Food

Out of relapse, for today

I don't want to be blogging right now, but I realize that I need to update the previous post, about my being in relapse, 'cause for today anyway, I'm not anymore. I can't have such a dangerously misleading headline being what readers see first.

For 46 days, I've been abstaining from foods and food behaviors that are unhealthy for me. In early December, I went away to Acorn Food Dependency Recovery Services, a Florida-based group from which I've sought help for more than 20 years, and I've been better since.


You talk, I'll listen, on food and weight issues

In conjunction with Kick Sugar Addiction World Summit 2017 (link to the 2016 event), I'm offering a free food and weight consultation to you, or to anyone you know. We'll talk for 30 minutes, via phone, Skype, or other electronic conveyance, about the struggles you face, and what I can contribute to your overcoming them.


"10 Words or Less" with Dor Mullen

[This interview was originally posted about a week ago, but due to faults of A Small Orange (my now-fired webhost) I'm reposting.]

Dorothy Mullen, founder of the Suppers Programs in New Jersey, is a pioneer in deploying community to help those who want to live more vibrantly via lifestyle changes that include food choices. She's also passionate, dedicated to helping, and pleasure to talk to.


Another RD misunderstands food addiction

[This is a repost of an article that was lost, due to the failure of my now-fired web host, A Small Orange.]

Kristina LaRue, RD, CSSD, LDN is a sports dietitian in Orlando, and thanks to her, we have another opportunity to discuss food addiction. Despite all those letters after her name, food addiction has been been misunderstood, again.

We can start here..


On childhood obesity, acting and not acting are both choices

In two prior posts, I’ve agreed with influential blogger Morgan Downey that the proposal in Puerto Rico to fine the parents of obese children is a bad idea, and that the food environment has a great deal to do with the globesity crisis.

But I balked at the implication that parents don’t have primary responsibility for obese children. I wouldn’t have said so before 5 or 10 years ago — because I didn’t get it — but now it’s clear: incorporating fitness and nutrition into children’s worldview is a basic ingredient of child protection.

If fines aren’t the right tack, though, what can be done collectively? I usually fail, but I’ll try to be brief. Clearly, the basic choices are to act or not to act.


Parents must protect against the food environment

In a recent post, I reacted to writer Morgan Downey’s mockery of a ham-handed suggestion in Puerto Rico to fine parents whose children are obese.  I think the suggestion is not helpful, but I objected to Downey’s giving not even a nod to the fact that parents do have a huge role in how kids learn to eat.

Downey focused his prescription on the food environment, and though we agree on its potency, I would put the onus on parents here, too, in part because in this world, a crucial role for parents is to educate their kids about media excesses — which is to say, “media.”


"Nature abhors a monoculture"

I’ve said many times, probably more than a couple of times in this blog, “Who is this guy?” referring to myself. For the first third (?) of my life, I was a sullen, cynical couch animal, whose only blazed trail was the triangle connecting refrigerator, television, and misshapen seat on the sofa.

That guy could never have envisioned this one, the one who glowingly quotes the Georgian farmer featured in a film by Maryn McKenna on The Plate, National Geographic’s food-focused website:

“In my mind, monocultures are the hallmark of what’s wrong in agriculture today. I learned in college physics that nature abhors a vacuum. I learned out here that what nature really abhors is a monoculture. Nature loves the symbiosis of many different species — microbial, plant, animal — all living together, one benefitting from the other.” ~ Farmer Will Harris, White Oak Pastures

Exactly! (Just to be clear, he knew it first, and I’m celebrating his words.)

I would add just a little perspective implied in his comments: Harris implies that what nature “thinks” is important, which is a point I make at the podium. By what evidence? Nature has been sustaining life on earth for 3.8 billion years. Humans arose out of nature, and are a subset of nature, just live all the other lives, and as such, should be trying to fit in, instead of trying to subvert the realm we sprang from.


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