Eat Food...Update from Healthy Kitchens

I have been MIA once again, due to my travel schedule.  Eventually I'll catch up.  I have tons of pics to share from NYC and now from California.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share a bit from the Culinary Institute of America's (CIA) Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives event.  This is a collaborative event of the CIA and Harvard School of Public Health.  The idea is that in bringing clinicians (physicians, registered dietitians, nurses, psychologists, etc.) together with chefs, we might discover the sweet spot where healthy food meets tasty food and be able to really develop some ideas and concepts that make a difference.  The speakers include some of the most influential and wise, such as Walter Willett, Kathy McManus, Suvir Saran, and Mollie Katzen (and others), led by David Eisenberg.  They discuss the science of nutritional health, disease trends and hope for prevention and turning the tide on obesity.  It's good stuff.  It's not complicated.  Here's a summary of the theme of so much of the conference, a quote from Michael Pollan, by way of summary: Eat food.  Not too much. Mostly plants.

Good advice.  Uncomplicated.  I'll share more later.  Oh, but the food...is fantastic.  The wine (we're in Napa, after all) is delicious.  Here's a peek at last night's dinner.  I think I did pretty good...mostly plants!

Cream of Celery Root Soup (note the portion here is a very small tea cup)

Green Salad with Pea Tendrils, Watermelon Radishes and Goat Cheese

Dungeness Crab Cakes with Apple and Celery Slaw

Plus...three bites of fruit sorbet, though no evidence.  Does that count as a fruit?  No, but it was good.  Practice this idea today.  Eat real food, but not too much and choose plants most often.

Getting Pricked: My first experience with acupuncture

I've always had an interest in complimentary and alternative medicine.  It's part of what drew me to nutrition science.  I believe that the body has pretty much what it needs to maintain wellness.  Sometimes we get out of whack.  The body has specific and quite amazing internal controls to regulate itself.  Managing body temperature within a couple of degrees all of the time is a great example.  When our body temperature increases, we begin to sweat and blood vessels expand to help release heat; when it goes down, we shiver and blood begins to centralize to keep the most important organs warm.  Similar things happen in our nervous system, blood system and fluid balance - the body wants to maintain homeostasis (balance).

I'm a little...well, out of whack.  Oh, and I hate medicine.  I'm a terrible patient. I don't even follow my own advice sometimes.  Plus, I have a hard time remembering to take my vitamins.

To that end, I decided to try acupuncture as a compliment to nutrition.  According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), Acupuncture is one of the oldest methods of care.  As a component of traditional Chinese medicine, practitioners use tiny needles to open energy channels by inserting the needles at specific points along invisible energy meridians. 

Acupuncture in action. (c) BananaStock

I've been skeptical.  I'm still not totally sold.  Yet, it was a very interesting experience.  My practitioner had me complete a short questionnaire and then asked me a number of specific questions.  Then, she told me a little about what she was going to do and had me lay down on a massage table.  Next, she gently inserted the needs in various places around my body.  With most of the needles, I felt almost nothing.  In a few cases, there was a specific pinch-like pain.  After she was finished inserting the tiny needles, she left me alone in the room to relax.  I breathed deeply and began to deeply relax.  My hands became warm and my relaxation became deeper with a definite feeling of floating.

I don't know if the acupuncture worked.  The relaxation that I achieved was remarkable. My guess is that one visit won't change everything...but I might be hooked on getting pricked.