There is an amazing couple of lectures that were done by a professional researcher by the name of Dr. Lustig.

1. Sugar, the Bitter Truth

2. Fat Chance, Fructose 2.0

In these lectures Dr. Lustig goes over the science of sugar and how it affects our biology.

Some things I learned from the lecture:

1. It’s the sugar in all our food that is making us fat

2. Fat itself does not make us fat but can be healthy

3. There is a historical trend of increasing sugar in our diets

I learned a ton and these videos have really shaped my understanding of today’s food environment.

There are sections that are more heavy on the biology/science, which can be skipped over if it gets too boring.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Thanks for reading!

Overview

What exactly is food anyway? We all take our ideas of food for granted but in modern times our food supply has been heavily adulterated with preservatives, additives, and all sorts of extra chemicals we don’t need.

Disclaimer: I am not a dietician, this article is just my opinion, please seek professional help when making changes to your diet.

Food:
material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy.
Source: merriam-webster

Food has generally been modified to appeal to our taste buds, have long shelf life, and be cheaper to manufacture. Due to all the changes created by the food industry, we need a way to help navigate the swamp of modern food products, and find real food.

Identifying Food

A method of identifying food that I use is to ask myself the following questions. And depending on the answer I determine whether I should eat it or not.

1. Is this a plant or animal?
   If I have a hard time figuring that out, then it’s probably not food, or at least is moving toward the not-food category. Examples of plants and animals include:

   1. Plants: Rice, Beans, Fruits, Veggies, etc.

   2. Animals: Beef, Chicken, Fish, etc.

   3. NOT Plant or Animal: Aspartame, refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white sliced sandwich bread with a 3 month shelf life.

2. How refined is this? Less is better.
   Flour used to be part of a wheat plant, but it has been processed into a clean white powder. Flour is not true food, because you don’t find it out in the wild in plant form. It usually has to be enriched with minerals because they were lost with processing. So its one step away from true food. Sugar is another example that’s worse than flour for it’s negative impact on the body.

Health vs Convenience

There are many reasons we, as a society, don’t all eat perfectly fresh food and live healthy lives. For one, we can’t all be farmers and also live in a technically advanced society. That requires specialization, which then makes us dependent on the food industry for food. Companies are designed for creating profit which incentivizes the change to a more adulterated food supply.

Another reason for our food situation is that we need food that can last in our refrigerators and pantries, and be easy to eat. So we get boxed foods that just require heating and mixing, such as pre-made pasta with flavoring packets.

To properly eat healthy, requires buying more raw ingredients, and cooking them ourselves. This means washing, chopping, cooking, seasoning, and all the rest of the work that goes into good food. Eating healthy is hard work!

A Balanced Approach

Am I advocating for a pure diet of only fruits, veggies, and meat? No, that is impractical. Not everyone has the skill, time, energy, or money to live a lifestyle like that. Not to mention, sometimes junk food is just for fun!

Instead, a good approach is to create a base of ingredients and foods that act as our staple diet. Things like rice, beans, potatoes, chicken, beef, fish, etc, can form the basis of a good diet. From the basics we can add variety by adding convenience foods, like quick pasta, to a steak and adding a fresh sliced tomato to round it off.

A healthy dish should usually have one of each:

1. Protein: beans, fish, chicken, beef, lentils, etc.

2. Plant: spinach, lettuce, onion, cucumber, carrot, tomato, etc.

3. Carbs: rice, bread, potato, etc

Notice this list is not just Protein, Carbs, and Fat. By making one item, Plant, I am trying to point out the lack of important minerals and vitamins in a diet without plants. I have had too many meals that had carbs, proteins, and fat, but not any actual plants in them. Plants really provide an important source of special nutrients (micro-nutrients) that we need.

Best of luck and good eating!

Thanks for reading!

Overview

Let talk about the modern lifestyle and how it keeps us from moving our bodies, and what we can do about it.

Sitting in Chairs

Chairs are everywhere, and we sit in them a long time. When we eat, watch tv, when we drive, we are sitting in chairs. This is a well studied issue and has several health drawbacks due to the amount of sitting we do in our lifetimes.

1. Sedentary Behavior and Health Outcomes Source: Biswas, A., et al. (2015). Sedentary time and its association with risk for disease incidence, mortality, and hospitalization in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Internal Medicine, 162(2), 123-132.

2. Sitting Time and All-Cause Mortality Risk Source: Chau, J. Y., et al. (2013). Sedentary behavior and risk of mortality from all-causes and cardiometabolic diseases in adults: Evidence from the HUNT3 population cohort. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 49(11), 737-742.

3. Sitting Time and Cardiovascular Disease Source: Young, D. R., et al. (2017). Sedentary behavior and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality: A science advisory from the American Heart Association. Circulation, 136(8), e143-e156.

4. Sitting Time and Obesity Source: Saunders, T. J., et al. (2018). Associations of sedentary behavior, sedentary bouts, and breaks in sitting with cardiometabolic health in children with and without obesity. Obesity, 26(6), 1113-1119.

Note: links working as of 7/6/23

Staring at Screens

Whether its looking at our phones or staring at monitors for work, there are a lot of screens around. By there nature, screens slow us down, since we can’t both look at screens and watch where we are going.

If you are like me and work a desk job, then the amount of hours in front of a screen is too damn high! What makes a desk job especially bad, is the fact that most people are also sitting in chairs when we are staring at screens.

Get Moving

What do we do to deal with this lifestyle issue? Obviously, the solution to being sedentary is to start moving. What to do is not the issue but how to do it, since if it was so easy, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place, right?

Here are some basic ideas to get started:

• Start walking in the mornings, at lunch time, and after dinner.

• Start a body weight exercise routine in the mornings, evenings, or at night.

• Do chores around the house as a form of exercise and get things done too!

• Take up hiking on the weekends or evenings

To actually do these seemingly simple things, first start very small and focus on being consistent. It is better to do a 5 minute walk every morning for a month, than to do a 30 minute walks twice a week, but then to stop doing it after the first week. The chances of going from 5 minutes to 10 over time are much higher if you do it everyday.

Sleep More

Tired people don’t move as much. It takes energy to move and so getting well rested is important. Getting good sleep is good for more than just moving about, so you can expect other benefits as well, such as better thinking ability, and more emotional control.

Getting good sleep also ties into less screen time too. If you have a habit of watching screens before bed, try to put them away, or at least out of sight before you start your bedtime routine (a hard habit to break).

So place more importance on sleeping to improve your overall health.

Thanks for reading!