest to support your local farmer's market.  The winning market will receive $5,000 but there are other prizes as well.  Support your farmer's market and give them a vote today!

It's Men's Health Week, which always occurs the week before Father's Day.  

Be well.