Healthy Journey Day Nine

Instead of the plain yogurt yesterday morning with my oatmeal, I had half a 6 oz. cup of another flavored, soy yogurt, this one the All Natural So Delicious Dairy Free Cream Cultured Soy Vanilla. For flavor, it has "organic evaporated cane juice, chicory root extract (inulin), pectin, dextrose, natural flavors . . . citric acid" I'm no sure what all of that means, and I need to find out. I will go to the plain, soy yogurt when we finish off the flavored cups we bought Saturday. With the oatmeal and yogurt I had a half cup of frozen Publix Blueberries "Healthy, Fun & Firm."

For lunch, I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich (hearkening back to my cousin Ken's favorite lunch when we were kids) on whole wheat; a serving of Progresso Vegetable Classics 99% Fat Free Lentil Soup; baby raw carrots; and an apple. The peanut butter was Jiffy Crunchy, and I know people get exercised about commercial peanut butter. It's something I will find out about.

I taught a class at the UM Law School from 5 to 7:45 last night and took a hummus sandwich to eat at the break. It was also on whole wheat bread and had lettuce and tomato with it. When I got home, I microwaved a bag of Act II 94% Fat Free Butter popcorn and had a frozen banana. Yes, the popcorn had some "dairy." I'm not counting it right now.

Healthy Journey Sunday Evening Supper

Here's Carol just now preparing "quick cooking mushroom-barley soup" from Lorna Sass' Short-Cut Vegetarian; "roasted asparagus with a balsmic butter sauce" (I concede that the butter is "dairy", but she is cooking up the butter that's left) from Cooking Lite; and "early morning oven roasted new potatoes," mainly, she says, because "we need to eat these potatoes," I guess because they aren't as "new" as they were when she bought them. (Yes, it's not "early morning." Carol's the cook. Are you kidding me?) She got that recipe on line.




[Insert oath], I'm a lucky husband!!!

A Healthy Journey

The bout with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma that Carol and I had in 1994 (I had the chemo, she had the sick husband), marked the beginning of our inquiry into how to live more healthy lives. Among the changes we adopted progressively since then were changes in our diet. Carol was already a marvelous cook, and she began to change her approach to meal preparation. We started to move away from a meat centered, refined carbohydrate diet, and each year has seen us make some make progress on that healthy journey. During the course of that journey, Weight Watchers has been a great help, especially for me. For Carol the journey has included the joy she finds in the kitchen learning new ways to feed her family.

I have been reading a book called The China Study, as I have posted before. This book has captured my attention as nothing I have read in the area of nutrition. Its thesis is that a diet based on plant-protein and complex carbohydrates is the one that is most likely to result in one's living his life to its end in a way that is not compromised with an extended, final period of disability. At this point 15 years after Carol and I started our healthy journey, this thesis makes complete sense to me.

Today is the ninth day of my living a dietary life based on that thesis. I feel good, and not particularly deprived. We were very close to this life already, except for the dairy based food that we ate. The proportion of meat products was already relatively small. Giving up frozen yogurt, ice-cream, scrambled eggs and cheese (how we love cheese!) - that's more difficult for sure. But, still, we are getting along fine, even after just a week or so.

The weekend is when Carol goes grocery shopping, so we did the first grocery shopping under this new regime yesterday. On Saturday afternoon Carol brought home from Publix some "vegan" products, and then we went shopping together at Whole Foods and picked up some more.

This morning Carol pulled out of our pantry some relatively healthy canned foods that are not vegan. We took them to church this morning to put in the basket that goes to a church in Hialeah that distributes food to needy families. So now we are ready for week two of this journey.

As we go along, I thought I would let you know how we are doing and what we are eating.

Let me start with breakfast this morning. My usual breakfast has been oatmeal, plain yogurt and a banana or frozen berries. I have been having the oatmeal all week without the yogurt. At Whole Foods yesterday, however, we bought some yogurt substitutes of different kinds and brands. I used a half of a 6 oz. cup of WholeSoy & Co.'s strawberry "soy yogurt," and could not tell much difference when mixed with the oatmeal. I ate the rest of the cup as a snack later in the day, and it was good. It didn't taste exactly like dairy yogurt, but it was tasty and satisfying.

