Editor’s note: Welcome to Almost Fit. This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

In case you haven’t guessed from the title of this post, I have a very long and fragmented relationship with beets that has always teetered between love(occasionally) and hate (mostly), good and evil, starvation-if-that’s-all-there-is and, well, ok-I’ll-try-it-again-but-I-KNOW-I-won’t-like-it. I have never been a beet fan; I mean it’s pretty amusing from a geek standpoint that eating beets does all kinds of weird things to color your vital organs and their perfunctory processes (as in the next morning, groggily shouting, “HOLY CRAP! Why am I bleeding internally?!? Oh. Nevermind.”), but other than that, I’ve always felt that beets taste rather like, well, dirt.

Who knew I would develop a taste for dirt?
Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to Almost Fit. Almost Fit focuses on improving your health by eating real food in moderation. If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing. It’s free, as always. Thanks.

One of my goals with Almost Fit is to demonstrate that you don’t have to be a world-class chef to improve your health by eating quality meals at home. Neither my wife nor I have been through culinary training of any kind, but we do possess a passion for food, a desire to learn, and a spirit of adventure when it comes to what we eat. To me, those are the simple prerequisites to learning how to cook. You don’t have to be an Iron Chef to prepare meaningful, tasty dishes that you aren’t embarrassed to share with friends. Well, unless you hang out with Mario Batali, in which case you might want to have a culinary spotter when you prepare supper. Read the rest of this entry »

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Can somebody PLEASE tell me what the FDA is smokin’?

We all know that plastics used in bottles and cans were recently implicated as very clear risk factors for infants and young children, but a new study that was published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that adults may also be at risk – big surprise.

While the health concern certainly gets me to think twice about using that Nalgene bottle, I have to say that my thoughts really do soar into the upper levels of outrage when I start to think about this. Why? Simple [RANT WARNING]: Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to Almost Fit. This is part 2 of a series on High Fructose Corn Syrup, and includes the first five of ten reasons why I avoid it. This series has been brewing for a long time, but it is in part being offered as a response to the nationwide ad campaign in favor of using HFCS (You can find some of the commercials on YouTube). If you enjoy this article, please consider sharing it with a vote on Digg or StumbleUpon. Thanks.

Despite the Corn Refiners Association’s $30 million dollar attempt to suggest that we poor unintelligent consumers are simply confused about the wonderful benefits of a diet that is rich in high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), I still find their benevolent story hard to, ahem, swallow. I guess you could say that I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. The suggestion that it is our own dimwitted ignorance that causes some of us to avoid HFCS, and that the big government-subsidized businesses associated with corn refining really only have OUR best interests at heart by adding a chemically-produced sweetener to our foods, is insulting at best.

Before I get into it, here’s my disclosure: Although I like to think from time to time that my ever-expanding forehead is thanks to excessive cerebral exercise and fits of right brain vs. left brain blindfolded fire-juggling mental ping-pong matches, I will confess:

I am not a rocket scientist (in the literal, or figurative, sense – but don’t tell my younger sisters I actually admitted it) – so don’t take my word for it. I am also not a physician, or a nutritionist. These are my conclusions, but your mileage may vary. Thus, my suggestion is very clear: Read about it for yourself and make your own decisions.

BUT, to me, that is the best part, because in my opinion, you don’t have to be a scientist, nutritionist, physician, or politician (I jest) to see through the murky veil that the CRA is casting. All you need is a little common sense, to take responsibility for what you eat, and an ability to read at a 5th grade level. Toss in a little discernment when you watch expensive television ads, and you can find the truth.

Because as you might have noticed, and as one reader pointed out in the comments in part 1, the novel notion of “truth in advertising” is very much dead.

[Pause, take a breath. Resume.]

On with the show. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to Almost Fit. This is part one in a series on my opinion on High Fructose Corn Syrup. I’ve broken it into three parts, with the next two focusing on the specifics. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to Almost Fit. It is free, as always. Thanks.

There are very few things that I avoid more consciously these days than High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). And despite what you may have been led to believe recently by a gigantic ad campaign, people like me do not make this choice out of ignorance as a consumer.

As you have likely seen, the Corn Refiners Association is in full swing on a huge ad campaign to restore the broken faith of the American public in the benefits of using HFCS in our collective diet. In one ad, the CRA suggests that there are not solid reasons for avoiding it – in fact, it is kind of, well, what all the healthy, cool kids drink. The Mother who avoids HFCS is portrayed as far less informed (she is made to look like the fool, actually) than the Mother who happily feeds her children HFCS-laced products. In fact, the Mother who avoids HFCS for her kids has nothing better to say then, “….um….nice shirt?”

