Sugary haze

196 pounds
As some of you may know from my post about Pepsi Throwback, I'm a fan of soda made with real sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup. Real sugar—or real anything (sugar, butter, cheese)—is almost always better for you than chemically processed sugar, so I've been thrilled to see a few soft drink companies bringing back soda made with beet or cane sugar.

While it's true that too much sugar—whether it's processed or not—isn't good for anyone, it's also true that in moderation it's better to have the real stuff than to shovel a bunch of carcinogenic chemicals in your body along with it.

And that's why Pepsi is introducing Sierra Mist Natural this weekend. Not only have they replaced the high fructose corn syrup with real sugar, they've also cut all the preservatives, which is a move I can definitely get behind since "Preservatives are toxic and tumor-causing. Most impact the nervous system, changing behavior. Some have an impact on reproductive health or weaken the immune system."*

But what's strange about this is the way I heard about, which was in an Associated Press article called, "Pepsi Giving Away Cans of Sugary Soda."

Say what?

The way this headline is written, it sounds like Pepsi is giving away soda made by Satan . . . or at least soda that is much worse for you than the average Pepsi, which seems like an odd choice given that the opposite is true—the new Sierra Mist Natural is better for you than the old Sierra Mist. So shouldn't the headline say, "Pepsi giving away cans of soda made with natural sugar" or "Pepsi giving away cans of soda without preservatives"? And am I crazy to think that the headline they did use is totally misleading? Am I crazy to think that it almost sounds like the reporter is trying to make Pepsi look bad?

The answer is, no, I'm not.

The article also claims that Pepsi has created this new drink to counteract the "slump in soft drink sales and a rise in sales of juices and teas, which are perceived as healthier than soda." Juice and teas are "perceived as healthier than soda"? Does that sound as funny to you as it does to me??? OF COURSE, juice and tea are healthier than soda. Because real juice is a great source of fruit and vitamins, and tea is rich in antioxidants. But the way this article was written makes it sound like that may not actually be the case.

The article also claims that there is "little scientific evidence" to show that "high fructose corn syrup is more harmful or more likely to cause obesity than sugar." But that's simply not the case. There actually have been several studies that have shown that high fructose corn syrup is worse for you than natural sugar—the most recent one out of Princeton University. Yes, it's true that the Corn Refiners Association questions this research, but to say that little evidence exists is just plain wrong.

So why did this reporter get so many of his facts wrong?

I'll never know for sure, but it almost seems like the article was written by the corn lobby, a group that is fighting very hard right now to re-brand "high fructose corn syrup" as "corn sugar" because Americans are finally learning about the problems with it and the giant subsidies the government gives to the corn industry.

And maybe that's exactly what happened with this article. Some lazy reporter got a press release from the Corn Refiners Association, and rather than check any of the facts, he simply copied the pertinent lines—"percieved as healthier than soda" . . . "little scientific evidence"—word for word. What's sad about this is that most people will probably take what he says as fact and think, "If it's in the newspaper, then it must be true."

Incidentally, as Michael Pollan explains in his bestselling book The Omnivore's Dilemma, corn farming "undermines small farmers, depletes soil nutrients and weakens topsoil—which, in turn leads to more fertilizer use, and further environmental damage."‡

All of this means that cutting back on high fructose corn syrup will be good for farming and good for our planet. Just one more reason I'm glad Sierra Mist Natural was invented.

* http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/231968/why_you_should_avoid_artificial_preservatives.html

‡ http://www.salon.com/food/feature/2010/03/26/high_fructose_corn_syrup_study

Bless me, readers, I have sinned . . .

199 pounds

According to food guru Michael Pollan, the obesity problem in our country would be solved if we all ate every meal at home from here on out.

I agree with Pollan, but I'd back away from his extreme solution by one step and say that we should all only allow ourselves one meal out a week.

I mean, come on, Michael.

You don't want us to EVER eat out again?

You can't expect a nation raised on Happy Meals and pan pizza to go cold turkey like that. And once a week is a pretty good goal. There's no way that wouldn't make a dent in our nation's collective girth.

And I don't mind sticking to once a week if I have to.

