Food Rules (6 page)

32

Don’t overlook the oily little fishes.

Wild fish are among the healthiest things you can eat, yet many wild fish stocks are on the verge of collapse because of overfishing. Avoid big fish at the top of the marine food chain—tuna, sword-fish, shark—because they’re endangered, and because they often contain high levels of mercury. Fortunately, a few of the most nutritious wild fish species, including mackerel, sardines, and anchovies, are well managed, and in some cases are even abundant. Those oily little fish are particularly good choices. According to a Dutch proverb, “A land with lots of herring can get along with few doctors.”

33

Eat some foods that have been predigested by bacteria or fungi.

Many traditional cultures swear by the health benefits of fermented foods—foods that have been transformed by live microorganisms, such as yogurt, sauerkraut, soy sauce, kimchi, and sourdough bread. These foods can be a good source of vitamin B
₁₂
, an essential nutrient you can’t get from plants. (B
₁₂
is produced by animals and bacteria.) Many fermented foods also contain probiotics—beneficial bacteria that research suggests improve the function of the digestive and immune systems and, according to some studies, help reduce allergicreactions and inflammation.

34

Sweeten and salt your food yourself.

Whether soups or cereals or soft drinks, foods and beverages that have been prepared by corporations contain far higher levels of salt and sugar than any ordinary human would ever add—even a child. By sweetening and salting these foods yourself, you’ll make them to your taste, and you will find you’re consuming a fraction as much sugar and salt as you otherwise would. 9781101163160_FoodRules_TX_all_fp.indd 75 10/15/09 1:14:28 PM

35

Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature.

In nature, sugars almost always come packaged with fiber, which slows their absorption and gives you a sense of satiety before you’ve ingested too many calories. That’s why you’re always better off eating the fruit rather than drinking its juice. (In general, calories taken in liquid form are more fattening because they don’t make us feel full. Humans are one of the very few mammals that obtain calories from liquids after weaning.) So don’t drink your sweets, and remember: There is no such thing as a healthy soda.

36

Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.

This should go without saying. Such cereals are highly processed and full of refined carbohydrates as well as chemical additives.

37

“The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”

This rather blunt bit of cross-cultural grand-motherly advice (passed down from both Jewish and Italian grandmothers) suggests that the health risks of white flour have been popularly recognized for many years. As far as the body is concerned, white flour is not much different from sugar. Unless supplemented, it offers none of the good things (fiber, B vitamins, healthy fats) in whole grains—it’s little more than a shot of glucose. Large spikes of glucose are inflammatory and wreak havoc on our insulin metabolism. Eat whole grains and minimize your consumption of white flour. Recent research indicates that the grandm others who lived by this rule were right: People who eat lots of whole grains tend to be healthier and to live longer.

38

Favor the kinds of oils and grains that have traditionally been stone-ground.

When grindstones were the only way to refine flour and oil, flour and oil were generally more nutritious. In the case of grain, more of the germ and fiber remains when it is ground on a stone; you can’t get white flour from a stone. The nutritional benefits of whole grains are impressive: fiber; the full range of B vitamins; and healthy oils, all of which are sacrificed when the grain is refined on modern roller mills (as mentioned, highly refined flours are little different from sugar). And the newer oils that are extracted by modern chemical means tend to have less favorable fatty acid profiles and more additives than olive, sesame, palm fruit, and peanut oils that have been obtained the old-fashioned way.

39

Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking a soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we’re eating them every day. The french fry did not become America’s most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes—and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they’re so much work. The same holds true for fried chicken, chips, cakes, pies, and ice cream. Enjoy these treats as often as you’re willing to prepare them—chances are good it won’t be every day.

40

Be the kind of person who takes supplements—then skip the supplements.

We know that people who take supplements are generally healthier than the rest of us, and we also know that in controlled studies most of the supplements they take don’t appear to be effective. How can this be? Supplement takers are healthy for reasons that have nothing to do with the pills. They’re typically more health conscious, better educated, and more affluent. They’re also more likely to exercise and eat whole grains. So to the extent you can, be the
kind
of person who would take supplements, and then save your money. (There are exceptions to this rule, for people who have a specific nutrient deficiency or are older than fifty. As we age, our need for antioxidants increases while our body’s ability to absorb them from the diet declines. And if you don’t eat much fish, it couldn’t hurt to take a fish oil supplement too.)