Your Efforts Aimed At A Healthier Diet?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxo @ Dec 11 2006, 03:06 PM) [snapback]360559[/snapback]</div>

I'd actually say it isn't... It's most likely due to better disease prevention and control, as well as improved health care. If you look at the average American's diet, it's horrible - filled with fried foods, fatty foods, sugar, etc. Thats why so many in the country are obese. I actually find it surprising, considering the prevalence of fast food, candy, bad diets, smoking, and alcohol, that we're living longer and longer. I do not know... maybe it's all the preservatives we have in our food - they help keep everything from aging quite so quickly

*edit*
Could WWI and WWII have something to do with the life expectancies for those prior to 1930? You generally have to be 18+ to enlist, so it seems that people past a certain point wouldn't have been involved in the bloodbaths...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxo @ Dec 11 2006, 05:06 PM) [snapback]360559[/snapback]</div>

Artificial weed killers have their own ramifications that they set upon the environment. The term "organic" also means no pesticides which are linked to cancer. These are commonly used in traditional farming methods. Don't forget too that herbices and pesticides have to be manufactured, bottled and transported to these agricultural fields and this requires energy as well. In the states, organic farming is supposed to mean (at least it used to mean) rotational growing so that one field sits dormant allowing the soil to return to a more "healthy" structure. Overall, I cannot see how it's wouldn't be better for our environment.

What you've read is an interesting concept to me since I try to live with a light footprint. I'll have to try to find out more about what you've read but just wanted to point out the the "energy use" for organic growing may be offset by all of the peripheral concerns that I've mentioned.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ Dec 11 2006, 01:20 PM) [snapback]360573[/snapback]</div>

"The Future of Food" film http://www.thefutureoffood.com/ detailed alot of these issues. There was also a nice segment featured in the Bill Moyers hosted - "Earth on Edge"

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ Dec 11 2006, 01:20 PM) [snapback]360573[/snapback]</div>

Allowing fields to lie fallow is often practiced in both organic and conventional agriculture. It mainly helps to control weeds, as everything can be kept plowed down, and weeds don't get a chance to go to seed. But it's never been a requirement for organic certification.

Another practice is growing a "green manure" crop, which is then plowed into the ground to improve both soil structure and fertility.

I would guess that both practices may be more common in organic agriculture, but both are used in conventional agriculture as well.

Crop rotation is something else: growing different types of crops in rotation on a given field. This is widely practiced in both conventional and organic agriculture, as it is recognized by everyone as healthy for the soil. Any farmer who grows more than one crop will rotate crops. Where I lived in North Dakota it was universal.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxo @ Dec 11 2006, 04:06 PM) [snapback]360559[/snapback]</div>

Life expectancy statistics were historically skewed due to high infant mortality.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mojo @ Dec 12 2006, 03:13 PM) [snapback]361070[/snapback]</div>

When I raised this subject I did not mention statistics: I wrote that family historians would have noticed longer life spans on average. In other words, of people who survived infancy you may find that your parents live(d) longer than your grandparents and they lived longer than their parents. Talk to people in their 80s & 90s and many will tell you that few of their known relatives lived much beyond 75.

 

Averages can be misleading, as they are when talking about longevity. If the age 60's group is analyzed, two distinct sub-groups are already quite apparent. Those with lifestyle morbidity will die in the next 10 - 15 years, the other group will reach about 90.

And of course this analysis does not take quality of life into account.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jack Kelly @ Dec 13 2006, 01:08 PM) [snapback]361641[/snapback]</div>

The following charts are from 1990, but it's judging from the colors, it wouldn't surprise me. Courtesy of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Male life expectancy at birth
Female life expectancy at birth

There's also a ridiculous amount of information here, if you're so inclined: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/organizations/...bodi/index.html

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gene @ Dec 11 2006, 09:26 AM) [snapback]360308[/snapback]</div>

Bingo!

