Repair your body image

We all tend to value what meets the eye. It’s human nature! When it comes to our health, how we look can seem more important than how we feel (how else to explain high heels?) I’ve been thinking lately about how our language reflects our priorities. For instance, there are only a handful of descriptive words for feeling sick to your stomach -- queasy, nauseated, unsettled. But there are literally dozens of synonyms for throwing up, the outward manifestation of feeling sick to your stomach. I won’t list them here. After all, this is supposed to be a food blog. In fact, just saying “food blog” makes my stomach feel a little... unsettled.

Anyway, the point is, outward appearances carry a lot of weight for us -- pun intended. If you’re thin and fit in our society, it symbolizes that you are successful, happy, healthy, and popular. If you’re overweight, it suggests you are a failure, lazy, and have no self-discipline. Never mind that many highly successful people battle their weight (think of Oprah!) We all fall into the trap of judging books by their covers.

The New York Times health column calls our attention to a new blog this week, called Weightless. Unlike most diet blogs, this one's refreshing goal seems to be to help readers focus less on the numbers on the scale and more on making peace with their bodies. I particularly like this post, which picks apart the ridiculous diet advice given by women’s magazines.

Weightless has a lot of potential. It will be interesting to see where it goes. The blog’s biggest drawback so far is that it’s targeted only toward women. In this day and age, body image problems affect everyone.

Is obesity really the problem?

Obesity is bad for you and causes disease. This belief is so ingrained in our culture, and reinforced so consistently by medical experts, the media, the fitness industry, and everyone around us, that nobody stops to question it. Well, almost nobody. A few people have suggested that obesity may not actually be to blame for all the health problems it’s associated with.

One of them is Amy Farrell, professor of women’s and gender studies at Dickinson University, who appeared a couple of weeks ago on the Colbert Report (of all places!) and pointed out that it’s possible to be fat and healthy, just as it’s possible to be thin and sick. By associating obesity with illness, Farrell argued, we are creating a kind of discrimination against fat people.

The fat acceptance movement is a topic for a future post. But as far as obesity and its connection to disease goes, Farrell could be on to something. Remember your logic studies? Just because two events occur simultaneously doesn’t mean one causes the other.

Look at it this way: the same thing that causes you to gain weight (that is, an unhealthy diet) can also cause you to develop diabetes. Both weight gain and diabetes are the results of an unhealthy diet. Your excess pounds did not cause the diabetes. Eating the wrong foods did. Trying to get rid of weight by going on a gimmicky crash diet does not address your real problem, which is not your weight, but the fact that your body is not getting the proper balance of foods.

Still confused? Consider that smoking stains your teeth and can cause lung cancer. Both stained teeth and lung cancer are the results of smoking. If you develop lung cancer, it will not go away when you bleach your teeth.

It’s a small mental shift, but it could help you approach weight loss from a healthier perspective. For more reading on the subject, visit the resource page of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA).

Adjusting your workout for winter

Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend, and with it goes your opportunity to go for a bike ride, work in the yard, or do anything else outdoors in the late afternoons. Even if you exercise at a gym, the early darkness makes it tempting to blow off that end-of-the-day obligation and hurry home to your cozy den, doesn’t it?

My exercise program consists of hiking in the woods, but it gets tougher in the wintertime. Besides the shortened daylight, here in northern New England we have harsh weather conditions to deal with. Breaking a snowshoe trail in two or three feet of fresh powder can be more strenuous than you bargain for. Venturing outside at all when it’s 20 degrees below zero becomes a matter of gearing up for survival.

Then there’s hunting season, when it becomes necessary to wear a blaze-orange vest and make noise so you don’t get shot (seriously, it happens to a few people each year).

For years, I stuck to my walking routine in the wintertime, five days a week, come ice or snow, hell or high water. Believe me, I’ve suited up and strapped on my snowshoes in the worst weather you can imagine. I’ve bashed through the woods in my Day-glo accessories, shaking my wrist bells like one of Santa’s reindeer, my heart jumping whenever I spot someone carrying a rifle.

