Spurious Precision in the Dietary Realm

From our recent correspondence:

Yes, I am  dieting the good diet, and now I’m exercising the good exercise by using my Wii Fit Plus again (lapsed time: nearly 1 year).  But “come back in three months” from the doctor puts a time limit on the superb pleasure of just winging it, especially when (dietetically, at least) I was already doing well on a careful vegetarian diet with not too much sodium.  That makes it both the good and the bad news: the ‘well’ that I was doing, or anything like it, turns out to be not good enough — until it can be made to do so, with more stringent efforts; and we get to find out only at the end of the three months, and only if we put our quadriceps into it as well as our molars.

One of the things I like least about tracking those individual nutrients in grams and milligrams is the spurious precision of the results.  If the testers’ particular piece of kiwi — 1 medium —  fruit weighs 56.7g and is measured to contain 1.7 g of protein and 0.8 mg of fat and 2.3 g of fiber,  then that’s the value put in in the database.  When you track your foods by recording that you’ve eaten 1 kiwi fruit, those amounts — the standard amounts; the diet tracker is at heart a database-accessing tool, although the one I have does lots more than that — are what show up in your tracking list, to be added to others by the end of the day.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell whether the kiwi fruit you ate, even one judged to be 1 medium by size and weight description, weighs exactly the same amount as theirs.  Even if you are fanatical enough to weigh accurately in grams each item of food you eat before you prepare it, and calculate the exact differential in values from that ideal (I’m not willing to go that far; and I’d like a life outside the kitchen, thanks), even then you couldn’t be 100% sure of the accuracy, since fruits and all foods vary slightly in their makeup, while conforming to a general standard which makes them ‘them.’

So all those decimal places (there are often two or three of them in evidence, especially for scarcer nutrients) may be as accurate as possible for that one piece of originally weighed and measured fruit (no one’s disputing that) but, when you add up everything you eat all day long, all those decimals with their aggregate rounding off (nothing in life is ever really exact, least of all measurements of nutritional components; once you get past “1 kiwi fruit” it comes down to the degree of precision you choose and where you decide to round off) introduces a spurious precision into your totals.  People differ one to the other, and so do kiwi fruit or anything else you eat.  And, larger, smaller, how finely chopped or sliced, slightly more or slightly less in an individual piece plus your serving, cooking or preparation method, and more, all enter into the variation from the ideal that is represented in the database.

On the other hand, calling it ‘one fruit’ and leaving it at that for the day is not only more accurate (it actually matches 1-1) but more precise.  At the end of the day, I can’t trust that I’ve actually eaten (say) 1237.8 calories.  I’ve eaten probably something close to 1200, and probably a little over, but a diet in which I count servings of fruit, vegetables, grains and bread, protein foods, dairy foods, etc. is much more accurate and an awful lot easier to track and tally, once you get used to the sizes of servings in each group.  How do I know how I’m doing? By eating the ‘spread’ of food servings called for by my diet in each group.  So counting by servings and types of food seemed more sensible, lots easier,  and less spuriously precise than counting grams, mg., etc.

Or it was, until it became important to me to track sodium, since I don’t know the sodium content of most foods, and certainly not (without reading the labels, but that only gets you so far) of made foods.  I recently pulled a loaf of otherwise praiseworthy whole wheat bread (store-bought) from my freezer.  Only after I ate a sandwich and went to record it   (I wasn’t at the store trying to read labels, I grabbed it from my own freezer, which holds a lot of ‘prior’ foods) that I learned how much sodium was in each slice.  Way more than I wanted, I’ll tell you that.  I may have to go back to making my own bread. I use a lot less salt — and it’s a lot more work.

I guess that’s the other side of things: planning, cooking, eating, attendant cleanup, recording what I eat, buying more food, etc. can take up a huge amount of my life.  I don’t want to spend my life doing ONLY this.  I keep telling myself part of the difficulty is that I’m new to this particular effort (true) and that when I once get past the initial stage I’ll find it easier (a core repertoire of known recipes and meals, a familiar shopping basket of foods, etc.) and I’ll be able to spend less time at it.  But each aspect of the diet, at least the one I’m concocting for myself with the help of reliable nutritional information from trusted sources including about the DASH diet, and books from Harvard: this, and that), opens a vista of new ramifications of kitchen activities, at least so far, and doesn’t seem to close off or shorten any old ones.  There’s even a DASH diet online program (fee required).  Depending how my own Herculanean efforts pan out, I may try that.

For instance, I ordered varous grains, beans and seeds from a good seller, Bob’s Red Mill in Oregon.  The foods came, just as good and as well-packaged as I had hoped.  But then I found I needed a more permanent storage medium that I could open and close and reseal and stand up on my shelf, so I ordered a dozen quart-sized Mason jars.  Again, these came in fine shape.  I spent several hours in the kitchen filling jars and labelling them (we neophytes have to learn the visual differences between amaranth and quinoa, hence labels taped on the front and recipes, cooking instructions, and nutritional info taped to the back, “front” and “back” of a mason jar being arbitrarily assigned by moi).

