Michael Pollan from a CR perspective Part 2

Not too much: 

From a CRON viewpoint, this seems obvious. But because we are looking at calories as opposed to just volume, there are some caveats here. Leafy vegetables are hard to overeat. They are very high in nutrients, filling, and low in calories. In general though, you want to have smaller than average plates. Become familiar with portion sizes, both the RDA size portions and the portions that you calculate out through your CRON diet software. When I have oats in the morning it is 1/4 of a cup of raw oats. It seems like a small portion until that becomes your mental standard. Especially in the US, the portion sizes have increased significantly over the last 50 years.  

Wait 20 minutes before taking another helping. This gives your body time to register that it is satisfied. In fact, it helps if you do not serve "family style", but prepare the plate of food, and put the rest away.  

Be aware of calorie density and look for lower-calorie (but actual food), substitutes. For example, as a relaxing winter beverage "treat" I substituted my old comfort cocoa with warm milk with nutmeg, saving 120 calories a serving. Spaghetti squash instead of pasta saves about 360 calories per serving (as well having much higher nutrient density). Fruit instead of cake. Turnips rather than potatoes, etc. 

Additionally, we should especially not eat too much of foods that have been highly correlated to increased cancer, heart disease, and other health risks. In no particular order:  

Saturated fats and especially trans-fats have been correlated with increased cholesterol and higher risk of heart disease and stroke.  
Red meat has been linked to cancer.  
Protein consumption of more than .8g per kg per day may negate some of the benefits of the CRON diet. 
Sucrose and Fructose have been correlated with a number of health ills including diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Foods with high glycemic indexes, which include potatoes, and most refined grains have been strongly correlated with type 2 diabetes, and recently with cancer.

Finally, avoid eating things that are not food. This includes artificial and natural dyes, artificial and natural flavors, hydrogenated fats, polysorbate 60, high fructose corn syrup, food gums etc. Basically, avoid foods that are manufactured rather than grown or raised. While I have not seen studies specifically linking food additives (in general) to disease or health problems, it is just common sense that if you don't even know whether something once was a plant, animal, or mineral, not to put it in your mouth. The FDA, after all, is only saying that there is no proof that these additives are UNSAFE.

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Menu from January 12th

Breakfast:
Coffee with half and half,
Egg on 11grain bread with Artichoke Hearts and Tomato Slices

Lunch:
Finnan Haddie Chowder
Braised Zucchini with Almonds

Dinner:
Parsley Salad,
Parsnips,
Peppers, Tomato and onion stir-fry

Snack:
Yogurt

Free Calories (109)
Brown rice with the stir-fry.


Nutrition Summary:

Calories 1108 , Protein 59g, Carbs 156g, Lipids 33g

Vitamins 100%, Minerals 100%

Michael Pollan from a CR perspective Part 1

So, Some people wonder what you should eat on a CRON diet.

I think that Michael Pollan condensed it very well with his statement "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants". An oversimplification to be sure, but a nice summary of the current nutritional knowledge. I am going to talk about these ideas from more of a CRON perspective.

Eat Food

Try to get your nutrition through food, not through supplements. There is growing evidence that supplements do not provide the same benefits as the whole foods that contain the same vitamins. This should not really be all that surprising. We evolved eating whole foods, and so our body evolved to maximize beneficial interactions from eating those foods, while minimizing negative effects. Furthermore, new beneficial micronutrients are being discovered all the time, but have always existed in the actual foods. Along the same lines, the more heavily processed (via industrial processes) the food is, typically, the fewer nutrients it has left. Companies that sell these foods on the grocery store shelves often try to hide this fact by being fortified, but that is simply a supplement that has been added to the food, and is no better than taking a supplement yourself.

Eat a wide variety of foods. Try not to rely on a short list of foods that you repetitively eat. Even though swiss chard is amazingly high in potassium (per calorie), you should not eat only swiss chard to get your potassium. Find a number of good sources and rotate through them. The more the better. The rational for this is that all the essential micronutrients are not yet known for humans. It is better to use the RDA list of known micronutrients as an indicator list. If you are consistently getting your RDA through a variety of foods, you stand to have a good chance of having received the benefits of hottest new supplements in the same way that when the benefits of phytochemicals, anti-carcinogens and omega-3 fatty acid came to my awareness, I found that my diet was already rich in these substances.

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Menu Jan 5th

Breakfast

Coffee w/ half and half

Banana

Lunch

Bagel and Lox w/ green olive cream cheese

Spinach salad w/ fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and avocado

Snack

Black grapes

Dinner

3 Crispbreads w/ cheese and tomatoes

Clementine

Nutrition Summary:

Calories 1185, Protein 63g, Carbs 111g, Lipids 61g

Vitamins 92%, Minerals 96%

Supplements

I am an advocate for getting your daily nutrition through whole foods rather than through supplements. There are a number of reasons for this.

Tthe body is complicated, and we do not even know a complete list of essential nutrients. We are constantly finding new essential micronutrients, anti-oxidants, anti-carcinogens, etc that we were previously unaware of. For example, Vitamin B was once thought to be a single vitamin, but now we believe it to be 8 water-soluble vitamins that affect cell health. Whole foods contain these nutrients already.

Micronutients are complicated. You may (for example) take a Vitamin B12 supplement, but you would be getting cyanocobalamin, which does not occur naturally. The body can convert it to methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin, leaving behind cyanide. But, it is almost impossible to know whether the body treats cyanocobalamin exactly the same way that it treats naturally occurring forms of Vitamin B12.

