Christy sent me this article a few days ago:
Instead of Eating to Diet, They're Eating To Enjoy
That doesn’t mean they’re giving up on health or even weight loss. Instead, consumers and nutritionists say they are seeing a shift toward “positive eating” — shunning deprivation diets and instead focusing on adding seasonal vegetables, nuts, berries and other healthful foods to their plates.
It's nice to see people focusing on what they should eat, rather than what they shouldn't eat. That principle has helped me a lot over the past six months -- mainly, I added enormous amounts of vegetables to my plate and let them shove all the other stuff to the side.
Along the way, I read lots of different diet books, but also a number of books in the category "how to eat and live well." Real Food by Nina Planck. Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. The most recent one, which I thought would be kind of dumb but which turned out to be a fun little book to read, was French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano. (It brought back some lovely memories, as I spent a college summer in Lyon.)
There is one big problem with all these books. They make me crave expensive food.
Nina Planck's book had me dreaming of filling my cart with organic greens from the co-op, and lingering at the cheese counter at the good grocery store, you know, the one where they actually pay someone to put your groceries in a bag for you. Michael Pollan's books -- well, ok, I've already drunk that Kool-Aid locally produced organic cider, my freezer is full of grass-fed beef that met its end in the glass-walled slaughterhouse of Cannon Falls, MN. Guiliano's book had me wanting acacia honey stirred into my yogurt, and caviar and crème fraîche dabbed onto my boiled fingerling potatoes.
Not so good. Well, I mean, it is good -- it's caviar and crème fraîche and POTATOES for crying out loud, how could it not be good? But maybe not so good for me to be reading about.
Something I've learned: You cannot eat all the good stuff there is in the world. Certainly not all at once. You must pick and choose.
Which puts the gummy bears I've been craving into some perspective.
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