"Anticancer" Book Advice Boiled Down to 20 Pollan-Style "Food Rules," with My Comments

Thanks to Mike M. for alerting me to this. This week, the author of the book Anticancer: A New Way Of Life put a helpful post online. He starts off by saying "Michael Pollan's recent little gem of a book "Food Rules" inspired me to compile my own 'rules' about what I'd like every person to know about how they can help avoid cancer - or slow it down if they have it."

I think it's definitely worth reading, although I have some comments on specific points --

From his rule 2: "Get in the habit of adding onions, garlic or leeks to all your dishes as you cook."

That one made me laugh a little. Some dishes just aren't suited for that! (Good thing laughing is also good for your health.)

If you do plan to follow that advice, you (and whoever you live with) may find Beano to be really useful!

"3. Go organic: Choose organic foods whenever possible, but remember it's always better to eat broccoli that's been exposed to pesticide than to not eat broccoli at all (the same applies to any other anticancer vegetable)."

Worthwhile advice, although it seems to be easy to find organic apples, for example. I definitely try to stick to organic for anything on the "Dirty Dozen" list of fruits and vegetables that retain the most pesticide when NOT organically grown. (A longer version of the list is here.) If you can't afford organic everything, that list is a good way to make the best use of your food dollars while also protecting yourself from pesticides.

"4. Spice it up: Add turmeric (with black pepper) when cooking (delicious in salad dressings!). This yellow spice is the most powerful natural anti-inflammatory agent. Remember to add Mediterranean herbs to your food: thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, marjoram, mint, etc. They don't just add flavor, they can also help reduce the growth of cancer cells."

Worth noting that curry powder usually contains some turmeric.

I've also read that turmeric may help prevent Alzheimer's disease / dementia in later life. So I've been trying to incorporate it more, but it isn't suitable in every dish either. The Anticancer book points out that there's some turmeric in mustard (in the liquid version of store-bought mustard -- I don't know if it's in dry mustard powder).

"5. Skip the potato: Potatoes raise blood sugar, which can feed inflammation and cancer growth. They also contain high levels of pesticide residue (to the point that most potato farmers I know don't eat their own grown potatoes)."

You CAN get organic potatoes. So maybe they're not the best food ever for your blood sugar, but you can at least avoid the pesticides. And there are nutrients in the potato skins. I like to cut up organic potatoes (after rinsing off any dirt, then drying them), leaving the skins ON, spray them with olive oil from my Misto (you can also drizzle the olive oil on instead), sprinkle on some rosemary and other herbs, and roast them in the oven or toaster oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes or until done.

"10. Keep sweets down to fruits: Cut down on sugar by avoiding sweetened sodas and fruit juices, and skipping dessert or replacing it with fruit (especially stone fruits and berries) after most meals. Read the labels carefully, and steer clear of products that list any type of sugar (including brown sugar, corn syrup, etc.) in the first three ingredients. If you have an incorrigible sweet tooth, try a few squares of dark chocolate containing more than 70% cocoa."

I just don't see myself going that far. I have cut back a little on sweets, and I usually have an apple a day. And I love some dark chocolate during the day, well before bedtime when the caffeine in it might help keep me awake. Personally, I think dark chocolate tastes so much better than milk chocolate. I usually get the dark chocolate that has about a 60% cacao level. I like the 72% cacao dark chocolate too, but Better Half doesn't. And sometimes you just want a cookie -- I think one good choice is Kashi TLC Oatmeal Dark Chocolate cookies. One of them has 130 calories, 4 grams of fiber out of the 30 grams (just over an ounce) entire weight of the cookie.

Avoiding sweetened pop (or soda if you insist on calling it that) is easier for me. But no more cookies ever? Not happening. :-) I do sometimes try eating a few Frosted Mini Wheats if I am craving cookies - the FMWs are more filling because they have more fiber. (Yes, the FMWs are processed - I don't care. :-)

I am trying to eat berries more often. I keep some frozen bags of organic berries in my freezer since I end up having to rush to use the fresh ones before they go bad -- I buy organic berries since strawberries, for example, are on the Dirty Dozen list. (Plus it's usually only a dollar more for the same size bag of frozen berries if they're organic, and I like to support pesticide-free farming when I can -- the less of those chemicals making their way into our water, the better, I think.)

"12. Make room for exceptions. What matters is what you do on a daily basis, not the occasional treat."

That I can definitely agree with. :-)

Encouraging news: 'Healthy, organic and cheap school lunches? Order up'

OK, I'm a bit late to this one, but it's good news (sometimes hard to find lately!) and worth posting:

USA Today, Dec. 2: Healthy, organic and cheap school lunches? Order up

... it's big news when someone tries, even on a small scale, to feed kids well for under $3 a pop.
... For the first time, a small, privately held start-up is pushing to do just that: producing what are by all accounts fresh, healthful, all-natural school meals for just under $3 apiece. Starting with just one school in spring 2006, Revolution Foods has quietly grown year by year and now delivers about 45,000 breakfasts, lunches and snacks daily to 235 public and private schools in California, Colorado and the District of Columbia.

