Movie Review: Fast Food Nation

Last night, my wife wanted to watch Fast Food Nation. Having read the book a couple years ago, I figured it would be worth a watch. I was wrong! If you haven't had the displeasure of wasting two hours watching this movie, count your blessings and continue on in your life. I understand what the producers were going for. They wanted to turn a documentary into a story, but failed miserably. The story barely skims the surface of the issues that Eric Schlosser goes in-depth on in the book. The movie touches briefly on the poor and dangerous working conditions in meat packing plants, the low quality of the food turned out, and the environmental issues associated with factory farming. Unfortunately, this book was too full of information to be turned into a successful two-hour movie. In fact, had I not read the book and know the truth of the situation described in the movie, I would've thought I was just watching a fictional story, especially since the movie is staffed with actors like Bruce Willis.

Bottom line: Skip the movie, read the book.

More Farmer's Market Goodness

Today's Farmer's Market trip cost me $39 and netted me:
3 zucchini
1 Magda squash
4 cucumbers
5 onions
1 quart of blackberries - $6
1 pint of Brussels sprouts - $3
1 canteloupe
1 watermelon - $3.25
1 bunch of basil
Kale greens
Green beans
2 dozen free-range eggs - $6
1 small bunch of colorful flowers (maybe 8 flowers) - $3

Unfortunately it's been too hot here for anyone to grow lettuce, so I had to get that conventionally grown at the grocery store. If I were to avoid the higher priced items like the blackberries that I'm really enjoying right now, I could walk out of there for a significant amount less. But I figure I am quite frugal in other areas, so spending a bit on food doesn't bother me.

More Recent Links

Here are three good articles from the past couple weeks.

Art DeVany discussed Science and Staying Young. I would say that the science Art applies to his life is largely similar to The 98% Solution. He focuses on short intense exercise sessions and eating a vitamin-packed, natural hunter-gatherer diet.

Mark Sisson brought us 8 Essential Aging Hacks.

Here is David Seaman's article on The Dietary Pursuit of Disease. He makes a valid point that present behavior is indicative of our goals for the future. If we are knowingly eating things that are damaging to the body, then we are making disease our future pursuit. We all know those people that would rather eat a chocolate bar everyday than be concerned with their health. Don't be one of them.

New Paleo Diet Newsletter

This month's Paleo Diet Newsletter is out. This month Dr. Cordain finishes what he started last month, bringing us the last 4 universal characteristics of the hunter-gatherer diet. He touches on fat intake and composition, potassium vs sodium intake, net acid loads, and vitamins and minerals. He also uses one of my favorite lines (not to say that he stole it from me) regarding enrichment and fortification of foods:

If we have to add a vitamin to a food to prevent it from causing ill health and disease, we shouldn't be eating it in the first place.

I can't get with his demonization of saturated fats and cholesterol, but it's not necessary to agree with everything he says.

Norcal Strength and Conditioning Blog

Our good buddy Robb Wolf and the lovely Nicki Violetti at Norcal Strength and Conditioning have started (or is it restarted?) their own blog. Be sure to check out Norcal S&C's blog for what I imagine will be tons of good information.

The 98% Solution

This week, on Frank Forenich's GoAnimal newsletter, he talked about The 98% Solution. Frank raises an important point. Too many people focus on the little things rather than committing themselves to the big things. I regularly read guys on the forums that ask about using creatine, protein powders, L-glutamine, and every other supplement under the sun, but most of them haven't taken the big task of getting their diet in order. They want to fix their poor diet (the big thing) with supplements (the little things).

There is a similar focus in fitness on the pretty muscles, the extremities. Most teenage and college age males want "big guns" and "HYYUGE pecs" because that's what attracts the honeys. But few of them put in the work to have a strong, powerful body with the big lifts: squats, deadlifts, overhead press, bench press, and pullups. They're stuck with 15 variations of curls and 6 different cable exercises to hit the chest. But as the saying goes, "you can't fire cannons out of a rowboat". Isolation training produces lots of sizzle, but little in the way of steak. The pretty muscles unfortunately tend to be those in the front of the body that can be easily seen in the mirror: abs, pecs, and biceps. However, the muscles in the back, shoulders, and hamstrings are just as important for overall athleticism. Sprinting requires much more input from the hamstrings than from the quadriceps. You can typically tell which guys focus on the mirror and which focus on true athleticism. The "pretty" guy will tend to have a rounded, hunched look, typical of an overemphasis on the chest with little effort to shore up the back, whereas an athlete has shoulders back and stands tall, chest open and up. This overemphasis on the chest and anterior muscles is not only nonathletic, but also results in muscle imbalances that can be injurious.

