Challenging the Calorie Theory

M. Bennett

Description

Calories were invented when engineers sought to design better locomotives and adopted while citizens were at risk of starvation due to famine, depression, and two world wars.  Since Americans are now more likely to die of obesity, it is time to consider new bioenergetic models. This groundbreaking book:

-Explains culinary trends in a new language for fitness enthusiasts

-Provides graphs and charts for easy reference

-Offers a new scale of nutritional measurement for policy makers, clinical dietitians, even school administrators

-Proves consistent with both holistic methods and modern medical research

-And motivates chefs to assume their rightful place in line for future federal investments, as food science gradually becomes preventative healthcare

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Diététique
• Weight Loss
• Diets
• Diet
• Cooking

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977265548
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

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Challenging the Calorie Theory Why and How Our Culinary Community Can Heal Us All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 M. Bennett v2.0
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
Cover Photo © 2023 iStock Photos. All rights reserved - used with permission. Interior Photos © 2023 M. Bennett. All rights reserved - used with permission.
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
T ABLE OF C ONTENTS
Introduction

Part I: Why
1 The Calorie Theory
2 A Living Field
3 Systemic Buoyancy
4 Blood Storms
5 Fat

Part II: How
6 An Alkaline Battery
7 Feasting
8 Fasting
9 Dieting
10 Exercise
11 Taste Training

