Texas Lap Band Surgeons Talk With You

This past weekend my little hometown paper (that would be the New York Times) dedicated the entire Sunday magazine to diet and food.  Michael Pollan, who writes often on health related topics, recently collected 2500 different peoples’ “rules for eating” and shared his results in this issue.  Paraphrasing some of them, here are a few of my favorites:

-”make and take your own lunch” to work or school.  It’s radically cheaper and you can make sure you’re getting exactly what you need nutritionally without hidden calories

-it’s harder to get fat from food you pray over. Meaning: food prepared at home, eaten slowly with your family (after a nice grace is much less likely to allow you to overeat and is much more likely to be healthy than food grabbed from a drive-thru fast food joint

-”if you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re not hungry”  I love this and want to start making this one of my rules!

-don’t eat foods that contain the “oh” sound in their name: Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos, Ho-Ho’s

-”it’s better to pay the grocer than the doctor” – healthy foods may be more expensive than junk food, but in the end you won’t get diabetes or high blood pressure.

-”don’t eat egg salad out of a vending machine” . It may look relatively good through the glass, but not only is there very little in a vending machine that’s good for you, but you might get food poisoning to boot.  Ewwwww.  So avoid eating from machines you have to feed coins into.

-”nobody gets up from the table before they’ve eaten fruit.” This insures that you get some sort of fruit/veggie at every meal and will likely cut the post-meal impulse to have dessert.  Fruit & veggies have fiber and will keep you fuller, longer.