Now I have to plunge into a forest of recipes and cookbooks — one of my favorites already in hand, and the ‘net being only one source of many — that use these grains and legumes, so that I can enjoy the many and varied nutritional benefits they contain, in delicious, flavorful dishes.  Thus, yet more vistas of action and research, and buying the other ingredients (non-grain and non-legume) called for by the recipes, once I locate the recipes I want to try.  Where the foodstuff hits the plate, that’s where I live, in the great state of spurious precision.

I’m eating well so I can have strength and health to live well to eat well so that… at least it seems so right now.  I won’t even mention the old foodstuffs tagline about how this too shall pass.

To Ad or Not to Ad

Nowadays, everybody wants a monthly fee for nearly everything you can think of, either to buy access to some service, or to keep something annoying from happening that didn’t used to happen, such as having ads start appearing everywhere you look on the ‘net and on pretty much every service you use.

I feel a little like Yosemite Sam saying “Back Off,” but I refuse to pay a monthly fee simply to keep ads from appearing along with my posts, when they didn’t in the past.   In and of themselves ads are intrusive and irritating — they’re trying to catch your attention. The ads have their own colors and visual style, ones that clash with my sites. Worse, since the particular ads you see are selected by a computer using keywords and in other non-human-considered ways, ads promulgating the exact opposite of what I may advocate, feel or think can easily appear with my posts, especially when the posts are viewed singly.

I do understand the need to fund development and upkeep.  However, the “put up with the ads we’ve now put everywhere vs. pay to keep the ads off” route is not a good way to do this, to my mind. After all, you put the ads in, and then told me I could pay you to keep them from appearing. Trendy, perhaps, and done more and more often today, but not exactly friendly-feeling.

In the abstract, I’m willing (maybe — let’s see the terms of the deal) to pay a small amount as a regular user of your service, either monthly or, better, annually) to see that you stay in business under reasonable conditions.  After all, I’ve got a certain investment in your keeping my previous posts available on the blog sites I’ve set up. Even with good archiving of blog copy, I’d find it a bigger job than I’d like to re-create the run elsewhere.

But putting ads all over the place well after I’ve put lots of posts into an initially free  – and ad-free — blogging service, and then, afterwards, saying if I don’t want the ads, I can pay you a monthly fee to keep them off, feels like something a bit different to me.

For all I know, many people may not mind viewing ads wherever they look on the internet, whether they are text-only ads with links or animated ads or even video-based ads. Others, those who view my newly-added posts on RSS feeds, may not even have to see any ads at all. I DO mind the ads that are now infesting the net everywhere you look. I don’t want to have to find and click the ‘close’ button on the ad before I can read the material I came to the site to see, which so often is located carefully right under the ad window.

I dislike seeing the ads on my blog sites very much, not least because I’ve set up and designed my blog sites to be simple and visually attractive — I’m not merely an RSS-item generating station, although one or two readers prefer to view my blog pieces using that functionality — but rather I offer a consciously chosen visual experience when you view the entire blog site, as I really would like you to do.  OK, as overwhelming aesthetic experiences go, compared to, say, viewing the Pietà or the David up close, my blog sites are no big deal, but each offers a certain atmosphere that enhances the content of the blog pieces.

At least, I find it so, and I hope both my readers (the non-RSS ones, at least) do, too.

So, for now, I’m putting up with the ads, because I don’t want to have to pay merely to keep them off.  But, when a notice comes from me that a new blog post is available, you may choose to visit the link to the general blog site where the newest post appears at the top (links to the sites are posted handily in the signature of the emails) to minimize what looks to me very much like advertising pollution.

As I remember the scene, one character in an episode on the second season of The Wire points out “We used to make things ourselves in this country.  Now we just take money out of each other’s pockets.”  If those aren’t the exact words, that’s exactly their gist.

I think he’s got a point.

Half Together Now; or, Inadvertent Fecklessness in the Dietary Realm

One particularly fun aspect of using a good diet tracker is the ability to compare food values across different foods or food types.

For instance, my interest in a dietary change (words my doctor told me) is to watch sodium levels and lose weight.  Calorie-watching is important but secondary to me.  I’d rather watch my total portions and balance of nutritional elements, and stay within healthy, pre-determined limits.  So “fat-free” foods are not by themselves a necessity. I’d rather use moderate amounts of unsaturated fats and oils and avoid saturated ones, not try to cut fats out altogether.

Having said that, why am I tracking with a (very fine indeed) software tracker that counts calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat, sodium, and fiber?

Because a.) foods nowadays are labeled with nutrition labels, and large databases exist based on those nutritional elements; foods are not often labeled in terms of exchanges or food-type portions; and b) I’d like to track what I eat both ways, because of tracking sodium in particular and a desire to see the nutritional makeup of what I’m eating and c.) this is a fine, flexible tracker that does this type of nutrient-counting very well in an easy-to-use entry and simple-to-read report structure I like.  (I’m using Perfect Diet Tracker available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, also available through the Mac App store, where I bought mine.  I recommend it highly.)  I’m tracking exchanges separately.