What are not mentioned in the ads are, well any real facts at all. Things like the minor detail that HFCS is not considered safe, even by the food producers themselves, for infants. Though from anything I’ve been able to find, they won’t say exactly why. Or that HFCS, not just fructose, has recently been linked to increased rates of obesity and diabetes, yet again.

Is it any surprise that the Corn Refiners Association and Big Tobacco are related through their PR companies and strategists?

So what is the truth about HFCS? And what are the solid answers surrounding why I think it should be listed next to industrially produced trans fats as something we should avoid? Read the rest of this entry »

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Editor’s note: This post marks the return of the weekly Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article on Almost Fit, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

I have been anxiously waiting for something to happen, and in the last few weeks, it did.

Our tomatoes have begun to ripen. (The photo above was taken this morning in our backyard.)

Tomatoes may sound like a pretty mundane thing to anticipate, but believe me, when you’ve shoveled a dozen tons of dirt into a large garden space and gone to the trouble of tending to them through the odd summer we’ve had, getting a few beautiful round red, green, and yellow orbs to spring from the ground is a welcome reward. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to Almost Fit. Almost Fit focuses on improving your health by eating real food in moderation. This post is a continuation of the series of photographs of What We Eat. If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing. Thanks.

Supper, Saturday evening, 5 Spot in Seattle

Saturday evening in Seattle we ate with friends and family at 5 Spot on Queene Anne. 5 Spot is one of our old hangouts, and was a frequent late night dinner stop for us when we were out on the town. 5 Spot’s atmosphere is what I would call “hip quirky” – lots of odd, seemingly random elements on the walls that make it fun just to look around and investigate what’s new, and a really broad range of patrons. This time, they had “spooky” radio drama piped into the bathroom sound system, which is par for the course for 5 Spot. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to Almost Fit. Almost Fit is about losing weight and improving your health by eating real food in moderation. If you enjoy this entry, please consider sharing it with StumbleUpon. Thanks.

I am amazed at this, but apparently I have not posted a link roundup in nearly a month. Without further adieu, here are some links to articles that I’ve personally found interesting this week.

[And in case you're wondering, that big fella in the picture in this post is me, running in the Santa Barbara Half Marathon a few years ago. ]

I recently came across this article on MSNBC: French lessons: Eat petite, take your time, which describes some of Paul Rozin’s work on identifying the differences in habits (particularly portion sizes) between the typical American diet and the French, and the correlation to obesity rates. The article is a decent, if lightweight, treatment of Rozin’s incredibly practical findings (as opposed to many University-driven studies that are often reflections of scientifically interesting results, but have little practical value on a daily basis for most of us). Read the rest of this entry »

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This article is the third part in a series on buying chicken. Part 1 is How to buy chicken without getting punched, and the second discusses how to save money on chicken at the grocery store. In this part, I’ll describe how to interpret the dizzying array of labels that are used on packaged chicken, and give you my purchasing priorities based on what I’ve learned so far. If you would like to learn more, please consider subscribing to Almost Fit. Thanks.

As I’ve made clear in the previous articles in this series, we have opted to seek out locally farmed, pasture-raised chicken. It means a little more trouble for us in terms of turning the chicken into a meal, but we’ve decided it’s worth the extra effort. But it raises the questions: Why buy pasture-raised chicken? Why go to the trouble?

It’s more than just nutrition

In our family, cost, health, and the social implications are all part of our buying decision. In particular, I think it’s important to consider into whose pockets we as a family are pouring our money. I would much rather benefit a local, sustainable farmer supporting a family and a sense of community than a large, faceless corporation who will go to any length to acquire my money.

Certainly some corporations benefit the big picture and do good things – they provide jobs for an awful lot of families for example, and often provide products at an affordable price. But for the most part, the goal of a corporation is to increase profits by squashing competition, lowering costs by any means they can get away with, and convincing consumers that they are selling a product that the human race simply cannot live without.

I don’t buy it. Read the rest of this entry »

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This is part 2 in a series on buying and preparing chicken. Here is a link to Part 1, How to buy chicken without getting punched. Or, you can skip ahead to part 3 which is Demystifying chicken labels: From Organic to All Natural. If you enjoy these articles, please consider subscribing to Almost Fit. It is free, as always. Thanks.

As I mentioned in part 1 of this series, we have taken our next step in seeking out real food: we are eliminating the purchase of meat and poultry from grocery stores by going directly to the farmer.

Of course, not everyone has access to local farm-raised chicken, so in this article I’ll describe how to save money at the grocery store when you’re trying to make better choices. This piece of the series evolved from a reader’s comment from the last post where the question of cost was raised. I think it’s important because it’s a common feeling among those of use trying to make “better” decisions on what we eat, that we’re going to have to get a second mortgage to be able to afford good food. Read the rest of this entry »

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