Book club: Made from Scratch

Well, the voting is dying down on the selection for the next book club and it looks like the winner, by a wide margin, is going to be Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life. This book will tie in nicely with my next super challenge which I'm going to announced this Monday. I'm so excited!!

Anyway, I digress, it also looks like the author, Jenna Woginrich, is willing be participate in our book club nonsense, I mean, discussions, so I'm very excited about that, too! So, get yer copy and start reading. I'll be posting the first discussion post sometime in mid-October so we can hopefully be finished before the holidays begin en force.

Let me know if you'd like to start sooner and I'll get on it!

New book club vote

Now that we've wrapped up the book club for Sleeping Naked Is Green, I thought I'd spring some ideas on you for the next one. The most obvious choice is Colin Beavan's recently released, No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process. But, since it's new and many don't have access to it from the library, I thought I'd put it to a vote and take suggestions.

Here are some oldies and some goodies:

Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life
Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
We could also finish Depletion & Abundance (I know, I know, bad book club host)!

Feel free to add suggestions in the comments. This is a multiple choice poll so you can pick your top 2. I wouldn't start the discussion posts until early October to give you time to acquire the book we choose and get a headstart on reading.

Anyway, what book would you like to read/follow along with for the next book club?


Reminder: The Cloth Wipe Challenge starts this Sunday the 13th and lasts for a week.

Head's up: I've got another challenge I'll announce soon after The Cloth Wipe Challenge ends. I'm so excited about it, I'm about to burst. I've been sitting on it for a few weeks now and I hope I can make it!

Sleeping Naked Is Green: Discussion 4

Woohoo! We've made it to the final discussion post of Vanessa Farquharson's book, Sleeping Naked Is Green. Once again, for those who are unfamiliar, Vanessa is the writer of the green blog, Green as a Thistle and the book summarizes the 366 green changes she made over the course of a year. In this installment we'll be covering the winter and final chapters. So, grab yourself some local wine (or not-so-local coffee if it's morning) and join me.

December: During December, Vanessa stops shaving her legs, quits downhill skiing, drinks only fair-trade tea, goes cold turkey with her vacuum, stops using paper towels and makes her own cosmetics and beauty products.

Although this chapter was somewhat light on the green changes, I found it an interesting statistic that one toilet flush on an airplane equates to over fourteen pounds of carbon dioxide, which is enough to power an average-size car for six miles. Now I have one more reason to avoid the airplane bathroom besides my fear of getting sucked out.

Vanessa also describes her meeting with Colin of No Impact Man fame, her rival at a year-long green challenge. She tries to sneak out of him more details about his toileting habits (which lack any TP), but he remains elusive on the subject. Apparently, he switched back to toilet paper after his challenge ended. Vanessa, to her benefit, still uses cloth wipes. Go Vanessa!

January: The new year brings with it no new plastic, switching to organic cotton produce bags, taking a butchering class to confront her meat-eating and switching to Bullfrog Power, which uses alternative energy sources.

Vanessa also buys a used mattress for her new place and ends up buying it from the guy working at the U-Haul rather than from the person she intended to on Craigslist. The reason for the used mattress was to avoid off-gassing. In the end, she only paid $120 for the mattress, boxspring, love seat and transportation. I'd say she also got away with her life. Really, Vanessa, taking up some guy named Fred's offer to test out a used mattress in the back of a U-Haul office sounds rather sketchy.

February: In February, Vanessa installs a dual-flush toilet (I'm jealous!), sets up a rain barrel to collect water for the garden, stops using makeup, restricts food to only that grown in the Ontario region and provides for an eco-friendly funeral in her will. In addition, she also switches over to eco-logs in the fireplace.

Epilogue: The epilogue contains a follow-up of the number of changes that she's stuck with. She doesn't go through which ones have worked out and which ones haven't per se, but she does mention a few and calculated that about 74 percent of the green changes she continues to do.

She also had Zero-footprint run the calculations (as best they could) on what kind of impact the changes made. They were able to do so on about 26 percent of her total changes (some things like consumer consumption are difficult to translate into carbon) and it resulted in approximately 11.02 tons of CO2 saved. Not bad for a cynic, eh?

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Random discussion questions:

If you are female, would you be willing to stop shaving your legs and/or armpits in the name of environmentalism? Have you stopped wearing makeup?

Do you avoid anything made or packaged in plastic? Would you be willing to forgo products that were?

Would you be willing to butcher your own meat to learn more about the process?

Do you use rain barrels?

Do you burn wood or eco-logs in your fireplace (if you have one and use it)?

What would you have liked Vanessa to have done during her challenge or have done differently? Were there things in particular that you would have liked a more thorough follow-up on?

Related posts:
Sleeping Naked Is Green: Discussion 1 (Spring)
Sleeping Naked Is Green: Discussion 2 (Summer)
Sleeping Naked Is Green: Discussion 3 (Fall)

Sleeping Naked Is Green: Discussion 3

Welcome to the third discussion post of Vanessa Farquharson's book, Sleeping Naked Is Green. For those of you who are just joining us, we are smack dab in the middle of the book. Vanessa is the writer of the green blog, Green as a Thistle and the book summarizes the 366 green changes she made over the course of a year. In this installment we'll be covering the fall chapters.

September: During September, Vanessa stops using toilet paper for #1, stops buying DVDs and rents them instead, switches to eating ethically raised fish, switches to cloth menstrual pads instead of disposable ones and exterminates bugs with eco-friendly solutions. Finally, that slut uses a natural lubricant instead of K-Y and stops using birth control pills.

I see now that she switched to cloth wipes for #1 during my first Cloth Wipe Challenge. I can't remember all the participants that first year since that was the same time my husband was diagnosed and I immediately ended up in a fog for a few months (some might say years).

Anyway, this month Vanessa realizes her relationship with Mark isn't really going anywhere and punts him back to Oregon. This is immediately remediated by a funny interview with hottie, Jake Gyllenhaal, where soul searching questions revolving around pets and cilantro ensue. Life could be a whole lot rougher.

October: In October, our heroine starts working from home twice a week, lowers the temperature on her water heater, starts air-drying all her laundry and switches over a menstrual cup. I totally loved her description of the rotting mass collecting in her now-turned-off freezer. But she never said what she ended up doing with the infestation.

Vanessa had a few issues when first using the DivaCup. Apparently, she has a black hole for a vagina and couldn't retrieve it after first inserting it. But, Vanessa managed to overcome the escape velocity issue and, with a little counseling, she figured it out. Or, rather, got it out, and she was officially a happy convert.