And now, back to our exciting story of dietary adventure: each morning I enjoy a small pot of coffee, lightened with a little half-and-half.  In a recent shopping trip I saw some fat-free half and half and wondered what could possibly be of interest in such a product.  The whole essence and enjoyability of cream — the entire point of it, as it seems to me — is the butterfat.  My attitude towards foods has always been to fish or cut bait: I don’t normally use ‘substitutes’ or ‘concocted’ foods.  Use it and own it, by counting the calories, fats, etc. as part of the dietary allowance for the day; or give it up altogether.

But, in a fit of unthinking excess dietary zeal that day I said, “Aaaah, I’ll try this maybe I can use the calories or fats elsewhere.”  I should have paid more attention, perhaps, to the clue offered by the crowd of ‘fat free’ containers remaining in the half-and-half area of the dairy case, and the dearth of regular ones.

I got it home, and put some in the coffee the next morning.  Not as good as the real stuff, but acceptable, sort of. Definitely sweeter, and that’s not good (I’m not fond of sweets). An acquired taste? Maybe. H’mmm.

Then I did a side-by-side comparison of the ingredients in standard half and half and an equal serving size of the fat-free type, using my computer-based diet tracker.

In this comparison, R = regular half and half and FF = fat free half and half; in each case, a leading national brand is represented:

Calories: R 40,  FF 20

Carbohydrates: R 1g,  FF 3 g

Proteins: R 1 g,  FF 1g

Fats: R 3g, FF 0 g

Sodium: R 10 mg, FF 30 mg

Clearly, what you lose on the roundabouts you make up on the swings.  While yes, with the fat-free type, you’ve lost half the calories (20) and all the fat (3 g.), you’ve also gained three times the sodium — not good in my case — and carbohydrates. In addition, you’ve lost most of the flavor and texture, and gained a certain sweet flavor that I don’t care for (skim milk and corn syrup are the first two ingredients listed).

I like a small amount of half and half in my coffee, used moderately it fits within my diet, and I am going to buy some of the real stuff for that purpose when I go shopping later today.

Other people may have different preferences and needs and I wish them only good luck and happiness.

But as for me, a lesson learned: give me the real deal, or else forget it entirely.

A Silent Moment

The President has called for a moment of silence at 11 am today for the victims of the shooting in Tucson Arizona.  I, for one, plan to observe that moment of silence.  I also plan to observe it standing outside, on my lawn, in the snow, and holding my flag at half-staff.

This may seem like a pointless gesture, one that will be seen or noted by no one.  Here’s why I don’t agree that it’s pointless: I’ll see it, I’ll be there, I’ll know it. That matters to me. And it’s equally important to me that I be holding my flag, appropriately positioned at half-staff.  I don’t have a flagpole holder on my house, as many others do, or I’d be flying the flag from there at half-staff as directed by the President, all day long.

And, it should be noted, I don’t routinely fly my flag outside my house, as some of my neighbors do, because that is their way of proclaiming a political identity which I don’t share.  It strikes me as not beforetime to reclaim the use of the flag for all citizens who wish to display it.  How to do that without giving a false impression of political orientation?

Today’s moment of silence for victims of a tragic event — a tragedy which brings to the attention of all of us to a nation-wide atmosphere of hatred, hateful speech and hateful actions, which threatens the peace and well-being of our country more profoundly, at this moment, than any foreign enemies — seems to me a moment when I can display my flag, at half-staff, as called for by the President to mark this occasion, without danger of having the message of that flag misinterpreted.

I hope that you will observe this moment of silence.   Observing the moment of silence across this country today is important, whoever and wherever you are, and whether you, or the building you’re in or company you work for, are flying a flag at half-staff or not.

 

No More Bananas In Our Republic?

At some time or another in this country, nearly everyone, it seems, has heard, or said, something funny about a banana.  At the same time, we are reliably informed, Americans eat a lot of bananas: 7.6 billion pounds in 2008. That fact, plus our own actions past and present, seem to make us the banana republic, not others.

Mike Peed’s article in The New Yorker’s January 10, 2011 issue  explains that there’s a blight on the horizon: Tropical Root Four, a blight that is taking down whole banana plantations all over the world.  (Alas, this article is viewable in its entirety only to subscribers, and if you’re not one, this particular issue of the magazine is worth going out and getting, at the newsstand or using your iPad app.)  That means, if a solution is not found — at least one attempt is underway — there may be no more bananas on the table or in the supermarkets in the relatively near future.

The situation is made worse in that only one variety of banana, the familiar Cavendish, the variety of banana you see sitting out at your nearby supermarket, is grown almost exclusively the world around.  The danger attending monocultural cultivation — allowing a single variety of any plant to be grown nearly everywhere —  is precisely the danger facing bananas now: a disease can run rampant over the entire population of a single variety and, possibly, wipe it out before anything can be done to stop it. Other varieties may be disease-resistant, but those (if they can be discovered) are not widely present in the currently-cultivated population. And they may not be as appetizing or as durable for shipping as the Cavendish. The blight has already devastated East Asian banana plantations, and is now in Australia — which is where Peed’s article picks up the story.

I again urge both my readers to make the extra effort to find and buy the print edition at a bookstore, or puchase it using the New Yorker’s iPad app. The iPad price is the same as the newsstand price for the issue: $5.99.