Book suggestions - on nutrition

I like "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or anything by Michael Pollan. His books are available in my library system so maybe yours as well.

"Pollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.

Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."

Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.

Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.

This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota."

I've already been successfully using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques and am currently listening to this on my mp3 player, courtesy of my library:

The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person

Can thinking and eating like a thin person be learned, similar to learning to drive or use a computer? Beck (Cognitive Therapy for Challenging Problems) contends so, based on decades of work with patients who have lost pounds and maintained weight through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Beck's six-week program adapts CBT, a therapeutic system developed by Beck's father, Aaron, in the 1960s, to specific challenges faced by yo-yo dieters, including negative thinking, bargaining, emotional eating, bingeing, and eating out. Beck counsels readers day-by-day, introducing new elements (creating advantage response cards, choosing a diet, enlisting a diet coach, making a weight-loss graph) progressively and offering tools to help readers stay focused (writing exercises, to-do lists, ways to counter negative thoughts). There are no eating plans, calorie counts, recipes or exercises; according to Beck, any healthy diet will work if readers learn to think differently about eating and food. Beck's book is like an extended therapy session with a diet coach. (Apr.)

My favorite is "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan.

I might read that Ludwig book, but I think he's one of the "sugar is evil" authors who is pretty controversial.

Fuhrman isn't a bad read but he's pretty controversial, too. He recommends a very restrictive diet, and has some kind of baseless belief that onions and mushrooms are superfoods.

maggieeric1 wrote: »

I am just hearing about a new book called "always hungry" by Dr David Ludwig.

Has anyone read it? What do ya think?

Let me know if you've read anything recently that informed inspired motivated or educated you.
Cheers!

I'm picking at it; there is a good write up about the book and the faulty thoughts therein. Best nutrition book last year I read was Pollan In Defense of Food. A good read for runners is Fitgerald's Racing Weight.

AnvilHead wrote: »

JanetYellen wrote: »

Interesting? The China Study.

Even more interesting are all the subsequent studies which completely debunk the China Study. You can start at Sciencebasedmedicine.org - The China Study Revisited

Agreed. And that links to one of Denise Minger's pieces. A more comprehensive site for those (which are interesting) is here: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/

Her stuff is pretty thoughtful in general, including her Death by Food Pyramid book.

I also second the recommendation for Diet Cults, above.

Brian Wansink's book Mindless Eating and the follow up (forget the title) are interesting on why many people tend to overeat in a way that made me more conscious of things.

For more general nutrition stuff in a popularized way, Marion Nestle's What to Eat is pretty good, Michael Pollan's stuff is enjoyable (although about a lot more than nutrition), Walter Willett's Eat Drink and Be Healthy informative but I have reservations about it (I think he's more restrictive than necessary). Reading about the ways people eat in blue zones can be worthwhile (Dan Buettner has a variety of books on this).

For quick and reliable information on nutrition, I tend to recommend the Harvard Nutrition site and David Katz's various articles (he is at Yale, so I'm giving balance). For inspiration I don't really go to nutrition books, although I do find them interesting. I'd say read anything with a critical mind.