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More on "Fat Head"

The fog has cleared a little, but I still feel uncertain about my nutritional future.  For years, I've been brainwashed into thinking that fat is bad, grains are good.  Ancel Keys, a Minnesota cardiologist somehow got the AHA and the rest of America to buy into the premise that high-fat, meat-laden diets were causing heart disease rates to skyrocket.  At his insistence, we all soon believed that low-fat was the way to go.  We all stocked up on potatoes, pasta, rice and loaded them up with substances like margarine and fat-free sour cream.  Then guys like Atkins and Agatston come along and tell some kinds of fat are better than other, and maybe we should eat real butter, use real cream, and eat some meat.  In fact, lean cuts of meat as it turns out, maybe help fight fat better than anything else!

These, and other revelations, crop up in the movie "Fat Head".  (For a Taoist's take on this movie, check out my friend's blog at A Taoist Journey to the Stars)

And so, here I am, feeling like I don't know what.  My most recent trip to Costco netted me eight boxes of pasta and two bags of breakfast cereal - both of which I'd be doing a disservice to feed to my kids, according to the research behind "Fat Head"!

So.  What the heck do I do now?  While I'm trying to sift through Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories", I reach for a quick fix with my favorite food writer - Michael Pollan...and I remember some of his (and others') sage words from his "Food Rules", particularly: 

1.  Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
2.  Avoid food products that make blatant health claims.
3.  Stay out of the middle of the supermarket as much as possible.
4.  If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.
5.  Eat your colors.
6.  Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature.

While, yes, I've been turned on my nutritional little head, I am trying to find order out of chaos.  And while I'm trying to do that, I found this little funny and decided to share it with you.


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  1. SherryMarch 23, 2011 at 2:16 PM

    Do you remember diet guru Susan Powter who was so popular back in the 70's? She was this loud platinum blode with a body to die for who claimed to have lost a massive amount of weight eating whole foods.

    There was a controversy over her weightloss claim. Her brother called it Bulls**t and she seemed to drop out of favor. Which is too bad, because I would have saved myself a lot of grief had I listened to her.

    Whole grains, fresh fruits and veggies, lean protein, low fat dairy, nuts and seeds. Nearly 20 years ago, those were the choices she was pushing. How right she was.

    The only breakfast cereal I am advised to eat is Old Fashioned oatmeal or steel cut oatmeal. Everything else, according to my doctor has way too much sugar in it. I looked and discovered that for every bowl of raisin bran I was eating, I was consuming 6 to 8 teaspoons of sugar even before I added any of my own. And I thought I knew how to make healthier choices. BAH!

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