Conclusion
Notes
References
About the Author
D ISCLAIMER
The information provided herein, including, but not limited to, text, graphs, charts, illustrations, citations, references, and research, is intended for theoretical discourse, intellectual entertainment, and educational purposes only, and it does not substitute for personal, professional medical advice.
On the contrary, the ideas presented in this book are intended to encourage more frequent visitations, laboratory screenings, and robust conversations with accredited healthcare providers, especially on the subject of safer, more responsible consumption of popular American food products.
In fact, the culinary community offers our work as a patriotic tribute to nurses, doctors, technicians, physiologists and kinesiologists, an amuse-bouche for their innumerable sacrifices toward our national good. We sincerely pray that this effort ultimately can assist in easing some of the more predictable stresses along the path of their daily missions.
But the author is a philosopher, not a physician, and athletic, not academic. The author accepts no liability for illnesses or injuries that might occur from medically unsupervised feasting, fasting, dieting, exercising, or training.
Only a licensed professional can advise, diagnose, or treat medical symptoms. Therefore, always consult a doctor before beginning any dietary experimentation or fitness regimen.
For My Sister
I NTRODUCTION
Imagine you cooked a loving meal for your family.
You spent an early morning hour at the farmers’ market, elbowing your way through a crowd of competitors for the shiniest produce and most fragrant herbs that budgeting would allow.
You worked a couple hours in the afternoon, peeling, soaking, prepping ingredients according to time-tested recipes, referenced from oil-splattered index cards, handed down through generations of finicky in-laws.
And you invested a few more hours standing over the stove, stirring a simmering pot, reducing sauces to a syrup, straining bay leaves and garlic cloves from the stock, doing your best to navigate a path between these classic techniques of global cuisine and several, silly, little special requests.
You speckled the caramelized onion and braised cabbage ragout with bacon bits so your spouse would try it.
You tossed raisins into the spinach with Thai peanut dressing, calling it "peanut butter and jelly salad," so your son would try it.
And you reluctantly placed horseradish on the table, on the side, instead of sprinkled in the bread crumbs atop the hash brown casserole, as your grandmother taught, since your daughter acts out a dramatic scene if ever she detects even a hint of spice.
But then, during dinner, they refuse to try any of your side dishes, claiming to be saving their Calories for dessert.
Imagine that your love for them extends in other directions, too.
You are the one holding your daughter’s purse while she tries on seventeen outfits because she feels fat, yet eats only starches.
You are the one who cancelled your monthly night out so the family could afford your spouse’s latest prescription medication.
And you are the one who knocks on your son’s door when he thinks no one can hear him crying, when his focus in math and in the batter’s box proves inadequate amid other, menacing, middle school struggles.
You know the food you prepared is healthier, more nutrient-dense, better for their bodies and brains than just eating meats and sweets, but each dinner guest references a different pop culture diet to argue against you, to bully you out of your logical position.
Finally, imagine that, after years of this, of your considerable effort compounding with frustration for the increasing cost of treatments for their various symptoms and setbacks, one by one, they leave you.
Your son stops coming to the dinner table, presumably because he cannot sit still, because he is so jacked up on neon green energy drinks, although the official position is a claim to be full. Having been told by his therapist to increase protein intake, he devours twenty dollars’ worth of fitness bars with names like "cookie dough" and "mint chip" every single day.
Your daughter decides to be vegan, having read the virtues of the lifestyle in a fashion magazine, but, effectively, she now eats only potatoes, preferably fried. For your convenience, she insists, the budding guru gets them from an obliging drive-through on the way home from cheerleading practice. She now has developed such severe, cystic acne that it may require medical intervention in order to prevent permanent scarring.
And your spouse declares to be taking control of his health with an eating plan, having purchased an expensive, Calorie-counting workbook, which he exploits even more regularly as an excuse not to eat your roasted vegetables, due to the frighteningly ambiguous quantities of olive oil intrinsic to their preparation. These new habits include such a wild increase in diet cola consumption that, after he chipped a tooth, the dentist expressed deep concern for the integrity of his remaining enamel, and so many miles of slamming his joints into the pavement around your neighborhood that his former swagger has turned into an asymmetrical limp.
Yet this precious paperback usually can be found beneath a pile of crossword puzzles in the wicker basket behind your toilet.
This is how we feel, the United States culinary community.
We want to express our patriotism by providing Americans, our friends and family, with the best food the world has to offer. We want to cultivate, to nurture, to pair flavors that will function as worthy rewards, as special occasions, as validation for the sacrifices and struggles we see you endure.
Thankfully, recent advances in urban farming, craft brewing, molecular gastronomy and culinary anthropology have forced us into greater scientific literacy, toward lifelong education and daily experimentation with evolving definitions of food itself, such that our love no longer is evidenced only by the manic sweat from our brows but also with the monastic patience of study. Cookbooks are vastly more entertaining than video games.
Still, we do work hard. We are small businesses, attempting to craft menus at competitive prices by measuring food costs against seasonal harvests. We try to limit pollution and waste by using local produce and few packaging materials, employing real people, often at-risk members of society, not robots, to wash real plates, pots, and pans. And, when numbers don’t add up, we exploit our own labor to make ends meet in tiny shops across the nation, too often working unpaid overtime to maintain our high, family standards. Our brands are usually our names.
But the rising cost of national health insurance premiums makes it impossible for most culinary workers to save anything for retirement.
The profit margins associated with fresh food preparation remain too slim to pay culinary workers according to their experience. Although we have an apprentice structure of hiring and promotion, there are few unions other than state minimum wages to protect us. Of course, our industry is quite unique among labor markets, since our duties historically were fulfilled by wives, women, servants, or slaves. Nonetheless, we have risen in social prominence and public influence.
Now, routinely, from atop our perch over the American dinner table, we can deduce clear parallels between those of our customers who request adjustments to our creative, calculated recipes and those who complain loudly in mixed company about embarrassing medical conditions.
And so, certainly, we feel increasingly frustrated by the predictable, annual rise in health insurance premiums. More so, however, we feel visceral sadness at the sight of our patrons suffering with constant, chronic pain.
We truly want to help.
Unfortunately, fresh food chefs in small kitchens are unable to compete in the same market as multi-national, publicly traded "restaurant" companies. Our humble, local, lobbying efforts cannot match their massive political donations, their brand alliances, their charitable contributions, nor their nutritional impact.
It feels to us like they are cheating.
These corporate behemoths mass-produce frozen, canned, and prepackaged knock-offs of the recipes we invent and popularize.
Their real estate lawyers negotiate with poor municipalities to command the best properties for the least taxes with a promise of "jobs."
Then, their corporate training methods do not prepare industry professionals for work in any other kitchen, often relegating them to be microwave managers, not fresh food cooks, rarely entrusted with the most import