November: November is a little bit light as far as changes go, but she still manages to eek out learning how to sew and mend clothes, knit her own scarves and mittens, ask for only green gifts and make soup broth from scratch.

There were a lot of homey, craft oriented changes this month, which makes sense given the holidays and season. Oh yeah, and given the fact that she bought a house and just about had a nervous breakdown. But, those are minor details, really.

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Random discussion questions:

Would you be brave enough to stop using toilet paper for pee? If so, sign up for this year's Cloth Wipe Challenge (insert shameless plug here).

Do you use an eco-friendly form of birth control?

Do you air dry all or part of your laundry? Even if you live in a small place?

Do you use a menstrual cup, like the Diva Cup (ladies only)?

Do you know how to sew your own clothes and mend them? Or do you tend to just throw them out or donate them?

Related posts:
Sleeping Naked Is Green: Discussion 1 (Spring)
Sleeping Naked Is Green: Discussion 2 (Summer)

Sleeping Naked Is Green: Discussion 2

Welcome to the second discussion post of Vanessa Farquharson's book, Sleeping Naked Is Green. For those of you who are just joining us, Vanessa is the writer of the green blog, Green as a Thistle and the book summarizes the 366 green changes she made over the course of a year. In this installment we'll be covering the summer chapters.

June: During the month of June, Vanessa tackles making changes to her beauty routine by switching to a natural bar soap, using natural, mineral-based sunscreen, letting her hair air dry, not using nail polish, using natural hair dye, treating sunburns with pure aloe and using only one bar of soap for her face and body.

I believe when I read on her blog that she was using bar soap on her face, I also switched myself. I'm pretty sure I've been using Dr. Bronner's bar soap on my face since then, with much success. Another notable change she makes this month is sleeping naked (hence the title), although she laments that she has no one to share this nekkidness with except her cat.

However, the biggest change o' the month has to be selling her car. Instead of private vehicle transport she relies on her bike and public transportation and the occasional use of a Zipcar.

July: In July, Ms. Thistle attempts to build a compost bin, buy only locally and sustainably made clothes (good luck with that one!), use biodegradable garbage bags and quit social smoking. I'm sure her lungs are thanking her for it. As for the compost bin, Vanessa turns out to be construction challenged and wrangles her literary agent to come over and build it for her.

During this month of her project, she discovers how green her grandparents really are when she goes for a visit, strictly because they live according to a lifestyle they grew up with, having lived through the Depression and wartime. They grow much of their own food and her grandfather hunts and fishes. When it comes down to it, Vanessa realizes she has a lot less to complain about with her green changes since many people live or lived this way not as a matter of choice.

August: At the height of summer's heat, Vanessa skips A/C and chooses only a hand held fan, uses only cold water for her laundry, switches from paper napkins to cloth and makes her own jams and preserves. Apparently, my jam recipes convinced her to give canning a try and she successfully made some peach and plum vanilla jam without poisoning herself and others.

Unfortunately, her love life isn't as sweet and Vanessa resorts to giving GreenSingles.com a try. It sounds like she ran into some real winners there and ends up sticking to a romance with someone she already knows, albeit not exactly the right match for her. I mean, really, who doesn't know what a Mini is anyway? (You'll have to read the book to find out what I'm talking about here :)

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Random discussion questions:

Would you be willing to give up your car?

How about your A/C?

Do you use only cold water in your laundry?

Do you have a compost bin?

If you are single (or married, you naughty reader), have you looked into Greensingles.com?

Related posts:
Sleeping Naked Is Green: Discussion 1

Sleeping Naked Is Green book club

Since it looks like 80 or so people are interested in the book club for Sleeping Naked Is Green, I might as well announce it now so you all have time to get your reading started in time.

I'm planning on starting the book club in August and moving through it fairly quickly with posts every week. I'll be covering the book in sections, with a synopsis and asking any suitable questions. Since you all historically seem to be fast readers and this is a quick read, we'll wrap it up in a month.

So, go get your books now before the Buy Nothing Challenge starts in August! Any questions?

Depletion and Abundance book "winners"

The first three recipients of Depletion and Abundance through the Crunchy Chicken lending library are:

Tara

Abbie

Carla

For those of you listed above, send me your mailing and contact info at crunchychickenblog@gmail.com and Sharon will send out the books STAT. Ok, maybe not stat, but soon.

When you are done reading it, let me know and I'll tell you who to send it to next, to cut down on postage.

The book club for Depletion and Abundance will start on October 14th, so start reading!

Depletion and Abundance lending library

Sharon, the fine author of our next upcoming book club, Depletion and Abundance, has kindly offered three books for a giveaway.

Since a lot of you either can't afford to buy the book, it isn't in your budget or you don't have access to it through your local libraries, Sharon thought it would be fun for some of you to be able to read it with the rest of us rather than just following along with the discussion posts. This got me to thinking... rather than just give the books away, what about trying out an online book lending library for these books?

So, here's the deal, people. If you aren't able to buy or borrow the book and are interested in "winning" one of three copies to read, participating in the discussion posts and then returning to me for further lending, sign up in the comments to this post.

The three book recipients will be chosen at random on Friday, October 3rd, at 6:00 pm PST. What you need to agree to when signing up is sending the book back when you are done. This should be a fairly minimal cost (unless you live abroad) since you can send it USPS via media mail for rather cheap. Then I can run the lending library "giveaway" again for those who don't have access to the book.

If you're interested in borrowing the book, sign up!

Fall Book Club: Depletion and Abundance

There's just nothing quite like curling up with a good book when fall is in the air. And, because it seems rather unanimous to begin a new book, I'll be hosting a new book club starting in October.

We'll be reading none other than our very own Sharon Astyk's first book, Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front. Since this is a new book don't expect to find it in your library yet, although it doesn't hurt to ask or make a request for it. There are some used copies floating around, but not enough to satisfy all you voracious readers out there.

What's this book about you ask? From the publisher:

Climate change, peak oil and economic instability aren't just future social problems - they jeopardize our homes and families right now. Our once-abundant food supply is being threatened by toxic chemical agriculture, rising food prices and crop shortages brought on by climate change. Funding for education and health care is strained to the limit, and safe and affordable housing is disappearing.

Depletion and Abundance explains how we are living beyond our means with or without a peak oil/climate change crisis and that, either way, we must learn to place our families and local communities at the center of our thinking once again. The author presents strategies to create stronger homes, better health and a richer family life and to:

live comfortably with an uncertain energy supply

prepare children for a hotter, lower energy, less secure world

survive and thrive in an economy in crisis, and

maintain a kitchen garden to supply basic food needs.

