Happy Meals...
There's an article in the International Herald Tribune today about nutrition, which is pretty cool. I recommend reading it.
People talk about the paradox of the French diet - that people in France eat supposedly unhealthy foods and yet they are healthier than Americans. The author is perhaps too polite to come out and say what is obvious, but I will not be so polite.
If you have ever been to France, you know this, but I think most people haven't been to France. The notion that the French have a less healthy diet than we do, and that there is some one ingredient in their diet, coming perhaps from red wine or red grapes, that makes up for all their dietary mistakes, is complete, utter, catastrophic, pathetic, murderous codswallop.
I will tell you what you see when you go into a French grocery store. You see a cornucopia. You see beautiful fresh fruit. You see fresh vegetables. You see amazing cheeses. You see breads that would make a grown man weep (don't ask me how I know this). They have product, it is true. There are things in packages on the shelves. But the guts of the French diet are things that are actually good for you. Fresh fruits and vegetables. If you go to a traditional French restaurant and order the chef's pride and joy, it will contain meat, but it won't contain even eight ounces of meat. And it will contain a ton of vegetables too.
All this sage advice we're fed here in the 'states about how to be healthy by eating processed foods containing this little thing, or that little thing, that's supposedly nutritious, is killing us. The article I mention above has a single sentence that contains everything you need to know about eating, right at the beginning. I won't repeat it here, because that would be cheating. Go read the article.
I'm sorry I haven't been blogging much recently - I've been really working hard. Amazingly. I taught a course in Tucson this past month that finished up on Thursday. I've been doing some serious django hacking, and am getting to the point where I have a good gestalt understanding of the system, which was, I must say, hard fought. There's more to learn, of course.
I've been having some major brainstorms about UI design recently, which I hope to turn into a demo of sorts when I have time. But I have plenty of actual work work to do, so I'm not sure when I'll get to that.
People talk about the paradox of the French diet - that people in France eat supposedly unhealthy foods and yet they are healthier than Americans. The author is perhaps too polite to come out and say what is obvious, but I will not be so polite.
If you have ever been to France, you know this, but I think most people haven't been to France. The notion that the French have a less healthy diet than we do, and that there is some one ingredient in their diet, coming perhaps from red wine or red grapes, that makes up for all their dietary mistakes, is complete, utter, catastrophic, pathetic, murderous codswallop.
I will tell you what you see when you go into a French grocery store. You see a cornucopia. You see beautiful fresh fruit. You see fresh vegetables. You see amazing cheeses. You see breads that would make a grown man weep (don't ask me how I know this). They have product, it is true. There are things in packages on the shelves. But the guts of the French diet are things that are actually good for you. Fresh fruits and vegetables. If you go to a traditional French restaurant and order the chef's pride and joy, it will contain meat, but it won't contain even eight ounces of meat. And it will contain a ton of vegetables too.
All this sage advice we're fed here in the 'states about how to be healthy by eating processed foods containing this little thing, or that little thing, that's supposedly nutritious, is killing us. The article I mention above has a single sentence that contains everything you need to know about eating, right at the beginning. I won't repeat it here, because that would be cheating. Go read the article.
I'm sorry I haven't been blogging much recently - I've been really working hard. Amazingly. I taught a course in Tucson this past month that finished up on Thursday. I've been doing some serious django hacking, and am getting to the point where I have a good gestalt understanding of the system, which was, I must say, hard fought. There's more to learn, of course.
I've been having some major brainstorms about UI design recently, which I hope to turn into a demo of sorts when I have time. But I have plenty of actual work work to do, so I'm not sure when I'll get to that.
posted by Ted Lemon at 10:07 PM
1 Comments:
The French Diet ... I love French food and when I spend time in France I eat *anything* and *everything* that I want. And I still usually come back to The States a good twenty pounds lighter.
My take on this is that the French walk - a lot! Up and down stairs, transferring on the metro, from one arrondisement to another, to work ... They also like to ride bicycles.
Their food is also grown with less chemicals than ours - their eggs taste like chicken because they have true free range chickens in France. The cheese tastes like the grass that the cows ate.
With globablization and community standards on food production, this is changing quickly in France. For example, there are many varieties of cheeses that are no longer available there because of these standards.
Anyway, I love France :)
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