Drop Dead Healthy A. Jacobs (good novels to read .TXT) 📖

figuring out how to press our gustatory buttons. Their researchers use scary-sounding words like “bliss point” and “hedonics.” But why should they have all the fun? Why can’t healthy eaters steal their tricks? Like crunchiness. As billions of Cheetos prove, we love a crunchy food. McGlothin suggests adding sunflower seeds to salads and fish.

“Shop the perimeter of the grocery store.”

—Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University and author of What to Eat

As Nestle has explained, “Supermarkets want customers to spend as much time as possible wandering the aisles because the more products they see, the more they buy. So it’s best to stay out of the maze of the center aisles, where all the junk foods are, and just shop the perimeter, where the healthier, fresh foods are.”

She says to look down. Or up. Avoid the foods at eye level—along with anything sold at the cash registers and ends of aisles. They are generally the most high-profile, heavily-advertised packaged foods. In other words, junk.

“If you are going to eat meat, make it a side dish.”

—Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and founding flexitarian

Jefferson wrote that he ate meat only “as condiment to the vegetables which constitute my principal diet.” Jefferson was also an early locavore, finding much of his food in his garden, which, according to the folks at Monticello “featured more than 250 varieties of herbs and vegetables, including those that others considered exotic or even possibly poisonous, such as the tomato.”

“Create pause points.”

—Brian Wansink, Ph.D., Cornell psychology professor and author of Mindless Eating

Unless we are given a cue, we’ll just keep troweling food into our mouths. (Remember the experiment with the secretly refilled tomato soups?) This is why Wansink suggests creating “pause points,” visual cues that slow us down. Instead of eating “directly out of a package or box, put your snack in a separate dish and leave the box in the kitchen.” Or else, repackage treats into little plastic bags. Even distance can create a pause point. When you’re at your desk, make sure all food is out of reach. The thought of hoisting yourself out of the chair is a compelling pause point.

“Protein and fats for breakfast”

—Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat

If I were to round up the people who caused the obesity epidemic, I’d start with nineteenth-century health guru John Harvey Kellogg. Along with his other questionable cures (e.g., yogurt enemas), Kellogg believed protein was the devil’s food. So he crusaded to have America’s traditional protein-heavy breakfast replaced with his cereals. Which is why millions of Americans eat bowls full of gut-expanding simple carbs every morning.

Instead, Taubes and others advise, eat some protein. It will keep you satiated much longer and prevent your blood sugar from spiking. My own breakfast often includes the white of a hard-boiled egg and a handful of walnuts.

“Eat your colors”

—Michael Pollan, Food Rules

Not to be confused with “taste the rainbow,” the official slogan of the Skittles Diet. The idea is to eat vegetables of all different hues—red peppers, yellow tomatoes, green spinach—to ensure you’re getting a variety of antioxidants.

“Buy a steamer.”

—Ellen Jacobs, my mom

Thank you, Mom. You saved me from consuming thousands of calories.

“Don’t be so obsessed with healthy food that you end up sitting alone in the corner eating organic kale and silently judging your friends.”

—Steven Bratman, M.D., coauthor of Health Food Junkies

That’s a paraphrase, but the sentiment is from Bratman—the man who coined the term “orthorexia,” meaning an unhealthy obsession with healthy foods.

Appendix F

How to Live the Quiet Life

Three Tips from Les Blomberg of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse

• Buy electronic lawnmowers and hedge trimmers instead of gas-powered ones. Electric devices tend to be about half as loud.

• I know it’s ironic, but throw a party for your neighbors. Become friendly with them. It’s hard to noise-pollute someone you care about.

• For cooling your house: Central air is the quietest option (and Lenox is one of the quietest brands of central air). After that, try a “mini-split.” These ACs have two parts—one in the window, a noisier section out on the balcony.

     If you’ve got the sufficient levels of money and noisephobia, try buying two smaller window units, which are usually quieter than a big one (especially if you turn one off).

. . . and My Two Favorite Ear Protectors.

Blomberg doesn’t like earplugs or earphones because they put the burden on the hearer, not the noise-maker. But I’m all for them.

After sampling a bucketful of noise-dampening equipment, here are my top picks.

—EarProSonic Defenders by Surefire

www.surefire.com/EarProProducts

Originally designed for the military and law enforcement, these guys provide amazing protection—and stay in your ear thanks to a rubber handle.

—Bose Noise-cancelling headphones

http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/headphones/noise_cancelling_headphones/index.jsp

Cons: Outrageously expensive (about $300). Pros: They make life tolerable. Also, my sixteen-year-old niece says that big headphones are back, so you won’t necessarily look like a tool.

Appendix G

Five Toxins I Now Avoid

Even if you lived in a hazmat suit in Antarctica and ate only organic lentils grown in boiled water in your hydroponic garden, you’d still encounter plenty of toxins. Like God and Duane Reade drugstores, toxins are everywhere.

The question is, which suspected toxins will do real damage and which ones can we safely ignore? It’s a headache-inducing puzzle.

The perfectly rational person must weigh four factors:

• The strength of the evidence that the suspected toxin harms our bodies at the doses you’re consuming

• The strength of the evidence that the suspected toxin harms the environment

• How time-consuming it is to replace the suspected toxin with a less chemical-heavy alternative

• How much money it costs to replace the suspected toxin with a less chemical-heavy alternative.

Obviously, there are no black-and-white answers. It’s one big gray area, and the shades of gray are forever shifting.

By way of illustration, I’m listing the five habits I’ve changed since Project Health. Remember, this is just my list, based on my research and my biases. It’s not meant to be definitive.

Organic food

When I can, I