Most importantly, readers will discover that depletion can lead to abundance, and the anxiety of these uncertain times can be turned into a gift of hope and action.

As per usual, book club posts will be on every other Tuesday starting October 14th. I know a lot of you already own the book and have started reading it, but many of us haven't yet so I'll start out slow. I'm sure Sharon will be weighing in on the comments to our questions so this should be a most exciting book club this time around! I'm very excited to read this book and I hope you all enjoy it as well.

If my poll software were working, I'd be running a poll right now, but they are all out of commission at the moment, so you'll have to let me know in the comments if you are interested in this book club, if you plan on reading it as well or if you are going to just follow along by reading the discussion posts, but not the book.

Food Not Lawns follow-up

Oh, dear. I certainly did drop the ball on the Food Not Lawns book club, didn't I? One whole measly discussion post and then not a peep.

I could give you all sorts of excuses like stem cell transplants, work, kids and whatnot, but I guess I have to admit that I'm just not excited about reading this book. The hokey fluff that encompasses some of the content in the first few chapters just turned me off even though there was a lot that also got me excited.

It's like the experiments where you get electro-shocked when reaching for the candy instead of the monkey kibble. Eventually you stop reaching. Anyway, that said, I am willing to slog, I mean, move forward with the book club if there's sufficient interest out there. So, tell me people. Are you interested in finishing this book or, say, starting a new book?

For a new book, I'm suggesting Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front well, because I already have a copy of it, I'm mentioned in the credits (thanks Sharon!) and it will be so much fun making fun of it. Just kidding!

What do you want to do? There's also the option of finishing Food Not Lawns and then going straight into D&A.

So, what's it going to be?

Food Not Lawns discussion (chapters 1 - 3)

Welcome to the first installment of the Food Not Lawns book club discussion post!

Let me first, right off the bat, state that I find this book both alternately inspiring and annoying. What do I find annoying? Mamble like the following:

"In the garden, by stepping outside economic and social constructs for a moment to envision ourselves in the cradle of nature, we can get to know the ecological self."

That kind of yammer just bothers me. And most of the exercises she suggests seem contrived. Particularly the water sports one. I don't envision myself cradling that one.

That said, I will ignore this kind of language and hooha and try not to let it distract me from the task at hand: discussing the actual content. Since this book's format is quite a bit different than the other ones in the book club, I won't be breaking it down by chapters, but just discussing a chunk of the book as a whole and throwing out questions where I see fit.

Okay, let's begin.

Lawns. Big ass lawns. Why do we have a culture of lawns? Well, the 18th century French aristocrats thought it good fun to rub it in the faces of the peasants that they were so darn wealthy than they could just grow grass. Not something functional, like food, but big swaths of green, grassy goodness. That cultural ideal has continued to modern America where a beautifully manicured lawn is equated with wealth and status.

I think of it as those covenants against laundry lines. Growing food, raising chickens and hanging out your laundry = poverty. Austere, pristine grassy nonsense = wealth. Put it another way, 58 million Americans spend about 30 billion dollars every year to maintain more than 23 million acres of lawn. Oh yeah, and use around 270 billion gallons of water a week. That's right folks, we're talking billions to maintain grass.

Let's not forget the incredible amount of pesticides and fertilizers being doused on those lawns that, ultimately, run off into the groundwater, evaporate into the air we breathe or run out into our waterways, poisoning our fish and aquatic life. The gas mowers, edgers and blowers don't exactly help either. Even if you don't water or fertilize your lawn, you still are preventing all sorts of habitat for critters by keeping a lawn.

So, what's an environmentally conscious citizen to do? Well, aside from the obvious alternative of returning the lawn to its natural habitat (by growing native plants and using permaculture techniques*), grow some food!

What to do if you don't have a lawn? Well, you have a couple of options. You can see if you can use a neighbor's lawn, rent a plot in a community garden, volunteer at a local farm (oftentimes they'll offer free produce to volunteers), garden in pots and containers, use the roof, depave a sidewalk or driveway, or (the most radical) take over a vacant lot.

If you do have the space you have some alternatives such as growing in raised beds, vertical gardening (growing up), or just reshaping your yard to take advantage of microclimates, rainflow and runoff and all sorts of other permaculture techniques*.

One of the discussion points in Chapter 3 is water-wise gardening. The author discusses mulching, irrigation, contouring and graywater. I'm a little unsure of the whole graywater thing as I believe it has to be done carefully (graywater can quickly become blackwater) and there are legal issues to be considered. She is extremely cavalier about this aspect, so tread carefully on how you want to proceed with using graywater.

After reading these sections are you inspired to tear up your lawn? What about the community aspects of growing food? Would you be willing to share you lawn with the neighbors for growing food for the community? Do you know your neighbors well enough to ask them to share their yard?

What about some of the suggestions she has for contouring your yard to grow food? Had you thought much about that when considering growing food before or was this new information for you?

Would you be willing to install some sort of graywater and/or pond system to irrigate your food crops or does it seem like too much work or too risky? What about rainwater capture?

Ok, that's it for now. The next book club post will be in two weeks.

*Ms. Flores goes into permaculture techniques in depth in the first section of the book, but I won't cover it here because I like to keep things somewhat briefish.

Food Not Lawns Book Club

Afraid of joining Sharon's Doom 'n Gloom book club, aka The Post Apocalyptic Book Club? Well, never fear, I'm starting a new book club based on your last votes. And there will be no death and dismemberment. Okay, maybe a few grubs will be injured, but that's about it.

Out of the almost 500 votes, the top book (at about 30%) was Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community.

From the publisher:

Food Not Lawns combines practical wisdom on ecological design and community-building with a fresh, green perspective on an age-old subject. Activist and urban gardener Heather Flores shares her nine-step permaculture design to help farmsteaders and city dwellers alike build fertile soil, promote biodiversity, and increase natural habitat in their own "paradise gardens."

But Food Not Lawns doesn't begin and end in the seed bed. This joyful permaculture lifestyle manual inspires readers to apply the principles of the paradise garden—simplicity, resourcefulness, creativity, mindfulness, and community—to all aspects of life.

So, starting in July we'll start up the reading. I'll be putting up discussion posts probably towards the middle or end of July, so if it takes you a while to get a copy from you library, used bookseller or Amazon, do not fret. The world will not end between now and then. Although I haven't checked Sharon's blog yet today to see if that statement is correct.