Furthermore, foods are complicated. Oranges, for example are high in Vitamin C. So is taking water fortified with Vitamin C equivalent? A study shows that while the Vitamin C absorbed into the blood plasma was the same for both juice and Vitamin C water was the same, the benefits associated with the vitamin only shows up in the plasma of the juice-drinkers. Furthermore, it should be noted here that drinking juice causes glycemic spikes that is in turn mitigated by dietary fiber, which is abundant in the rest of the fruit.

I do not have confidence that we currently have the knowledge to understand the subtle and complex interaction between the body and micronutrients to rely on supplements. I know that some people feel that because we do know SOME things we ought to do them. For example that we need Vitamin E, and if one is not getting enough Vitamin E, then one ought to take supplements of that vitamin. However, I think that it is better to look at the known vitamins as indicators. If you know you are not getting enough Vitamin E, then you may not be getting enough of some other not-yet-known nutrients. Find a variety of foods that contain Vitamin E and add them to your diet. I think that you are likely to be better off in the long run.

January 1st menu

Calories: 1180

Vitamins: 100%

Minerals: 100%

Breakfast:

Coffee w/ half and half

Braised mushrooms and peppers Omelette

Snack:

Clementines

Dinner:

Finnan Haddie Chowder

Spinach Salad w/ Avocado

Quick tomato sauce over spaghetti sauce

Desert:

Full cream Yogurt w/ Blueberries

Leftover sweets - 960 Calories

Today was a much healthier day than yesterday, although really, how can I not do better than unmitigated gluttony? A total of 1842 calories, 731 of them from almond cookies and 230 from chocolates. So, leaving the sweets aside, my menu was pretty lean, as I was still fairly full from Christmas:

December 26th

Calories: 881

Vitamins: 85%

Minerals: 94%

Breakfast:

Coffee with half and half

Yogurt with blueberries

Dinner:

Kale with sunflower seeds, sesame seed oil, and salt

Marinated mushrooms

Ratatouille

Merry Christmas - 3500 calories.

Wow, I managed to eat almost 3500 calories for Christmas. My family is very much into sweets and treats, and I had a hard time to find green vegetables and the protein that I prefer (which is mostly dairy and eggs - a holdover from my vegetarianism). I did not keep track of what I ate, very well, and did not have easy access to many of the recipes that we ate. Where I really blew the calorie budget was on cookies and chocolate (490 and 1070 calories respectively). Once I had my first treat, I somehow felt that I had failed for the day and that gave me permission to eat whatever I wanted. I need to think about strategies that limit that behavior. I DO love chocolate, and especially good chocolate, but surely I can do better than this at the next family holiday.

400 Calorie meals

I saw a book the other day, as I was doing a little shopping for Yule. It was called "EatingWell 500 Calorie Dinners Cookbook" and I though that, while it did not quite meet my needs, it was well done. I find that if I am eating on 1200-1500 calories a day, then my typical meals run closer to 200 calories for breakfast and 400 for lunch and dinner, leaving some room for 2 snacks of around 100 calories each.

Some of the things that appealed to me about the book is that it had meals made out of food. There is little or no "fat free", "sugar free" or pseudo food products. Secondly, the meals did not focus on dessert. There are a number of "500 calorie meals" that involve a diet shake and a diet cookie. The meals looked appetizing - they had some color, some veggies, and more than one thing on the plate. For instance it might be chicken with sweetpotatoes and green beans with a little side salad.

However, I think that with a little thought, I can do better than that. Instead of posting a photo of my CRON data, I will start posting my day in menu form, with the daily calories, vitamins and minerals at the top. If I manage to get around to it, I will start taking pictures of some of my meals, although I understand that food photography is quite a bit harder than it might look.

December 21

Calories 1145

Vitamins 100%

Minerals 100%

Breakfast 118 Calories

Yogurt with strawberries

Coffee w/ half and half

Snack 67 Calories

20 Red Grapes

Lunch 441 Calories

Eggs Florentine w/ tomatoes on homemade bread

Dinner 321 Calories

Braised Asparagus and mushrooms with crab

Spinach Salad with mustard/ume dressing

Dessert 195 Calories

Hot Cocoa w/ Ghirardelli's Chocolate

Another dinner party, and Christmas is Coming

Well, not really a CRON day today. Had some guests over and had a great dinner. I underestimated the calories in the galette, which I later discovered is butter held together with a little bit of flour. If I had know, I think I would have just had a single piece. I also had 2 glass of wine and quite a few slices of bread. However, as I have mentioned before, it is not really the calories of any one given day, but the weekly average, and I find that today, I have not been very hungry at all (although my sweet tooth got the better of me and I had two delicious homemade cookies). The holidays are a little challenging, in that they are full of rich comfort food, and traditions. Foods that I love, and we only have this time of year. I want to make sure that I have everything, because it will be a full year before it comes around again.

This is my first Christmas on CRON, and I think that it will take me a little while to reset my mind when it comes to holiday treats. I think that the thing to do is to budget one's "holiday calories" and keep track as you go along. Just assume that anything that is a holiday treat is about 250 calories, and add it up as you go through the day. A 6 oz glass of eggnog? 258 calories. A gingerbread cookie? 242 calories. A slice of apple pie? 411 calories. A 5 oz glass of wine? 100 calories. It will probably average out to about 250 per treat. Watch out for that pie though.

My plan is to eat light for the next few days - try to keep it under 1000 calories, and then shoot for under 2200 calories on Christmas Eve and Christmas, and then eat light again until the calories per day average to around the 1500. I may take a supplement this week to keep my nutrient level up. I will be at my parents, and have a lot less control over what I can prepare without making a fuss and getting in the way.