My cholesterol was horrible for years. The cause was simple, I was consuming vast quantities of partially hydrogenated oils every day, mostly in the form of cookies and baked goods and peanut butter.

Some Google time revealed the error of my ways.

Now, with only 10 mg a day of Lipitor, and a stringent ban on trans fats in my diet, I have now gone from "highest risk" category for heart attack/stroke, to "lowest risk," based on my cholesterol numbers.

Banning all partially hydrogenated oils from your diet is absolutely essential. My cholesterol has gone from horrible to perfect just by doing that, and doing it religiously.

All baked and fried foods from restaurants must be suspected of having partially hydrogenated oils. I will not eat donuts, cookies, french fries without first proving that they are free of partially hydrogenated oils. While most products in these groups have these trans fats, you can find others that do not. Read the ingredients! Your health depends on doing so.

I now eat peanut butter, and cookies again, but none have partially hydrogenated oils in them. I simply boycott all food products that contain trans fats. Note: be careful. A product may say "0 trans fats." If it has partially hydrogenated oils in the ingredients, it does contain trans fats. There is a loophole, where if the quanitity is small, it can be claimed as zero.

take care,

Harry

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Earthling @ Dec 13 2006, 10:34 AM) [snapback]361692[/snapback]</div>

Except that the FDA's notion of "small" is actually rather large. I think it can have something around 5 gm per serving and be listed as zero.

When the news media began to pick up on the whole trans fat thing, a lot of traditional junk foods began to put "Zero trans fat" in great big letters on their packages. I was surprised, and then skeptical, and then found out what you point out in your post:

The FDA allows companies to lie about the trans fat in their products!!! The law specifically allows them to lie. Obviously, the FDA is more concerned with protecting food manufacturers than with protecting consumers.

As a home gardner and home canner for many years (up until I left my rural North Dakota home) I was struck by the different attitude taken by the FDA and the Agriculture Dept concerning botulism: The FDA says boil suspected foods. The Department of Agriculture says discard suspected foods. Boiling does not destroy the botulism toxin. But the FDA does not want to alarm consumers.

(The above may have changed since I lived on the farmstead. But that was the conflicting advice the two agencies were giving in the 1970's.)

 

For the first 20 years in my life, growing up in Sri Lanka, I could count the number the times I've eaten "fast food". We rarely ate meat (few times a year), then also it was chicken most of the time, but fish was a regular dish at the table.

After I came to USA for college, things changed. The next three years, I ate out almost every meal. I stopped eating meat completely though.

After coming to grad school, I started cooking, which I now enjoy very much. Now I don't eat fish either. I buy vegetables every week (organic whenever possible) and cook them in my version of Sri Lankan cuisine.

I use Olive oil unless I am frying something. Most of my diet is rice and curry. I eat out couple of time a week, but still I don't eat fast food. Actually, it is not easy to find vegetarian fast food!

Anyway, this is my diet. I have never dieted in my life, given that I have been slightly underweight all my life.

Oh, and I love to eat Cliff Bars for breakfast.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Michgal007 @ Dec 15 2006, 09:19 AM) [snapback]362810[/snapback]</div>

If you weren't so far away I'd be asking for a dinner invitation.

If I'm stuck in an airport, I look for a Subways, a Quiznos, or a Mexican burrito place. Those are the three places I can get a vegetarian meal.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxo @ Dec 13 2006, 04:55 AM) [snapback]361398[/snapback]</div>

That's mostly true. I've done quite a bit of genealogy, and back 100 years or more ago, there were certainly more people dying in their 50's from a farming accident or women in their 30's from pregnancy/birth complications. But there were always a surprising number of people (to me anyway) living into their 80's, back to colonial times (my genealogy records tends to taper off in the 17th century). That's just my family, YMMV. Of my grandma's siblings, of the 7 out of 14 that lived past age 3, all lived past 70 (my grandmother to 90, some younger siblings are still alive), but my grandfather's side tended to be hit by cancer in their 60's. Some countries/regions are healthier than others, such as the colonial Southern states had a much lower life expectancy than New Englanders (less mosquito-born disease, probably).

