Category Archives: Dieting

On bread…

This morning I was in a rush to get out of the house, and didn’t have time to make a big breakfast, so while I was gathering my stuff, I cut a fairly thick slice of bread off the loaf I made last night and jammed it in the toaster. As I was about to leave, the toaster popped, I quickly smeared on a tablespoon of peanut butter, and headed out.

It was really quite delicious.

Other than some Jewish ryebread that we got the other day, I haven’t bought a loaf of bread since last year. Instead, I make it, using what I consider one of the greatest food hacks of recent memory: Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread. Making bread this way is straightforward and ultimately rewarding: to have a tasty hot loaf come out of the oven, after filling your kitchen with that bready, yeasty smell feels like you are really cooking, that you really understand food.

Yes, yes. Some of you are of the anti-carb religion. I know, carbs do terrible things to your blood sugar and insulin levels, which mucks with all sorts of things having to do with metabolism and weight management. I even agree with it, at least to a point. But “bad foods” have gone through cycles. When I was a kid, it was sugar. Then it was fats. Then carbohydrates. We want to do the right thing, but we get fed conflicting information. We were told that there were links between consumption of fats and coronary disease, but more recent studies seem to refute this basic idea. Recent studies question the idea that omega-3 fatty acids improve cardiac health, or that dietary fiber protects against colon cancer. What’s a guy to do?

I’m trying to develop a philosophy of food, cooking and eating that will feed and nourish my body, and still provide me with the rich, emotional experience that I enjoy from food. I like Michael Pollan’s simple philosophy:

Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

I’m been mostly thinking about the first one over the last month, that I should be eating food. I began to realize that my weight (and the associated health issues related to it) weren’t really being caused by the occasional trips to the fancy restaurants that my wife and I enjoy a few times a year, nor by the meals that I prepared for myself, but were caused by all the “food-like” substances that I ate without thinking. So-called fast food. Processed food. Food that came in boxes, with nutritional labels. I began to view even the “Smart Ones” frozen foods that my wife and I consumed almost daily in our previous bought of Weight Watchers were part of a basic problem: a prioritization of convenience over actually taking the time and energy to think about, prepare, and consume actual food.

So, back to bread. The no-knead bread takes about 3 cups of flour to make. Along with infinitesimal amounts of salt, yeast, and a water, all it takes is heat to convert this into a large crusty loaf such as the one I pictured above. I made that loaf with unbleached bread flour (King Arthur’s). Should I be eating this? Should I be making this?

I’m going to say “yes”, with certain reservations.

First of all, while it is made from a fairly processed raw material (bread flour), it contains none of the “non-food” items that you frequently see on bread labels. It has no high fructose corn syrup (in fact, no added sugar). It has no preservatives. It’s just flour, salt, yeast and water. It’s pretty much the same recipe that humans have been making for thousands of years. It would be hard to classify bread made this way as a non-food: bread is practically the definition of food. We could deconstruct all the components: a cup of bread flour has about 361 calories, 2g of fat, 73 grams of carbohydrates, 12.7 grams of protein, and 1 gram of sugar. That is a lot of carbohydrates. There isn’t a lot of vitamin content in the bread either. But even if you ate 1/3 of my loaf in a day, it would account for less than 20% of the calories of a typical 2000 calorie diet. Reasonable (not even small) portions of this bread can be a part of your daily meal, and of course, I don’t even eat it daily. When I do, I try to make sure other aspects of my diet are richer in proteins and vegetables.

Secondly, I’m making it myself. I’m under no delusion that the bread is more nutritious as a result, but I’m trying to modify some of my destructive food behaviors. One of the ways to do that is to stop shooting for convenience. Convenience foods are there when you don’t want to be bothered to think about what you are eating, but you should be thinking about what you are eating. While this bread is simple to make, it does take 24 hours to make. You have to think ahead of time, and that means that you tend not to eat it without thinking about it. I firmly believe that so-called ‘food scientists’ are working mostly to make products which are addictive and convenient, rather than satisfying and nutritious. I can do better.

