Recent source of inspiration: Michael Pollan's (he of The Omnivore's Dilemma) article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine about Nutrition trends.  He comes up with the perfect diet for everybody:

Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.

Yes, that's it.  It reminds me terrifically of a wonderful article in The Onion from way back when...

His plan reads: Avoid saturated fats and simple carbohydrates, eat mostly fresh vegetables and and exercise.  As the son of a physicist, I've always been attracted to the "Theory of Everything", which is to say, a real theory is as simple as possible.  Pollan's new plan is pretty friggin simple, no?

So this Summer's Fancy Food show was a gas- all that cheese, all that wine, all those hot sauces.  This Winter's show was a lot of the same, with some big-boys showing up to strut their stuff (Ghirardelli OWNED that place).  Surprisingly, though, it didn't really distinguish itself from the Summer's entry- lots of sauces, lots of crispy snacks, lots of refined foods trying to follow trends into the sunset.

I guess I expected that since we were in sunny California (whch hasn't seen the sun all week) there'd be lots of, you know, "Healthy" stuff.  But WOAH was I wrong.  Aside from some regional farms, orchards,  and fruit growers (YAY Bella Viva!!!), it was all just the same old processed crap, mixed in with lots of innovators from the plain states and the East.  Go figure.

This of course links to Pollan's article, Unhappy Meals, because he basically asserts that processed food is getting us further and further away from what we should be calling food.  An early assertion in the article is that supermarkets have less and less "food," yet more and more "food-like substance".  He takes on the notion of "nutritionism" (eating by nutrients rather than by food) as a grave trend in American diets.  But isn't all that "nutritional" stuff supposed to be GOOD for you?

My Father-in-law once entertainingly lambasted me for just this sort of thinking.  He caught me taking a Vitamin C pill with something like 25,000 mg of C (or something silly like that).  I believe he put it something like, "boy, your pee sure will be loaded with citric acid!" (excess, unused vitamin C gets flushed through the kidneys).  I defended my action as being, you know, "nutritional."  But rarely, if ever, had I bothered to really define "nutritional".

Pollan makes a great case for ditching such notions, and focusing on FOOD.  You know, CARROTS.  APPLES.  RICE.  All that good stuff.  Sure, we can presume to get all the "nutrition" in a carrot from some kind of a pill.  But what's in a CARROT that they can't get in a pill?  Something, surely, that will be missed.

Pollan supports a "5 ingredient rule":  Eat things with that many ingredients, because then it's still food.  While I must respectfully disagree (Peeled Snacks have 6 ingredients), I think I'll take his comments as an unintended, accidental thumbs up for our tasty treats.  I'll also take them as a "tisk-tisk" for most of the over-processed muck I saw at the Winter Fancy Food Show.

This being California, I can, surely, get plenty of REAL "food."  All I have to do is go to my local supermarket, the Berkeley Bowl, which is (simply put)...

THE GREATEST SUPERMARKET IN THE WORLD!!!!!....

But that's for the NEXT Peeled Skinny.

But that's for the Peeled Skinny that comes NEXT.

Happy Groundhog Day,

EN "Peeled Skinny" K 

An Omivore's Dietary Haikus

Eat Food.   Eat REAL food.

Don't eat too much food, fatso!

Mostly plants, tubbsy! 

I ate food today.

Not too much, though.  Just enough.

Mostly plants?  As IF!!!

Ask me what "Food" is.

All that fits within my mouth.

You included, chump.... 

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Ever been to San Francisco?  Peeled Snacks trucked out here for last week's Winter Fancy Food show wilth all of our New York muchachos enviously braying about how we were so lucky to be heading off to the balmy weather of California. 

You know what?  California is COLD, a special kinf od COLD, a COLD that seeps into your clothes and nose and fingers, and for a moment makes you think that you're not cold, but then gives you a terrible COLD.  Sure, New York's chilly, but at least there people are expected to wear gloves.  Here, cold weather attire is an extra handkerchief and a frienship bracelet.

