Category: Health

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Overdiagnosed

I am very averse to taking medicine, and since reading The China Study I have put away all my supplements except for B-12. I have seen and experienced good Western medicine for things like bacterial infections and broken bones. But I have also seen questionable medicine for many other things....

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For Good Measure

The old management maxim holds that we can improve only what we measure. While there is a useful truth in there, the downside is that it can lead to obsession with measurement. Worse, we become tempted to affect the measurement itself in ways that are not consistent with the value...

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Breaking Addictions

Breaking addictions is a big topic, and I refer you to Johann Hari’s book Chasing the Scream for a rewarding treatment of it. For food addictions like sugar, salt, oil and cheese, try these ideas: Some people do better gradually tapering off, some do better all-at-once. Do what works for...

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Changing Tastes

It is easy to form the belief that foods that appeal to us must be healthy, or at least okay to eat. Listen to what your body asks for and you will know what to give it. This may have been close to correct in the environment in which we...

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What Do I Eat?

I eat a lot of food, roughly four pounds each day. What do I consider to be food? Fruits, leafy and root vegetables, whole grains, beans and other legumes. I eat lots of spices but little salt. Maybe one or two ounces of nuts and half an ounce of the...

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How I Came to Eat This Way

It is 2009, and I work at a small company headed by a man named John Tanner. John is three months younger than me. We are 52. In October, he is out jogging on a Sunday when he suddenly falls over with a heart attack. His heart had stopped. I’m...

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How Not to Starve at Home

Many people are convinced that they don’t know how to cook. When they try, they don’t like the result, which just reinforces their conclusion that they can’t do it.  I love to cook, and I love to eat my own cooking. But I don’t like to spend much time cooking,...

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The Last Ten Pounds

It is summer of 2021. Kathryn and I avoid crowds more than before Covid, and eat mostly our own cooking. I watch more television than I think is good for me. There is an ad blitz for an app called Noom, which claims to offer personalized, psychology-based weight loss. My...

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How Not to Starve on a Cruise, part 2

We arrived at Catalina Island Tuesday morning, despite having returned to Long Beach just a few hours after leaving. A passenger had a medical emergency that led to the early return. Since Catalina is just twenty-six miles from Long Beach, it did not put us off schedule. Kathryn and I...

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How Not to Starve on a Cruise, part 1

Let me end the suspense right now. Kathryn and I took a cruise and we did not starve. It was my first cruise and was just four nights. I was concerned about starving in the midst of plenty. Cruises are known for creating tempting arrays of food which most people...