A Curious Eye

Before Your Healthy Eating Internet Education:

I eat pretty healthy. Check it out: whole grain crackers, veggie patties, prawns, broccoli. I am actually pretty into clean eating.

After Your Healthy Eating Internet Education:

Those crackers – gluten, baby. Gluten is toxic to your intestinal health, I read it on a forum. They should call those crackers Leaky Gut Crisps, that would be more accurate. That veggie burger in the freezer? GMO soy. Basically that’s a Monsanto patty. Did you know soybean oil is an insecticide? And those prawns are fish farmed in Vietnamese sewage pools. I didn’t know about the sewage fish farming when I bought them, though, really I didn’t!

The broccoli, though..that’s ok. I can eat that. Eating that doesn’t make me a terrible person, unless….oh, shit! That broccoli isn’t organic. That means it’s covered with endocrine disrupting pesticides that will make my son sprout breasts. As if adolescence isn’t awkward enough.

Full article here

1. Put the healthy food up front (and make the junk food harder to reach).

2. Make it fun to eat healthy.

3. Give the food a fancy name.

4. Make it a choice.

5. Taller is better… at least when it comes to unhealthy drinks.

Read more at GreaterGood.Berkeley.edu

Every year, the world wastes 1.3 billion tons of food, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. That’s about 33 percent of all food produced annually. In rich nations alone, 222 million tons of food is lost by consumers outright throwing it into the garbage. That is almost the equivalent of all the food made in sub-Saharan Africa every year. In a word, our problem with food waste is disastrous.

At least one business in London is attempting to solve the problem commercially. Diners at the Kylin Buffet, a Chinese restaurant, have been surprised to find that they’re charged a $32 “wastage” fee if they take more food from the buffet they can eat. “To avoid food wastage, we recommend you do not unnecessary [sic] overfill your plate,” says a sign in the restaurant. “Please take only what you can eat.” When customers complain about Kylin’s wastage policy, as a woman recently did to theDaily Mail, the owner stands by his rules, saying, “we have to charge for wastage of food. We stand by our policies.”

A Japanese buffet in Manhattan also charges customers a surcharge for not finishing what they take. And in Australia, a “guilty free” Japanese restaurant called Wafu charges 30 percent more to customers who don’t eat everything on their plates. Wafu’s chef, Yukako Ichikawa, says her goal is to make the world a more sustainable place. Besides requiring customers to eat everything they order, Ichikawa will also only let customers do takeout if they bring their own containers for the food.

Of course, it would be nice to temper people’s tendency to bite off more than they can chew with rational suggestions that they simply stop wasting so much. But when talking doesn’t work, appealing to people’s pocketbooks often does. And not only might wastage charges keep people from wasting food; they could potentially lead people to be more thoughtful about how much food they need in the first place, which could have yet another benefit: helping to combat the world’s obesity epidemic.

Reduced-fat peanut butter

The oil is the healthiest part of a nut, containing most of the nutrients, so there’s no advantage to taking it out. In fact, it’s worse because it robs the peanut butter of its health benefits. “Reduced-fat peanut butter has as many calories and more sugar than the regular,” says Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Enhanced water

Drinks such as Vitaminwater are essentially sugary drinks with a vitamin pill. They are “unequivocally harmful to health,” says Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard’s School of Public Health. “Whether vitamins dissolved in water have any benefit will depend on who you are and whether you are already getting enough”

Energy bars

The reputation of these bars, also known as meal replacement bars, is that they are healthy, aid in weight loss or help build muscle. In fact, they are calorie bombs: candy bars with vitamins, protein or fiber added. For most of them, sugar is either the first (predominant) or second ingredient.

Multigrain foods

Multigrain breads, crackers and cereals are often the most confusing foods. People see “multigrain” and think “whole grain.” That’s not necessarily so. This is an important distinction because people who eat whole grains have a lower incidence of diabetes, heart disease and cancers, and are less likely to be overweight compared with those who eat refined grains. Note that when “enriched wheat flour” is listed in the ingredients, that’s refined flour.

Non-fried chips and crackers

It’s easy to believe these foods are healthful because of labels such as “baked,” “low fat” or “gluten free.” But most are made with refined grain or starch, which provide plenty of calories and few nutrients. Popchips, for example, are a new product marketed as healthful. But the ingredients are highly refined potato flakes, starch, oil, salt and about 14 additional things. Pita chips, made with white flour, oil, salt and several more ingredients, are no better. To boot, research shows that too much refined grains and starches increases the risk for heart disease, cancers, diabetes and weight gain.

Read More for the suggested alternatives

Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest.

“This is totally innovative, and has never been done before in a public park,” Margarett Harrison, lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest project, tells TakePart. Harrison is working on construction and permit drawings now and expects to break ground this summer.

The concept of a food forest certainly pushes the envelope on urban agriculture and is grounded in the concept of permaculture, which means it will be perennial and self-sustaining, like a forest is in the wild. Not only is this forest Seattle’s first large-scale permaculture project, but it’s also believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.

“The concept means we consider the soils, companion plants, insects, bugs—everything will be mutually beneficial to each other,” says Harrison.