The entire cup has 160 calories, 25 from fat. It was quite sweet, and a cup has 21g of sugar, which is a lot. I am used to plain yogurt with my oatmeal, but I was worried that this product would taste awful. So I hedged by getting the flavored version. The sugars are "organic cornstarch, organic rice starch, strawberries, and natural flavors." I would be glad to skip the corn and rice starch. So tomorrow I am going to try Silk Live! Soy Yogurt in its "Plain" version on my oatmeal. (WholeSoy has a "plain" version too.)

These soy yogurts have "live and active cultures to help your body's natural defenses," according to the Silk container.

Lunch on Sundays has always been problematical, because we have it at church. Often what is served is full of a lot of fat and refined carbohydrates. There are always cookies and cakes, and I find that sort of thing hard to resist, especially when I have eaten sparingly of the "main" courses. But today I took with me an Amy's Black Bean Tamale Verde, put it in the church's kitchen freezer just after we first arrived for Sunday School and then pulled it out and microwaved it after the worship service, when everyone was lined up in Fellowship Hall for the usual spread. (This dish, according to the box is "Gluten free . . . non-dairy . . . no cholesterol . . . no trans fat . . . no added msg . . . no preservatives . . . no GMOs (whatever they are) . . . No Bioengineered ingredients." Whew!).

After I heated up the dish, I put it on one of the paper plates and got at the end of the line and got some tossed salad and some tomato slices, because the dish did not look like it would be enough. I sat down at a table and thoroughly enjoyed the food and the fellowship, and no one seemed to know the difference. The Black Bean Tamale Verde was excellent.

Carol and Mary have been talking on the phone this weekend about vegetarian recipes, and so I am looking forward to more good things from Carol's kitchen.

Carol and I have talked a good bit about the social issues involved with this development. We are not going to be crusading about this, and when social situations with others involve non-vegan dishes, we will certainly join in. The question is more about one's default approach to nutrition and also about developing one's own strategies to make this approach not a burden on others.

World Malaria Day - April 25

Yesterday was World Malaria Day. According to a paper that Mary is writing for her bio class, an estimated 500 million people suffer from malaria each year, resulting in over one million deaths, mostly of children and mostly affecting poor populatons in tropical and subtropical areas.

Experts say one child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. Around the world, malaria kills 3,000 children under 5 every day, a higher mortality rate than AIDS. - New York Times 10-31-1998.

Law Firms and Starbucks

Carol sent this to me. I think the difference is that there is no guild controllong the delivery of coffee but there is one controlling the delivery of legal servies. This doesn't necessarily mean that the lawyers' guild should be broken open, but it certainly suggests an inquiry into that matter.

Recalibrating

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

-James 1:27

Fat Intake and Breast Cancer

Concerning the evidence in Chart 4.7 [reflecting a well-designed and implemented, country to country study made by the late Kenneth K. Carroll, professor at the U of West Ontario, of the positive correlation between total fat intake and breast cancer], the solution seems obvious: if we eat less fat, then we'll lower our breast cancer risk. Most scientists made this conclusion and some surmised that dietary fat caused breast cancer. But that interpretation was too simple. Other charts (Charts 4.8 and 4.9) prepared by Professor Carroll were largely, almost totally, ignored (Charts 4.8 and 4.9). They show that breast cancer was associated with animal fat intake but not with plant fat.

-from The China Study at pages 84 and 85.

Security Guards in lieu of Police Officers

The WSJ today carried an article about municipalities that are hiring security guards to do police work.

Hiring private guards is less expensive than hiring new officers. Oakland - facing a record $80 million budget shortfall - spends about 65% of its budget for police and fire services, including about $250,000 annually, including benefits and salary on each police officer. In contrast, for about $200,000 a year the city can contract to hire four private guards to patrol the troubled East Oakland district where four on-duty police officers were killed in March. And the company, not the city, is reponsible for insurance for the guards.