Third, and perhaps most importantly: it’s better in almost everyway than the convenient food it replaces. Check out that loaf again. It looks better. It smells better. It tastes better. When I make it, I feel like I’m cutting out the bad stuff, and concentrating on the good stuff. I think about building meals around a few slices of bread. I think about butternut squash soup. Or maybe just some braised greens and some crusty slices of toast. This morning’s peanut butter and toast was brilliant. The toast had a crispiness that I don’t think you get in prepackaged, pre-sliced bread. I modified the cooking times and preps a bit from my previous loaf, and the bread came out higher, and with a more delicate crust. I’m already imagining the next loaf I’ll make (probably next week).

I’m going to enjoy bread and pasta, but I’m going to think carefully about it. I’m going to maximize my enjoyment of it, while moderating my consumption.

Addendum: One of the most interesting books I’ve read lately is Tamar Adler’s incredible Everlasting Meal. She makes a claim in her book which struck home with me, that it’s impossible to solve dietary problems without cooking (I’ll have to look up the exact quote). Her book is a brilliant celebration of the art, craft and philosophy of cooking and food. Well worth reading.

Do Americans Eat 3,790 Calories Per Day?

A couple of times in the last few months, I’ve seen this very odd statistic that the average American consumes 3790 calories per day. This is usually used in conjunction with some argument about why Americans are overall so obese. For instance, here is one such thing from diet-blog.com.

Do Americans Eat 3,790 Calories Per Day?

I had thought that this number can’t possibly be correct: if it were, we wouldn’t have a 35% obesity rate, we’d effectively all be dead from exploding. As an adult male my age, you might anticipate that my caloric needs would amount to (say) 2400 calories a day (I’m a tall guy). That means that if I consumed this ‘average’, that I would have a caloric surplus of 1390 calories every day. There are about 3500 calories in a pound of fat. That means I’d gain a pound every two and a half days. 144 pounds every year! That can’t possibly be correct.

Until recently, I didn’t research or spot the error, but now I can tell you what it is.

The “consumption” referred to here isn’t the amount eaten. It’s merely the amount food which is available to consumers. From the USDA’s FAQ on the source of these numbers:

Q: Does the Food Availability (Per Capita) Data System measure actual consumption?

A: No. The data system, which consists of three data series, does not measure actual consumption or the quantities ingested. The data are not based on direct observations of consumption or on survey reports of consumption. They are calculated by adding total annual production, imports, and beginning stocks of a particular commodity and then subtracting exports, ending stocks, and nonfood uses. Per capita estimates are calculated using population estimates for that particular year. However, ERS’s food availability (per capita) data are useful for economic analysis because they serve as indirect measures of trends in food use. In other words, the Food Availability (Per Capita) Data System provides an indication of whether Americans, on average, are consuming more or less of various foods over time.

Roughly speaking, this 3790 calorie per day number is derived from the vast surplus of food which is produced and sent to consumers. It has nothing to do with the amount that is actually observed to be eaten.

Sadly, I see this number echoed time and time again on diet blogs, usually in the form of cautionary tales about ‘someone I know who probably does eat that much’. It’s nonsense.

Big Fat Lies by Gary Taubes

I’m back again fighting the battle against my weight, cholesterol and blood pressure. As a guy who tries to be very rational and very scientific, I’m constantly looking for (and constantly frustrated) by the lack of rigorous and useful scientific data that guides me in trying to change my behavior to have a better health outcome. In doing this, I am frequently frustrated.

For instance, when I was a kid, we were warned about eating to much sugar. Sugar, it was said was the major cause of hyperactivity and tooth decay. In fact, both of those appear to be myths. Parents have been told that their kids will be more hyper when they’ve had sugar, and often apply a purely subjective standard for their children’s behavior depending upon whether they know if they’ve had sugar or not. And of course pure sugar is relatively less of a problem than starchy carbohydrates because tooth decay is primariy caused by a bacteria which feeds on sticky starch which remains stuck to teeth, which causes them to emit acids which attack tooth enamel.

By the late seventies, the blame had shifted to dietary fats. It seems logical: if you are getting fat, it’s probably, well, because you ate too much fat. So, a huge industry began which fed America based upon this wisdom: we saw the creation of larger and larger amounts of “low-fat” and “non-fat” foods, which we as Americans bought in vast quantities. And, the net result of all this was that obesity rates skyrocketed. In other words, when millions of Americans did what experts told them to do and lower their fat content, they became fatter and fatter, and dramatically so.

The Atkin “revolution” told us that much of what we learned was a lie: that in fact it wasn’t fat which made us fat, it was carbohydrates. Our new demon was bread: you could eat all the steak you wanted, as long as you didn’t eat any of that bread.