Just so I can get a head count...



As usual, if you want to throw in your book club 2 pence, add a comment.

In Defense of Food book discussion (Part III)

This week's book club post is the fifth installment of the In Defense of Food discussion posts. This week's post wraps up the longest book club for the shortest book ever!

Chapter 1. Escape from the Western Diet - This chapter recaps what has been covered in the earlier sections of the book and sets up what we are to read in the remaining chapters. The main concept is reiterated: People eating a Western diet are prone to a complex of chronic diseases that seldom strike people eating more traditional diets. No matter what infighting occurs between scientists, the take home message is to stop eating a Western diet.

How do we go about doing this? Pollan isn't expecting us to truly go back to a "traditional" diet because how can you define traditional for each person? The genetic makeup of each individual and their ability to process certain foods relies tremendously on the environment in which their ancestors adapted to the local foodsheds.

So, what is he recommending? Well, to start off, choose whole foods. But how can we determine if that whole food is really unadulterated? Is that CAFO beef really a whole food? What about vegetables grown in nutrient depleted soil under a host of chemical pesticides and petroleum fertilizers? Is that a whole food?


Chapter 2. Eat Food: Food Defined - What the heck should we be eating then? Here are some rules of thumb:

Don't eat anything your great-grandma wouldn't recognize. Squeeze yogurts, cheese food products, Twinkies, non-dairy creamers - all of these can be readily identified as something not "whole".

Avoid foods containing unfamiliar or unpronounceable ingredients or high fructose corn syrup. This doesn't mean so much that the ingredients are inherently harmful, but they are good indicators of food quality.

Avoid food products that make health claims. This is a big neon sign screaming "processed". Generally, only big food companies have the wherewithal to secure FDA-approved health claims for their products.

Shop the peripheries of the supermarket. You know what's lurking in the middle - packaged, boxed, processed foods. Stick to the outside where produce, dairy, meats and bulk items live.

Get out of the supermarket if you can. Farmers markets generally don't sell highly processed foods, neither do farm stands or U-pick farms. Shop from your garden and you're assured of getting whole foods.

Do you focus on buying mostly whole foods or are you more concerned with buying healthy or organic even if it's processed (like cereals, crackers, soups, etc.)? There are a number of highly processed foods that are marketed as "healthy" - do you think they are? Do you really need to eat whole foods or are products found in the natural foods section okay?


Chapter 3. Mostly Plants: What to Eat - Okay, so we're supposed to eat whole foods. Any more words of wisdom?

Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Plants are chock full of nutrients, vitamins, fiber and antioxidants all delivered in a format that our bodies are evolved to uptake most effectively. Antioxidants help us get rid of toxins and the rest are necessary for health and function. Enriched foods just don't get processed the same way and plants supply us with these necessities.

You are what what you eat eats too. WTF? In other words, the diet of the animals we eat has a bearing on the nutritional quality, and healthfulness, of the food itself. The same thing can be said for plant based foods - poor soils make for nutritionally poor plants.

If you have the space, buy a freezer. If you can buy foods at the height of the season and store them for year-round consumption, you are ensuring that you are getting the most nutrition from your foods. Eating those anemic tomatoes in February just doesn't cut it.

Eat like an omnivore. If you eat a wide and varied diet, you are more likely to get the full range of nutrients that these foods supply.

Eat well-grown food from healthy soils. Again, soils rich in organic matter produce more nutritious food: higher levels of anti-oxidants, flavonoids, vitamins, etc.

Have a glass of wine with dinner. I love Michael Pollan.


Chapter 4. Not Too Much: How to Eat - First of all, focus on quality over quantity. Shake off the idea of supersizing your meals or trying to maximize the food you get for your dollar. Instead, spend more money on less. You'll find the quality of the food and it's improved taste will satisfy you with less.

Second, eat meals. No more eating in the car, at your desk, in front of the TV or computer, standing at the sink or sitting on the toilet or wherever you grab your meals. Sit down at the table for crying out loud and enjoy your food. Preferably with family and friends.

Thirdly, eat slowly and listen to your belly. Don't hoark down your food so fast that your brain doesn't recognize that you ate so much that you have to unbutton your pants. Or, worse yet, you're so full that you can't stand up and walk upright without discomfort. It takes your brain about twenty minutes to catch up with your gut, so give them time to communicate with each other.

Lastly, become a cook and grow a garden. Doing both gives you an appreciation between the plants and the soil and between the ingredients and those you are feeding.

How many meals do you eat at home? How many with your family? Are you so overly busy that you don't have time to cook or eat with others?

Well, that concludes the In Defense of Food book club posts. How has reading this book changed the way you think about food and eating?

In Defense of Food book discussion (Part II: chapter 3)

This week's book club post is the fourth installment of the In Defense of Food discussion posts. Since the third chapter of Part II is so obscenely long, this discussion will encompass one chapter only. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Part II
Chapter 3: The Industrialization of Eating: What We Do Know - In this chapter, Pollan discusses the relationship of food with nature. As a species we have adapted to different environments and different foods based on its availability. One example he uses illustrates the relationship between cows and some humans who have the ability to digest cow's milk beyond weaning age that occurred about five thousand years ago. This provided a nutritional benefit for those who possessed the gene to digest the milk as it provided a "terrifically nutritious new food source" and was beneficial to the cows as it created a symbiotic relationship with humans.

The relationship between plant foods and the animals that eat them are complex as the plants are dependent on the spreading of seeds to proliferate. In turn, animals learn what foods are suitable based on color, taste and smell of ripeness. Detecting these signals is a whole lot easier when you have developed a relationship with a food over many years. It becomes a lot harder when manufactured foods are available that mimic "real" food with artificial flavors and synthetic sweeteners because the relationship was originally between the eater and whole foods, not with nutrients or chemicals.

Do you think that it matters what food history humans have had? Is there really a difference between foods grown in nature or ones created in a lab if they have the same nutritional components and values (protein, carbohydrates, fats, etc.)? Do the sci-fi fantasies of taking a pill for all your nutritional needs ever seem plausible given the information you've read?

Section 1. From Whole Foods to Refined - Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, refined foods have been de rigueur. They imparted not only more prestige (due to the expense), but better digestibility and a shelf-life heretofore unseen. Flour and rice could now be stored for months and shipped over long distances. The drawback is that, with the removal of fiber among other things, the conversion to glucose was quickened when digested. The other problem with these gorgeous white powders and grains was that they were nutritionally worthless. They merely provided a quick energy rush in the form of calories, but not much else.

