Worth reading: The New York Times Magazine 10-11-09

A DC-area friend joined us recently for snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park. We had a cabin at the nearby YMCA camp and everyone brought reading material for the evenings. Lee brought me the October 11th edition of The New York Times Magazine, titled "The Food Issue: Putting America's Diet on a Diet."

Mark Bittman, A NYT regular columnist wrote on "Faster Slow Food," advocating the concept of focused, individualized, online grocery announcements, allowing consumers to buy the kind of food they wanted, when and where they were ready to shop.  Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food will be publishing Food Rules; An Eater's Manual soon and contributed some of 2,500 answers NYT readers gave him in response to a request for their guidelines for eating.

Douglas McGray contributed an article, "A Fresh-Food Bank," about California's leading the charge to hand out fresh foods, rather than canned foods, to food-bank recipients. Their efforts have been ongoing since a 2005 agreement was established between CA food banks and growers + packers statewide.

There are a variety of viewpoints and issues discussed in this fascinating collection of short, pithy articles about diet, dietary quirks and preferences and nutrition problems, mostly but not exclusively, in the United States. I found this edition to be well worth reading, not the least for a provocative article on long-term calorie-restriction research and its beneficial effects on health and, potentially, on longevity.

4 Responses to “Worth reading: The New York Times Magazine 10-11-09”

  1. research suggest that calorie restriction can also lengthen a person's life span-:'

  2. Peter Springberg says:

    I've also read some articles that support this viewpoint. Most of the studies I've seen have been done with animal subjects. I think the concept makes sense, but it's not at all clear to me how much calorie restriction is optimal. On the other hand excess calorie intake clearly has the potential to shorten a person's life span

  3. Lily Walker says:

    as science suggests, calorie restriction diets are great for longevity.:-

  4. Peter Springberg says:

    There is data to that effect; it's just tough to find people who are willing to stay on the diets used in those studies for the long term.

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