The fact of all of this is that food metabolism is very complex, and much of what people say about diet is not only incorrect, but in fact can’t possibly be correct. As a for instance, the conventional wisdom is that “a calorie is a calorie”. It doesn’t matter if you eat fats or carbs or proteins, it all doesn’t matter. If you have an excess of around 3500 calories, you will put on a pound of fat.

But this can’t possibly be true. Let’s say that it were true, and you were one of those lucky people who “hasn’t gained a pound since college” (let’s say that’s 10 years ago). That means that in the span of 3653 days (we’ll round), your total caloric intake as compared with your energy expected has to be balanced to within 3500 calories. That requires a precision of about one calorie per day. I burn a calorie in a few seconds of walking on a treadmill. Does that make any sense to anyone?

There obviously has to be more at work here.

I got on this track courtesy of Jay Parkinson’s blog. He’s an MD, and was writing about a retailer who pulled a T-shirt from their stores which carried the message “Eat Less”. He said that he thought it was a bad thing, because anorexia accounted for a mere 1% of the population, while 35% of us were obese. According to figures provided by UN FAO (and linked by Parkinson) Americans consume on average 3790 calories per day. The American Heart Association suggests that I eat between 2000 and 2400 calories as a moderately active adult male in my age group. Let’s say that my activity level burns 2200 calories per day, but that I am one of these “average” Americans. This means that I am overeating to the tune of 1590 calories per day. I should put on more than a pound every three days. If weight gain (and loss) were really as simple as Parkinson would have you believe, the real question isn’t “why can’t I seem to get thin” but rather “why aren’t we all bursting our skins?”

Someone left this link to a talk by Gary Taubes on Jay’s discussion board. I think it’s pretty interesting, and points out some of these fallacies and the likely causes. I think that if I could internalize some of the lessons, it might prove to be helpful.

A New Weight Loss Experiment: Twittering My Weight

Well, I’m about to embark upon a new experiment. My weight has crept back up to where it was when I first joined Weight Watchers six years ago. I peaked probably near 325 or even higher, but was around 307 when I started with Weight Watchers. I eventually trimmed down to a little over 260, but lost movitation as my efforts to go lower stalled, and of course, once you feel like you stalled, my weight slowly has crept back up to higher levels, and this morning I’m nudging in at around 303 lbs.

Yes, I’m unflinchingly telling you those numbers. Okay, I’m flinching a tiny bit. Many people gasp when they hear that number. Hey, I’m 6’4″ tall too, so it isn’t as bad as it could be. Still, I cringe a bit inside when I see that “3” at the beginning of my weight, largely because I know that it probably means that my blood pressure and cholesterol levels could use some work too.

Anywhere, there’s the setup. Here’s the new experiment: I’ve acquired a wifi enabled scale from withings.com. I blame Leo Laporte, because he mentioned he got one, and I decided that I would give it a shot. One of the interesting things about this scale is that you can set it up to echo your weight to both their own site, to Google Health, or to (gasp!) Twitter.

So, I’ve created a new twitter login called marks_mass to serve as the output for this device. Each morning I’m going to hop on the scale and get a weight + BMI reading, which will get echoed onto my twitter account (right now it seems to just be sending my weight, I’ll see if I can change that, I’m still getting acquainted with the device). And, all of my followers will be able to see what I weigh.

Here’s where you come in: if you have a reaction, positive, negative, doesn’t really matter, go ahead and respond to marks_mass. Send encouragement. Send disappointment. Send advice. I’m opening this up to harness the power of my peers to help me change my own attitudes and behavior.

Welcome to my grand experiment.

Click here if you want to see marks_mass, and if you like, you can become a follower.

Addendum:
I should also give a brief mention to the device. It’s a really nice little gadget, much nicer than any other bathroom scale I’ve had before. It’s got a very sleek black finish and a bright display that I can read easily when you stop on it. If you step on it with bare feet, it will weigh you, and if you continue to stand, will give you a progress bar as it determines your BMI. Setup for the WiFi was similarly simple. You go to their website, download an installer for PC/Mac. You then do a one time configuration by plugging it into your PC, which pairs it to your wireless access point and gets it registered. You can then create a profile, and use it to start monitoring your weight. (All future configurations are done over the Internet.) I’m quite pleased with the device thusfar.