While I was reading big fat deal they had a wonderful blog posted from the New York Times on the Slow Food movement. Here are some exciting and interesting excerpts that are both encouraging and exciting.
The market research firm NPD Group gets a glimpse of national eating habits through the food diaries it has collected from 5,000 consumers since 1980. The percentage of those consumers who are on a diet is lower than at any time since information on dieting was first collected in 1985. At the peak in 1990, 39 percent of the women and 29 percent of the men were dieting. Today, that number has dropped to 26 percent of women and 16 percent of men.
This is such amazingly brilliant excellent news. Wow all this anti diet stuff is actually taking a hold and people are finally realising that diets don’t work.
And there are other indicators of a shift in eating habits. In May, the market research firm Information Resources reported that 53 percent of consumers say they are cooking from scratch more than they did just six months ago, in part, no doubt, because of the rising cost of prepared foods. Sales of organic foods have surged, and the number of farmers’ markets has more than doubled since the mid-1990s.
Again this wonderful news. People are no longer eating gimmicky, crappy, processed food and are actually learning how to cook proper homemade food again. I know that I have made that step and I do NOT regret it. Today I am slow cooking some beef in red wine and making a blueberry sauce (will be posted in recipe section at the end of the day). I will be using butter but how can this be bad for you? Homemade food is the best.
The cookbook author and television personality Rachael Ray has attracted both loyal followers and harsh critics for creating food that doesn’t focus on calories, fat,carbohydrates or even portion control. She intentionally doesn’t include calorie information with her cookbook recipes. “I think that puts your head into science and away from what I think the experience of food should be,” Ms. Ray said. “If you take the time to cook and provide yourself with a balanced diet, you can cook freely and eat pretty freely and in pretty large amounts without worrying so much about the nutritional intake or the calories or your pant size.”
Well I am buying her book. She sounds great. I am certainly not a critic and kudos for not putting in calories into her cookbook. That is NOT the point of a cookbook.
“If everyone ate more plant-based and more whole foods and unprocessed foods, that would be major,” said Arlene Spark, associate professor of nutrition at Hunter College in New York. “But that would mean people going back to cooking, and what we’ve lost is people’s ability and knowledge of how to cook.”
Music to my freaking ears!!!!!!
Last year, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported on a study of 97 obese women, all of whom were avoiding high-fat foods. Half the women were instructed to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. By the end of a year, the women who were focused on adding vegetables lost an average of 17 pounds, 20 percent more than the women who were just paying attention to fat consumption.
Although I think people should be adding vegetables etc to be healthy, weight loss should not be the motivation. Besides I doubt this type of cooking will actually make that many people lose weight. This does suggest that thinking about what you can, rather than what you cant have is far more healthier for your body AND your mind.
Also, the more time people spend on tasks like food shopping, cooking and kitchen cleanup, the more likely they are to be of average weight. The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture found that people of normal weight spend more time on meal-related tasks than people who are overweight or underweight.
So this I found really interesting. I know that with myself if I start spending time cooking I dont actually end up eating that much because in some strange way I get my cravings met by making and cooking the food and so they are somewhat subdued by the time I eat it and so I eat until my physical hunger is satisfied. I have just wrote a blog on cravings and hunger and so you will see how this can be quite difficult to know what is the difference and this might be the answer – cook food.
On a final note I found this over at big fat delicious.
The report, which asks 5,000 Americans to keep a daily journal for two weeks about their eating habits, also found that despite high levels of obesity nationwide, a declining percentage of people want to slim down or, for that matter, consider excess weight unattractive. In 1985, 55 percent of those surveyed “completely agreed” with the statement, “People who are not overweight look a lot more attractive.” Today, only 25 percent completely agree with it.
So overall this is great news. Not only are people giving up on diets but peoples attitudes are changing and fat people are becoming considered as normal just like everyone else. Today is a good day!
Interesting post Dan. It never has made sense to me that people should obsess about the numbers (calories, fat grams etc) associated with every bite they put in their mouths. It seems healthier to me to eat a varied diet (not weight loss diet, but the food you eat diet) of actual food than to eat all the chemicals in diet foods or supplements. I know I feel better when I eat more fruits and veggies and I also tend to eat less of other foods.
Absolutely true for me too.