atlantalarry

Why Zen Habits is still one of the best blogs on the internet

If you've never visited Zen Habits you've  been missing out on a demonstration of just how good non-fiction self help writing on the internet can be.  If I had to categorize the nature of the blog, and Babuata's primary focus, in one tag, I'd say that it's part of the simplification movement.  Many of the articles present practical steps for how to pare down life to a manageable set of activities and personal belongings.

He also writes about exercise, how to handle procrastination, relationships, and the whole range of subjects also treated in the thousands of self help books on the market today.

His blog practices what it preaches.  The visual design of the site is sparse and highlights the written advice.  The advice Babuata gives tends to be straightforward and broken into manageable steps.  And while not every step he outlines in his articles would work for me, the advice is generally solid.

Here are a few articles from the index of Zen Habits:

10 Ways to Do What You Don’t Want to Do

What to Think About During Exercise

The Habit Action List

How to Make a Marriage Work

3 Steps to a Permanently Clear Desk

If you are not a regular reader of Zen Habits, I can only hope it is because your life is already running as smoothly as you'd like.  If it isn't, I'd suggest browsing over Leo Babuata's articles for guidance in fine tuning your approach.

I don't expect to live forever, but on the other hand ...

I've always wanted to live a long life, not because of any particular fear of death, but because the events of my life, and the changes I've seen in the world around me, have been so darned interesting.  Even the mundane stuff holds my attention.  Take washing dishes for instance.  There are two baking pans in our kitchen which absolutely resist all attempts to be cleaned.  I read cleaning manuals, search the web for methods, and have tried a half dozen techniques, and it still takes ten minutes of scrubbing per pan to get the things even marginally acceptable. It's imperative that I stay alive at least long enough to defeat those pans.

It may be just a sign of getting old, but I find small routine challenges like that absorbing.  The big stuff is sort of interesting, too (major technological changes, scientific and medical advances, trying to figure out why anyone has any fascination whatsoever with either Angry Birds, or the Kardashians).

But, moving along to the topic of longevity , I've just finished reading How Not to Die: Surprising Lessons on Living Longer, Safer, and Healthier from America's Favorite Medical Examiner, by Jan Garavaglia.

I don't have cable TV, and watching anything on broadcast television is extremely rare for me, so I was only vaguely aware that Dr. Garavaglia had a TV show.  I picked her book up at the public library.  Since I am interested in health and longevity, I frequently browse the stacks on health, nutrition, and exercise, and the title caught my eye.

I wasn't disappointed with the book.  It was readable and engaging, the advice is sensible, and despite the tragic nature of the anecdotes she recounts, a number of them are funny in a macabre, Darwin Awards sort of way.  One death, which she describes as similar to a cartoon, involved a fellow who sat on a limb he was sawing from a tree.  Another involved two men hauling a mattress on a car roof.  Lacking a rope to secure it, one of the guys attempted to sit on the mattress to hold it down, with tragic, though predictable, results.

Based on her experience as a Medical Examiner, the advice she gives can be summed up as staying alive by not doing high risk things.  Don't drive fast, don't ride without a seat belt, don't smoke, don't drink heavily, keep your eating under control, keep your blood pressure and cholesterol within normal range, visit the doctor and dentist regularly, and so forth.  Some of the more interesting stories involve people who managed to die by neglecting things which don't normally kill a person, like a fellow who failed to seek treatment for an abscess, leading to a deadly infection.

The book is worth a read, whether you're interested in auditioning for the Darwin Awards, or like me, trying to avoid that honor.

 

The pink slime dilemma

Whether you call it "pink slime" (the most popular term) or "lean finely textured beef" (the beef industry's preferred name for the substance) that particular emulsified food product consisting of beef trimmings treated with ammonia has become one of the most notorious food additives of the past few decades.

Various forms of meat slurry are not unique.  The popular engineered food "chicken nuggets" are produced by a similar process.  And those longtime slurries of the processed meat world, hot dogs and sausages (unless you make them yourselves), have always included components that it's best not to think about if you intend to eat them.  Meat slurries and chemical additives are among the reasons I mostly eat food from plants, and overwhelmingly buy those foods in a form which makes them easily recognizable to me.  The tomatoes I buy or grow look like tomatoes.  The beans are clearly beans.  Even the flours I buy tend to look like what they are purported to be, and if I buy organic whole wheat the likelihood that it is really ground grain is high enough for me to accept.

The argument that pink slime is being treated unfairly may have a grain of truth to it.  Pink slime has the disadvantage of being pink and slimy.  It also had the misfortune to have its derisive popular name stick.  The likelihood that the industry's chosen name, "lean finely textured beef" is ever going to gain currency is nearly zero.  But on the other hand pink slime is probably no more unsafe (or in my opinion unappealing), than the tens of thousands of other highly processed food-like products foisted upon the public every year.

There are two interesting arguments I've seen advanced defending pink slime.

The first is that the controversy is killing companies, and consequently jobs.  That's true, but industries are hurt by negative publicity all the time.  The same argument could be used to defend the tobacco industry, or to remove toy safety regulations.  Consumers have indicated clearly that they don't want to eat a slimy, pink, ammonia-processed food additive in their hamburgers.  The USDA actually approved the stuff.  So if you would like to use the "job killer" argument blame the consumer. 

The second is that pink slime serves a resource friendly and animal friendly purpose by using more of the cow.  True, as far as the argument goes, but not eating beef is an even better way of conserving resources (the inefficiency of cattle as a food source is well documented).  Likewise not killing the cow at all is a kinder act than making sure that every bit of cartilage and ligament winds up in the hamburger or hot dog..

My own preference, and there isn't any means of enforcing it except by increasing the availability of nutritional information, and knowledge of the process by which food gets to our table, is for people to eat real food rather than highly processed and highly engineered extruded "product".

As a start, I think everyone should read the book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, by Eric Schlosser.  It goes into a great deal of detail on how factory farming and the fast food industry operates.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is another book with excellent descriptions of our descent from eating food to eating highly engineering food-like product. I think the bar should be set higher for what we consider acceptable eating habits. "It won't kill you", while a good criteria at the extreme end, is hardly an encouraging endorsement of any food or diet.

 

 

 

Smoothie with a bit of a kick -- Habanero spinach smoothie

I experiment with food combinations with an enthusiasm that has often horrified my friends and relatives.  Sometimes the more unusual combinations are quite tasty, and only sound awful.  Sometimes they are just awful.  I also browse the Dekalb Farmer's market, and the various ethnic specialty grocery stores in metro Atlanta for new ingredients, and follow studies in the scientic press on possible beneficial (or detrimental) effects of various food components.

Lately I decided to add more hot peppers to my diet, based on studies indicating that capsicain, the chemical which makes hot pepper hot, might lower blood pressure and cholesterol.

Since I'm drinking a lot of smoothies these days, I decided to try a smoothie with habanero pepper (for breakfast, no less!)

Here's what I came up with.  It was actually quite tasty.

1 avocado

1 medium tomato

1 banana

1/2 cup frozen blueberries

2 cups soy milk

1 cup spinach

1/4 habenero with seeds

1 T flax seeds

1 T chia seeds

1 T walnuts

1 t cinnamon

I ground the dry ingredients (flax seed, chia seed, walnuts) first, then added the other ingredients and blend until smooth. By my standards, it's hot, but not blazingly hot.  If your tolerance for heat is lower, you could try using less habanero, or subsitute a milder pepper.