After reading this section are you more inclined to seek out and purchase brown rice and whole wheat flour over white? Or do you already do so?

Section 2. From Complexity to Simplicity - With the advent of chemical fertilizers, modern foods have been grown on a distillation of a few major macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium aka NPK) and little else. As a result, produce grown in this environment has lost some of its nutritional components.

Why is this so? Well, for one, harsh chemical fertilizers depress or destroy the natural biological activity of the soil (microbes, earthworms and fungi), leaving the plants to subsist largely on a simple ration of NPK. This chemical diet also leaves the plants susceptible to pests and disease. The addition of pesticides affects the quality of the plant as well. The tendency of modern plant breeding has consistently selected for industrial characteristics (such as yield or ability to transport) over nutritional quality. Additionally, plants grow considerably quicker under chemical fertilizers and are unable to uptake as many nutrients in such a short period of time.

Another issue is the rise of monoculture farming. Roughly two-thirds of the calories we eat come from four crops: soy, corn, wheat and rice. This is an issue because humans, as omnivores, require somewhere between fifty and one hundred different chemical compounds and elements in order to be healthy and it's unlikely we are getting all of them from such a limited diet.

Were you aware that so much of your diet is a product of soy and corn? Will you pay more attention to your food choices in trying to achieve a balanced diet?

Section 3. From Quality to Quantity - Our food system is at the point where the focus is on increasing yields and selling food as cheaply as possible. With the rise of "super-sized" meals, enormous portions and restaurants such as Claim Jumper that pride themselves on food gigantism, it's no wonder Americans are getting heavier. (For example, Claim Jumper's Ore Cart, I Declair and Chocolate Motherlode Cake are all obscenities of consumption.) Add in the fact that our food has less nutrition per calorie, one needs to eat more in order to gain the proper amount of nutrients. As a result, people on a Western diet are overweight and malnourished.

When buying food or meal-planning, do you take into consideration the nutritional components of the food you eat or do you think of it in terms of the food pyramid? Will you focus on getting a wider range of fruits and vegetables in your diet and will you choose organic foods to help supply those missing nutrients?

Section 4. From Leaves to Seeds - This section goes into great detail regarding the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids versus the potentially harmful effects of omega-6s. I won't reiterate it as there's a lot of information there, but suffice it to say that we are eating more seeds and less leaves and, as a result, we aren't getting enough omega-3s. A growing number of researchers believe that the Western diet is grossly deficient in omega-3s.

Section 5. From Food Culture to Food Science - The gist of this section is the fact that industrialization of food (i.e. the Western diet) is systematically and deliberately undermining traditional food cultures everywhere.

Do you think it's too late to maintain traditional food cultures or is the draw of the novelty and glamour of the Western diet too hard to resist with its emphasis on sugars and fats?

Affluenza book discussion (chapters 19 - 21)

Here is the discussion post for the fifth installment of the Affluenza, The All-Consuming Epidemic book club.

Don't forget! Next week starts the Ask Dave Wann giveaway contest. Submit your interview questions starting Monday, March 24th, for Dave to answer and I'll select six questions. From those six, I'll be drawing two winners of his new book, Simple Prosperity.

For those of you who want to prep a little more than just reading Affluenza, here's an interview with Dave on Sustainable World Radio and an article he wrote, Fabric of America is Fraying, for you to check out.

Chapter 19. The age of affluenza - Even though advertising really hit its stride in the 1980s, one can see the seeds sown as far back as 1957 when the marketing director for the Chicago Tribune stated, "advertising's most important social function is to integrate the individual into our present-day American high-speed consumption economy." He also stated that, "the average individual doesn't make anything... he buys everything, and our economy is geared to the faster and faster tempo of his buying, based on wants which are created by advertising in large degree."

Over the average American's lifetime, one will watch nearly two years worth of TV commercials. The result of this is that the average American can identify fewer than ten types of plants but can recognize hundreds of corporate logos. If you read the paper, view websites (news or otherwise), watch TV or listen to the radio, you are being bombarded by media messaging. Unless you live a hermit's life, it's impossible to escape the billboards and bus advertising.

There's even an advertising campaign running right now about moonvertising. This really ground my crackers when I first saw the ads for it and y'all almost got an earful until I found out that it's a joke. Either way, the concept truly disturbs me.

Do you feel like you are manipulated by the barrage of advertising? Or do you believe you can shut it out? Would you be averse to something like moonvertising, where logos or commercials are projected onto the moon or do you think it's okay?

Chapter 20. Is there a (real) doctor in the house? - The underlying idea of this chapter is that PR (that's public relations for you hermits) equals covert culture shaping and opinion spinning. In other words, it sounds like they are the modern day mafia of misinformation.

A few examples of spin-doctoring include: funding and sponsoring environmental groups that have been hounding a company for years and, essentially, absorbing the enemy while green-washing the company; "book burning" or obtaining book tour itineraries and using a variety of tactics to sabotage the tours (one example included calling and cancelling appearances); campaigns to infiltrate actors (covert commercial agents) into ordinary situations to "talk up" a product to garner interest; front groups like the American Council on Science and Health that is funded by Burger King, Coca-Cola, NutraSweet, Monsanto, Dow, Exxon and others. The list of tactics is seemingly endless.

The issue at play here with all this "information" is its quality. How do you determine the validity of a product's assertion of health, success or whatever it's trying to promote? How can you tell if what they are promoting is accurate?

Part Three: Treatment
Chapter 21. The road to recovery - This chapter is comprised of a diagnostic quiz to see if you have affluenza or if you are susceptible to it. The real test includes 50 questions, but I've culled it down to ten to give those who didn't read the book a taste:

Answer 'Yes' or 'No'. For 'Yes' answers, give yourself two points. If you are uncertain or it's too close, give yourself one point.
1. Do you get bored unless you have something to consume (goods, food, media)?
2. Do you ever use shopping as "therapy"?
3. Do you sometimes go to the mall just to look around, with nothing specific to buy?
4. Given the choice between a slight pay raise and a shorter workweek, would you choose the money?
5. Do your conversations often gravitate toward things you want to buy?
6. Do you feel like you are always in a hurry?
7. Is the price of a product more important to you than how well it was made?
8. When you shop do you often feel a rush of euphoria followed by anxiety?
9. Do you have more stuff than you can store in your house?
10. Do you watch TV more than two hours a day?

