I have always been interested in food and nutrition, and had once even tried to see if I could enroll in a degree programme. I didn't commit though.
And so when I saw this programme being offered by Stanford in Coursera, I quickly signed up.
It's very basic but very good, just nice and enough to learn about food and health for the time being.
Death by Food Pyramid
by Denise Minger
I also read this book recently and my take away from it is not to believe in everything I read about food and what they claim is good or not good for you. I usually don't because most of those articles usually just go by a few anecdotes to promote their claims and beliefs. But after reading the book, I came to realize that even empirical studies are not as clear cut as they claim to be.
Food is much more complicated than just its components and nutrients, it's a system.
Michael Pollan who was featured in the Stanford course said that, "people like to figure [food] out because then you can just adjust that one thing and go on your merry way, but we haven't gotten that down yet. We don't know the answer to that question with any real confidence."
With that, we still do not know for sure what is good and bad for sure but there are still some foods to avoid especially trans-saturated fats, fats that are made from oils through partial hydrogenation, a food processing method, that will increase unhealthy LDL cholesterol and lower healthy HDL cholesterol.
I've already banned McDonald's from my food list with it being very calorie expensive. Now I will also be banning food like french fries, fried or battered food (oh no, there goes my fried chicken), margarine, frozen dinners, instant noodles, doughnuts, cookies, crackers, pies, pancakes, waffles, ice cream, nondairy creamer, and cakes.
I don't eat most of those food anymore, but some of them I might not be able to ban completely, but to eat less of them I shall.
pearlie
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