Diet Changes
I didn't think much about what I ate. In community college, I'd eat burritos and taco bowls en masse from the cafeteria, often served with ingredients that tasted much past their prime. At home, I'd cook up something frozen, usually broccoli and beef or orange chicken, or make eggs, and would very often put off eating out of laziness.
At Pomona, I thought I'd hit the jackpot on good food, but I wasn't exactly right. I was just eating healthier than I was used to. Then when summers and winters came, I learned the prices of the frozen packaged meals and decided to compose meals more freely. I got a rice cooker, and would mix vegetables and meat. Only, I would usually eat what I cooked for the whole day. If it was rice and beef with tomato and onions, then it was my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So I started to discover what I could cook for breakfasts to give me some variety. Usually, this was an omelet or pancakes or both, and later, it would often be a smoothie.
In the summer eating at Yale's dining halls, I wrote that I didn't really care what I ate, so long as it was healthy and enough. I had a pretty loose sense of what was healthy.
I was limited by gluten and lactose intolerance. Actually, it turns out I wasn't gluten intolerant, it's just something I'd internalized from being told that I was for so long. I discovered this in August, when I had difficulty finding gluten-free options in Edinburgh and thought I'd put my body to the test. When I discovered that I could eat bread just fine, the floodgates opened. Not only could I finally — finally — eat bread, but I was also curious about what I'd been doing to my body with the food I ate.
I want to live a long and healthy life. If eating healthy food can make my body feel better now and reduce chances of getting a horrible condition in the future, then I would prefer to eat healthy food. So here are some of my recent notes from How Not To Die, a book backed by a tremendous amount of research, that has been influencing my food choices:
The majority of premature death and disability is caused by unhealthy diet and is more or less preventable with a plant-based diet
Eating vegetarian can reduce risk of diabetes by 61%; eating vegan can reduce risk by 78%
Fumes from frying as well as second hand smoke can contribute to lung cancer (bacon, meat patties, eggs); safer to fry outside than inside
Exercise-induced coughing occurs from diet; especially eggs
3% Americans get enough fiber
80% antibiotics sold go to meat industry
Processed foods attribute to 800k deaths a year, 4x more than deaths to drugs
Humans are genetically programmed for 10x less salt than is found in our regular diet; daily recommendation is no more than 3/4ths of a tablespoon of salt; reducing sodium consumption by 15% could save millions of lives every year
To lower blood pressure: don’t eat salt
Cheese is also a major source of sodium
3/4 sodium comes from processed foods
Single slice of Pizza Hut pizza = half daily sodium intake
Chicken: huge amounts of sodium to increase weight
Reduce salt craving by reducing salt intake
Alcohol thins blood. If you already have a healthy lifestyle, drinking alcohol does not improve your health.
Eat some flax seeds every day
Happier people are less likely to get sick
Eating less meat is good for us emotionally
Benefits of coffee decrease as you add sugar/aspartame/artificial sweeteners
Exercise is a lot better at treating depression than drugs
Saffron is as effective in treating depression as prozac
About half of men over the age of 80 have prostate cancer. Most men die with/of it without knowing they have it.
Eliminate eggs and poultry to massively reduce cancer risk
Getting a chest CT scan is estimated to inflict the same cancer risk as smoking 700 cigarettes. One cross-country round trip flight can expose you an to equivalent amount because of increased radiation from proximity to the sun. Green, leafy vegetables help with resistance to radiation, protecting immune systems immensely. So can ginger, garlic, turmeric, goji berries, and mint leaves
Vegetables yield 48x more nutrition-per-dollar than meat
Eating kiwi fruit can combat colds
Citrus fruit: boost DNA repair; peel is very important; get lemon
2-3 servings of cruciferous vegetables a day to decrease nasal inflammation; to get the sulforaphane: either don’t cook, or cut the broccoli, wait 40 minutes for the enzyme to activate, and then cook; or cook with powdered mustard (applied before eating)
Cruciferous vegetables should be fresh, not frozen
Sweet potatoes: one of the healthiest and cheapest foods; the more yellow/orange its flesh, the healthier; one boiled potato a day greatly decreases inflammation; also purple sweet potatoes or purple potatoes are great
Garlic/leek/onions are very good at destroying / protecting against cancer cells
Organic produce: 20-40% healthier; either buy or buy more regular food
Salt bath for vegetables to remove pesticide residues
Flax seed: make sure to grind it
Flax seeds can replace eggs in baking; for each egg in the recipe, whisk one tablespoon of ground flax with three tablespoons of water until the mix becomes gooey
Eating one handful of nuts five days a week can increase your lifespan by two years; nut/seed deficit kills millions of people each year
Walnuts are the healthiest nuts
Peanuts are not actually nuts; they are a legume.
Turmeric contains curcumin and is one of the healthiest spices you can use; eat a quarter of a teaspoon a day
Mix black pepper with turmeric to increase body’s consumption of turmeric
Can get turmeric root fresh and it will keep for many weeks
Fenugreek: a good spice for weight lifting; side effect: makes your armpits smell like maple syrup
Ginger is good for headaches/nausea
Red onions have 70% more antioxidants than white onions; always eat red onions, same with any fruit or vegetable that has a color/pigment
Eat a serving of berries every day
Rather than baguette, get darker bread; baguette is tasty but it’s not so healthy; it’s white bread, with salt.
Peppermint: most antioxidant-rich common herb
Cloves are the most antioxidant-rich spice
Vinegar is a condiment that is good for you
Cough: avoid caffeinated drinks
Instead of cereal, how about brown rice for breakfast?
Green tea can reduce allergy symptoms
White tea with lemon = more healthy than green tea
Coldsteep tea to make it healthier; do it overnight
Do not brush your teeth until an hour after eating something sour, because your softened enamel may become damaged by brushing
To increase weight gain, don’t drink before a meal, and minimize/eliminate drinking during a meal
For protein, eat a lot of legumes -- three servings a beans each day
And that would be that, I would say, except it wouldn't be so honest. I wanted a kebab today, and I went and got it. I would say that's okay — treat yoself — but what I'm suspicious about is the notion that I am treating myself. Couldn't I make something healthier and cheaper that I might enjoy even more? Yes, definitely. How about treating myself this way?
Changing my eating habits hasn't been so much like turning a switch but like entering an undulating train that goes forward and back, comes to its happy destination and then arrives at a meaty carnival, then backs up and goes too far, ending up at candyland. Only, this time, the visit to candyland is short and serves up good reasons not to come back. The next time we get a little closer to stomach paradise, etc. I'm floating in a place where I'm starting to develop my own rules, and gradually, they become firm.
When it comes to diet, I'm learning to try not to undermine what is ideal for what is practical. To a certain extent, I hope to limit the bad ways I could die.
To paraphrase Haruki Murakami in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, to deal with something as unhealthy as writing, a person needs to be as healthy as possible.