Sunday, September 30, 2012
Why not to avoid germs
JAKE! This is why your camping lifestyle is flawed!
Oh, and coincidentally I just saw this in my google reader: http://www.webmd.com/parenting/d2n-stopping-germs-12/kids-and-dirt-germs?src=RSS_PUBLIC
Monday, September 24, 2012
Organic vs. Conventional Foods
This was a very interesting read from Scientific American (link).
We should continue to analyze pesticides, but we should not scare people away from eating fruit and vegetables because of the slight risk associated with them. They provide too many health benefits for people to be avoiding them. The levels of pesticides in conventional crops have not proven to be detrimental to health. Some level of pesticides may actually 'gear up' our immune system and provide a health benefit. Organic crops have less synthetic pesticides, but apparently many organic crops use organic pesticides (I had not heard of this before). In which case, I want these organic pesticides to be under the same level of scrutiny as synthetic pesticides.
My one concern may be shortsightedness on part of toxicologists. Do pesticides (organic or synthetic) have a long term affect? It seems the studies sited in this article find no correlations, but I find it hard to believe that such large epidemiological studies exist (I could be completely wrong though and have not done the research).
So I guess my advice is:
1. Eat as much fruit and vegetables as you can
2. Don't worry about pesticides
3. Buy what you can afford. I don't think anyone can claim at this point whether conventional or organic crops are more beneficial from a health standpoint (environmental considerations may give organics an edge?)
We should continue to analyze pesticides, but we should not scare people away from eating fruit and vegetables because of the slight risk associated with them. They provide too many health benefits for people to be avoiding them. The levels of pesticides in conventional crops have not proven to be detrimental to health. Some level of pesticides may actually 'gear up' our immune system and provide a health benefit. Organic crops have less synthetic pesticides, but apparently many organic crops use organic pesticides (I had not heard of this before). In which case, I want these organic pesticides to be under the same level of scrutiny as synthetic pesticides.
My one concern may be shortsightedness on part of toxicologists. Do pesticides (organic or synthetic) have a long term affect? It seems the studies sited in this article find no correlations, but I find it hard to believe that such large epidemiological studies exist (I could be completely wrong though and have not done the research).
So I guess my advice is:
1. Eat as much fruit and vegetables as you can
2. Don't worry about pesticides
3. Buy what you can afford. I don't think anyone can claim at this point whether conventional or organic crops are more beneficial from a health standpoint (environmental considerations may give organics an edge?)
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Nutrition Indices!
About a week ago I started working on a nutrition index to represent the nutritional well-roundedness of a food. Ultimately, I want to use this index to put in terms of $/nutritional point.
I first broke down the index into 2 sub-scores using macro and micro nutrients. I am somewhat happy with my macro-nutrients results so far. The inputs to this sub-score are total calories, carbohydrates, proteins, saturated fats, unsaturated fats, and fiber. Everything is normalized by total calories, so the score is not dependent on portion size.
Very generally, a food can get about 1 point for net carbs (carbs - fiber) if carbs aren't too high or too low; 1 point for protein if protein is high (very high protein can get over 1 point, but not typically), and 1 point for fat (less than 30% calories from fat). A food can also get up to 0.6 bonus points for a healthy fat profile (high unsaturated fat compared to saturated fats) and 0.6 bonus points for fiber.
Some categories can also result in negative points. If a food is almost all net carbs, then it can get a small penalty (-0.2). If a food is almost all fat, then it can get up to a -0.5 penalty. If a food has an unhealthy fat profile (saturated fat greater than unsaturated fats), then it can get up to a -1.5 penalty. No foods in this dataset were given greater than -0.1 penalties for their fat profiles. Butter would be a good example, but the butter listed below is a SmartBalance brand with about a 50/50 ratio.
An interesting finding was that fruit did not score well. I'm hoping fruit makes up ground when I do micro-nutrients. Otherwise, I may have to reconsider the macro scoring as non-fat foods seem to be underrated. I am also a little concerned with inconsistent nutrition data as some data were obtained from packaging and others were from online research, but anyway, here are my results:
I first broke down the index into 2 sub-scores using macro and micro nutrients. I am somewhat happy with my macro-nutrients results so far. The inputs to this sub-score are total calories, carbohydrates, proteins, saturated fats, unsaturated fats, and fiber. Everything is normalized by total calories, so the score is not dependent on portion size.
Very generally, a food can get about 1 point for net carbs (carbs - fiber) if carbs aren't too high or too low; 1 point for protein if protein is high (very high protein can get over 1 point, but not typically), and 1 point for fat (less than 30% calories from fat). A food can also get up to 0.6 bonus points for a healthy fat profile (high unsaturated fat compared to saturated fats) and 0.6 bonus points for fiber.
Some categories can also result in negative points. If a food is almost all net carbs, then it can get a small penalty (-0.2). If a food is almost all fat, then it can get up to a -0.5 penalty. If a food has an unhealthy fat profile (saturated fat greater than unsaturated fats), then it can get up to a -1.5 penalty. No foods in this dataset were given greater than -0.1 penalties for their fat profiles. Butter would be a good example, but the butter listed below is a SmartBalance brand with about a 50/50 ratio.
