Eat Food

I was tagged for this meme twice, by Alex & Tim, so I guess I need to get out of my blogging slump and get to it. (Looking in the archives, you can see that every month for the past couple of years I seem to average about a post every other day. This month, I’ve barely got a post every four days... weird. It’s not that there’s nothing going on, I’m just not blogging. Not sure what to make of it, but I think I’ll just let the slump ride itself out...)

But back to the meme. Here are the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan

“Studying cultured human cells, he’s found that “deficiency of vitamins C, E, B12, B6, nicin, folic acid, iron or zinc appears to mimic radiation by causing single- and double-strand DNA breaks, oxidative lesions, or both” - precursors to cancer. “This has serious implications, as half the US population may be deficient in at least one of these micronutrients.” Most of the missing micronutrients are supplied by fruits and vegetables, of which only 20 percent of American children and 32 percent of adults eat the recommended five daily servings.”

This book has absolutely confirmed my eating habits, and encouraged me to be even more diligent. For the past few years, I’ve been eating a diet very similar to the one encouraged by Pollan’s “Eater’s Manifesto:” Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. If all the recent scary news about the food industry has you thinking about your diet, I encourage you to pick up this book. Heck, I encourage you to pick it up anyway. The information about the history of nutrition and the commercialization of food, not to mention the fads of our diet culture, is incredibly eye-opening.

I tag Coloratur...aaah, Melear, Little Ms Bossy, Nick, and Thom.

Off to Princeton in about an hour. Remember to tune in tonight at 8pm for the concert, streaming live at the Princeton music department homepage. Hillula will be the second piece on the first half of the program. Enjoy!