Sharing Menus

Mitt Romney meets Mike Pollan

The first goal of this blog was to share insights on healthy living, chiefly diet.  We distilled these insights from the oracles at hand: science, tradition, and scripture.   Our title is taken from the Word of Wisdom, a canonized scripture that Mormons are still learning to live.

Though scripture serves as our north star, our blog seeks a conversational tone that invites cooks of every persuasion.  Diversity is strength.  Which brings us to a current food article in the N. Y. Times, “Not Just for Sundays After Church”.  The article is about the evolving Mormon cuisine: “With Mitt Romney’s candidacy for the White House, Americans are newly curious about all the traditions of the [Mormon] church he has done so much to support.”

The article notes, “Healthy living was of great interest to the religion’s founders, and their dietary prescriptions of little meat, much produce and plenty of whole grains make them sound like proto-Pollans.”  And it’s true; Pollan’s excellent book, In Defense of Food, heavily influenced by science, also resonates with our understanding of a scripture-guided diet, in contrast to that crazy modern (MAD) diet the world has stumbled into.

The Last Word on Menus

The last three posts have invoked excellent comments on writing weekly menus.  You, who comment, besides sharing your ideas, also shape this blog.  I’ve gone back and analyzed the first 2000 comments on this blog.  It took me two days; two themes  resonated:

1. Readers want practical recipes that follow our healthy-eating precepts.
2. Readers want wholesome, affordable menus based on these recipes.

There’s a repeating theme in the comments.  Homemakers are concerned about the health of their family and they are tired of the pressure and poor outcome of “wingin’ it” at dinnertime.  There is a growing interest in menu writing but we need a better way to share ideas.

Please Comment

After some pondering, it seems we might move to a new format of three posts a week:

• One post would feature the Healthy Change of the week, with supporting information. 
• The second post would offer a suggested menu of three or four dinner meals, with recipe references. 
• The third post (most weeks), would provide a recipe congruent with the Healthy Changes(s).  To reflect a broad spectrum of ideas, we would need readers to share menu ideas.  This could be done through our email address.

Please comment:  Is this a good way to go?  Is there a better way? And please excuse that we haven't posted this week's Healthy Change on better breakfasts.  It will follow in a day.

Photo from the N.Y Times

is sugar toxic?

In his 1925 book, Food, Health, Vitamins, the pioneer English biochemist, R. H. A. Plimmer made a foreboding but prophetic comment about sugar in America: 

“The Americans, with their love of candy, are the largest sugar eaters in the world.  Incidentally, cancer and diabetes, two scourges of civilization, have increased proportionately to the sugar consumption.” 

We did not heed Plimmer’s warning—our sugar intake continued to increase, as did the incidence of diabetes and cancer.  Add to that list the illness that has since grown to be the #1 cause of death: heart disease.  Everyone knows excessive sugar is unhealthy, but we accept it, we’re much like the air traffic controllers who fall asleep at their station. 

Now a true crusader has taken on the task of awakening slumbering Americans.  Gary Taubes, author of the definitive exposition of the sugar-related diseases, Good Calories, Bad Calories, has fired another blast in the New York Times Magazine, under the title “Is Sugar Toxic?”

Taubes invokes the work of Robert Lustig whose YouTube video lecture, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” has gone viral and is approaching one million viewings.  Lustig is a respected professor at a respected medical school (UCSF), and he addresses the common sugars—glucose and fructose—like a revival preacher, calling them “poison”, “toxic”, and “evil”.  Lustig gives a brief summary of the chemistry that supports his views about sugar, particularly fructose and its role in fat generation, and links them to the rise in obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and the common cancers.  He closes with a benediction, however, on the natural sugars found in fruits: “When God makes a poison, He wraps it in the antidote.”

Taubes also reviews the work of Dr. John Yudkin who in the '70s warned of sugar's toxicity with his book, "Sweet and Dangerous" (the U.S. version of "Pure White and Deadly," published in England).  Yudkin made the link between sugar intake and heart disease when the loudest experts were (wrongly, it turns out) touting the “lipid theory” of heart disease that claimed dietary saturated fat and cholesterol were the cause.  A generation was wasted as thousands of “low-fat” foods and sugary drinks were added to our dietary.  This campaign not only failed to reduce the incidence of heart disease, it introduced two new epidemics: overweight and type 2 diabetes.  Yudkin was so effectively ridiculed by the lipid theory camp—yeah, scientists do that kind of stuff too—that it became politically incorrect to criticize sugar or mention Yudkin’s work.  Well, the times have changed—Yudkin, now deceased, is getting new respect and his books have become collector’s items.

Finally, Taubes returns to the subject of sugar and cancer, introduced by Plimmer in 1925.  Though the mechanism is not fully understood, there is no question that cancer increases with sugar intake and with diabetes.  Studies have shown cancer to be nonexistent in primitive societies who don’t consume refined sugars.  Taubes closes by quoting two cancer experts:

Dr. Craig Thompson (head of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in N.Y.):  I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet and eat as little as I possibly can.

Dr. Lewis Cantley (director of Harvard Medical Schools cancer center):  Sugar scares me.

Taubes’ closing paragraph:

“Sugar scares me too, obviously. I’d like to eat it in moderation . . . but I don’t actually know what that means, and I’ve been reporting on this subject and studying it for more than a decade. If sugar just makes us fatter, that’s one thing. We start gaining weight, we eat less of it. But we are also talking about things we can’t see — fatty liver, insulin resistance and all that follows. Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do.”

Government vs. Nutrition

In the November 6, 2010 New York Times there is an article that reveals the conflicting roles of government in nutrition.  This article, by Michael Moss, is well-written and worth reading. Titled “While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales”, it tells an Orwellian story of how one government agency offered free consultation to Domino’s and helped them to improve the popularity of their pizza by adding more cheese. 

This aid to Domino’s was provided by Dairy Management, a branch of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.  Pizza is high in calories and low in nutrients, just the kind of fast food the USDA is supposed to discourage.  Other fast food companies have also been helped by USDA’s Dairy Management group. 

The USDA has a group charged with encouraging healthy eating—the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.  Unfortunately the center has a tiny budget, much smaller than Dairy Management’s, and is no threat to the fast food companies.  The food environment in America has been described as “toxic”.  All would agree, I think, that we can and must do better.  Unfortunately, as this article illustrates, our government is much less helpful than it could be.  We are on our own here, I fear.

As a point of full disclosure, I enjoy pizza but eat it less than once a month.  If a healthier pizza were available—perhaps with a thinner, whole-grain crust, or more tomato sauce—I would enjoy it more often.  Wouldn’t you?