Green Tea Today, Boiled Barley Tomorrow.
Maui has no shortage of health food stores, and I often grab some kind of tofu-based lunch at the hot bar or organic, preservative-free fig newtons off the shelf. And I prefer that kind of food - not just because I know it's better for me, but because it TASTES LIKE FOOD. I like when my food actually tastes like, at one point, it was in the earth.
However, I am by no means an expert on healthy eating. On my drive to work I listen to this health program on talk radio, and as much as I am interested, it also stresses me out. It's kind of like looking at magazine covers: I want to attain it, but I don't even know where to begin. The hosts toss around all these food items, insinuating that they fit them all into their pre-lunch diets, and I just feel totally inadequate and overwhelmed: flax linum, omega 3 fish oil, acai, alfalfa. I'm not ready to be one of those people who carries a medicine cabinet around in my purse, and I'll probably never be one of those people who can casually work that stuff into my everyday food.
My problem, like everything else in life, is that I let a basic thing like eating right overwhelm me. I forget that it's not about being perfect right away.
So here's what I'll do. Starting now, I will cut cold turkey on trans fats. I mean I won't be a complete freak about it - someone offers me some calamari at work, I'll have a taste. But no stopping for something fast and fried when I'm running late. That's step one.
Step two will be to introduce one new food to my diet each week, and then work to really incorporate it in regularly. For this week, it will be morning cups of green tea. Green tea is one of those miracle foods that I've been drinking on occasion since living in Japan, but the boxes I buy always seem to sit on my shelf longer than the hot chocolate (thanks to the habit I picked up in Mexico). But green tea really is a miracle food. D.'s dad developed almost an arthritic-like situation in his knees. The pain got so bad that he couldn't even bend them to sit down at the dinner table, and had to leave them stretched out, tripping waitresses. His doctor, baffled, casually suggested giving up his coffee habit and switching to green tea, and almost immediately he noticed an improvement. Two weeks later the pain was completely gone, and hasn't returned for two years.
It's unfortunate the FDA tries to deny research on the health benefits of green tea. I'm not sure I ever thought of the FDA as having much credibility, but it certainly makes me distrustful of them now.
However, I am by no means an expert on healthy eating. On my drive to work I listen to this health program on talk radio, and as much as I am interested, it also stresses me out. It's kind of like looking at magazine covers: I want to attain it, but I don't even know where to begin. The hosts toss around all these food items, insinuating that they fit them all into their pre-lunch diets, and I just feel totally inadequate and overwhelmed: flax linum, omega 3 fish oil, acai, alfalfa. I'm not ready to be one of those people who carries a medicine cabinet around in my purse, and I'll probably never be one of those people who can casually work that stuff into my everyday food.
My problem, like everything else in life, is that I let a basic thing like eating right overwhelm me. I forget that it's not about being perfect right away.
So here's what I'll do. Starting now, I will cut cold turkey on trans fats. I mean I won't be a complete freak about it - someone offers me some calamari at work, I'll have a taste. But no stopping for something fast and fried when I'm running late. That's step one.
Step two will be to introduce one new food to my diet each week, and then work to really incorporate it in regularly. For this week, it will be morning cups of green tea. Green tea is one of those miracle foods that I've been drinking on occasion since living in Japan, but the boxes I buy always seem to sit on my shelf longer than the hot chocolate (thanks to the habit I picked up in Mexico). But green tea really is a miracle food. D.'s dad developed almost an arthritic-like situation in his knees. The pain got so bad that he couldn't even bend them to sit down at the dinner table, and had to leave them stretched out, tripping waitresses. His doctor, baffled, casually suggested giving up his coffee habit and switching to green tea, and almost immediately he noticed an improvement. Two weeks later the pain was completely gone, and hasn't returned for two years.
It's unfortunate the FDA tries to deny research on the health benefits of green tea. I'm not sure I ever thought of the FDA as having much credibility, but it certainly makes me distrustful of them now.