I found these on the facebook page of The Farm Food Freedom Coalition, which was "formed by consumers in response to government interference regarding food choices and access. Our mission is to inspire, empower and facilitate consumers into action until everyone can procure the foods of their choice from the producers of their choice."
I'm not really an activist, but when I read the stories of independent small farmers and food producers being shut down, arrested, put out of business, and bankrupted, often via mere technicalities, it breaks my heart. There's a ton of politics in this stuff, and the big money to "encourage" the government to do this comes from the big agriculture organizations, seed producers, and chemical companies. Is it really your best interest that these groups have at hear? I wonder.
Support your local farmer, farmers market, and pretty much any avenue of food production that's not the conventional channel, whenever possible.
One last note... my Gallery of Unusual Fruits only exists because of the farmer's market, backyard farmer, and the 99 Cent Store, all of which are more than willing the sell the fruit and vegetables that don't conform to the standards of beauty demanded by the mass market supermarket chains.
Do you sometimes find unusual fruit or vegetables? Take a picture of it and send it my way. I'd love to put it out there with your name on it!
Lou and Alwyn have done it again, with yet another great book that goes beyond a simple lifting program! The ultimate fitness duo's followup to The New Rules of Lifting for Abs is more than just another volume in a series; The New Rules of Lifting for Life ditches the concept of a "generic training program" and puts the actual exercise selection into the hands of the reader! And, they do it in a way that's clear, easy to follow, fun, and downright satisfying.
I will confess that I got the book ahead of time, as my wife wrote the recipes, so we got the book a couple of weeks ago. :) Still, I love the book enough to give it as a gift, and have already purchased two more to give to two friends who can really use Life.
One of the best parts of this book is that you get to pick your own exercises. No, you don't have to be your own trainer, but you get to participate in your own program design. Other programs might tell you to do an exercise that you just can't do because of an injury or lack of equipment OR because it's simply too hard or too easy. Not a problem with NROL4L because there are a ton of alternate exercise from which to choose.
Also, because it's a template, you don't have to stop after you're done with the program; simply choose new, different, or tougher exercises and get back at it! The book delivers more exercises than any previous volume of NROL, and in a way that makes it easy to follow and learn.
New Rules of Lifting for Life is one of those books that every fitness enthusiast needs to read. The advice is golden, straight shooting, and as funny as Lou Schuler can be. The book has sound advice for all of us, man or woman, including how to get lean, get strong, get or stay healthy, and look good. I don't know about you, but I want to look good for years to come. ;)
Alwyn's programs are deceptively challenging, and as I found out during my workout just last night, I guess I really needed to step things up.
The New Rules of Lifting for Life is my new go to recommendation! ...at least until my own book is ready to go!
"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means." – Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
Way back when, I posted about Bodyweight Training, and the mystique of purity that surrounds it. I hope that you bodyweighters went ahead and added some weights or external load if appropriate and felt no guilt about it.
This time, let's talk about sugar, which is crazy controversial. People are against sugar, against added sugar, against high fructose corn syrup, against white sugar, against fructose, against fruit, against sugars that aren't high in fructose, and more. Truly, you can find someone who's for or against sugar or "a sugar" for all the right and all the wrong reasons. ...and sometimes they just say gibberish and shout "sugar!" while pounding their little fists on their keyboards.
Sugar, added sugar, naturally occurring sugar, and WTF, a whole plate of "sugar" with sugar on top!
Take a look at this video. I'm sure she means well...
Again, she means well, I'm sure. While I watched the whole video, I'm only focusing on the sugar, tomato sauce, and pasta drama for today. Let's start with the obvious nonsense:
Teaspoons and tablespoons aren't the same thing. Three teaspoons make one tablespoon. I hope she made a mistake, rather than trying to be dramatic as she spooned all that sugar, dramatically, over the pasta. She actually spooned 15 teaspoons over the pasta.
Oh my God that's a lot of pasta! She even says the sauce has 5 tsp of "sugar per serving" and starts doling 5 TABLESPOONS of white sugar onto the plate of pasta, implying that the pasta isn't an issue at all AND that this must be one serving. Yet somehow, it's the added sugar of the pasta sauce that the issue.
