After being referred to as the “organic exercise goddess” by a friend of a friend who forgot my name, I thought this might be appropriate to share with you all in response…more so than a simple eye-roll, right?
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan is out. That’s cool, but what’s better is that it’s illustrated by one of my favorite designers and artists, Maira Kalman who I learned about via the project I was working on in New York, Designers and Books (small world, right?).
There are some nifty guidelines, as per usual, for healthier eating and Kalman’s paintings make it a very cheerful read. You can read an overview of the book at the link above. Go do it.
Forks Over Knives
I’m a documentary nerd.
I forgot to post this documentary . Just watch it and you can be sure it will “convert” you to become a vegan or make you happy you are already one! :)
Source: health-heaven
Cute, colorful breakfast.
FOOD PORN: This is what I had for bfast today! Eggs in bell peppers! Mmmm…
(via Flower Power Eggs – Bell Pepper Ring Molds for Sunny Side Up Eggs! « Apron Strings)
Man, I wish I still had time to cook in the morning….
I LOVE THIS IDEA!
(via my-wishful-shrinking)
Source: apronstringsblog.com
Infographic: Genetically Modified Food via @fastco
GMO crops have infiltrated 80% of all the pack
aged food in the United States, and no one has told you. Here’s why.
I just overheard an awkward conversation that went something like this:
Girl: “That salad was delicious.”
Dude: “Yeah, that’s a lot healthier than the fucking hamburger you were eating before. Maybe now you’ll lose some weight.”
I can elaborate that this conversation was in the context of the girl starting a new eating plan to improve her health due to a medical condition (because I know them personally…and will be cooking the food for her food plan for the next month).
It’s not my business, so I did not get involved in the conversation, but I can say here that it bothers me to hear this kind of exchange.
No matter what you are eating, it’s nobody’s business. Personally, when I comment on how something tastes, I’m not inviting comments about the nutritional quality of that food or any food I’ve eaten prior to it or how I look while I’m eating it. It’s generally because I think it’s too exceptional (or too exceptionally bad) not to say something.
But somehow, that’s what happens so frequently. One of the best things about cooking for other people, in my experience, is showing them that they can cook things that taste really great but aren’t unhealthy, full of preservatives, frozen, etc.
My approach to personal cheffing is similar to that Jesus parable about teaching someone to fish…you know the one. I want to give people around me agency in their food choices so that they don’t have to rely on the ever-changing marketing onslaught of diet, nutrition and health products. That stuff generally poses as an authority yet teaches very little. Anyway…
So to go back to the conversation between the girl and the dude…There is nothing more counter-productive to an effort to try to find what combination of food works for you than hearing negative comments from people in your life. It can negatively effect body image, overal mental state and seriously derail attempts to be healthy and happy. Unfortunately, it’s very acceptable now to make presumptive comments about how or what other people should be eating since there is such a huge industry built around that very thing.
Should I have said something? I’m never sure.
I just wish that what we eat and, by extension, the state of our bodies weren’t subject to such “public” scrutiny. Health is a personal thing and there isn’t a single statement about it that can be applied to every human being on earth.
Basically, support the people around you. Don’t presume to know why they’re eating what they’re eating or what they want to accomplish in their own health. You can be supportive or you can shut the fuck up.
What do you think? Would you have said something if you were me?
The Top 5 Reasons You Should Look in the Mirror: Where Kjerstin Gruys Misses the Point
Recently, my blog was tagged in some comments on a Time Health article about Kjerstin Gruys project Mirror Mirror Off the Wall.
Miss Gruys is a newlywed (congrats!) who has vowed to go without looking in a mirror for a year. She’s a recovering anorectic and sociology student.
In a post that for Sociological Images that got picked up by Jezebel, she talks about her discomfort with dieting “as a feminist” and how she’s decided to improve her body image leading up to- and after her wedding by not looking in a mirror.
Of course, this project (and specifically the guest post on SI) hinges so tightly on three assumptions that just ARE NOT true:
- You have to be on a diet to have a healthy body and body image.
- You cannot be a feminist and have a healthy body.
- Not looking in a mirror is a way to remove discomfort with our appearance (whether they are caused by unrealistic beauty standards or not).
Ladies, can we give ourselves a little more credit than this? i have to question any project whose statement is “I’m uncomfortable with these standards. I’m going to turn away from them.”
As I wrote in a post called The Mean Girls Mirror, it’s not the mirror that causes the problems, it’s OUR OWN REACTION TO WHAT WE SEE. Simploy avoiding your reflection isn’t going to change your thought process.
Here’s why I think you need to look at yourself:
- Spinach: It’s good for you…and it gets stuck in your teeth. Just sayin.
- Liquid eyeliner: too good not to wear on a night out…way to hard to put on without a mirror.
- Melanoma: I’m only kidding a little, I live in California now, don’t want to miss skin changes.
- Time waste: Actively avoiding mirrors is as much as waste of time as staring at yourself. And if you have a negative perception of yourself, it doesn’t really matter in which way that manifests.
- This year of your life is UNREPEATABLE. Don’t miss it.
Sorry if that was tongue-in-cheek.But, not dieting doesn’t mean you sit around pounding donuts and never leave the couch. It doesn’t make you a feminist or not a feminist, either. It means you have learned about your own health and taken it into your own hands—-instead of trusting it to fad diets and gurus and magazines.
If this project helps Kjerstin recover, that’s great. But I don’t think we should praise it as progress in terms of confronting and changing how we deal with ridiculous beauty standards. It’s simply not.
I challenge you to look in the mirror for 10 minutes. Sit with yourself and refuse to be a critic. Smile at what you see. Then we’d be making some progress.
Please share this.
Source: ayearwithoutmirrors.com
For literary nerds and bakers:
Edgar Allan Poe Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet!
Yield: one 2 layer 8-9-inch cake
This is amazing! Allan Poe fans stand up!!!! I wonder what other characters this bakery can make! ENJOY! (which one of you is going to try and make this? teehee…)
Cake:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 oz. liquid red food coloring
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon white vinegar
(via annieelainey)
Source: thecakebar
Tomatoes are still in season here. #lunch
The French Way: A Guest Post from Tyler McCall
I case you missed it, Tyler McCall (eiffeltyler) wrote a guest post on her time in France for my blog, check it out!
Tyler’s observations about the lack of concept of “guilty pleasure” is pretty important and, I think, helps to take this post beyond the cliche of french women not getting….well, you know.
Here’s what she had to say on her time in France:
From fall 2009 to summer 2010, I participated in a Master’s program through Columbia University called “French Cultural Studies in a Global Context.”
That’s right. I spent a year living in Paris, eating delicious food, drinking ridiculous amounts of wine, wrote my thesis on French fashion, and at the end of it they handed me an Ivy League degree. I’ll give you a minute to be jealous.
Other than pleading with me to speak in French, friends and family loved to ask me about the many ways they suspected France was different from the US. Some of their ideas were pretty dead on. Some of them were comically incorrect or misinformed (and finally, to set the record straight, French people do shower). Having only had minimal experience with provincial French citizens, I can only base my observations off Parisians, which sometimes feels as unfair as using New Yorkers as representative Americans. But, France is a significantly smaller country and as such, I find a lot of behavior translates nationally.
Full article here.
Source: onegirlnodiet.com
