Mindful today

I hate to admit it, but I seem to have lost the research article I printed out on the benefits of blossoms, thus I am unable to comment on it yet. Once again, I 'get' to find some humor in my forgetfulness and the small irritations of everyday.
The everyday has obvious delights as well though: just a few minutes ago our cat Mona did her jump-to-the-top-of-the-door feat, that always makes me smile (well, almost always; I guess I'm not smiling when I see gouges in the wood from her claws...).

I appreciate, in this poem, the gentle reminder to find joy in all of life, mindfully and gladly present in this day.

Mindful

Every day
I see or I hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light
It is what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world --
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant--
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these --
the untrimmable light
of the world,
ocean's shine
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
--Mary Oliver

Planting pleasures

Ok, so no word yet about research on flowers. But I can tell you that there IS power and pleasure in planting. This week, under glorious sunshine, I cleared and weeded some garden beds, Gregg tilled the vegetable garden, I divided the plot into sections, and planted early seeds.
Playing in black dirt always cheers me. As a sensor (of Myers Briggs pairing- Sensor vs. Intuitive) I am “attentive to the present, the joys and beauty of what is…Sensing types frequently experience the Creator through the reality of Creation.” p 18 Looking at Type and Spirituality.

Spring is my favorite season.

From food to flowers

Let’s move along from the last entry on food to this next on flowers. I love blossoms. One of the better gifts my husband has ever given me was on our 25th wedding anniversary: he brought home a monthly bouquet of blooms for a half year or so. Turns out that flowers do good things, at least for women. These three statements are made in the April 2008 issue of Health magazine.

“You’ll feel more up…
In a study by Haviland-Jones, women who unexpectedly received flowers displayed instant happiness – and were still in good moods three days later.

You’ll stress less…
In a Harvard Medical School study, people who kept fresh-cut flowers around the house felt less anxiety.

You’ll get creative…
Texas A&M University researchers found that women had more innovative ideas and solutions to problems when flowers were nearby.”

I want to believe all that: but as the claims are rather broad, and I am presently taking a statistics class that calls for careful scrutiny of 'results', I feel I need to question. I’ll try to track down the particulars to determine if there’s any cause and effect, or just how the researchers, or journalists, are coming up with the associations, and report back.

In the meantime, flowers close by certainly won’t hurt, and will likely help in some way. I say - bring on the blossoms.

A great deal?

Here is one last, kinda long entry featuring tidbits from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food (if you endure to the end, there will be reward). I think most all of us have an awareness that as a culture we are snacking more, eating fewer meals together, and eating on the run. Not so good.

“One study found that among eighteen- to fifty-year-old Americans, roughly a fifth of all eating now takes place in the car. (*The study, commissioned by industry and unpublished, was conducted by John Nihoff, a professor of gastronomy at the Culinary Institute of America.) [p 189, In Defense of Food]

It’s easy to eat on the go with convenience foods. Snacks, microwavable entrees, soft drinks, and packaged food of all kinds “are the source of most of the 300 or so extra calories Americans have added to their daily diet since 1980” [p 186, In Defense of Food]. And not only are the foods convenient, but also cheap. I’m usually all for a good deal, but it turns out that cheap food is not such a great deal.

“The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There's no escaping the fact that better food -- measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) – costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils -- whether certified organic or not -- will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown. [http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=87]

I’m a believer in fruits and vegetables, and put out for consumption of them. Every so often I even buy organic and pay more, though it could be so much more often that I do so. Pollan’s words and admonitions encourage me to buy organic, continue gardening, and go more often to open markets and whole food stores. You have my invitation to ask me how I’m doing. Happy eating.

Consider the whole

I love variety. But in determining cause and effect, variety gets in the way. We are complex beings with numerous and varied choices. Just a couple of days ago in my Statistics textbook I read about confounding variables (and yes, I am often 'confounded' as I try to keep up with the young brains of my Carleton classmates). I appreciate Michael Pollan’s reminder that we really must pay attention to confounding variables and consider the whole picture as we consider food choices:

“The Mediterranean diet is widely believed to be one of the most healthful ways to eat, yet much of what we know about it is based on studies of people living on the island of Crete in the 1950s, who in many respects lived lives very different from our own. Yes, they ate lots of olive oil and little meat. But they also did more physical labor. They fasted regularly. They ate a lot of wild greens -- weeds. And, perhaps most important, they consumed far fewer total calories than we do. Similarly, much of what we know about the health benefits of a vegetarian diet is based on studies of Seventh Day Adventists, who muddy the nutritional picture by drinking absolutely no alcohol and never smoking. These extraneous but unavoidable factors are called, aptly, ''confounders.'' One last example: People who take supplements are healthier than the population at large, but their health probably has nothing whatsoever to do with the supplements they take -- which recent studies have suggested are worthless. Supplement-takers are better-educated, more-affluent people who, almost by definition, take a greater-than-normal interest in personal health -- confounding factors that probably account for their superior health.” [http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=87]

Beyond “whole picture” to also “whole foods,” consider these words, again penned by Pollan [possibly a bit irreverent, but really quite helpful]:

“Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are
a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number
-- or that contain high-fructose corn syrup. None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.” [http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=87]

Eat food, again

I have enjoyed Michael Pollan's wry perspective and wise guidance on food. As I love to pass along what I learn, especially if it might be of benefit, I'll share a few more of his words here and in the days ahead. The following is from the long essay "Unhappy Meals" (content from his book In Defense of Food) by Michael Pollan, in The New York Times Magazine, January 28, 2007.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

"That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. . . a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won't kill you, though it's better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you're much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That's what I mean by the recommendation to eat ''food.'' Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you're concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it's not really food, and food is what you want to eat."

[For much more, go to -- http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=87, or www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ex=1327640400&en=7c85a1c254546157&ei=5088]

Eat food

"It's important to watch what you eat. Otherwise, how are you going to get it into your mouth?" — Matt Diamond.

“Eat food.
Mostly plants.
Not too much.”

- Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

[There’ll be more later from In Defense of Food; for now you can derive your own thoughts on what all might be gleaned from those few words above]

“Butter vs. Margarine? I trust cows over scientists." quote from http://www.gdargaud.net/Humor/QuotesFood.html

Mindless Eating

When do you stop eating?
When the food runs out? When you feel full?
Too often I do not pay close attention to the fullness factor.

Recently I read the book, In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan, and the insights therein have taught me much and reminded me of a number of suggestions for greater health. For example, these words:

“As the psychologists have demonstrated, most of us allow external, and mostly visual, cues to determine how much we eat…
Supposedly it takes twenty minutes before the brain gets the word that the belly is full; unfortunately most of us take considerably less than twenty minutes to finish a meal, with the result that the sensation of feeling full exerts little if any influence on how much we eat. What this suggests is that eating more slowly, and then consulting our sense of satiety, might help us to eat less. The French are better at this than we are, as Brian Wansink discovered when he asked a group of French people how they knew when to stop eating. “When I feel full,” they replied. (What a novel idea! The Americans said things like “When my plate is clean” or “When I run out.”)…
Wansink offers dozens of helpful tips in a recent book called Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think…

Serve smaller portions on smaller plates;
serve food and beverages from small containers (even if this means repackaging things bought in jumbo sizes);
leave detritus on the table – empty bottles, bones, and so forth – so you can see how much you’ve eaten or drunk;
use glasses that are more vertical than horizontal (people tend to pour more into squat glasses);
leave healthy foods in view, unhealthy ones out of view;
leave serving bowls in the kitchen rather than on the table to discourage second helpings.”
P 193-194 In Defense of Food