Another of the concluding excerpts from my readings, and commentings, on "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book in which she and her family became mondo locovores for a year:

I reach perhaps my greatest convergence of outlook with author Barbara Kingsolver in this latest excerpt from her 2007 book "Animal Vegetable Miracle," to the point of wanting to effect that quizzical look puppies evince when they see something that truly flummoxes them:

I have long been frustrated by what I hear from my many friends who seek out registered dietitians, because so many of them seem clueless about my experience and the multitudes of others whose experience is similar. 

"Eat everything in moderation, and you'll be fine," is the worst; as advice, it's accurate but tone-deaf. For many people with weight concerns who consult registered dietitians, that's as good as saying, "do that thing you haven't been doing, even though you know you should, even though you've been trying to, sometimes for years." Thanks for the help, Ms. RD.

Another excerpt from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book:

Nobody should need science to prove the obvious, but plenty of studies do show that regularly eating cheaply produced fast food and processed snack foods slaps on extra pounds that increase the risks of diabetes, cardiovascular harm, joint problems, and many cancers. As a country we're officially over the top: The majority of our food dollars buy those cheap calories, andd most of our citizens are medically compromised by weight and inactivity. The incidence of obesity-associated diabetes has more than doubled since 1990, with children the fastest-growing class of victims. ... One out of every three dollars we spend on health care, by some recent estimates, is paying for the damage of bad eating habits. One out of every seven specically pays to assuage (but not cure) the mulitple heartbreaks of diabetes — kidley failure, stokes, blindness, amputated limbs. [Page 116]

This paragraph, coming a just a few words after the previous one, underlines the false economy of choosing what we eat based primarily on cost. If it were any other commodity, that might be more defensible, but food is by far the one commodity that determines health, vigor, longevity. It is just staggering to realize that this obvious fact has become so undervalued: You can get a pretty good deal on a truckload of sawdust, but you wouldn't eat it just because it was cheap.

A version of this was also posted today at Sprout Savvy. I'm delighted to share with them, and delighted they invited me to.

One of the first questions people have for me is, Never mind how you lost 155 pounds, how have you been keeping it off for almost 20 years?

I have several answers, depending on how much time we have, but the best, most accurate one is, I finally realized and accepted that I’m a citizen of the planet.

I'm not related to Lisa Leake by blood, but we share common roots and a common outlook. Definitely, someone to admire, someone to follow. 

Here's a piece she wrote that appeared on civileats.com.

A tenet of my argument about obesity is that Americans don't lack for knowledge about nutrition, but choose not to apply it because nutrition is for sissies.

I could be wrong about that.

A poll by Consumer Reports Health says that 9 out of 10 Americans consider their diet  "somewhat," "very," or "extremely" healthy. Yeah, right. Fattest nation on earth, one of whose chief cultural exports to the world is fast food.

FoodNavigator-USA.com reports on a Brazilian writer's commentary that assigns three levels to food processing and blames the "ultra" level for much of diet-related obesity. It's a foreign idea to most people, I think, but shouldn't be.