Nourishing Traditions: A book that gets to the heart of food

There is no arguing that our food system has dramatically changed over the past half century. The American diet has been overhauled with the advent of fast-food, supermarkets, and convenience foods (read: shelf-stable products all found in the interior of your local market or in those vending machines you frequent). These changes have affected public health in unimaginable ways -- not the least of which is the rapid rise of obesity and Type 2 (preventable) diabetes among adults and children of all ages.

This Christmas, I asked my in-laws for a cookbook that could revolutionize the way I think about and interact with food. That book, Nourishing Traditions, is subtitled "The cookbook that challenges politically correct nutrition and the diet dictocrats." And if that doesn't say enough -- it's filled with recipes calling for raw, whole fat dairy, lard and numerous recipes calling for whey (the liquid part of curds and whey -- or that clear, yellowish liquid that settles when you have a tub of yogurt in your fridge).

An Eating Local Challenge @ TastyKate

I have decided to commit to increasing my consumption of locally grown/raised foods during my last year at HSPH (Harvard School of Public Health). It was difficult to decide whether to initiate this using Veritas Health or my food blog, TastyKate, but finally decided that TastyKate was a better venue. Check out my first post here.

There are many barriers to healthy eating that we, in public health, are always throwing around. Healthy food is too expensive. It's not available. It takes to much time to make. I'm going to try to put some of those theories to the test.

I hope that you will follow along. This will certainly be an adventure.

Comparing Apples to Apples: The Organic Debate

Check out my review of a recent Boston Globe article discussing the potential harms and benefits of eating conventional vs. organic produce.

I think it might be of interest to the VeritasHealth readership.