Is it an all liquid diet?
Nope.
A fancy weight room and French foreign legion drill sergeants?
Nope.
Surgery?
Nope.
Hours of counseling?
Nope.
So what is it?
It's a focus on food.
Exhibit A comes from the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris where their obese and overweight patients are being given cooking classes. Patients are taught how to cook healthy, low calorie meals and in so doing are given a survival skill in navigating an obesigenic environment.
Exhibit B comes from the Beaupre School in Haubourdin, near Lille where students are given swipe cards to choose meals from the cafeteria. While the cafeteria does have options like fish and chips and pizza, the cards are smart and limit those choices to once weekly.
Obesity is an intake problem and while the question as to why society has started consuming so many more calories than in the past has yet to be answered one thing's for certain, any intervention that fails to address cooking and eating out isn't likely to lead to any remarkable outcomes.
Vive la cuisiner!
[Very belated hat tip to Kavita who passed me this tip in 2009 via the BBC]
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What a novel idea! :)
ReplyDeleteD
I think it was in one of Michael Pollan's excellent books where I read that the average amount of time North Americans spend preparing their meals each day has fallen from the pre-WWII period from around 90 minutes, to as little as 10 minutes. By definition, this means that in majority, we are eating vastly more convenience and/or fast foods than we used to, and of course the results from this kind of "nutrition" are obvious.
ReplyDeleteI applaud the Slow Food movement and any sort of initiative that encourages home food prep from scratch. I know from personal experience that the more time I've spent chopping vegetables and carefully preparing a meal, the less likely I am to rush through the eating of it, and the more likely I am to enjoy and savour it in its entirety.
Thanks for the link.
I agree with what Dustin says, and would like to add an additional comment.
ReplyDeleteIn pre-WWII times most women stayed home & looked after the house, including spending 90 mins on preparing a meal from scratch. During WWII many women went out to work as their part of the war effort, while the men were away. Undoubtedly this reduced the meal preparation time somewhat, but the kids were out playing in the backyard with their friends and didn't need to be taken anywhere.
Nowadays, we see 2 parent families, where both parents are working, and single parent families where that parent works. We also see kids scheduled into whatever after school programs are available, often 3+ evenings a week. If there are 2 or more children parents are rushing to take one or both of them somewhere every evening, and on weekends. The result - overstressed exhausted parents & kids, who have to grab something to eat on the go (which, by definition is not a home cooked meal) or who order pizza because they can all sit down to that together with no time "wasted" on preparation.
Factors arising from this scenario:
1)people eating high calorie convenient foods
2)stress, which leads many people to eat more, and produces cortisol
3)generations growing up without knowing how to prepare a meal from scratch, and who would be horrified that it might take 90 mins
I have to wonder how many of those people have even eaten fresh veggies
I recently prepared chili from fresh chopped vegetables and dried beans soaked and pressure cooked (to reduce sodium) for a family group of 45. I cannot tell you how many hours it took to make those delicious and nutritious chilis (one vegetarian and one turkey chili), but it was a gift of love to my family. However, some family members complained that I asked them to spend time before the party cutting up avocados and scallions for the chili. Then some complained about having to wash dishes afterward. We have some kind of collective amnesia about what the rest of the world considers normal daily activities.
ReplyDeleteMy journey back to health, during which I "reversed" my Type 2 diabetes, largely depended on my willingness to resume cooking from fresh ingredients in my own kitchen, and eating mostly my own food. I learned that the food industries do not have my health interests in mind when they prepare food.
I have come to enjoy cooking as a creative and rewarding enterprise, and don't think I'll ever go back to dependence on processed and restaurant foods.