In fact, that's what Dave and I try to do. To be honest, we've become pretty darn routine about it. Saturday nights, we see a movie and go out to eat. It's downright scary how much we've become like my parents who took us out to eat every Saturday night after mass when I was growing up. I guess you could argue that Catholic mass is its own form of theatre, huh?

Despite the similarity of my own life to that of my parents', I'd be happy to stick to the eating-out-once-a-week routine if I could. The problem is that things keep getting in the way.

For instance, I had to go the doctor today—does this just happen more often as you get older?—and after numerous tests and x-rays and surgical gown changes, I decided that I deserved lunch out on the town.

(In case you're wondering, Dave and I went to Taquiera Azteca on Old Morgantown Road, which has some mean tacos de carne asada if you're ever in Bowling Green, Kentucky.)

I don't know why I always want to go out to eat after I go to the doctor. It just feels right—I figure if I have to suffer a little, I should live a little too. Know what I mean?

The problem is that it violates my only-eat-out-once-a-week rule.

And going to the doctor isn't the only thing that causes me to break this rule. Going shopping or to a movie also makes me want to eat out. As does running errands. Or going to campus when school's not in session. It's almost as if I think that if I leave the house at all, I deserve some kind of culinary reward.

And let's face it—that is seriously f***ed up.

Maybe Pollan's right. Maybe I should go cold turkey. But it's hard to imagine doing that if I can't even cut back to once a week.

Nothing beats a home-cooked meal

195 pounds

So now that we can all agree that processed foods are the devil’s handiwork, what can we do about it?

1) Shop on the outside of the grocery store and stay away from anything boxed, canned, or frozen.

2) Buy more locally raised produce, eggs, and meat.

3) Cook at home more and eat out less.

Numbers one and two are not that hard to do if you set your mind to it, but number three is obviously more difficult for many of us, especially if both you and your partner work.

But I learned a wonderful trick this past year that makes it much easier to cook and eat at home.

Unlike most English professors, Karen, the chair of my department, has to go to campus five days a week and work long, tiring days. Her husband Kevin also has a job that requires him to be away from home all day long every day of the week. In that way, they are like most Americans. (Trust me, I know how lucky I am to be able to work at home two or three days a week.) And they are also like most Americans in that by the time they get home, they have little or no energy left for cooking. (A problem that is, of course, exacerbated if you also have children on top of a full-time job.)

But Karen and Kevin are foodies—they love food but they want their food to be fresh, natural, healthy, and usually homemade. In order to stay healthy and eat well, Karen and Kevin cook all of their food on Sundays. They each make one big meal on Sunday, and then stretch that one meal out for three days. So if Karen makes moussaka and Kevin makes steak, they’ll eat the steak for the first three nights of the week and the moussaka for the next three nights.

Once I learned about Karen and Kevin’s routine, I was so impressed that I decided that Dave and I should give it a try.

Because we can sometimes work at home a few days a week, we don’t have to make everything on Sunday the way Karen and Kevin do. Instead we take turns cooking and follow Karen and Kevin’s model of making meals that will last us more than one night a week—one of us cooks on Sunday, we eat that meal Sunday and Monday, and then the other one of us cooks on Tuesday, making a meal that lasts the next two days. On Thursday, the person who cooked on Sunday cooks again, and we eat that meal Thursday and Friday. (And we usually eat out on Saturday.)

Sometimes we stretch the meals out longer, but even if we only have to cook every other night, we always notice how much of a relief it is when half of the time we don’t have to exert any effort for a delicious home-cooked meal. And since we take turns, that means each of us only cooks one or two days a week, which seems doable even for the busiest couples. If we plan it right, we almost never have to cook on an especially long and exhausting day. This is, of course, important since we are all more likely to eat out or eat unhealthy food when we are tired.

Another benefit of this system is that we eat less. If we know that a meal has to last two—or three—nights, we’re much less likely to get a big plate of seconds, a huge benefit for two people who really like their food.

This may seem like an obvious solution to the problem of not having time to cook, and in many ways it is, but until we heard about Karen and Kevin’s routine, it had never occurred to us to do make such a simple change.

It seems fitting that today to end with a recent quote from Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma: “You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short, and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want—just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.”