Last year, though, I came down with a cold right after Thanksgiving, and my workout schedule kind of went off the rails. By the time things settled down after the holidays, I realized I hadn’t been out in the woods in weeks.

I decided to try an experiment... and kept right on taking it easy. Instead of busting my butt in hip-deep snow every day, I walked up and down our plowed road on nice days only. I practiced yoga. I shoveled our front steps. I vacuumed the house. I carried logs in from the woodpile. But I did no official “exercise” whatsoever.

Guess what? I stayed healthy for the rest of the season, and I did not gain a single pound. Come springtime, I was full of energy and eager to get back outside, instead of exhausted from battling the elements. In fact, I think I’m going to do the same thing this year -- give myself a break from routine, I mean.

What about your exercise schedule? Does winter make your usual activities difficult, inconvenient, or logistically impossible? Don’t force yourself to keep plugging away, but don’t abandon the whole concept of exercise either. Try doing something else, something more fun and maybe a bit less structured. Join a dance class, do water aerobics at an indoor pool, take up yoga or Pilates, learn how to figure skate.

Wintertime is challenging enough already. Exercise should be something you look forward to, not another thing on your “to-do” list. Besides, change is good!

No more 'Dumb Choices'

Did you ever take a college class with one of those professors who thought it was a good idea to let students grade their own work? “What do you think you deserved on this paper?” Hmm, tough question! I’d give myself an A. What would you do?

Even a college freshman can see that a self-grading system doesn’t work very well. Especially a college freshman. So how could anyone expect Smart Choices -- a program designed by a group of food manufacturers to award special labels to products that met their own criteria for being healthy -- to do any better?

When the Smart Choices program was rolled out couple of months ago, it was met with howls of laughter or outrage, depending on which commentaries you read. Especially ridiculed was the fact that products like Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Krispies, and Cracker Jacks had earned the all-but-meaningless Smart Choices check mark.

A member of the Smart Choices board defended the system by saying such products were better breakfast options than, say, a doughnut. This prompted a few critics to start calling it the “Better Than a Doughnut” program.

Last week, the FDA announced that Dumb Choices, uh, Smart Choices, has been discontinued. The stated reason was that the existence of so many different labeling programs could mislead consumers. Products that already bear the Smart Choices logo on their packaging can keep it, but some manufacturers, such as Kelloggs, are already backing away.

The many manifestations of milk

As a kid, I always hated milk. Hated it! There it lurked by my plate at every meal, the inevitable tall glass, growing warmer and nastier by the minute, while I eyed it resentfully, knowing I wouldn’t be allowed to leave the table without forcing it down.

I remember getting a lot of stomach aches as a kid, but I didn’t put two and two together until a few years ago, when I figured out that my digestion doesn’t handle milk very well. As a result, I no longer go near the stuff. On rare occasions that I need milk as an ingredient, I substitute soy milk, almond milk, or kefir (whose fermentation process removes much of the lactose, the sugar found in milk).

Turns out I’m not alone: over 80 percent of the world’s population lacks the necessary enzyme to process lactose. Unless your ancestors hail from northernmost Europe, a region where dairy has traditionally been a dietary mainstay, drinking milk may produce symptoms of improper digestion, including gas, bloating, stomach aches, and diarrhea.

The good news is that alternatives to cow’s milk are now available at every supermarket. Besides soy and almond milk, there's rice milk, hemp milk, and oat milk. Goat’s milk, though it does contain lactose, also works for some people.

Conventional nutritional wisdom would suggest that we milk-avoiders aren’t getting enough calcium: according to the National Dairy Council (backed by the USDA Healthy Eating Guidelines), everyone should be consuming three servings of dairy per day.

