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Jun30

F as in Fat…and Finances

Posted in: Aging and Costs of Aging, Obesity and Weight Loss

Fat and broke, and getting fatter: the Healthy Americans new study showing that no state dropped in obesity rate last year and 38 states are over 25% obese.

But undiscussed is income: it’s a major driver of the obesity epidemic, because calorie-rich food is cheap and getting cheaper. Over 35 percent of adults who earn under $15,000 a year are obese, but only 24.5 percent in the over-$50,000 per year.

Yes, this is also education, and ethnicity: poor urban neighborhoods too often are unsafe places to play, and have too few fruits and vegetables for sale.

Several people have made this connection already: Suze Orman has dedicated this CNBC season to “health and wealth”, and has linked out-of-control finances and out-of-control weight, and though I’m not a FICO score expert, I do know that people who have less money to spend (i.e., nearly everyone) are more mindful about what their dollars can buy.

And it’s no secret that calories are cheap: when you can buy 800 calories for $1 (2 liter soda) and the graph below shows cheap fast food, it’s no wonder. As fast food has gotten cheaper, healthier foods have gotten more expensive.

But there is a cure: it’s learning to cook (even wealthy and famous people are doing it: Kristen Stewart makes her own 6 hour marinara); and it’s eating SOUL (sustainable, organic, unprocessed, local…grown yourself) food.
Jun7

Personal Food Revolution #7: Reverse Diabetes with What You Eat…Out

Posted in: Common Conditions, Wellness and Health

One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #7 of 7.*

Carol has diabetes. She is 48 years old, the mother of two and a successful Washington litigator. She does not know what to eat at the dinner she must attend tonight.

She eats out ten times weekly, usually orders chicken Caesar salad, and snacks on cheese, chocolate and energy bars. She often eats the last of her Taco Bell in the front seat of her car before going in for the night.

I tell her that she can beat insulin resistance, which is causing her out of control diabetes. But she has to treat her disease like her best client–conscientiously.

She is to avoid red and processed meat for 12 weeks: the heme iron increases diabetes risk. Ditto, any food with the words High Fructose or Enriched Flour or Sugar or Rice or Corn Syrup on the package.

Tonight, like every night out, she should have two dinner salads with good vinaigrette over 20 minutes with good fish or lean poultry, and drink hot cinnamon tea afterwards. She should pack almonds, high protein cereal, tea bags and string cheese when she travels.

Carol liked knowing what to eat, and practiced it, a lot, with coaching. She now teaches water aerobics in Virginia.

*adapted from ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.
May24

Personal Food Revolution #5: Eat Your Way to Lower Cholesterol

Posted in: Common Conditions, High Cholesterol

One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #5 of 7.*

Tom’s case was a quandary: a Pulitzer-winning health reporter, he already exercised diligently, running about four miles most days. He had long ago given up meat and most cheese. Yet his LDL (bad) cholesterol was 169, way above the recommended 130 and an optimal 100.

A single Dad, Tom’s two teenagers had grown accustomed to a stick of butter in their weekend Slow Roasted Hen.

So I worked with Tom to add multiple terrific dishes to their eating cycle. There was a Turkish eggplant recipe, and white beans with escarole and tomato.

His internist was astonished. His LDL dropped 33% to an acceptable 114; his healthy HDL cholesterol was up to 75.

Apart from not spending his own and his employer’s money on drugs, Tom found another benefit to this program.

His daughter regularly makes steel cut oatmeal for breakfast and enjoys split pea/carrot soup with tarragon, nutmeg and barley. And his son’s special request for dinner this past Saturday was grilled salmon with honey-mustard marinade.

You can’t get that with a pill.

*adapted from ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.
**adapted from the Wall Street Journal report on lowering cholesterol, by Tom Burton.

N.B. investigate top Amazon.com diet and nutrition alternatives to cholesterol medication
May6

Personal Food Revolution #2: Are You Overweight, Never Hungry and at Risk For Stroke?

Posted in: Common Conditions, Obesity and Weight Loss

One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #2 of 7.*

Susan was just 50 when her younger brother Bill died of a stroke. Always significantly overweight, she nevertheless was healthy. She felt energetic, took no medicines, ran a small textile business (“love fabric”), avoided doctors (“no need, unless you’re sick”). But Bill’s death moved her like nothing else, until at 51, she had a TIA.

Susan was a very picky eater: raised on corn casserole and peanut brittle, she kept to those foods. She had trouble changing her eating habits because she did not actually feel hunger. So she learned to stop eating when the plate was 80 percent empty.

She also promised to begin to eat six fruits and vegetables daily, especially high folate (vitamin B9) ones, because folate in food cuts stroke risk.

She chose one citrus fruit (tangerines), one vitamin C rich veggie (she chose red peppers), one green leafy (spinach), and three cruciferous (Brussels sprouts, watercress, broccoli) veggies. Her risk just dropped 55 percent, I told her.

After four years, 72 pounds, three changes of wardrobe, two years off cigarettes, a new kitchen and one more scary TIA, Susan is still stroke free…and walking 20 blocks daily in Manhattan as a textile buyer for a major department store.

*adapted from ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.
Apr12

Taste the Transformative Power of Lifestyle Changes

Posted in: Aging and Costs of Aging, Common Conditions, Wellness and Health

The transformative power of lifestyle changes is the best medicine…and synergistic with meds and devices.

But what if you can’t eat the best diet possible, exercise most efficiently, alleviate stress in the model way and be nakedly intimate in your closest relationships?

You start wherever you are. Perfect is often the enemy of good. Dean Ornish is the chief apostle of this approach. I think his work deserves to be highlighted.

Next week in Portland Oregon, I’ll feed 19.6 calories of high quality Xocolatl chocolate to 200+ IACP teachers, chefs and restaurateurs during my talk on culinary medicine.

Because for people who love food, flavor can be a form of meditation. You enjoy it more fully/ experience more pleasure if you let it melt, slowly, gently, seductively. In your mouth. And your arteries dilate, to boot.

Turn on the genes that protect your immune system. Turn off the genes that promote breast and prostate cancer, and impotence. What you include in your diet is even more important, to someone who loves food, than what you exclude.

Jamie Oliver’s flash-mob of wok-ing West Virginians is a great way to show that small changes make a big difference. To you and your relationships.
photos of 1000 West Virginians with their stir-fries

We already know what works. Taste it!