If you've read my blog for any length of time you know that I occasionally will write about food. I try to eat in a way that supports my health and that of my family, and sometimes I like to share what I've learned through research and trial-and-error.
Basically, I want to do the right thing when it comes to food.
I've said it before -- and, yup, I'll say it again -- I loved the book In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. It opened my eyes to some of the problems with our whole food situation here in the US and it changed the way I thought about certain foods.
Why Women Need Fat: How "Healthy" Food Makes Us Gain Excess Weight and the Surprising Solution to Losing It Forever
I was invited to review Why Women Need Fat for the BlogHer Book Review program and I quickly felt that this book is right up my alley. Lassek and Gaulin outline how a series of events -- a study on heart disease, an increase of the disease, media attention to heart issues -- came together to create a widely accepted theory that real fat is bad for your health, and that it must be replaced by fake fats.
The history of how it is we came to have our nutritional guidelines is so interesting -- I loved reading about it in In Defense of Food and I enjoyed reading about it in Why Women Need Fat, too. But it is also sad. Lassek and Gaulin -- like Pollan -- show that American women have been the targets of aggressive marketing to get them to switch to eating fake fats instead of real ones, to eat foods that have been modified and processed instead of whole ones.
Real, whole foods are what our bodies need. Unfortunately, for so long, we've been told to avoid certain foods. So, people drink skim milk and think they are being healthy. But then they snack on processed junk foods. They've swapped a whole food, real fat that their bodies can process and need for junk. And, as "they" say, junk in, junk out my friends.
Overall, I enjoyed reading the book and gained more information to support some of the changes to my diet that I have already been making. If you are interested in getting back to basics with food, check it out.