So what is the 98%? If you focus on high quality nutrition, plenty of sleep, a low stress lifestyle, and exercising the main movers of the body, you'll be one hellaciously fit person. What would I consider to be the 2%? Supplements (other than fish oil...fish oil is part of "high quality nutrition"), intermittent fasting, isolation exercises, etc. If you aren't eating a diet focused on whole natural foods, getting 8 hours of sleep per night, taking fish oil, drinking plenty of water, keeping alcohol and sugar intake low, and exercising vigorously, all of the 2% in the world isn't going to help you.

McDonald's Tastes Better

According to three to five year olds

Researchers ordered some food from McDonald's - chicken nuggets, hamburgers, fries, carrots, and milk - and fed it to the preschoolers. The catch was that each preschooler received two meals, one containing a chicken nugget, a part of a hamburger, some fries, a couple carrot sticks, and some milk all packaged in McDonald's wrappers and the exact same meal packaged in plain wrappers. Note that all of the food came from McDonald's, the only difference was the wrapping. And the findings:

For example, 76 per cent favoured the fries presented in the branded packaging, compared with 13 per cent who liked the unbranded fries better. And while 60 per cent of the children preferred the McDonalds-branded chicken nuggets, only 10 per cent favoured the nuggets presented in plain wrapping.

These findings really illustrate what many of us already know: the mind controls the body. McDonald's advertising does an excellent job of convincing people that the food is high quality and delicious. I've read studies before that showed that younger children have trouble even distinguishing advertising from regular programming and their trusting nature makes them more likely to believe hyperbolic claims. The children even preferred McDonald's branded carrots over the non-branded carrots.

I've seen a similar instance of the "mind thing" before in a college job as a server at Red Lobster. Most people know that calamari is squid. But I recall more than one occasion where a family came in and ordered some fried calamari (delicious morsels!), which the kids had never had nor knew of. None of us would tell them what it was until they tried it. The general consensus was that it was delicious. Then when we told them it was squid, it suddenly ceased to taste good. Their minds had convinced them that it was repulsive while their taste buds were slapping their eyes silly from the deliciousness.

The mind-body connection is probably how people manage to keep eating foods that make them feel horrible (see: donuts, Twinkies, Ring Dings, etc), or to eat foods that are supposedly healthful but that actually damage health. Because we believe something is healthful or makes us feel good, the mind allows us to ignore the problems that those foods cause.

And here's more good reason to turn off the TV:

The study also found that children in homes with more televisions were more likely to show a preference for the branded meal, suggesting that fast-food commercials exert a strong influence.
....
Experts have estimated that the food and beverage industries spend more than $10 billion each year to market products to US children.

More TV time equals more advertisements viewed, which gives more time for an influence to be exerted. The industry is spending quantities of money that no parent can hope to overcome to make kids say "I want!" Unfortunately, more and more of us turn over our, and our children's, entertainment to the talking picture box.

My wife mentioned one possible confounding factor though: familiarity. Humans are naturally reluctant to try unfamiliar things, so perhaps the children are just gravitating towards the name they know versus the unknown factor.

This Week's Farmer's Market Trip

As usual, I hit the farmer's market again this past Saturday. If you live in Louisville, get down to the Bardstown Rd Farmer's Market ASAP (The picture is not of my farmer's market). If you don't live in Louisville (most of you), find your local farmer's market and go. You'll find some really excellent stuff there. Here is a rundown of my take from this week:

Stand #1 - $4
- A big bag of kale greens
- Grapes (real grapes with seeds)
- 1 cucumber (still have some leftover from last week)
- 1 zucchini (still have two leftover from last week)
- 1 yellow squash
- 2 apples

Stand #2 - $13 (blackberries and blueberries are expensive)
- 1 pint of Brussels sprouts
- 1 quart of blackberries
- 1 pint of blueberries

Stand #3 - $8
- 2 heads of lettuce
- 1 bunch of basil
- Something else that I seem to have forgot

Various other stands
- A dozen free-range eggs with the orangest yolks I've seen - $3
- A bunch of green onions with the biggest bulbs ever - $1
- 1/3lb of raw blue cheese - $5
- 1 sunflower stem that contained about 6 sunflowers and really brightened up the house - $1

And the real gem of the trip:
- 2.xx pounds of rabbit for $4.50/lb - $9.50

I don't know the exact quantities of most of the stuff, nor was it all priced separately. Prices are approximate. Regardless, I know that I walked out $45 lighter, but 5 bags of food heavier! If you take out the rabbit and cheese, both abnormal purchases, the cost was really very low for a week's worth of produce.

My farmer's market has several people selling pastured chicken, grass-fed meats, free range eggs, and excellent raw cheese. You can't find that in the big box grocery, although most of these farms do sell through the local health food stores. The eggs are even cheaper than getting the good Omega-3 eggs from the grocery. One thing that is really cool at the farmer's market is seeing food that would NEVER be sold in a grocery store because it's too ugly. Grocery store tomatoes are all perfectly red and about the size and shape of tennis balls. The guy selling the berries had the craziest looking tomatoes. One of them was literally about 8" in diameter with a hole through the middle. It had actually grown into a ring. The rabbit/sunflower seller had two butternut squashes that were easily 1.5-2 feet long, one of which was a perfect U-shape. Because these items wouldn't pack well, nor are they pretty, they wouldn't be sold in a grocery store. Of course, the bulbous, ugly tomatoes are usually the most flavorful, but unfortunately, grocery store produce is all about yield and durability, not flavor and nutrition.

