forks over knives

Saw a thought provoking film a couple of nights ago:  Forks over Knives.

About our food and health, and how you are what you eat (surprise!).  What's especially surprising, and enlightening, is the research that the two featured doctors (Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, now in their 70s) conducted and the ideas that have evolved.

 

Lots of compelling statistics, and simple to digest (no pun intended) engaging graphics.  Data is drawn from enormous statistical studies in China, Japan, Norway and the US.  The studies done in Hawaii are oddly familiar (my dad was a participant in one).

The short message is that degenerative diseases (heart disease, diabetes and cancer) can be arrested, controlled and even reversed by a diet of plant based whole foods. 

The featured demons are fast food, processed food, meat, sugars, dairy products.  Scary stats on the amount we ingest.  Through it all, the movie espouses a vegan diet, but stealthily.  Hardly a mention of "veganism".  No mention of animal rights.  And the barest touch on the environmental and social consequences of the typical western diet.  It focuses on health.  Your health.  Our health.  Smart move.

Not all of this is well received.  Opposing perspectives by Connie B. Diekman, MEd, RD, FADA (Director of Nutrition at Washington University, and former president of the American Dietetic Association) and David Klurfeld, Ph.D. (USDA's National Program Leader for Human Nutrition) are given airtime but hardly compelling.  Doesn't help that Connie looks like her nutrition should be examined.
 

A review by Rex Reed in the New York Observer (rex reed ny observer review) is off-putting but his synopsis is really pretty good.  And the corrective comments to his on-line post are hilarious in their brevity.   For all the bitterness in the article and his admission of guilty eating, its funny that Rex was compelled to post a photo of Dr. Esselstyn's hunky son.



So we did our first foray into it last night.  After much discussion, and lots of time on the web searching for recipes, we made buckwheat noodle salad with apple-ume-ginger vinegrette dressing, asparagus bisque, and tofu-rice burgers with honey glaze.  Surprise!  Tasty as all get out.  And the best part:  clean cleanup.  No grease splatters on the stove or plates.  Yay! 

As a first pass, it was a great success.  We have more ideas about presentation and variations. (E.g. soba would have looked better atop the greens.)  It will be a struggle.  We are acknowledged omnivores and only recently cut back on our meat consumption for health concerns.  Frying is frowned upon, and fish is a fave, but that's another problem and another post.



In the meantime.  The movie has opened nationwide.  Look for it.  See the possibilities.  Certainly has its biases and no end of criticisms can be leveled against it, but its value is in revealing possibilities and an alternate path.  Don't need to become a true believer and re-born as a vegan.

Go ahead, see it.

I see you

Ever wonder why it seems like you are the only one who noticed that (fill in the blank  . . ) : pattern of cracks in the sidewalk, mole on your face, thumbprint in the mirror, passersby's limping walk, flight path of the fly tapping against the window, . . .?

So much of life to be noticed.

Noticing a bit of life is the aspiration for this blog.  Looking, seeing, perhaps clearing a path.  It's a work in progress.

I heard an opinion on talk radio today.  The speaker pronounced his definition for the "working class."  If you lost your job and remained unemployed for a year, you'd likely had to "move out of your mortgage".  (Isn't that curious phrasing.  Who wouldn't want to "move out" of a mortgage?  Excuse me, oh no thank you please, I'd rather live forever under the bank's thumb.  Sheesh!)  If you didn't move out, you were middle class.  Oh-kay.

That opinion came on the heels of another radio program where the speaker claimed to be "of the working class" because he worked.  Rah-ight.

Where do they find these guys?

 Why did these opinions matter?  Well, to put it euphemistically, my life is in flux.  I'm of the non-working class, in a state of work interrupted.  And any discussion about it stirs deep uncertainties.

So many people want to tell you what they think (including this blog) about work, about life.  It's utterly wack and crowds out your own conclusions.  Does it matter what other people think?  Need one follow another's path?

Been spending a fair amount of time listening to public radio.  Reading, and thinking.  About my path.  What did I look at?  What did I see?

That crack pattern in the concrete sidewalk can be mesmerizing.  Just watch any 2 year old.  And that thumbprint on the mirror begs four fingers to be whole, or the swipe of a damp cloth to be complete.  Look inward to your heartbeat or your breath.  There are worlds of mysteries.  Keep looking.

My boyfriend and I have a favorite movie memory.  You've probably, inexorably if you are asian, heard it.  From Joy Luck Club, from a mother to her child:  "I see you."

A day after Mother's Day I miss mom.  Come October it will have been five years since I've been truly seen.  Tomorrow is her birthday.