"Proof In the Low-Fat Pudding"

Maybe it's my new-found love of Trader Joe's, or that I recently watched "Super Size Me," but I'm suddenly fascinated by eating habits.

So much so, that during a visit to a local DCPL branch, I found Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" on display. I checked it out.

Pollan attributes part of America's eating problem to our Puritan roots (those gosh-darn prudes):

"Like sex, the need to eat links us to the animals, and historically a great deal of Protestant energy has gone to helping us keep all such animal appetites under strict control."

Of course this is just a brief mention of Christian social reform, but I think it bears another look.

What if we (a) bought "real" food instead of processed food and (b) what if we took time to enjoy it? I realize both of those suggestions are hardly convenient, but I wonder if the long-term effects might bode better for us than the "easy" path?

One report - "Too Fat to Fight" produced for Mission: Readiness found a sobering statistic : 75% of young people who want to enter the military cannot do so for three main reasons. One of those reasons? Obesity. The statistic comes to include 27 percent of young people who are overweight. In other words, obesity is a concern for national security.

If you don't want to read Pollan's book, just take a look at the cover, which offers this simple message:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.