Book Review: Fat Chance - Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease

I'm not going to lie - I checked out this book after hearing about it on NPR. Why?

Because it's difficult to get clear and accurate information on eating a healthy, balanced diet. Every few years a new 'fad' diet shows up, and non-dieters such as myself are left thinking...does any of this actually do anything? Should I cut out carbs from my diet? Should I avoid processed foods? Are the fruit and veggies I am getting hollow shells of their former ancestral selves? Is this toxic too? There's an overload of information and of people trying to sell you things - their book, their food, their exercise equipment, whatever. Food is labeled 'natural,' 'organic,' 'whole-wheat,' 'fjakdl-free,' and many of these mean little to nothing. And the USDA is under the lobbying influence of the food industry, so I'll just say no-thank-you to their recommendations.

But when I heard this little segment on NPR from this doctor/scientist Dr. Robert H. Lustig, I thought...this is a guy who sounds like he knows his science. Not in a pseudo-science hand-wavy way. I can spot that pretty easily. But in a way that was actually about biology and research articles done by medical and academic institutions. So I decided to check out his book.

I generally dislike any kind of self-help book. This is not really a book about dieting per se, but a book about the increase of sugar and additives into the international diet - the why, the how, and the results. It's a book tracing what is known about the causes of heart disease, diabetes, etc. Very fact-based. I skipped over some of the more dull parts, but I'll sum up the important take-away messages I got:

- Eat real food. Unprocessed food. Fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains. This is because...
- Fiber is super important for you for way more reasons than you know about. You should make sure you have both soluble and insoluble fiber in your diet, and lots of it.
- Juice is BAD for you! Even if there is no added sugar, even if it is a 'full serving of fruits and vegetables,' and V8 and looks healthy and sounds healthy and omg it's fruit and vegetables it must be healthy! But it's NOT! This is because converting fruit & vegetables into juice gets rid of all of the fiber but keeps all the sugar. Juice has more sugar than regular pop. Even with the vitamins and minerals juice is not good for you. Water is way, way, way better for you.
- Sugar in naturally occurring foods (fruits, vegetables, etc.) is fine, since it comes with the fiber and the other good stuff. Otherwise it's not good for you and we all get way too much of it. Fructose is the worst. So is high fructose corn syrup. Also, there are like 40 different ways to include sugar as an ingredient, so even if sugar doesn't appear in the first few ingredients listed, IT COULD STILL BE THE LARGEST INGREDIENT BY MASS. So conniving. This is just one of the ways that...
- Food labels are deceptive. They don't say how much sugar is added vs. endogenous to the food. They don't say how much fiber they've taken out. The ingredient list can be manipulated (as in the example of different kinds of sugar). Food without labels is generally nutritionally preferable to food with labels. That means real food.


A question I still have:
- Diet soda...is it bad for you? It doesn't have sugar, but apparently the jury is out on whether or not the net effect of diet soda is bad for you, neutral, better or worse for you than juice/regular pop, etc. This is something I'm interested in as a frequent diet-soda consumer.

Ultimately: I recommend this book if you're interested in public health, nutrition, or just learning a bit more about how to select healthy foods.

Eggplant Parmesan

So guys, no one ever told me that eggplant Parmesan was so easy to make! I had it in college a lot but had never tried it myself. But when my grocery store had eggplants for $1, I knew this was the perfect time. And it turned out great! I modified the recipe from here.

Ingredients
1-2 eggplants (I used 2)
olive oil
salt
some kind of marinara (I used vodka sauce)
whatever kinds of cheese you have around (I used Parmesan, cheddar, and asiago.)
1-2 eggs (I used 1, but should probably have used 2)

Steps
1. Slice your eggplant into 3/4-inch-thick circles. Then put salt on both sides and let them sit in a colander for 20 minutes. Something about getting weird juices out to change the texture and flavor. Whatever. Just go do something else for 20 minutes while your eggplant is hanging out juicing itself.

2. Once 20 minutes is up, rinse each piece of eggplant thoroughly in cool water and then shake it off and then squish the eggplant between paper towel on both sides to get remaining juices out. This is a teeny bit time consuming (ie, more than 2 minutes total) and I can't actually verify that this helps with anything, but it was recommended in the recipe I used so again, whatever, just do it.

2.5. Pre-heat the oven to 350.

3. Now fry your eggplant patties in a skillet. If you use any oil, I recommend a little bit of olive oil. Flip 'em so they're brown on each side.

4. While you're frying, put some marinara sauce in the bottom of a baking pan. Whatever you have lying around. I used a loaf-sized pan.

5. Also while you're frying, beat your egg/s and then mix in the cheese.

6. Then, when your eggplants are done frying, put a row of them on the marinara sauce. Then spread some of the egg-cheese sauce stuff on the eggplant. Then stack more eggplant. Then more egg-cheese stuff. Until you're out of eggplant and egg-cheese.

7. Put the rest of your sauce over all of the stuff. Put that sucker in the oven for 30 minutes. The sauce should be bubbly then. If not let it bake a little more.


I like that the ingredient ratios here are pretty flexible. I mean, it's basically eggplant, sauce, and cheese, so you can adjust it. Or you can default to my recipe-fixer: Add cheese.

Total time: like an hour. Definitely something I will make again! I'll post pictures when I eat the leftovers or when I make it again.