Saturday, April 12, 2008

Got Food and Exercise

I just finished reading Michael Pollan's, In Defense of Food--a magnifent treatise about the lack of real food in the western diet. It's quite disturbing actually, how few whole foods there are available to the public, and how little most of us eat them. The majority of our nutrition is now consumed out of boxes, cans, packages, jugs, and containers, and as we know, most of what we call food isn't really very healthy.

I took stock of the real food I have eaten in the past week and here are a few of my best:
lettuce, potatoes, carrots, zuccinni, squash, and whole, unpitted olives. The rest of what I've eaten consists of various kinds of junk: frozen pizza, canned soup, boxed mac and cheese, an Arby's roast beef sandwich (what, exactly, is that sliced stuff??).

I'm not sure it's good for me, but I drink a lot of milk (always skim--that's all we've ever drank in our home and the kids don't know anything but skim and even think 1% tastes like cream). I've also had beef (which is likely filled with plenty of fat, and all the junk the cows have been fed) and a fair amount of juices. I've also had about 20 cups of coffee to stay awake (my drug of choice), but studies have shown that a little of the stuff is okay but larger amounts hurt.

Finally, this past week I did work most of Friday without eating much of anything. I drank lots of water, in addition to moving two tons of gravel, at least one ton of hewn logs, two hundred pounds of pea gravel, unloaded a ton of Pennyslvania flagstone, stacked the same ton of rock a second time, and shoveled at least ten wheel barrows full of sod. All told, as I figure it, I moved more than five tons of timber and stone in a six hour period...and today I AM VERY VERY SORE! I need real food!!!

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