Recent studies have shown, though, that milk may not be an ideal source of calcium after all, especially if your digestive system doesn’t deal with it properly. Women who drink milk on a regular basis demonstrate the same or greater rates of bone fracture as non-milk drinkers. In addition, foods like leafy greens, almonds, and canned fish (with bones) may offer calcium in a form that’s more easily absorbed by your body.

If you can find it, you may also want to try raw or unpasteurized milk. Since it’s not heat-treated, it contains live enzymes which reportedly assist with digestion. I’ve tried it and haven’t noticed much difference, but your own body is the authority. Visit RealMilk.com for more info and sources.

And for a good overview of the pros and cons of various milk substitutes, check out this L.A. Times article.

Local food: Apples

You know that saying, “an apple a day”? Forget it. This time of year, I hope you’re eating all the apples you can get your hands on.

Apples may not seem all that special -- after all, you can always buy them at the supermarket, day after day, week after week, month after month. But no waxed imported version of the fruit comes anywhere close to the taste of an apple straight from the farm stand, or better yet, right from the tree. The fresher they are, the more wonderful their flavor and texture. A month from now, they won’t be the same.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of other opportunities to enjoy apples this fall and winter -- applesauce, apple crumble, baked apples, chopped apples on your cereal -- but if you want to bite into a truly glorious apple, get up from your chair this minute and go grab yourself the freshest, crispest one you can find. I’ll wait.

Back? While you’re munching, you might like to know that apples support the health of nearly every function in your body. Eating them regularly can help prevent heart attack, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and asthma, among other diseases. In particular, apples contain a soluble fiber, called pectin, that lowers your bad cholesterol and keeps your digestive system healthy.

If you used to get my health newsletter, way back before it turned into this blog, you’ll recognize the following recipe for apple crisp. I make it at least once every fall. No question about it, this is dessert, but it’s actually a pretty healthy version of the dish.

Apple Crisp

Filling:
6 large apples, peeled (if you want), cored, and sliced
2 tablespoons water, rum, or apple cider
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Topping:
3/4 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup all-purpose or whole-wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter

Grease a 9x9 baking pan. Toss the apples in a bowl with the rest of the filling ingredients until well mixed. Place filling in the pan.

Mix oats, flour, cinnamon, brown sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl. Add butter and cut in with a fork or a pastry blender until it looks crumbly. Sprinkle the topping over the apple filling in the pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes, or until the apples are soft and mixture is bubbling. Remove from oven and let cool for at least 20 minutes before serving. A scoop of vanilla ice cream on top makes this utterly sublime.

How did your garden grow?

This was supposed to be the year of the vegetable garden, remember? The lousy economy and all-around superiority of local produce made it cool to grow your own food again. Seed catalogs and garden supply companies reported booming sales. Even the First Lady turned over a chunk of the White House lawn and put in organic greens.

Now that the harvest season is just about over, I can’t help wondering how all of those brand-new gardens turned out. Because successful vegetable gardening is far from a slam dunk. Even the experienced farmers at my local CSA reported mixed results, due to weird weather, tomato blight, and other challenges.

I’ve been waiting for someone to do a wrap-up story on America’s victory gardens and whether they were, in fact, victorious.

At some point over the summer, it occurred to me that growing vegetables is kind of like investing in the stock market (that is, if you're still brave enough to partake). Some things pay off, other things don’t, but you never know in advance what they will be. There’s no way to predict whether the summer will be hot and dry, or cool and rainy, or if a freak hailstorm will come along at exactly the wrong moment.

The best thing to do, as with the stock market, is diversify. This year, I made the mistake of over-investing in tomatoes, only to watch them all succumb to the blight.

Squashes also did poorly this year, along with any plant that liked warm, sunny weather. Among the standout performers were lettuce, kale, and other greens, which were pleased with the cool, overcast conditions. My carrots, too, fared beautifully.

I’m tempted to double or triple up on greens and carrots next year, but who knows? Next summer it may be brutally hot, or we may be invaded by some exotic carrot beetle.

Did you do a vegetable garden this summer? How did yours turn out?