Thinking in Sevens 2-3-2

Covey had a huge best-seller with The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (notice the title was made of 7 words). As it turns out, seven words is a surprisingly catchy way to deliver a message. Just ask writer Michael Pollan, whose book “In Defense of Food” is Number 1 on The New York Times best-seller list. In the book Pollan uses the seven-word edict: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’’

 

I haven’t read Pollan’s book but the concept behind it resonates with me. I think that most people know that a good healthy diet requires monitoring, keeping your calorie intake to a sensible level (e.g. reduce from 2300 per day to 1500 and make that a habit), eat more fruit and veg and drink lots of water. My wife and I probably eat 4 or 5 pieces of fruit per day, mandarins, apples, bananas with fresh mango and pear regularly thrown in. In offices I visit I rarely see employees eating fruit or pieces of fruit on their desks but encourage everyone to make this a habit.

 

Another thing I live by is to treat convenience food like a four letter word beginning with F and not just ‘Fast’. I try never to buy packaged food, in fact I can’t remember when I last did and certainly avoid the fast food chains – I know I will probably insult many people here, but convenience food is another four letter word – lazy! How long does it really take to prepare a nutritious meal? We make the effort daily – and it does not cost an arm and a leg, often quite the opposite. Take a large dish of fresh mixed grilled vegetables, It only takes 10 minutes to prepare them by which time the oven has warmed up – 10 minutes in the oven and 10 minutes under the grill and you have a delicious healthy meal in 30 minutes. If you are a meat eater you can add meat to this in minutes – furthermore for me just the fact of making a dinner is healthy and social, you can spend time together preparing the food and talking about your day.

 

I don’t care how hard you work, and let’s face it most people work long hard hours these days, but don’t you feel better when you have more energy, I know I do and its a well known fact that healthy eating and lifestyle energizes people.

 

(If you want to skip the lecture jump to the end and see some 7 word edicts, but the lecture is quite interesting – honest….)

 

So what does Pollan advocate? Something along these lines:

 

1. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks.

 

2. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup. None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

 

3. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market; you also won’t find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality. Precisely the kind of food your great-great-grandmother would have recognized as food.

 

4. Pay more, eat less. The Western food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well, but most of us can: Paying more for food well grown in good soils will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown.

 

“Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. “Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Food abundance is a problem, but culture has helped here, too, by promoting the idea of moderation. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called “Hara Hachi Bu”: eat until you are 80 percent full. To make the “eat less” message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don’t know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

 

5. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less “energy dense” than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores. He does add near vegetarians (“flexitarians – who eat a small amount of meat and rarely”) are as healthy as vegetarians. Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he advised treating meat more as a flavoring than a food.

 

6. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren’t a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others: Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats, as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can’t possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.

 

7. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be cheap and easy; that food is fuel and not communion. Plus, the food you grow yourself contributes to your health long before you sit down to eat it. So you might want to think about putting down this article now and picking up a spatula or hoe.

 

Damn I digressed, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to bleat on about food and healthy eating – its the seven words that I’m interested in! Maybe some marketing guru should pick up on

 

Here’s my 7 word edicts for a healthy lifestyle:

 

Exercise daily. Quality not quantity. Laugh Regularly.

 

Think Positively. Use your Imagination. Be creative.

 

Less fortunate. Ignored by society. Help them.

 

Earn ten. Only spend nine. Happy person.

 

Forgive others. Everyone makes mistakes. Move on.

 

Feeling stressed? Take warm bath. Emerge refreshed.

 

Be clear. Express your opinion. Be concise.

 

Run daily. It’s too cold. No excuses.

 

Lick salt. Toss back shot. Bite lemon. (Hmm how did that sneak in?)

 

What about you, come on let me know your 7 word edicts and do you think this thought process works?

 

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