I recently read an interesting statistic, that in 1850 men who reached age 50, I think it was, could expect to live to 71. Now, men who reach age 50 can expect to live to 76. (My numbers may be slightly off, but not much, and it's a little better for women). So we've been very good at fixing things that can kill people early over those 150+ years, but even with the advent of penicillin, knowledge of germ theory, x-rays, cholesterol levels and chemotherapy, we're still only adding 5 years to the life of an average 50-year-old. And with the large obesity rate, they expect that average number to actually fall. I wish I remember where I read that.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 15 2006, 11:00 AM) [snapback]362797[/snapback]</div>

I thought it was anything less than 2 grams can be listed as zero. They sometimes lower the serving size to get the trans-fat level per serving down to that cutoff.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Proco @ Dec 13 2006, 12:18 PM) [snapback]361668[/snapback]</div>

That's good info, I believe it. My parents live smack in the middle of the big purple spot in SW MN into SD. He's a minister in a small town, and they tell me who just had their 70th or even 75th wedding anniversary, and who was out shoveling snow for their 90-year-old neighbor, even though they're 82, etc. There was one guy pulled over for speeding, in about 2000, and the cop didn't believe the driving license was real, since it listed his birth in 1890-something. He was ready to book him for a fake driver's license but he called it in and the office verified it.

 

Just be a vegetarian. Eat fresh vegetables ,grain, nuts, beans and a little fruit. i.e. rice and beans, spaghetti and vegetarian meat balls, steamed frozen or fresh vegetabls and a pile of rice. And vegeburgers. Also any imitation meats (made with soy). Also cut up some tofu and fry it (extra firm tofu). Tofu has more protein than meat. In fact you can even do without the soy products. There is so much protein found in ordinary food.
Mary

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Michgal007 @ Dec 15 2006, 01:19 PM) [snapback]362810[/snapback]</div>

Could you please give us a recipe from your Sri Lankan or rice and curry cooking?
Mary

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Masnyd @ Dec 17 2006, 08:30 PM) [snapback]363553[/snapback]</div>

Sure.

Ok, here is how I make lentils.

Buy orange color lentils (try an Indian store), wash them properly. Chop onions, tomatoes, a clove of garlic and a piece of ginger in to very small pieces. Add them to the lentils. Then I add some lime juice (not much), powdered cinnamon and tumeric (not too much), cloves and cardamom (one piece each), some dried, chopped basil, curry powder (I bought this from Sri Lanka, you probably don't have it, so ignore this), chilly powder depending on your hotness tolerence. Add water just enough to boil the lentils and cook.

You don't need to add all these I mentioned. I optimized mine by trial and error. Depending on how much lentils you decided to cook, adjust the spices etc. Lentils grow in volume when soaked in water, so you don't need a whole lot of it for a family of four.

Anyway, stir the lentils when cooking, just keep an eye on it. Once most of the water has been consumed, add milk. We add coconut milk in Sri Lanka, but I use whole milk and it tastes good as well. Amount depends on how much gravy you want.

Stir well and let it cook until lentils are soft. Last but not least, add salt!

Eat with plain rice. Let me know how it goes.

 

This is a good thread!

Over two years after getting off the couch and working out, I've realized that as good as exercise has been, lack of portion control is undermining my results. At 5'9" - I was 213 (obese) - now 185 - 160 would be the "chart weight" and out of the diabetic high-risk zone.

I do platlet blood donation on a regular basis. They post the total cholestrol count about three days later. I can tell the weeks I've eaten healthy (less meat) when I see the cholestrol count.

One thing that has brought my cholestrol count down is red rice yeast with CoQ10. It's important to take the CoQ10 along with the red rice yeast. The ingredients are a lot like statins but much cheaper.

I want to figure out how to eat healthy and simply - must be alternatives to just slaming a tray in the microwave.