Furthermore, in the East we have enough cold to realize that cold requires treatment.  We weather proof our windows and install functioning heating devices because we realize that, yes, cold sucks.  But in the Shangri-La that is California, the windows all seem to be terribly drafty and the heating units warm up a good 3 sqare feet each.  But don't worry, if you get chilly here, you can always borrow a mood ring.

So we brought our tasty treats out to San Fran, and (shockingly enough) they seem to have been very warmly accepted by the chilled hands of Californians (sorry, I'll stop with that now).   The Fancy Food show here is about a third the size of New York's July version, though it attracts a different crew.  Fewer Europeans, more "foodies", and almost no charmless New York style sharks (the kind who ask the price before tasting anything).

Naturally, we have the utmost confidence that our snacks will do smashingly out here, since Caifornians are known for their active lifestyles, their appreciation of good ingredients, and spectacularly warm weather (only one of those is a misconception). We were pleasantly surprised, though, when at the show we recieved oodles of orders.  Usually we shake hands, talk a lot, and the orders come later.  It seems that California was desperately in need of a good snack.

We went out there riding a glorious review courtesy of our friends at The Nibble.  It's always encouraging when a journalist really understand what we're trying to do and conveys it.  Such a sentiment we're hoping to find on this Western shore.  Peeled Snacks, as tasty as they are, just will never be a cheap and disposable as Pringles.  Thank heavens....

After the show ended on Tuesday, the Peeled Snacks team was desperately in need of a good meal, so at the invitation of a delightful and lovely new friend from LaLoo's Goat Milk Ice Cream (you know who you are, DANA), we swept down to the Mission disctrict's "Gratitude" Raw Food restaurant for a truly unique Californian gustatory experience.  The vegan menu is all prepared at temperatures at or below 118 degrees, which must make for a wonderful cool kitchen within to work.

It also made for some wonderful tastes (the cocunut soup was de-LISH), though the meal went terribly with the sake someone foolishly ordered (a fruity white would have been much better suited).  Perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with the rawness of the food, the uncooked nature of it meant that the next day my body was, ahem, "cooking" it (with gas heat, not electric).  Still, it was a marvelous experience, and Dana (you know who you are!) totally rocks.

We'll be out in California for a few weeks getting everything going here, so my next few entries will try to convey what it's like for a New Yorker (and former Southern Californian) to put up with the heat waves of San Francisco in January and February (that's the last dig, I PROMISE).  I'll try to be balanced and fair, but it's tough not to miss New York tremendously and take it out on San Fran.  Luckily, where I'm living has a beautiful dog (Sylvie) and its very own orange tree.  Life could be worse.  Life could, after all, be cold.

Posted by iankusc at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently Peeled Snacks has formed a partnership with the American Diabetes Association to help get the word out about healthy lifestyles and diets.  One of the key missions of Peeled Snacks is to give people a healthy snack option, and that's a mission that the ADA can certainly get behind.  It's certainly worth asking, though, are Peeled Snacks fit for diabetics?

Hmm... tricky question, that.  And unfortunately, the answer can't be a simple "yes", as much as we'd like it to be that way.   Peeled Snacks' fruit is loaded with carbohydrates, and though they may be loaded with vitamins, minerals, and fiber, all those carbs inevitably convert to sugars.  That should make any person diagnosed with diabetes at least a little bit leary.

This dried fruit stuff has plenty of health benefits, but being low in sugar isn't one of them.  Yet compared to most of the snack food out there, dried fruit is an excellent snack for diabetics.  Thanks to our national addiction to corn-sweeteners, a snack without any added sugar is suddenly a healthy alternative, even if it's mostly made of sugar.  Addicted to oil?  Get over it.  Corn Syrup is the new Crystal Meth... or, rather, the OLD one.

Still, in a sampling of 5 websites that discuss diets for diabetics, Dried Fruit got at best a cautious endorsement (and in one case, a flat out "avoid").  The clearest message for diabetics regarding dried fruit seems to be "it depends upon your body's reaction."  Dried Fruit could be just what the body ordered.  Or, they could be a problem.  But you never know till you try, so try in moderation....

