Food

The Daniel Diet, Part 3–What Does the Bible Actually Say?

by
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

The whole idea of the Old Testament prophet’s being a health and wellness guru was given a bit of juice in January of this year when the superstar actor Chris Pratt announced on Instagram that he was going on a 21-day “Daniel Fast” (which is only slightly different from the original 40-day Daniel Diet Plan). Today I want to take a look at the initial Scripture passage that has given rise to this whole craze. First, though, some historical background:

Although some Bible scholars want to give the writing of this prophetic book a later date, according to the actual events described it dates to sometime around 600 BC and takes place beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s successful siege of Jerusalem in which he captures the city, burning much of it down, and carries off both inhabitants and sacred vessels from Solomon’s temple, which he destroys. During the siege the inhabitants of Jerusalem run out of food, and then perhaps ten thousand of them are taken into exile by being marched off to Susa, the capital of Babylon, a distance of almost 850 miles. So believe me when I say that Daniel and his friends had no need of a weight-loss diet! They were probably skin and bones by the time they finally arrived in Babylon. (There are actually multiple sieges of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army, but I’m not getting into all those details here.)

Read more

This Type of Diet Is a Total Fad

by
Image by 200 Degrees from Pixabay

Ho-kay. I haven’t written about fad dieting for a while; to be honest, I thought I’d pretty well covered the bases with the keto, Whole30, vegan, food-sensitivity and paleo diets, with a brief foray into what Tom Brady eats, and figured that every other weird eating plan out there was just a variant on these. But I realize that I’ve never actually discussed the whole gluten-free craze, which I plan to do, plus some other somewhat more fringe-y ideas (since, sigh, going gluten free has become pretty mainstream). But I’m going to start this new round of anti-faddism with something I heard about only recently, and that is the “blood-type diet.” While it became popular with the publication of Eat Right 4 Your Type (no link provided, as I don’t want anyone wasting money on it) in 1996, it’s still alive and kicking. A revised and updated version of the book was published in 2016, and I found out about (or was reminded of) the diet because I heard about someone I know who is following it.

Read more

Develop a Taste for Strong, Sharp Flavors

by
Image by Negative-Space from Pixabay

When we were in Kansas City recently we visited the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, a truly splendiferous place that we had missed out on the last time we came through town because we got delayed at Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue. (Also because we got going rather late that morning.) Anyway, if you’re ever in the area you really should go. It’s free, and one of its major draws is that it has one of only two castings of Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise.” There’s even a video that shows how they installed the thing. (We knew nothing about this ahead of time, of course, in our time-honored tradition of bumbling and stumbling upon things of wonder. We walked in and got to the bottom of the ramp that leads up to it, and I said, “Those are Ghiberti’s doors!” So I guess I get full props for recognizing them.)

Read more

How Do I Balance the Day?

by
Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

Since I’ve been writing so much about various fad diets that you should just blithely ignore (with more to come), I thought it might be a good idea to write something about how a person should eat, and how well my own diet stacks up.

So first, for breakfast, Jim and I typically alternate between an egg-and-meat meal and a grain-based meal. If we had an omelet with veggies, cheese and perhaps some meat one morning then I might make whole-grain muffins the next day. Or we might have bagels bought

Read more

Four Great Books by the Great Michael Pollan

by

I first got acquainted with Michael Pollan back when I was trying to be a vegetable gardener as well as a flower gardener and was reading every gardening book I could get my hands on.

Second Nature: A Gardener

Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education was written in 1991; I probably read it 3-4 years later after we bought our first house and I was trying to get do something worthwhile in the yard. Pollan’s book uses his experiences in starting a vegetable garden of his own as a jumping-off point for all sorts of thoughts about how we provide food for ourselves and how a garden shapes the gardener as well as the other way around. I’d recommend it highly if you’re interested in growing anything in the dirt. I have officially taken myself out of the vegetable gardening business, but even so I’d probably enjoy re-reading this book. (How it can be possible that someone can grow flowers successfully but not vegetables is a puzzle, but I seem to fit into that category, so I’ve thrown in the towel. The farmer’s markets around here should be getting some business from me starting soon.)

Read more

So What’s the Whole30, Like, For?

by
Image by silviarita from Pixabay

Yesterday I ranted and raved about Melissa Hartwig and her crazy diet (that’s made her a very, very rich celebrity), but I went on and on without ever getting to the central question, which is:

Exactly what is this whole hoop-de-doo supposed to do for you?

Let’s get to that now. Remember, the idea for “going clean” for 30 days was an impulsive idea from Hartwig’s then-boyfriend, now-divorced-husband, Dallas:

Read more

Bad Advice from a Good Source.

by
Image accessed from Soloman Baking Co. website, http://solomanbakingco.com/chip-variety/

What’s the bad advice? I’ll quote two statements (actually imperatives) from the back of the bag: “Snack Often with Our Guilt-Free Ancient Grain Chips!” and “great for all day snacking.” What’s the good source? This locally-owned company, Soloman Baking Co., that produces a range of pita bread and pita chips. My mother-in-law had bought a bag of their chips on sale and boy, were they good! I liked them so much that I bought a dozen bags online. (Small bags.) But here’s the thing: they’re very tempting just to eat on their own, and their overwhelming encouragement on the bag is to eat the chips as snacks. I’ve eaten two of the bags, I think, and while I’ve tried to eat them as an adjunct to a meal probably most of them were eaten between meals–the dreaded s-n-a-a-a-a-a-a-c-k-s. I plan to use the rest of the crackers as part of a concert reception and use them up that way. They’re just too tempting! (I normally buy chips and crackers to use for parties

Read more

So if the Food Sensitivity Diet Is a Scam, Why Do People Feel Better on It?

by

In the previous post I discussed what the popular “food sensitivity” tests are actually testing, which is exposure and not actual food reactions. This one fact explains why the lists of forbidden foods that people get are so similar: a conventional American diet is going to have lots of gluten, dairy, and corn, with probably a lesser amount of soy. Getting rid of these four items will mean, for most people, a huge shift in their eating, often coming with the possibility of the loss of important nutrients. But the 

Read more

Food Sensitivity Testing–Science or Scam?

by

I don’t know how many people reading this post are following a food-sensitivity diet regimen or are supporting someone who is, but I’m sure there are some. So let me say first of all that my purpose here is not to offend but to inform. I got a little tickled/horrified recently with some comments regarding my keto diet posts. One woman said, in essence, “Why is Debi doing this? She’s not going to make any money by keto-diet bashing.” Then she named some diet celebrity whose

Read more