An interesting finding was that fruit did not score well. I'm hoping fruit makes up ground when I do micro-nutrients. Otherwise, I may have to reconsider the macro scoring as non-fat foods seem to be underrated. I am also a little concerned with inconsistent nutrition data as some data were obtained from packaging and others were from online research, but anyway, here are my results:
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Preliminary Vegetarian Grocery Breakdown
I switched to a vegetarian diet about 2 months ago while reading Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully (hopefully I will have time in the next couple of weeks to post something on that). Since the change in diet, I entered all my grocery expenditures into a spreadsheet except for one missing week. I also went on 2 vacations where I did eat meat, but most of those expenses are not included below.
First, here is a percent by cost breakdown of my groceries. The key on the right is in order from high to low, and the pie chart starts at about 12 o'clock and goes clockwise from high to low.
I somewhat arbitrarily separated foods into groups. Some may be smaller or larger based on whether it is a general or specific category. For example, it may make sense to combine cereals, grains, crackers, and bread into a grains/carbs category, but I split these into separate categories. Also, juice is included in fruit, which probably accounts for at least half the high placement of the fruit category. There is one more caveat and that is the short time span. I have a huge collection of some of the foods above and will not need to buy anymore for several months, so some percentages such as protein bars, fat (oils), and tea will decrease.
This graph still gives some interesting insights. I am spending approximately 57% of my grocery money on soy, dairy, vegetables, cereal, and fruit. I expected soy to be high, but not the top category. I typically buy tofu and tempeh for protein in roughly half my meals, but seems somewhat cheap with a pound of tofu costing ~$2 and a 1/2 pound of tempeh costing roughly the same. In comparison to meat, soy is probably the same price or cheaper per gram of protein (with comparable amino acid profiles). Dairy may be high because I recently switched to organic milk, which is almost twice the cost of regular milk. I'm glad to see that vegetables are high (consuming roughly 6 to 8 ounces/day). These are mostly frozen vegetables, which are typically much cheaper than fresh vegetables. Cereal is sometimes a breakfast food but usually an after-dinner snack. Although the high cost for cereal seems unnecessary, I think the high protein and fiber makes this a nutritionally dense food that is worth the high cost.
A good question after seeing this graph is what can I cut. I don't think I actually eat that much fruit, so I think cutting fruit juice and increasing other fruits may be nutritionally beneficial while still reducing costs. Jelly seems high, but PB&J is my go-to for lunch if I do not have any leftovers available. There may be some way to reduce that as jelly isn't the greatest thing nutritionally anyway (maybe less jelly/sandwich).
Here is the same data, but graphed to give a better idea of the magnitude of each cost. This graph isn't too much more useful than the first one, but it is interesting to consider with these numbers: a total of $588 was spent for 2.5 months of food, which comes out to approximately $7.74/day and $54.19/week.
First, here is a percent by cost breakdown of my groceries. The key on the right is in order from high to low, and the pie chart starts at about 12 o'clock and goes clockwise from high to low.
I somewhat arbitrarily separated foods into groups. Some may be smaller or larger based on whether it is a general or specific category. For example, it may make sense to combine cereals, grains, crackers, and bread into a grains/carbs category, but I split these into separate categories. Also, juice is included in fruit, which probably accounts for at least half the high placement of the fruit category. There is one more caveat and that is the short time span. I have a huge collection of some of the foods above and will not need to buy anymore for several months, so some percentages such as protein bars, fat (oils), and tea will decrease.
This graph still gives some interesting insights. I am spending approximately 57% of my grocery money on soy, dairy, vegetables, cereal, and fruit. I expected soy to be high, but not the top category. I typically buy tofu and tempeh for protein in roughly half my meals, but seems somewhat cheap with a pound of tofu costing ~$2 and a 1/2 pound of tempeh costing roughly the same. In comparison to meat, soy is probably the same price or cheaper per gram of protein (with comparable amino acid profiles). Dairy may be high because I recently switched to organic milk, which is almost twice the cost of regular milk. I'm glad to see that vegetables are high (consuming roughly 6 to 8 ounces/day). These are mostly frozen vegetables, which are typically much cheaper than fresh vegetables. Cereal is sometimes a breakfast food but usually an after-dinner snack. Although the high cost for cereal seems unnecessary, I think the high protein and fiber makes this a nutritionally dense food that is worth the high cost.
A good question after seeing this graph is what can I cut. I don't think I actually eat that much fruit, so I think cutting fruit juice and increasing other fruits may be nutritionally beneficial while still reducing costs. Jelly seems high, but PB&J is my go-to for lunch if I do not have any leftovers available. There may be some way to reduce that as jelly isn't the greatest thing nutritionally anyway (maybe less jelly/sandwich).
Here is the same data, but graphed to give a better idea of the magnitude of each cost. This graph isn't too much more useful than the first one, but it is interesting to consider with these numbers: a total of $588 was spent for 2.5 months of food, which comes out to approximately $7.74/day and $54.19/week.
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