The Scientific 7-Minute Workout: “The exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30 seconds for each, while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about an 8 on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10, Mr. Jordan says. Those seven minutes should be, in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes, you’re done.”
I haven’t had Mcdonald’s since December 2009. Cool!
I know it’s just a small act by one person, and won’t really make a difference in the world. It’s more of a symbolic act, a starting point, and just a personal refusal to spend any more money on a huge fast food corporation that advertises to children and takes advantage of people who don’t know any better. They spend millions of dollars on research and marketing, and they deliberately use psychology, biology, and economics to get people to consume way more of unhealthy foods than they should. Their advertising even targets children. Mcdonald’s is not alone in this; fast food corporations in general are all guilty of this. In my opinion though Mcdonald’s is the worst— probably a personal bias stemming from the fact that they innovated supersizing to overcome people’s instinctive portion control. Michael Pollan wrote about that in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In a more recent book, Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss, it is revealed how junk food companies use science to get us addicted to junk food… and perhaps more importantly, that junk food companies know exactly what they’re doing. I haven’t read the book yet but I really want to, based on this excerpt from NYTimes:
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The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
I first met Moskowitz on a crisp day in the spring of 2010 at the Harvard Club in Midtown Manhattan. As we talked, he made clear that while he has worked on numerous projects aimed at creating more healthful foods and insists the industry could be doing far more to curb obesity, he had no qualms about his own pioneering work on discovering what industry insiders now regularly refer to as “the bliss point” or any of the other systems that helped food companies create the greatest amount of crave. “There’s no moral issue for me,” he said. “I did the best science I could. I was struggling to survive and didn’t have the luxury of being a moral creature. As a researcher, I was ahead of my time.”
Moskowitz’s path to mastering the bliss point began in earnest not at Harvard but a few months after graduation, 16 miles from Cambridge, in the town of Natick, where the U.S. Army hired him to work in its research labs. The military has long been in a peculiar bind when it comes to food: how to get soldiers to eat more rations when they are in the field. They know that over time, soldiers would gradually find their meals-ready-to-eat so boring that they would toss them away, half-eaten, and not get all the calories they needed. But what was causing this M.R.E.-fatigue was a mystery. “So I started asking soldiers how frequently they would like to eat this or that, trying to figure out which products they would find boring,” Moskowitz said. The answers he got were inconsistent. “They liked flavorful foods like turkey tetrazzini, but only at first; they quickly grew tired of them. On the other hand, mundane foods like white bread would never get them too excited, but they could eat lots and lots of it without feeling they’d had enough.”
This contradiction is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” In lay terms, it is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more. Sensory-specific satiety also became a guiding principle for the processed-food industry. The biggest hits — be they Coca-Cola or Doritos — owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.
Read the whole story: The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
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My boycott is unnecessary. I can probably still eat Mcdonald’s occasionally and it would be fine… But I don’t need to and I don’t want to. Also, I don’t push my boycott on other people and I don’t get mad at other people if they choose to eat Mcdonald’s. If I’m with people who want to eat at Mcdonald’s, I still go with them and just politely decline to eat. It’s really important to me that I don’t make other people feel uncomfortable about that, so I go to great lengths to let people know that yes, it’s really ok if you eat that burger in front of me. I’m going to continue with my boycott and will probably break it only if I’m very hungry and there are really no other options.
So… I can live without Mcdonald’s. I can probably live without a lot of those other junk foods! I started that boycott as an easy “baby step” so maybe it’s about time to step up and add a second corporation. I’m thinking of Coca-Cola.
Save Philippine Seas » NEW! SPS Volunteer Opportunities -
This wonderful org, Save Philippine Seas, is looking for:
Bloggers/writers – to cover and document marine-related events and issues
Graphic artists – to create infographics and publicity materials
Reporters and respondents – preferably based at or living near coastal communities outside of NCR who can regularly report (via email or SMS) any sea-related news from their area to the SeaNN media curators
Project/event assistants – to assist in logistics and volunteer mobilization
Photographers/writers – to document different events
Marketing assistants – to help SPS look for and secure partners and sponsors
Admin assistants - to assist in preparing logistics and organizing documentation
Layout artists – to design the training kit and other informative materials
Gluten-free coconut flour heart-shaped experimental pancakes :D yesterday they were dry, but I tweaked the recipe and they’re much better today! Super filling but I don’t get bloated— since I’m basically just eating coconut meat and eggs :P (via feannekitty on Instagram)
Did you that know you can have fresh, organic, biodynamic food delivered right to your doorstep? Holy Carabao, that’s awesome! ;) Here’s my review of this lovely little farm in Laguna that delivers grass-fed meat and organic veggies and more to your doorstep.
Sustainable Manila: Holy Carabao Review
Just finished my Peak 8 HIIT jump rope workout :3
Reasons to hunt and eat sea urchins:
1. They’re delicious!
Sea urchin roe or “uni” has a strong, briny, ocean taste like caviar, and a rich, creamy, delicate consistency like foie gras.
2. And nutritious!
Full of vitamin A, D, zinc, and long-chain fatty acids. This is why roe is prized as a superfood in many cultures, especially for pregnant women.
3. Preemptive strike.
Hunt and eat them before they sting you with their spines while you frolic about at the beach. The best defense is a good offense!
Read on at Sustainable Manila: How To Hunt And Eat Sea Urchins for my fun guide on capturing and consuming these wily little creatures!
Went to CrossFit Alabang for a free trial sesh. Warmup pa lang pagod na and was only able to do half the workout :)) it’s basically HIIT + muscle confusion. Got really excited about the super slim jumping ropes— got to try those out and they’re super fast! WHA-PSSH! And those ropes are not available at local fitness stores!
Easy nomnomz! Minced Puso Ng Saging & Mushrooms at the Sustainable Manila blog :)
Excerpts from Paula Aberasturi’s thoughts on dieting:
- Food should nourish you, make you glow, put a twinkle in your eyes. So, you have to be happy with the diet you pick. For example, eat healthy because you love it, not because it keeps off the pounds. Otherwise, you’d be walking around mad at the world everyday because it deprived you of chocolate.
- Don’t obsess about it. When you are obsessed about every part of your diet, you lose the joy in it. There are some people who claim to follow the healthiest diets on earth, but they look so frail with dark circles under their eyes. They get obsessed about every ingredient and snap when they can’t get this or that. (No wonder they look like that.) I don’t want to be them. I want the glow and rosy cheeks, not be a stick with gray skin.
- You don’t have to pay a lot of money to know that you should be eating a lot of vegetables (Hint: biodynamic vegetables especially), avoid sugar and processed food, and get good protein. (Hint: pasture-raised meat.)
- If you eat when you’re hungry, and begin to stop starving or depriving yourself, the bingeing stops. So will overeating. As your body knows it will be nourished every time, it won’t find the need to gorge. And how ever can you sustain a very restrictive, lower than required calorie diet? The day you go off this diet is the day you will overindulge because you felt so deprived for weeks, months on end. (Also, eating so few calories a day is dangerous. When the body is starved for calories, the body’s metabolism slows down to preserve energy. And then you’re in big trouble.)
- Once we start equating food with “shoulds”, it becomes dogma. And who wants to eat dogma? I have had enough of that elsewhere. Food ought to be joie de vivre. Of course it should be. It’s what you put in your mouth. And there has to be butter, chocolate and wine in that equation. Although not exactly measured.