If you scored:
0 - 5: You have no serious signs of affluenza
6 - 10: You are already infected
11 - 15: Your temperature is rising quickly
16 - 20: You've got affluenza big time!

How did you score?

In Defense of Food book discussion (Part II)

This week's book club post is the third installment of the In Defense of Food discussion posts.

Part II
Chapter 1. The Aborigine in All of Us - In 1982, Kerin O'Dea ran an experiment on ten Aborigine volunteers in Western Australia. She wanted to see if temporarily returning these individuals to their traditional lifestyles would reverse the health problems they had incurred since they moved out of the bush and started partaking in a more Western lifestyle.

Since leaving the bush, all ten members of the cohort had developed type 2 diabetes and elevated levels of triglycerides in their blood (a risk factor for heart disease). The Aborigines returned to their homeland and went back to their increased activity levels and traditional foods acquired via hunting and gathering. These methods resulted in a very large variety of foods consisting of foodstuffs such as fish, shellfish, birds, turtles, crocodile, yams, figs and honey among other things. These individuals had gone from a Western diet consisting of flour, sugar, rice, carbonated drinks, alcohol, powdered milk, cheap fatty meats, potatoes, onions and other fruits and vegetables.

The end result was that, after seven weeks, all had lost weight (an average of 18 pounds), lowered their blood pressure and their triglyceride levels had returned to normal. Additionally, all the metabolic abnormalities of type II diabetes were either greatly improved or completely normalized.

The thing that is amazing is that it only took seven weeks to reverse the damage done. What does this mean for the rest of us? Can you extrapolate the results of individuals adapted to a specific environment and dietary habits and apply it to Westerners? Did reading this chapter give you a sense of hope that the issues with the Western diet can be reversed if we adhere to a diet consisting of non-processed whole foods?

Chapter 2. The Elephant in the Room - In this chapter, Pollan is referring to the pattern of eating what we call the Western diet as the elephant in the room. The effect of this diet is that people suffer substantially higher rates of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. So, when individuals adopt the Western diet, these problems creep up all too quickly. In other words, immigrants from nations with low rates of chronic disease acquire these health issues quickly.

In 1939, Weston Price published the results of his research in working with isolated populations. As a dentist, he noted that people who ate a traditional diet needed no dentists whatsoever. He found little or no evidence of chronic disease, tooth decay or malformed dental arches. One thing that he found was that these groups were eating substantially more amounts of vitamins A and D.

Price's conclusion after years of research was that modern civilization had sacrificed much of the quality of food in the interest of quantity and shelf life. Interestingly, he found that groups that ate diets of wild animal flesh (or milk, meat and blood of pastured cattle) were generally healthier than agriculturalists who relied on cereals and other plant foods.

In general, it would appear that humans can thrive on a variety of different diets, but the Western diet isn't one of them. What does this mean for you? Are you willing to stay on the standard Western diet and continue risking heart disease, diabetes, cancer and who knows what else? Has reading this made you decide to eat better or confirmed your actions if you already are eating a healthy diet? If you want to get off the Western diet bandwagon, do you know where to start?

Affluenza book discussion (chapters 15 - 18)

Here is the discussion post for the fourth installment of the Affluenza, The All-Consuming Epidemic book club. This post begins Part Two: Causes.

Chapter 15. Original Sin - In this chapter, the authors argue that affluenza isn't a part of human nature. That, in studying hunter-gatherers or more "primitive" cultures, the individuals and communities rely on very few possessions and are quite happy without amassing huge quantities of stuff.

But their lifestyle, moving from place to place as food and water sources warrant, really prevents them from acquiring too many things. What do you think? Are humans innately wired for possessing tons of things they don't need? Are the groups mentioned in the book merely not affected by affluenza because it's impractical and, given the ability to stay rooted in one place (with no other changes) would they hoard materials just like the rest of us?

Chapter 16. An Ounce of Prevention - Early Americans came to the New World in search of a Christian commonwealth based on simple living. Over the years, this idealism crumbled as delineations in wealth grew between the Americans and the British. By the time of the industrial revolution, the push for automation under the guise of higher production in less work time resulted in longer workdays rather than shorter ones as employers, greedy for more, exploited their employees.

Indeed, the concept of "more through exploitation" is accomplished by exposing consumers to affluenza. Modern advertising creates "imaginary appetites", using sex to sell as well as appealing to one's depravities. Karl Marx had suggested that too many goods results in too many useless people. And Thoreau stated that the luxuries and comforts of life are not only indispensable but also a hindrance to the elevation of mankind.

So, if the intention of many individuals and philosophers was a focus on the simple life, how did we become such out-of-control consumers? Did the influence of a few really affect the rest? Or were they preying on some deep-rooted desire for not just more stuff, but more stuff acquired through just the right approach and advertising?

Chapter 17. The Road Not Taken - The factory systems of the late 1800s pushed Americans to a crossroads. With all this efficiency came the choice of what to do with all that extra time? On one hand, you could make more stuff and on the other, you could work less. Luxury or simplicity. Money or time.

If given the choice of living a more simple life and working less, which would you (or do you) choose?

Chapter 18. An Emerging Epidemic - During World War II, Americans knuckled under and accepted rationing and deprivation, limiting their consumption and driving and growing their own food with victory gardens. After the war, an economic boom erupted, fueled by low-interest government loans and pent-up economic demand.

An era of consumption had begun and along with it was the increase in production of products created with "planned obsolescence" in mind. In other words, products were manufactured to last only a short time so that they would have to be replaced frequently. Products were continually upgraded, more so in style rather than quality.

And, how did Americans finance all this stuff? With consumer loans, providing tremendous purchasing power that theoretically resulted in a higher standard of living. Or so the story goes. Next up came shopping malls and televisions in every home. With advertising, manufacturers were convincing consumers through creative ads that their product was not only necessary, but better, convenient and disposable.

John Kenneth Galbraith suggested that our emphasis on private opulence led to public squalor with declining transit systems, schools, parks, libraries and air and water quality. Is it possible to have both individual wealth and public wealth? Are the two mutually exclusive or is this something that society can achieve?

In Defense of Food book discussion (chapters 6 - 10)

Alright. Enough squirrelling around. Here is the second installment of the In Defense of Food book club discussion posts.

Chapter 6. Eat Right, Get Fatter - What? I can't eat a whole package of Snackwells and not get fat? But it says right here, fat-free. I should be able to eat at least half the bag and not get fat, right? Uh, no.

