On diet, weight, cholesterol and food choices

This morning Jenn over at the Green Phone Booth started a discussion about dietary choices. You can read her post titled the junk food dilemma here.

Here's my two cents:

The challenge that many of us have is the notion that if you prepare food for yourself from scratch from quality ingredients, that your diet is healthy (or at least healthier).

Michael Pollan mentions in his book that junk food isn't terribly bad for you if you prepare it yourself. But we all know if we are eating pies and cookies that we prepare for ourselves all the time it will wreak havoc on our diet.

I think that we may have to dig a little deeper into what Michael Pollan was saying. Specifically, he mentions that he has a huge weakness for french fries and he prepares them for himself. But I think he was referring more to the fact that he grows his own potatoes and makes french fries from those time to time rather than purchasing russets from the grocery store and frying those up. But even he acknowledges that eating french fries isn't the best of dietary choices.

For me, the solution, I hope, will become producing the majority of food myself. My comments to Jenn's post are:

Well, I've been thinking a lot about this subject as well. My diet is significantly healthier than most, but I still consume too much food. Cheese and butter are so easy to just pick up at the food store, especially near where I live with so many natural food stores. We have plenty of organic and sustainably raised options, but I still have a good 20-30# that I should lose.


For me, I am hoping to get to the point that mostly everything that goes into my body I produced myself. That does not mean purchasing food at the grocery store and bringing it home to make it. That means making my own butter, cheese, etc., from my own animals. That will drastically reduce the amount of dairy product that is available to me and I will still be able to eat butter and cheese, but far less of it.

This also means that my diet will consist largely of the freshest vegetables and fruits that are from my own yard. I want to focus my meals around the vegetables that are available to me, rather than meat product.

This also means eating less preserved fruit and eating it when it is in season. Fruit preserves have far too many calories and most often require that I purchase sugar, which is bad for my diet, typically not sustainably produced, and introduces too much packaging into the environment.

Those are my goals anyway. I'm far from making it happen, as I am still a novice gardener and keeper of livestock, but I've got the cooking down. Probably a dangerous combination!

In addition to Jenn's post, Ruchi over at the Arduous Blog had a provocative response. You can her post here. She speaks of her dietary choices in regard to her cholesterol levels.

I've been curious to find out experiences from people who've needed to change their diet because of high cholesterol. What has worked for you and what hasn't worked? My husband has off the charts high cholesterol. He went entirely vegan for a few months, and his cholesterol improved but not to a healthy level. Recently he's quit drinking alcohol, and I'm very curious to find out if that will impact his cholesterol levels.