Lately I’ve been making myself more antiquated, turning neo-Luddite more every day, shunning the conveniences of modernity. It started a year ago, really, when I decided to start making all my own bread. Now every Monday I’m baking at least 4 loaves of 100% whole wheat sourdough (I can’t even bring myself to use commercial yeast). A couple months ago I wondered what it would be like to shave with a straight razor. When my mom found out, she promptly bought me a starter kit with soap, strop and razor. I’ve tried it a couple times with varying degrees of success and trembling hands (that razor is scary sharp). Nutrition has been more and more on my mind. A while back we joined a co-op to get organic fruits and vegetables. Then I started reading the labels of my “food” more and reading books like The China Study and The Omnivore’s Dilemma that have made me really start eating fewer processed foods. If you’re interested at all in thinking more about what you eat, here’s a NYT article by the author of that second book. Then join me for a nice salad and some homemade bread.
Calendar
- 2008-11-20 Fall play @ RBR - Romeo & Juliet
- 2008-11-21 Fall play @ RBR - Romeo & Juliet
- 2008-11-22 Fall play @ RBR - Romeo & Juliet
- 2008-11-23 Fall play @ RBR - Romeo & Juliet
- MSSB @ M Shanghai Den
Our monthly first Saturday gig. Awesome Schezwan food!
When: Dec 6, 2008 9:00:00 PM
Where: M Shanghai Den in Brooklyn,New York
Posted by:richardpetermorris
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- Chuck Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy - Great review of new GNR album.
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- Fall and Winter Vegetable Planting Guide - The key to successful winter gardening is knowing the average date of the first killing frost in your region. You then plant your winter crops early enough to let them reach their full maturity before that killing frost.
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- Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives | Video on TED.com - Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.
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- Multitasking Can Make You Lose ... Um ... Focus - NYTimes.com - As our minds fill with noise ? feckless synaptic events signifying nothing ? the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and gradually to anything,
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long time no hear ken, good to see you back.
healthy living is something that benefits all of society in so many ways. it has cascading benefits. BUT, you would cringe if you knew how far i am from a model of healthy living.
i often wonder, if i were to muster up the will power to alter my eating and excersize habits, what i would eat if i were traveling or in any place that only offered food that was processed or non-organic. after eating healthy for a year, i dont think my body could handle a bacon bouble cheeseburger with sauteed onions and a side of american fries.
Chris,
I hate to see you be cavalier about your health. I have a good friend who’s my age (mid-30s), overweight, smokes/dips tobacco, eats poorly, drinks too much, and is on meds for high blood pressure and heart problems. To top it off, his dad died from a heart attack before 50. And this guy isn’t really concerned about widowing his wife and leaving behind his two kids.
I’m not saying you’re going to die, of course, but consider, too, that there are lots of things worse than dying. Figure you live long enough to develop diabetes and heart disease. Maybe you just go blind and suffer an amputation. Maybe you get laid up in bed for months at a time from illness or emergency bypass operations. Can you afford to not work for a few years, pay for your surgeries and home health care, depend on your wife to take care of the house and kids, etc.?
One fascinating part of The China Study points out that people on a high-fat, animal-based Western-style diet suffer from a whole different class of diseases than those on low-fat, plant-based diet. Heart disease is still the biggest killer in the US, and it’s quite closely linked to eating animal protein.
I grant you that eating healthily is very hard to do away from home, esp. when traveling (esp. when traveling to Mississippi, as I did recently). But that doesn’t mean one can’t try, esp. when you are at home.
I have the luxury (like Jim) of being at home a lot, esp. during work hours, so I can do things like make bread or cook for an hour to make dinner. When you’re working away from home and commuting and picking up kids from school and daycare and such, time for cooking gets shortened and it’s much easier to rely on convenience foods like frozen pizzas, etc. Still, you can look on the label and pick ones that have the least objectionable ingredients (I’m becoming morally opposed to anything with high-fructose corn syrup).
Anyway, if I’ve prompted you to think about your diet and perhaps read that article or some book on food and nutrition, then that’s enough.
Chris, you ARE a bacon bubble cheeseburger with sauteed onions and a side of sausage fingers.