Read the whole thing - it makes for fascinating food (sorry!) for thought.
Udhay
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ei=5090&en=a18a7f35515014c7&ex=1327640400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly
complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in
order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right
here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I'm tempted
to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a
few thousand more words. I'll try to resist but will go ahead and add
a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat
won't kill you, though it's better approached as a side dish than as
a main. And you're much better off eating whole fresh foods than
processed food products. That's what I mean by the recommendation to
eat "food." Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are
lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These
novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with
health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you're
concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products
that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food
product is a good indication that it's not really food, and food is
what you want to eat.
Uh-oh. Things are suddenly sounding a little more complicated, aren't
they? Sorry. But that's how it goes as soon as you try to get to the
bottom of the whole vexing question of food and health. Before long,
a dense cloud bank of confusion moves in. Sooner or later, everything
solid you thought you knew about the links between diet and health
gets blown away in the gust of the latest study.
<snip>
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
