Category Archives: Food, Health and Diet

Get your proteins and your percentages too

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Some time ago, I stumbled over claims made on the internet that spinach (and other vegetables) had more protein than meat. Though Iā€™m positively sure this not to be the case, I continued searching for such claims – you never know. And as we do need to cut back on meat consumption of the mass produced kind, getting more of your protein from vegetables is a good thing, right?

(For all those who know me a little, this is not so much about nutrition and health and all, it’s more about numbers, and how rumours get started šŸ˜‰

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On Food, Diet, and Health

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Especially, what we think about it

Update 2021

In the mean time, my classes at the School for Dieticians have continued and the newer stuff can be found in the pages I have created specifically for those classes.

However, as mentioned below, the topics are definitely of general interest. 

There has been a paradigm shift over the last years concerning dietary recommendations, also among medical doctors, at least in the English speaking world. Actually, I would say it is in progress – it has not been completed yet or reached everyone as successfully as the dogmas it is trying to ‘correct’. This might have something to do with what is called the Semmelweis Reflex. The beliefs of the last 40, 50 years, especially the ‘Fat is Bad’ mantra or the idea that calorie restriction diets are the way to lose weight are so ingrained and cemented they seem impossible to have been wrong. Continue reading →

NY City’s (Failed) Ban on XXL Sodas and the History of Supersizing

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Recently we read an article in class on the mayor of New York City’s attempt to ban the sale of supersized soft drinks. In January, the city’s health board “passed a ban on serving sodas and other sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces (0.5 l) in restaurants and cinemas” (Moya Irvine in Read On , January 2013, p 1).

We discussed the pro and con arguments and related issues like causes of obesity, our own eating and drinking habits, general lifestyle issues etc. According to Moya Irvine, the main parties against the ban were those who feared Continue reading →

Food Talk…again

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(Updated September 3)

The topic of food keeps coming up in my classes. Though I do believe (or hope) it does so, because everybody is always interested in a topic so essential to everyday life and survival, it’s probably me being on a mission having read all these books and articles recently.

So here is a list of what I have been reading – in addition to the web sites linked to in my post on food pyramids: Continue reading →

Food Pyramids

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‘Food’ is a topic that always comes up at some time during a course in various forms. Sometimes it is just a vocabulary issue: course members ask to review food vocabulary for example because they have guests from abroad and would like to explain their company’s menu. What we have often done was to simply get copies of the menu of the week and start translating, realizing how difficult even the translation of food vocabulary can sometimes be, especially when it comes to fancy menu names. (This would normally be the place where I would relate my famous food translation anecdote, but I will refrain from that for now, suffice it to say it involves turkeys and patrols).

And it’s always nice to have some pictures. Continue reading →