My thought today is around healthy eating. I was having a great discussion with a coworker at lunch as we shoveled down our semi-healthy food. The discussion started because my co-worker, she, is reading a book right now titled In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, by Michael Pollan. As I have not read this book, I still felt compelled to share my thoughts on the subject; after all, I am an expert on unhealthy eating as I have been doing that for almost 29 years now. So through this discussion, we discussed the theories expressed by Mr. Pollan and were in total agreement with his thoughts. http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php add
I was also disgusted that he wrote a booked based on seemingly common sense...which I claim to have....but still eat as unhealthy as I possibly can. Thank you Mr. Pollan for making me question my level of common sense.
The premise of his book, as I understand from my friend, is that the more healthy that we (Americans) try to become, the less healthy we eat. We move away from fresh healthy foods and instead inject ourselves with processed foods. We even put additives in our food to make them healthier instead of eating food that naturally have the vitamins and minerals we need. We wonder why cancer and heart disease rates are so high.
We also speculated about our “American Culture” and how it enables this problem of unhealthy eating. You would think that a country made up of so many different cultures would somehow assimilate the best aspects of each culture and implement them into our daily lives. Alas, we are over weight, over worked, under nourished, and under loved. Hmmm...anyone seeing some connections here?
I am excitedly awaiting the borrowing of my friends book and would like to challenge all of my followers (all two of you) to read this book and let's discuss it. My common sense is telling me that the rest of you (those I sent this email too) just link to my page daily and religiously and have not registered yet. Yes, I think that sounds right. Please weigh in on this topic, as I will be anticipating your thoughts and responses. Please let me know what your common sense says to you....it may be that we have a common sense problem in the US! We could probably find more evidence to support this! LOL
As much as it is that we say we are trying to be healthier, many people just don't do it. The old adage, "talk is cheap," works pretty well there. For those that actually make the effor to be healthier by actually exercising properly, will in turn eat properly. I'm a good example. Once the fast food every other day diet with minimal exercise and the usual weekend beer binge, now the running 4+ miles a day and watching what I eat so as to run further.
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