So why shop at a farmer's market?

• Variety: Note the ugly (probably more flavorful) tomatoes and squashes mentioned above; can't find that in the grocery.


• Freshness: Most of the food at the farmer's market was on the vine/in the ground just a few days before; most of what you purchase in the grocery has been picked before it's ripe (probably at least a week in advance) and artificially ripened (which helps to explain why it isn't as flavorful).


• Local: Supporting your local economy is always a good thing.


• Pollution: Whether you believe in human-caused global warming or not, we can all acknowledge that bringing organic grapes from California spews more pollution than bringing grapes from 75 miles away.


• Seasonality: What better way to eat seasonally than by buying from people who can only grow what is seasonal to your area.


• Price: With the exception of a few items, my bill from the farmer's market was very low. I don't normally purchase rabbit and cheese, so that's $15 I wouldn't have spent and the berries are probably similarly priced at Meijer.


• Meet the growers: You can actually talk to the people that grow your food, ask them about their growing methods, and make friends with them. It is nice to know that a human is at the other end of the food chain.

SimpleFit.org Again

I wrote once before about SimpleFit.org by Kevin McKay and wanted to spotlight this site again. Since my first post, Kevin has done a lot of good work to the site. First, the site is much expanded since I last had a good look around. Kevin has added more workouts, improved on the already solid nutrition advice, and provided a list of some excellent reading material, along with a forum. Second, the only complaint I had about the site previously was his use of study abstracts that lay people can't understand. He's taken care of that. SimpleFit is an awesome site for the beginner or the person that just wants to know what to do and when and isn't too concerned with getting overly immersed in the finer points. Following the SimpleFit protocol will certainly get you in excellent shape.

How to Get Fat Without Really Trying

This video was posted on Ross Enamait's site yesterday: How to Get Fat Without Really Trying

It's 10 minutes long and a good watch. There are quite a few salient points in the video, such as:
- The typical grocery store carries 30-50,000 products, most of which are processed.
- Americans consume 3 times as much corn in the form of sweeteners (high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, etc) as in other forms, including as a side dish.
- It takes 1 hour of biking to burn off the calories in a soda. They showed a 20oz bottle, but didn't elaborate on the quantity of soda.
- A McDonald's meal (appeared to be a cheeseburger and fries) takes about 6 hours of walking to burn off.
- 25% of elementary school kids have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc.

All of those tens of thousands of processed products are specially packaged to entice you to make that impulse purchase. Colorful cartoon characters and celebrities call out to us, tempting us to just try a bite of the garbage they're hawking. To counter the excellent marketing of the food companies, stick to the outer perimeter of the store where you can get your meat, eggs, dairy (if you desire), and produce. If you must walk down a center aisle, pick the one with the olive oil and/or nuts or an aisle that has products you are completely disinterested in. It's hard to be tempted if you don't see the products. Another solution is to shop at farmer's markets as much as possible, venturing into the supermarket as little as possible for essentials like spices, olive oil, and nuts. And get one of the small hand baskets as we tend to want to fill whatever apparatus is at hand...smaller apparatus = less room to fill with crud.

Three times as much corn in the form of sweeteners! That is appalling. Art De Vany had a good post on the I'll run it off mentality.

All of those elementary school kids have the makings of Syndrome X. Unless their dietary intakes are changed, most of them will end up obese, diabetic, and disease-ravaged. All of that sugar depletes the immune system and destroys arterial walls.

Peter Jennings was talking to a marketer about the products that the marketer helps shill. They didn't give a name, so John Doe is our marketer so I can quit writing "the marketer". He asked John if he cares if a product is healthy when he designs the advertising. JD's reply was "I care that the product has a positive role in a child's life." What positive role could Twinkies, Pop-Tarts, Oreos, and Cocoa Puffs possibly have in a child's life? Does he think that insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome are a positive thing? When Jennings pushed him to compare his products to asparagus and broccoli, he actually used the words "so-called less healthy products" in reference to the sugary junk. "So-called"! That's marketing speak for "you're absolutely correct that I'm making a living off of pushing crap to kids, but I won't admit it in as many words." One good way to reduce your and your children's exposure to advertising is to....turn off the television.

Of course, I can't get behind the "blame the food industry" tack. It's all about personal responsibility. Granted marketers have mastered the art of using human nature against us to get us to buy things we know are bad for us. But ultimately, companies are only providing that which people are buying. If people would quit buying the junk, the companies would quit making it. It's not Kraft's fault if you're overweight. Kraft, et al, may be enablers, but in the end you and only you put the food in your mouth.