About sugar
Tomato sauce may often have some added sugar, but tomatoes are full of naturally occurring sugar. The sauce is usually the least of one's worries. When you make it yourself, using no added sugar, it's still full of sugar. As an example, 1 cup of raw tomato, which will cook down to about a half cup of sauce, contains about 7g of carbohydrate (5g of that is sugar). Safeway Select Tomato Basil (pictured on the video) contains only 4g of sugar in a half cup serving. You can quibble over the slight differences if you like, but a gram here or a gram there is nothing worth warning about.
About pasta and starch
Pasta is one step away from being sugar. Pasta is comprised of starch, primarily. As soon as it hits your mouth, enzymes start to "turn starch into sugar." It's virtually the same thing after about five minutes. That plate is a huge plate of virtually empty calories, most of which will soon be sugar in the body.
I'm not a low carb guy, but I think that foods that are easily eaten, have high caloric density, low nutrition, and are prone to be delicious and/or addictive are a problem for us. Too much of these highly palatable foods can lead to overeating. Processed carbs and sugars are "carriers," similar to Typhoid Mary. Mary wasn't the problem, the typhoid she carried was. Along with most delicious processed carbs, come fats (hence extra calories), more carbs (yet more calories), and salt, sodium, and other taste enhancers (spurring one to eat yet more calories).
Is sugar the problem? Not if eaten in moderation, but as a society, we don't seem to have much luck moderating much of anything, which is why the USDA's current motto (via myplate.org) is so laughable.
“Enjoy Your Food, But Eat Less” – the government
The different 'sugars'
Since the dawn of cane sugar, there has been a stream of sugar alternatives, starting with beet sugar (now interchangeable with cane sugar). I won't dwell on them, as I've droned on and on before on the insignificant differences between them. For a flashback, check out "Tea, but with what?"
For a peak at a recent sugar that claims to be healthy, but is still sugar, see this article over at "The Sweet Beet" on coconut sugar. The article stands for itself, but I'll remind you that if you are worried about how many micronutrients you are getting from your sugar, you are eating too sugar and too little of the foods that actually have a decent level of micronutrients.
The ongoing sugar debate/controversy
While it's true that we eat too much 'sugar,' it's really more true that we eat too much food. Any societal rise in sugar intake also shows even bigger rises in dietary fat, processed foods, flours, breads, and other high calorie, low nutrition foods.
Sugar (along with sodium, salt, flavor enhancers, processed carbs, and fats) are carriers. What they carry, is more of the same, which equals calories, and lots of them. Arguing that it's the sugar is pointless, because people also overeat chips because of the salty, crispy, fatty, carbiness.
This is somewhat of a chicken and egg issue, but if we were eating more chicken and eggs (and other whole, homemade foods), and less sugar and processed food, we wouldn't be having these issues now would we?
What can you do?
To start, for just one meal a day, replace the starchy carbs with an extra vegetable dish. The easy way is to just not have potatoes, bread, rice, or pasta, at dinner. Have your pot roast and carrots, but add some broccoli, green beans, or a salad to the meal. Have bacon, eggs, and fruit for breakfast instead of cereal of pancakes. Have a salad at lunch, instead of a sandwich.
Next, cook and eat more fresh, whole
foods. Ditch the boxed foods. Consider high calorie, low nutrition,
highly palatable foods to be optional components to the meal.
This is not the be all, end all of diet plans, but it's a start.
1 – any food that contains a ridiculous amount of calories
2 – a meal that’s large and bad enough to ruin all dieting
progress for the past week
3 – one of those huge burritos that are only made in
America
Bomb calorimeter, noun
1 – a device used to measure the caloric energy of a given food
2 – the device used to measure the average calorie content of macronutrients
3 – what the human body isn't, which somehow nullifies all the weight loss that happened before paleo and low carb diets were invented
* sarcasm
** I'm pro paleo diet, actually, but you can lose weight by counting calories, as long as you realize that every formula is an estimate and every calorie count is an average.
