What Should We Eat?

What should we eat? That’s a question I never really seem to be able to answer. Usually I fall into paralysis by analysis and just eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. I’m pretty much a novice when it comes to understanding diet and nutrition. Honestly, in my early 20’s I would drink a Coca-Cola for breakfast on the way into work. Not in addition to anything of substance. A can of Coke was my entire breakfast. So clearly I had a lot to learn.

My father used to always tell me, “Wait until you turn 30. That wonderful metabolism will slow down in a hurry.” Thankfully, the turn wasn’t as dramatic as he implied, but I did start to pay more attention to how I was treating my body.

I started reading about nutrition and wellness a little more. The more I read, the more confused I became. It seemed like everything I read contradicted the last article. Eat this… no, that’s bad for you, eat this… no wait, that might be bad for you if you’re over thirty… you should eat meat with every meal… no, don’t eat meat at all… wait, you can eat meat, but only if it grass fed and free of antibiotics… on second thought, you can only eat chicken that listened to classical music and did pilates twice a week prior to the butcher… Ugh! It was utterly confusing.

Then somebody told me about Food Rules by Michael Pollan. It is an extremely quick read that tries to unpack some of the confusion around eating and nutrition. The first sentence of the introduction says, “Eating in our time has gotten complicated – needlessly so, in my opinion.” He was reading my mind!

Food Rules is broken into three parts: Part I- What should I eat? Part II – What kind of food should I eat? Part III – How should I eat it? In each section, Pollan gives very practical advice that is easy to understand. Each tip is accompanied by a brief, often one paragraph, explanation of the suggestion. Here are my ten favorites:

  1. Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize.
  2. Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human being would keep in their pantry. (Xanthan gum, anyone?)
  3. Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce. (Boys and girls, can you say “Xanthan gum?”)
  4. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
  5. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
  6. Stop eating before you’re full.
  7. Eat when you’re hungry, not when you are bored.
  8. Buy smaller plates and glasses.
  9. Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does. (No hotdogs off the rollers at the gas station. That would have been shocking to my twenty-year-old self.)
  10. Break the rules once in a while.

There are so many wonderful thoughts in this book, and Pollan presents them all in a way that is easy to understand and hard to forget. For a person like me, it was the perfect place to start thinking about what I was putting in my body.

Pollan shares seven words he believes are the answer to that incredibly complex questions of what to eat: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

I try to think about these seven words as much as possible. It’s hard, especially when I walk into the faculty room to a table overflowing with donuts and other baked goods. There’s got to be some Xanthan gum in something on that table. Sometimes I follow the rules; sometimes I break them. At least I’m thinking about food rules at all. That’s got to count for something, right?

Healthy Teachers

If you’ve ever flown on an airplane, you’ve seen the flight attendants explain what to do in the event of an emergency. (I’ve always thought this was an unsettling, yet necessary, way to start a flight.) In the event that the cabin pressure should drop, oxygen masks will drop out of the overhead compartment. If this happens, the flight attendants say, “Please place the mask over your own mouth and nose before assisting others.” The point is, you can’t take care of others unless you’re taking care of yourself.

This is a great metaphor for teachers. A teacher can’t take care of others, primarily students, unless he takes care of himself first. We need to put the mask on before we can put the mask on our students. So, if we’re not taking care of ourselves physically, emotionally, psychologically, and even financially, we’re going to be in the best condition to take care of our students and teach at our best level.

With that in mind, I’m setting off on a mission to learn how teachers, myself included, can take better care of themselves. Personal care has not been a great quality of mine in the past, but I’m determined to change that over the coming months.

I found a fantastic article in the New York Times titled “How to Be Healthy, in Just 48 Words.” As the title suggest, it contains health tips in just 48 words. It is such a wonderful, concise article to get started. I decided to use it to reflect on whether my habits are healthy or not and identify where I can start making improvements. Below are the 48 words from the article and my personal rating for each. I scored myself as excellent, okay, and needs to improve.

Don’t smoke (2). Excellent

Get vaccinated (4). Excellent

Avoid trans fats (7). Needs to improve: I’ll be honest, I don’t really pay attention to labels as much as I should.

Replace saturated fats with unsaturated if you can (15). Needs to improve: Same as trans fats.

Cook from whole ingredients — and minimize restaurant meals (23). Okay: I do try to use whole foods as often as possible, but could improve in this area.

Minimize ultraprocessed foods (26). Okay: I do like to eat ice cream but otherwise not too bad.

Cultivate relationships (28). Need to improve: There are many times I put other areas of my life above taking the time to cultivate relationships. It’s a definite weakness of mine.

Nurture sleep (30). Needs to improve: I’ve always been a night owl. Typically I go to bed around midnight and wake up at 6 a.m. This is definitely an area where I need to improve.

Drink alcohol at most moderately (35). Excellent

Exercise as often as you can enjoy (42). Okay: I love running but haven’t been great about getting out as often as I’d like.

Drink only the calories you love (48). Okay. I recently quit drinking Coke. Trying to only drink water and tea right now.

Identifying areas where improvement is needed is the first part. Now comes the real work.