Green Options

Overeating on holidays like Thanksgiving is more than acceptable in our culture - it’s expected.

Why not binge on mashed potatoes, gravy, and pecan pie?  Thanksgiving only comes once a year, after all.  Sure, you might gain a few pounds over the holiday season, but you have until New Year’s to worry about those.

New research suggests that the holiday binge might have a less visible effect than the extra weight around your midsection.  Switching from a healthy diet to one high in fat and sugar - even for just a day - might allow obesity-linked microbes to dominate the communities of microorganisms found in your gut.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” says Michael Pollan. While I’m pretty good at eating real, non-processed food and basing my diet on plants, I struggle with the “not too much” part.

I love food. I probably love it a little too much. Although I’m very active, I carry around 10-20 extra pounds from being such a big eater.

Part of the problem is that, as a grad student, I don’t get nearly enough sleep. Sleep deprivation can make you fatter by increasing levels of appetite regulating hormones and eroding your ability to make good decisions. I also spend an inordinate amount of time in front of my computer doing work that I don’t really want to do, so I snack to stay awake and make my work more enjoyable.

So what’s a food-loving, sleep-deprived gal supposed to do? I have enough experience training animals that I know I can’t simply tell myself to stop certain behaviors. (Ever try yelling at your dog to get it to stop barking? Usually doesn’t work, does it? Distracting your dog with a game works much better.) Instead of telling yourself that tomorrow is the day that you will stop overeating, you need to replace a bad habit with a good one to be successful.

Here are some strategies for replacing habits that lead to overeating with healthier habits:

Today is National Sandwich Day, supposedly because November 3rd marks the birthday of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. Legend has it that Montagu ordered his servant to bring him meat tucked between two pieces of bread so Montagu could eat one-handed while gambling.

While I’ve yet to be convinced that National Sandwich Day wasn’t created to sell more sliced bread, the holiday is still a good excuse to make [...]

My dog taught me to make better seafood choices.

Weird, I know.

You see, my dog has a lot of, er… issues. By the time I adopted her, she had lived on the streets of East St. Louis for three months, bounced through eight different foster homes, and had one failed adoption - all before her first birthday.

Dealing with her emotional baggage has become a big part of my life. Since she doesn’t find pets, praise, or ordinary dog treats very motivating, I’ve had to get more creative in my training. One food she finds really motivating are canned sardines.

Before I got this dog, I had never eaten a sardine. Once my pantry was stocked with at least a dozen tins of sardines - an option I knew was more sustainable and lower in mercury than the neighboring cans of tuna - it was inevitable that I would get curious.

I’ve since become a convert, and it looks I’m not the only one focusing on the sardine as a greener seafood option.

With all of the attention being paid to the platforms of foodies like Jamie Oliver and Michael Pollan, you would think that Americans would cook more and rely less on fast- and processed-food.

The misperception that cooking is too time consuming turns out to be a major roadblock on our path to a sustainable national food system.

Cooking is not time consuming. Shopping for groceries, however, is.

One strategy for making cooking a part of your daily life is to maximize your cooking to shopping ratio.

Here are some tips on how to cook more and shop less:

I can’t tell you how many times I have broken a sweat in a restaurant. I’m not talking about a girly glow. I’m talking about sweat pouring off of my face and dripping onto my plate. The kind of sweat that makes people stop and stare and wonder if perhaps I am some sort of drug addict.

Surely after so many embarrassing meals I would have learned not to order the spiciest thing on the menu by now, but there’s something about a chili pepper that I can’t resist.

That something, it turns out, is capsaicin, a chemical compound produced by chilies to ward off unwanted consumers. The higher the concentration of capsaicin in a chili, the hotter it is.