In this week’s Time magazine, there is an essay from an American writer in Paris that talked about the school lunches that her child was having at his school. She marveled how high quality the food was:
“The food is very good, Madame. The meat is 100% French,” the official said, picking up a brochure from her desk. I knew this brochure well, having e-mailed it to friends in the U.S. last year as a this-could-only-happen-in-France conversation piece. It lists in great detail the lunch menu for each school day over a two-month period. On Mondays, the menus are also posted on the wall outside every school in the country. The variety on the menus is astonishing: no single meal is repeated over the 32 school days in the period, and every meal includes an hors d’oeuvre, salad, main course, cheese plate and dessert.
She contrasts the seriousness of how the French approach serving meals in the school environment mainly to have the children appreciate the food they are served and to prepare them for a lifetime of good eating.
The French don’t need their First Lady to plant a vegetable garden at the Élysée Palace to encourage good eating habits. They already know the rules: sit down and take your time, because food is serious business.
In his new book Food Rules, Michael Pollan states in rule No. 58: “Do all your eating at a table.” French children quickly learn that they won’t be fed anywhere else. Snack and soda machines are banned from school buildings in France — a battle that is now raging across the U.S. And France’s lunch programs are well funded. While the country is cutting public programs and civil-servant jobs to try to slash a debt of about $2.1 trillion, no one has dared to mention touching the money spent on school lunches.
She also mentions that while it is difficult for her to know what was going on in her child’s classroom, she did know what he was being served for lunch:
I cannot tell you what my child learns, paints or builds on any given school day. But I do know that on Feb. 4, he ate hake in Basque sauce, mashed pumpkin, cracked rice, Edam cheese and organic fruits for lunch.
Contrast that meal with what is typically served in the cafeterias operating in our schools: french fries, burgers, pizzas, desserts, sodas. Of course, vegetables are served but generally are processed to the point of banality. In terms of preparation, many cafeterias can only reheat food; the ability to cook from scratch is severely limited.
In these troubled economic times, school budgets are always under pressure to cut costs or raise extra revenues. many school districts entered into exclusive contracts with snack and soda vendors to put machines in schools as long as the school gets its share. This is regardless of the nutritional value of the food themselves.
So it is a short term gain for the school. But for students and the economy alike, it extracts a far higher cost down the road.
The most significant health challenge facing people in North America now as smoking continues its long term decline to irrelevance is obesity. We live in a land that produces more food than it should consume. Relative to family budgets, food prices are cheap more even more cheap for the high fat, high sugar processed foods along with the ubiquitous fast food places that populate every town larger than a hamlet.
All these cheap calories are leading to our obesity epidemic which in turn is causing more severe health problems: diabetes, heart attacks, stroke and cancers of various sorts especially colon cancer as we avoid eating those healthy greens. These additional health problems will mean more strain on the health system here with more doctors visits, more surgeries, more drugs and long term care.
Is there is a relationship between the fact that even with a cuisine as rich as France’s, that it has a lower expenditure on health care than the United States because the French know what to eat and when? The evidence suggests more than a casual relationship. Consider too that in the United States, food is continually eat on the go and all of the time. It is almost like a grazing way of eating. Contrast that to the French where food is eaten at meals and rarely in between. There is something to the effect on how you appreciate food when you make a time and place for it rather than holding a burger in one hand as you navigate the lunch rush hour traffic.
Can something like the French school system’s approach to meals happen here. Perhaps not given the sizable shift in cultural attitudes at least in the public school system. It is also difficult to justify the cost as school programs are cut even sacrosanct athletic programs. But if we instill good eating habits in our children when they are young and let them appreciate good healthy food without reverting to the cheap easy way of going to McDonalds, then in the long term, we will all be much better off.
A few weeks back, I went to a specialist to address my ongoing battle with gout. For months, the situation was that I was hobbled by gout of varying severity that it was preventing me from doing the things I like doing especially my photography. Nearly everywhere I went, I had to take a cane with me to walk, albeit with some struggle. Taking painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs only worked in part. At one time, the gout was so severe that my family doctor mistook it for a potentially fatal situation of deep vein thrombosis that caused me to end up in the emergency room at the hospital. Followup visits with an Orthopedic surgeon wit MRI scans were inconclusive as regards to my gout.
So I went to a rheumologist who examined me, looked at my charts from the hospital and made the declaration that my gout is now chronic and will have to managed for the rest of my life. My uric acid levels were just too high and needed to be under the minimum level which gout manifests itself.
Now, I have tried the standard medication for gout control which is Allopurinol but my experience with it has been less than favorable. Taking the medication regularly always left me in a fatigued state and contributed to a lack of concentration which is critical for the sort of work I do. So the specialist put me on a new medication, Uloric which may have less side effects for me. So giving me first a regimen of steriods to take down the swelling I was experiencing so that I could start to walk again unencumbered, I was to start on a gradual program of taking Uloric.
It has been 4 weeks now since I have been on the new medication and I am feeling fine now. I can walk comfortably and I can reasonably eat a variety of foods now, not just the ones that do not increase my uric acid levels. But I have to accept the reality that I will need to be on this medication for years to come if I want to avoid future gout attacks
But I should not have to rely on medication alone. A strong contributor to my gout attacks is the fact that I am way overweight. Now, I did get the side effect benefit of this recent prolonged attack of gout in that I lost 20 pounds, primarily because I was afraid to eat nothing but carbohydrates to avoid intensifying the attacks. But I need to do more. If I get to an ideal weight of 180-190 pounds, that will lower the chances for future attacks and perhaps lead to a reduction in the dosage of Uloric in future (at $180/month, the medication is not cheap).
