A little something to consider

Sadly, my cord to download photos from my camera took a field trip to Beloit College, so you'll have to wait another day to see pix from Entertaining with Seafood.

In the meantime, there were several interesting articles in today's NYT Science section about food. One about a pediatrician who has tried to eat only organic food for the last three years. Conclusion: he feels much healthier, he can't afford as much meat, many people still don't know what organic means ("You mean vegetarian?" he got asked a lot).

The other is about the "health halo" surrounding foods that are labeled healthy (whether with a stamp announcing "O Trans Fat!"or a picture of some one eating oatmeal while doing yoga), people tend to underestimate the calorie count and overestimate how healthful the item actually is. It goes back to the whole issue of health claims of processed foods. I remember reading some where that the more labeling a food item has to convince you how healthy it is, the less you actually need it. How many labels were on the last apple you ate? Exactly.

One of the researchers was French and commented that, "“Europeans obsess less about nutrition but know what a reasonable portion size is and when they have had too much food, so they’re not as biased by food and diet fads and are healthier. Too many Americans believe that to lose weight, what you eat matters more than how much you eat. It’s the country where people are the best informed about food and enjoy it the least.”

Sigh. Bring on the reasonable portions of wine and chocolate, monsieur.