Since the late 1970s, when Americans began stuffing their pieholes with carbs, we've gotten fat and fatter and the rates of obesity and diabetes have climbed. Now, I'm not suggesting we blame it all on Devil's Food Snackwells. But doesn't it seem a little strange that you can eat half the package and it will only set you back 300 calories? Of course, that's 276 carb calories which will launch your blood sugar into the mesosphere.

The problem isn't so much that we're eating more carbs as that we didn't cut back on the total consumption of fat (even though we were supplanting saturated with polyunsaturated and trans fats) to make up for it. And the idea that, since these foods were so healthy for us, we should eat lots of them caused us to increase our total overall caloric intake. Thereby, making us fat.

Do you excuse your (over)eating of a particular food, convincing yourself that it's okay because it's better for you than the "regular" version?

Chapter 7. Beyond the Pleasure Principle - The idea that Americans have become immune to enjoying food, due to the sheer abundance of it, is an interesting one. It allows people the luxury to focus on food for it's nutritional value only.

I know several people whose diets revolve solely around its nutritional value and not their actual enjoyment of it. It's not as obvious when people focus on garlic, olive oil, flax, salmon, etc. purely because they offer some sort of "extra" nutrition. But, when it rules one's diet to the exclusion of seemingly lesser foods and taste is not being used as a "true guide to what should be eaten" it can get more problematic. In other words, "experimental science has produced rules of nutrition which will prevent illness and encourage longevity" and a lot of people have subscribed to this way of thinking, looking for the holy grail of nutrients to keep them alive and healthy for longer.

Do you fall prey to this type of eating?

Chapter 8. The Proof in the Low-Fat Pudding - Understanding how we can potentially gain weight eating carbohydrates rather than fats (when fats have 9 calories per gram versus 5 for carbs and protein) is a little counter intuitive. The theory goes along the lines that refined carbs interfere with insulin metabolism, causing you to become hungrier and leading to over-eating and, thus, extra fat storage in the body. Remember those Snackwells? There's a reason why you can actually eat the whole box. Because they are totally non-satisfying. It's like eating chocolate flavored wood chips. But with calories.

Do you find that, when eating low-fat foods (generally made with refined carbs), you tend to eat a whole lot more simply because you didn't feel satiated?

Chapter 9. Bad Science - Nutrition science is a sticky wicket to say the least. It's impossible to distill one nutrient at a time, without ignoring how those nutrients interact with others in a food when digested. This sort of scientific reductionism works wonders in other areas of scientific research, but when it comes to nutrition, it can be a disaster. Because people don't just eat nutrients, they eat foods and each person metabolizes food differently. There are too many chemical compounds in a food to be able to determine, with much assurity, that it's one compound over another that is healthier.

There isn't much risk in this sort of reductionist thinking when you are eating whole foods. But if the goal is to distill out the components (like polyphenols or carotenoids), can you really substitute those for "real food"? Are the benefits the same?

Chapter 10. Nutritionism's Children - "Thirty years of nutritional advice have left us fatter, sicker, and more poorly nourished. Which is why we find ourselves in the predicament we do: in need of a whole new way to think about eating."

So, now what? All this has left the American eater confused and anxious about what's safe to eat and what we should or should not be eating. High carb, low-fat? High protein, low-carb? There's even a new eating disorder called Orthorexia nervosa, which is an obsession with healthy eating.

What's next? Well, this ends Section I: The Age of Nutritionism. The next post will start Section II: The Western Diet and the Diseases of Civilization. Sounds ominous, doesn't it?

Affluenza book discussion (chapters 11 - 14)

Here is the discussion post for the third installment of the Affluenza, The All-Consuming Epidemic book club.

Chapter 11. Resource Exhaustion - One of the points made in this chapter was regarding the real costs of the products we buy. For example, when we buy a computer we don't take into account the 700+ materials that went into it, we don't account for the 140 pounds of solid and hazardous waste resulting from its manufacture and we certainly don't account for the 7,000 gallons of wastewater and the massive amount of energy used in production.

The argument was not so much that we need to necessarily give up everything (although there is merit in that point), but to be conscious of what we are buying and choose products, when we do buy things, that have less ecological impact. For example, if you must still buy coffee, make sure that it is shade-grown or organic (and fair-trade, I might add).

What items do you still purchase that aren't necessary, but where you've made a concerted effort to choose a product with a lighter footprint?

Chapter 12. Industrial Diarrhea - We live in a toxic sludge soup, where 1,600 pounds of synthetic chemicals are produced every year per capita. Over the last half century the production of these chemicals increased 600 times. Again, there are hidden costs. All that cheap food is the direct result of chemical use, with cost savings a result of fertilizers and pesticides. And how many of those chemicals are we storing in our bodies?

The estimate in the book that 2 out of 5 Americans will contract cancer at some point in their lives rings true for me. Of the 5 family members I have living in Seattle, 2 of them are battling aggressive forms of cancer.

We rail against products like DDT, but how many of you are aware of the dangers of Scotch Guard, a common product that shows up in nearly everyone's blood stream? How many of you are still using non-stick (Teflon) pans? Convenience never outweighs the public health risk of many of these chemicals yet we oftentimes turn a blind eye on them until the risks are so blatantly obvious that we can't do anything but avoid them like the plague.

How aware are you of chemicals in your environment? Do you get disturbed every time you see advertising for spray air fresheners, and that hideous Febreze? Or do you think their benefits outweigh any potential hidden cost?

Chapter 13. The Addictive Virus - Consumption is an addictive virus, hooking the victim into feeling a sense of reassurance when they have purchased all those goods. Yet the standards for what is fashionable or acceptable changes constantly (thanks to product improvements and new, additional features), thereby leaving the addict never feeling satisfied with what they own. So, they continue purchasing, hoping to feel like they finally have what they "need".

I found this statement interesting: "Psychologists tell us pathological buying is typically related to a quest for greater recognition and acceptance, an expression of anger, or an escape through fantasy - all connected to shaky self-images." This sounds awfully like many of the "therapy shoppers" I know out there. There is the perceived need to have the next best thing lest you be though less of, or think less of yourself.

I frankly don't care about recognition or acceptance based on what I own, wear, want, read or eat. But it seems like the majority of Americans are stuck with that sort of mindset. Do you feel this is a result of media influence (TV shows like Friends, Sex in the City, Desperate Housewives) or product marketing or both? Sometimes I feel like product marketing in a vacuum outside of media doesn't have the same impact as watching what your favorite stars wearing or using what is being hawked.