So I have to know what to eat in the future as I diet so to reduce weight but not encourage a return of the gout.
The key trigger to gout is when you consume a lot of purines (a form of amino acid) from food. Some foods are higher in purines than others notably organ meats. They are metabolised by several enzymes, including xanthine oxidase, into uric acid which if gets to a high level can crystalise in the tissues near joints giving you gout.
There are certain food recommended to eat and others to avoid:
Low purine diet :
To lower uric acid:
- cherries have been shown to reduce uric acid
- strawberries or blueberries (and other dark red/blue berries) are also reputed to be beneficial
- celery extracts (celery or celery seed either in capsule form or as a tea) is believed by many to reduce uric acid levels (although these are also diuretics).
- limit food high in protein such as meat, fish, poultry, or tofu to 8 ounces a day. Avoid entirely during a flare up.
Food to avoid high in purines, that is, high in DNA:
- sweetbreads, kidneys, liver, brains, or other offal meats
- sardines
- anchovies
- scallops, Prawns and Crabs
- alcohol, especially beer because brewer’s yeasts are very rich in purine (alcohol may also reduce the rate of uric acid excretion).
- meat extracts, consommés, and gravies
To use moderately:
- Vegetables: asparagus, cauliflower, spinach, mushrooms and green peas
- Lentils, dried peas and beans
- Beef, pork, poultry, fish and seafood
- Oatmeal, wheat bran and wheat germ
- diet sodas (these act as diuretics in many people, causing uric acid to concentrate in the blood which can then easily precipitate)
To avoid dehydration:
- Drink plenty of liquids, especially water, to dilute and assist excretion of urates;
- Use sparingly diuretic foods or medicines like aspirin, vitamin C, tea and alcohol.
So any diet I will have to undertake to lose weight will need to factor these foods in mind.
One thing I do have to watch out for is rapid weight reduction. Lose weight too fast and it creates a high uric acid situation again. Remember, I lost 20 pounds in a fairly rpaid fashion which no doubt prolonged and intensified my recent gout attack. I do have time to lose weight gradually.
In many ways, it is like living life as a diabetic. For people with moderate cases of diabetes , you could take medication to control your blood sugar level but keeping a steady weight and watching your diet can provide the same benefit without medication. It’s just a bit harder to do than just popping a pill.
So this is my life now as a chronic gout sufferer. It is not where I want to be in life but I have to make the best of this situation and lead a normal life which is quote possible now with this new medication and some effort on my part to maintain a more healthier lifestyle.
There has been a diet that has been quite successful in years past in keeping most people relatively slim for many years but it has fallen out of favor in the past twenty to thirty years. Instead people tried Weight Watchers, Atkins, Grapefruit, Green Tea diets among the hundreds of diets that have their own group of adherents and stories of successes along with failure.
However this much older diet is starting to make a comeback and we may yet see a reversal in the expanding waistlines of the majority of the population.
This is the the Grocery-Bill-Has-Doubled-And-I-Can’t-Buy-Food diet.
In the past fifty years or so, the percentage of the family budget that has been dedicated to food has been steadily shrinking to the point up to recently that it was becoming a very small part of the family budget. Consequently, people were able to buy more food and not just for the standard three square meals but plenty of snack foods and high calorie drinks and more of the richer type of foods. As well, eating out became a more viable proposition. What was a special occasion to be enjoyed has now become a more regular thing and as restaurants know what people’s taste buds like (plenty of fat, sugar and salt), eating out generally became a more unhealthier choice than eating at home.
But that bountiful time is now ending.
It used to be that I could go into a grocery store and get a cartful of groceries for about $150 or so each week and the items in that cart were varied and would take all of our needs for the week. Now that cart comes in at over $200 for the week and that is with making some serious compromises in what we eat now.
Food is just getting to be more expensive. Milk, eggs, cheese, beef and other items cost significantly more than they did a year ago. In fact, I can not even afford to buy steak any more. Spaghetti is a weekly item on the family menu because a box of pasta and a bottle of sauce will cost $4 for the meal. It may turn out to be a twice weekly item soon. Sales have increasingly have become more important. Going to the warehouse club is now essential to buy bulk purchase of pork chops and other sundry items.
Needless to say, we have not been going out to eat much lately and if we do it is only because it is expedient to do so.
So the full impact of higher food prices is that there is less to eat in the house now particularly if you have a yen for something as a snack. That is something I rarely do now. Where I used to buy sweet things every week , now it is just occasionally. More important that we have regular meals of some sort. As for the meals themselves, they have become plainer; just can not justify buying expensive ingredients for one dish and then throwing the rest away like fresh herbs or special condiments. I miss having proscuitto regularly but it is $5 for a small package and that is a luxury now.
Yet while my food selection and diversity seem to be shrinking, can not say the same for my waistline. Still too ample. Probably need more exercise.
Hopefully, though, that this new diet will work. Nothing else seems to do the trick.