So much focus diabetes in recent years has been on dealing with it via diet and habit.  Folks with type 1 diabetes have to moderate whatever they eat with insulun, but type 2 can be moderated by, well, moderation.  Easier said than done, with every little diagnosis having it's own, distinct dos and do-nots.  But at least for some, for many, Peeled Snacks are a great alternative to, as we call it around the office, "all the rest of the crap out there".

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First and foremost, Happy New Year.  I'm please to announce that the Peeled Skinny is now publishing in its 2nd year, and unlike many other bloggers, I don't need to make the New Years Resolution to Blog more- I've got 42 entries over 6 months.  That's over 1 per week, about which I feel, well, pretty gosh-darn good.

What I feel not-so-good about is my liver, which after a month of wassailing is definitely due some tee-to-tattling.  Starting from the week after Thanksgiving, we averaged 5 holiday parties per week, with several doubled-up days.  Back in November I couldn't finish a beer without getting woozy.  Now, thanks to a month of Rocky-worthy "spirited" training, I'm ready for my OWN bottle of tequila, thanks.

What I'm on the fence about (feeling strangely curious, yet absolutely anxious about) is the enormous bag of home-made cookies that my wonderful co-worker Cassie brought into the office this morning.  Cassie, you should know, adds fairy dust to her cookies, making them magically delicious, so I know that every one of those gooey morsels (and there's QUITE a variety) holds heaven inside.

In a normal week-in-the-life, I'd probably average one cookie per day of Cassie's creations, slowly carving the supply down bit by bit, with occasional escapes courtesy of hungry visiters.  But this past month, with all its buffet tables and hors d'oerves, has greatly expanded my appetite (not to mention my waist-line).  I live in fear, now, of insatiation- can I, you know, reign myself back in?

In general, the Peeled Snacks diet plan is a simple one- eat real food that counts, and don't worry about when you eat crap, so long as you eat very little of it.  Sure enough 11 out of 12 months, it works like a charm, and I'm proud to boast little in the way of a belly.  But here it is, barely past noon, and all that I can think of is a bag of admittedly heavenly tasting cookies waiting 20 feet away.

An article in last month's O, the Oprah Magazine went into the notion of compulsive behavior and its bio-chemical roots- habits you have that you enjoy (but that are, you know, "naughty") give you a little endorphine boost, thus becoming actually actually chemically addictive in a way.  Defeating such habits takes LOTS of work, especially for adults.  That little up-lifting article swims through my
head head heavily as I try, Try, TRY not to think about Cassie's cookies.

Sigh.  The habits of December lead to the resolutions of January.  And just as I'm not going to resolve to blog more, I'm also not going to resolve to not eat cookies.  I'm just going back to my pre-December cookie consumption index rating.

And that sucks, because MAN can Cassie bake!

Happy New Year,

EN, the Peeled Skinny, not quite as skinny as he once was

apeel@peeledsnacks.com

A Cookie in the Life

I read the news today, Oh boy

About some cookies that your Cassie baked

And though the cookies looked bad-ass,

Well I just had to pass

Because of my tremendous mass.

She baked them from a recipe

She didn't use a Betty Crocker box

All my co-workers turned and stared.

We'd had her sweets before

Nobody was really sure if she would ever bake some more.....

 

I wrote a blog today oh boy.

The Oprah magazine discussed Pavlov.

A crowd of people hate's his hounds

But I just had to try

His dogs make me cry.....

 

Woke up, got washed and dressed. 

2007, now I'm depressed.

Found my breakfast quick and drank a cup,

and looking up, I had another cup. <gulp gulp gulp gulp>

Brushed my teeth and read my mail.

Put my car on line for sale.

Found my way to work, said "G'morning" to the team.

Cassie brought in sweets, and I went into a dream ...

Ah...Ah...Ah..Ah........

 

I read the news today, Oh boy.

Four thousand resolutions broke by noon.

The resolutions sure were small.

And yet they broke them all.

Now you know how many people take 12 hours to have a fall....

I love to eat..... cooooo...kieeeeeeesssss.....

(I Burried Cassie) 

Posted by iankusc at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)