UPDATE: The WSJ reports today that the Oakland contract was cancelled because of a fraud investigation of the owners of the security firm. So much for outsourcing.

"Long Term Consequences are Grave"

I receive periodic letters and reports on the economic and investment climate from many sources. Many of them I have learned simply to discard, but others I read carefully. One of the latter is from an investment manager at Northern Trust. His letter of April 10 includes this passage:

We believe [the US] governments' (sic) aggressive monetary and fiscal stimulus programs will restore positive economic growth at some point during the second half of this year. We also acknowledge that the longer-term consequences of these programs are grave, and to the extent these programs are not unwound in a timely and successful manner, they may become the source of future economic distress. Nonetheless, these massive governmental interventions were and remain necessary given the past 20 months' precipitous collapse in global commerce and credit.

"He who does not know food, how can he understand the diseases of man?"

-Hipporactes, the father of medicine (400-357 B.C.), as quoted in The China Study.

eBooks Cheap

Here's link to a list of 10 sites where one can down load eBooks without charge. Of the Kindle books I listed on the next previous post, items 7, 8, 10, and 11 were free or cost around a dollar.

Books I'm Reading Update

1. The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health, T. Colin Campbell.
2. Daniel, Lives of Integrity, Words of Prophecy, Beth Moore
3. Truman, David McCullough (Kindle)
4. Celebration of Discipline, Foster
5. Chronological Study Bible
6. The Third Option, Flynn (Fiction: Kindle)
7. The Journal of John Wesley (Kindle)
8. Table Talk, Luther (Kindle)
9. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin, (Ford Lewis Battle translation)
10. The Imitation of Christ, a Kempis (Kindle)
11. Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (Kindle)

Let's [Tea] Party, Miami Springs and America!

On the Circle and at the Gazebo, where we signed petitions and threw our tea [bags] into the brine.

Are We Surprised?

Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security Director who lately distinguished herself with a report warning that people with "right-wing" views should be surveilled for terrorist leanings, turns out to be a surveillance advocate all 'round. The WSJ today reports that the Arizona legislature is

considering bills to dismantle the [freeway speed camera system] created by [then] Gov. Janet Napolitano when she faced a gaping budget deficit.

This is the system built on "short yellows," meaning the yellow light on the traffic signal that lights up as the signal is turning red. The "short yellows" are attached to a robotic camera that takes a photo of an offender's license plate as he drives through the intersection and then sends the offender a ticket.

Don't Mess With Texas

No, really. Don't.

Gov. Perry Backs Resolution Affirming Texas’ Sovereignty Under 10th Amendment

A number of recent federal proposals are not within the scope of the federal government’s constitutionally designated powers and impede the states’ right to govern themselves. HCR 50 affirms that Texas claims sovereignty under the 10th Amendment over all powers not otherwise granted to the federal government.

It also designates that all compulsory federal legislation that requires states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties, or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding, be prohibited or repealed.

Off The Wall

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in "rightwing extremist activity," saying the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "rightwing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.

-The Washington Times today.

[Catchy Title Goes Here]

Excess Men

Think about the implications of this.

To Whom Shall We "Blue Dogs" Flee?

Glenn comments.

What about Walt?

Obama and the Pirates

This is a pop quiz, not an exam, not a mid-term, and certainly not a final. One hopes he passes with flying colors.

UPDATE: Flying colors it is!

FURTHER UPDATE: Maybe not quite so flying. The WSJ reported today (4/13) that when Capt. Phillips jumped out of the lifeboat a couple of days ago and managed to swim away, the Navy did not yet have authorization to use force. The pirates shot at the captain and recaptured him. The Navy should already have had the authorization. There may have been an opportunity missed, then, to intervene at that point and save the captain. It turned out well, but the credit due the President seems compromised.

See, also, this from Glenn Reynolds.