The page also has links to the recent investigative articles the paper did on school lunches.

Product Reviews - Healthy Frozen Burritos and Lunches

I've been trying to eat somewhat less meat (mainly due to the environment - there's plenty about that in Food Matters) and also avoid always eating standard processed foods with a lot of chemical-y-sounding ingredients that no one would have recognized as food a few generations ago (inspired by In Defense of Food). But I don't usually have time to cook up enough stuff to have healthy leftovers to take to work for lunch. So I decided to start tasting my way through lunch-compatible burritos and other items from the frozen organic/natural section.

Two from Amy's Kitchen were terrific:

Amy's Cheese Pizza in a Pocket Sandwich - very flavorful, tasty - "Classic cheese pizza combination of mozzarella cheese and our flavorful organic pizza sauce."

Amy's Vegetable Pie in a Pocket Sandwich - this was fantastic -could qualify as comfort food. I think this was the first time I had tofu and liked it - it's not in chunks - it helps give the pot pie sauce/gravy a nice thickness and creaminess but it still tastes normal. If you, like me, aren't a tofu enthusiast, think of this pocket sandwich as "tofu made tolerable" or more accurately, "tofu made tasty."

Another from Amy's was good, although I wouldn't put it on the same level as those first two. The (meatless) shepherd's pie was decent, but one drawback is that it wasn't that filling -- it only has 160 calories, 5 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber -- it's about half a lunch for me! The human body has to run on something, ya know.

Now, for two burritos I won't be buying again:

Amy's Breakfast Burrito - bland, and just meh generally. If you don't like (even small) chunks of tofu, avoid this one.

Guiltless Gourmet Mediterranean Spinach Wrap - the taste was only so-so, and as I looked at the wrapper, I realized I should have read it more closely. Sure, it says "70% Organic," but guess which part isn't? A part that really counts -- the spinach! And organic vs. non-organic spinach matters because it's one of the "dirty dozen." Also looks like the cheese wasn't made from milk that was free of antibiotics or hormones, which may not bother you but is something I prefer and something I'd expect in a "guiltless" wrap in the organic frozen section.

I'll close with an RIP for one of my favorite healthy frozen lunches that both the grocery company and Kashi told me hasn't been selling well enough for them to keep making or carrying it. Sigh. Kashi's Chicken Rustico pocket bread sandwiches are filling, only take about 2 minutes to microwave, are very tasty and just right (for me) in terms of calories, protein, etc.

From Prevention Magazine: The 7 foods experts won't eat and 11 health food impostors

Ran across these two interesting lists recently, both from Prevention:

The 7 foods experts won't eat

Some of the 7:

- Canned tomatoes (due to the danger of bisphenol A -- why haven't companies just taken the BPA out of the damn cans already? For more on BPA, see Marion Nestle's BPA posts.)

- Microwave popcorn (due to chemicals that vaporize and go into the popcorn during microwaving)

- Non-organic potatoes (The article says:"Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won't," says Moyer, who is also farm director of the Rodale Institute (also owned by Rodale Inc., the publisher of Prevention). "I've talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals.")

- Non-organic apples (also due to high rate of pesticide absorption)

(Potatoes and apples are both on the Environmental Working Group's "Dirty Dozen" list - the 12 fruits and vegetables for which EWG says it's worth the money to buy organic.)

The other interesting list from Prevention is 11 Health Food Impostors, which include:

- vitamin water (yay, zero-calorie water with lots of calories added in!)

- spinach wraps

-"calorie-free" spray margarine (labeling loophole means it does have calories)

The margarine one got my attention because I like cooking with olive oil, but sometimes trying to drizzle it (for example, over potatoes before roasting them) yields pretty uneven results. So, as the article recommended, I bought a Misto sprayer last weekend and so far, so good. The Misto cost $8 plus tax at Bed Bath and Beyond (original price $10, before one of the 20% coupons they often mail or include in the newspaper).

And it even appears to be American-made -- "assembled" in the USA at least, according to the box.

Prevention says "Olive oil lessens inflammation throughout the body, which helps your heart and lowers cancer risk, thanks to monounsaturated fatty acids." Good to know, although taking a cue from Michael Pollan and others, I think it's still important not to overemphasize a nutrient out of its original context in whole foods (What's next? "hey, this Easy Cheese includes omega-3s!" Why do I crack wise about Easy Cheese? It was recently included in an article on "The 6 Weirdest, Scariest Processed Foods.")