Chapter 14. Dissatisfaction Guaranteed - We are not only working ourselves to death in order to buy things we really don't need, but we are working ourselves into a state of unhappiness. That's not to say that rich people are inherently unhappy. For many, it's the goal of wealth that drives people too hard, displacing things in their lives that are necessary for an enjoyable life.

So, let's talk about real wealth in terms of friends, skills, libraries, wilderness and free time for napping. The more real wealth we have, the less money we need to be happy. Hell, I would take a significant pay cut to keep my afternoon naps.

I think if everyone made a list of their top ten "real wealth" items, many of them would be inexpensive, or needn't be expensive. Things like spending time with friends and family cooking, eating or talking, taking a walk through the park or on the beach, watching the sun set, stargazing, playing with their children, having sex, reading a good book on a rainy day, sitting in front of the fire.... the list goes on and on. Granted, for many, the list would also include expensive entertainment (eating out, theatre, sports, travel) but I would argue that it includes less material items than you think.

What are a few of your favorite things? I, for one, won't be including opening the door of my overpriced faulty refrigerator as one of my top tens.


That ends Section I. Symptoms. Stay tuned for Section II. Causes in two weeks.

In Defense of Food book discussion (chapters 1 - 5)

For those of you in shock, I mean shocked!... I'm starting another book club today, inspired by Project Nowaste and our issues with food - both in eating it and throwing it out. Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is a follow-up book of sorts to The Omnivore's Dilemma.

It's a slim little number with quick chapters so I'll be cruising along through some of the (three page long) chapters with nary a comment.

Chapter 1. From Foods to Nutrients: This first chapter discusses how, in the last 25 years, supermarkets have been stocking not so much "food" (like eggs, butter, bread), but food substitutes like egg-beaters, margarine and low-carb bread. Most of these food substitutes advertise their merits of having no cholesterol or saturated fats and high fiber or whatever is popular at the moment. Instead of buying foods with a short ingredient list we are now bombarded by a laundry list of chemicals, additives and replacements.

For example, mayonnaise should contain egg yolks and oil. (One of these days I'll show you how to make your own.) But the "healthy" version will contain something along the lines of modified corn starch, high fructose corn syrup, xanthan gum, vitamin E, vitamin K, beta-carotene, etc.

The focus over the years has been on what's not there as well as what's been added for your health - phytonutrients, vitamins, and the like.

When you go shopping for food, do you make a point of buying low-fat, low-cholesterol or high fiber foods? If so, do you look at the ingredient list to see how this is achieved? Do you think it's better for you to eat these more "nutritious" foods than the original versions?

If you do look at the ingredient list, do you avoid those with the huge ingredient list of substitutes and just go for the originals?

Chapter 2. Nutritionism Defined: The concept of nutritionism is the idea that foods are essentially broken down into what nutrients are in it: fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. The problem with this sort of thinking is that there are myriad elements in food that we do not understand. And by this I mean that scientists do not know exactly what they do or do not do. An example is breastmilk - a more complex food, sure, but equally difficult to ascertain how each component functions on a growing brain and body.

The big issue with nutritionism is that if we believe we can break food down into the sum of its parts, then it's easy to believe that processed foods can be even "healthier" for you than the whole foods strictly based on the fact that it has the appropriate quantities of some nutrients, even if we do not fully understand what some of the other elements (phytochemicals, etc.) do for us.

Do you believe that processed foods can be just as good, if not better than the whole foods they are substituting?

Chapter 3. Nutritionism Comes to Market: The first important synthetic food to hit the market was margarine, which started out in the 19th century as a cheap and inferior substitute for butter. During the 1950s, when the concept that saturated fat and cholesterol caused heart disease (called, in the book, the lipid hypothesis) hit its stride, manufacturers lept on the opportunity to market margarine as the "smarter" butter. The bad nutrients were removed (cholesterol and saturated fats) and replaced with the good ones (polyunsaturated fats and vitamins). Of course, we all now know that transfats are a killer, yet margarines have managed to be reinvented and carry on (Now Transfat Free!) as if nothing happened.

In 1938, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act imposed strict labelling of "imitation" products. That was tossed out in 1973, thereby opening the doors for all manner of fake, low-fat products. As long as the new product was considered to be nutritionally equivalent to the original, it was no longer considered fake.

What's your impression of the whole trans-fats debacle? Do you feel like it was just swept under the rug and that no one really fessed up to the fact that the pushing of the lipid hypothesis potentially did way more harm than good? Do you feel safe from having this happen again or do you think that manufacturers and food scientists are just carrying on with business as usual - trying to sell enhanced products without much merit?

Chapter 4. Food Science's Golden Age: Starting with oat bran in the 1980's and continuing with omega-3 enhanced eggs, lean pork (aka "the other white meat"), low-carb pasta and the like, foods that could be manipulated to have a different nutrient profile were winning the marketing game. The poor banana, avocado and other whole foods that can't change their nutritional stripes can't compete against fantastical health claims like "whole grain goodness" being sported on boxes of Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs.

Do you get drawn into the marketing on boxes at the supermarket? Do you choose the one with splashy nutritional advertising when comparing two products? Or do you look at the actual quantities, for example of whole grains per serving, when comparing items?

Chapter 5. The Melting of the Lipid Hypothesis: The gist of this chapter can really only be summed up with a direct quote or two:

"The most important nutrition campaign has been the thirty-year effort to reform the food supply and our eating habits in light of the lipid hypothesis - the idea that dietary fat is responsible for chronic disease. At the behest of government panels, nutrition scientists, and public health officials, we have dramatically changed the way we eat and the way we think about food, in what stands as the biggest experiment in applied nutrition in history. Thirty years later, we have good reason to believe that putting the nutritionists in charge of the menu and the kitchen has not only ruined an untold number of meals, but also has done little for our health, except very possibly to make it worse."

"At this point you are probably saying to yourself, Hold on just a minute. Are you really saying the whole low-fat deal was bogus? But my supermarket is still packed with low-fat this and no-cholesterol that! My doctor is still on me about my cholesterol and telling me to switch to low-fat everything."

What do you think about this? Do you feel there is merit in the lipid hypothesis - that low-fat, low-cholesterol diets are heart healthy? Or do you think it's just a nutritional philosophy that took on its own life and now can't be expunged from the culture of nutrition?

That's a lot to take in, for sure. Some scientists argue that there was little scientific basis to back the lipid hypothesis even back in the 70's. The next few chapters get more into the heart of the matter. Ha ha.