Thursday, May 24, 2012. Broke fast with a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats in vanilla soy milk. Lunch was a chef’s salad with honey mustard dressing. Dinner the first was a bit of roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy, accompanied by some green beans. Dinner the second was a small pepperoni pizza that Dori brought home for me from Pat’s. Shameless indulgence right there.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012. Accidentally skipped breakfast, so my first food of the day was a chicken salad wrap and yogurt with granola for lunch. Dinner at work was spaghetti with meatballs and mixed veggies.
“…study participants who ate two or more servings of blueberries per week had a 23 percent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who ate no blueberries. The same appeared true for people who ate five or more apples a week compared to those who didn’t report eating apples.”
"Blaser speculates that this widespread treatment of young children with antibiotics has caused alterations in the compositions of their intestinal microbiome and that this change may help explain rising levels of childhood obesity.” - Jennifer Ackerman"
— “How Bacteria In Our Bodies Protect Our Health” - Scientific American, May 2012
(Source: scientificamerican.com)
Pictured: Uncooked chana dal.
I’m going start off by teaching you a mess of Indian cooking vocabulary today, m-kay?
To begin, the trifecta of Indian vegetarian cooking consists of pulses (e.g., dal), grain (e.g., rice, breads) and dairy (e.g., yoghurt, cheese). Dal can either mean one of…
Tuesday, May 22, 2012. Another day, another banana! It’ll be interesting at the end of the year to “tally me banana” … I don’t have stats from the past, but I’m quite confident that I’ve already consumed more bananas in 2012 than I did in all of 2011. Lunch represents another huge increase in my diet: veggies and yogurt. I also don’t have stats on this, but (thinking about yesterday’s post and the relationship between food and mood) I do sense that my better eating habits - perhaps including much more yogurt - and weight loss are contributing to a better tolerance of stress and a more positive outlook. And speaking of positive - dinner was a home run: I made pumpkin coconut chowder with shrimp. We topped with crushed peanuts instead of pumpkin seeds. I went back for another half bowl … it was awesome. I had some dessert and enjoyed the rest of the evening celebrating our little man’s 3rd birthday.
Monday, May 21, 2012. A banana to kick off the day. I went to a conference in Augusta and went with the turkey sandwich option, accompanied by some salad topped with balsamic vinaigrette. (And let it not go unsaid that I skipped the bountiful breakfast pastry options as well as the lemon square lunch desserts!) Got back from the conference and had dinner at work: baked stuffed chicken with rice pilaf and mixed veggies.
"There’s something, for me, a little poetic about the fact that a lot of our moods come from the same organ that produces s***. I mean, I haven’t put my finger on what’s poetic about that, but … it does make a little bit more sense when you step back and think about this from the perspective of evolution. You know, our biggest decisions ‘way back when’ were what to eat: is this going to kill me and make me sick? Is this food spoiled? So, it makes sense that the part of the body which can detect that is also intimately connected with decision making systems that have to do with: is this going to make me happy or I should fear this and not eat this? So, as outlandish as it seems that the self is connected with the part of the body that produces s***, it also has a little bit of engineering logic to it."
— Jonah Lehrer, in a segment called “Gut Feelings” from Radiolab’s recent episode, Guts.
