Can pizza be healthy?
By · CommentsWhen you think about pizza, you probably think about a company who will bring a tasty meal right to your door but also the fat that seeps from the crust and meat which cannot be good for you.
Pizza is a traditional Italian dish which was made with a thin crust, topped with tomatoes, cheese and olive oil. However, over the years the American take on the pizza with double meat, shortening laden bases and cheese stuffed crusts.
As I mentioned earlier, tomatoes have a number of anti-cancer chemicals in them including lycopene, and a traditional margherita pizza contains a double dose of them. Plenty in the sauce and tomatoes as a topping as well.
An interesting study conducted in Milan, Italy between 1995 and 1999 found that men were 40% less likely to suffer a heart attack if they ate pizza once a week, but once again this is the Italian style pizza.
Having read all this I decided to try my hand at making my own pizza. I’ve done this before and it has ended in disaster. Today’s effort was much better, firstly buying a pizza stone made a huge difference, giving the crust an extra crispiness. Making the dough in my breadmaker, an appliance which has been out of action for about four years, was also a great success giving me a light fluffy dough, the foundation of a good pizza.
Pizza sauce is something which you’ll find on many supermarket shelves, but that’s just not the way I like to do things. Instead I got a couple of cans of tomato products, after checking the ingredients, and mixed them with some garlic and herbs, leaving them to simmer for 30 minutes.
The end result? My margherita pizza was fantastic, and while there are a few tweaks I need to make to my technique, I think this is one meal which will be promoted to the regular rotation.
Practice what I preach
By · CommentsAfter posting about how we should eat real food rather than “edible food-like substances”, I thought it worthwhile to talk about what I ate for dinner and what it contained.
Tonight’s dinner was lasagne, and not that crappy packet kind, I made this myself. The primary ingredients were beef mince, cheese, butter, flour, milk and pasta, all wholesome real foods. In fact even the pasta listed surprisingly few ingredients, always a good sign.
To make the meat sauce I added an onion, a carrot, some garlic, a can of tomato paste and oregano. All but the tomato paste are fresh and single ingredient foods, in fact oregano contains forty times more anti-oxidants than apples. Checking the can of tomato paste I found that it contains nothing more than concentrated tomatoes, tomato juice, salt, sugar and citric acid, nothing sinister there.
The taste verdict on the lasagne was a good one, with Jess declaring it to be “delicious” and “the best ever” while I have to say I really enjoyed it, tasty and filling.
Further practicing the basic rules, I served myself up about two thirds of what I would normally eat and I resisted the temptation to have seconds. However it means I’ll have plenty for lunch tomorrow or we could reheat it for dinner tomorrow night.
Either way, I think this meal nails all three of the basic rules, so I’m very happy with it. Roll on tomorrow.
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants
By · CommentsThree simple rules for a better diet from food author Michael Pollan, whose book In Defense of Food I am now extremely keen to read. Pollan has been an outspoken critic of US food policy and points out that the Western diet, the one we have invented for ourselves, is the only one which makes us sick.
The first rule, eat food, seems pretty obvious but what Pollan is getting at here is to avoid “edible food-like substances”. He cites the American example of the Twinkie, but you don’t have to look too hard in Kiwi supermarkets to find things like fruit flavoured “strings” and the like. Even some fruit drinks (not fruit juice, there is a distinction) can often contain nothing but water, sugar, flavouring and colouring, absolutely no nutrition there.
His second rule, not too much, is one that is largely ignored by most of us. How much is a serving of meat for dinner? Around 100g per person, and trust me, when you see that much on your plate your first thought will be, “where’s the rest?”
I was keeping a food diary a couple of weeks ago and was initially pleased with my results until one fateful Wednesday evening. I cooked up some delicious crumbed chicken, but noticed there were three pieces in the pack and I was cooking for two. Instead of doing the sensible thing and leaving one in the fridge, or even cooking it to eat for lunch the next day, I ate two and gave one to my wife. This sent me way over my recommended daily calorie intake and left me feeling bloated and over full. I just didn’t need to eat it.
Another interesting piece of information around this rule comes from the book Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink who is a consumer behaviourist. He claims that we are full 10 minutes before our brain tells us that we are, leading many of us to overeat. As Wansink is a behavourist he focuses very much on the why we eat, rather than what we eat which makes him a very interesting read.
The mostly plants rule really boils down to something we all should know, fill up on vegetables, not meat. Vegetables, or fruit for that matter, contain a great deal of the nutrition that we need and very little of what we don’t. The great philosopher Frank Zappa once said, “There are two things in life you can never have too much of: Sex and vegetables.”
Pollan also warns against what he calls “nutritionism” — an ideology that’s lost track of the science on which it was based. Many people think that food is a delivery mechanism for nutrients where really it’s the other way around.
In An Apple a Day, author Joe Schwarcz discusses an interesting study about the anti cancer effects of the nutrient lycopene. Lycopene was discovered to be effective at fighting prostate cancer and as a result of this research, lycopene supplements began to appear on the market. Researchers at The Ohio State University conducted a study on rats who were fed either lycopene supplements or tomato extract, a food high in lycopene. What they discovered was that while lycopene did reduce the risk of prostate cancer, the tomato extract was 40% more effective, suggesting that other chemicals in the tomato also play a role.
This heathy eating this isn’t nearly as tough as it seems. Most of us know the rules and either choose to ignore them, or convince ourselves that a few slip ups here and there aren’t really a big deal. But really, when it’s summed up in just seven words it’s pretty hard to ignore. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Runkeeper
By · CommentsSince I’m a geek, I have all sorts of gadgets, one of which is my iPhone. Apple’s slogan for the iPhone App Store is, “There’s an app for that!” and there most certainly is. Want to know how far you just ran, how fast you went and even the elevation changes in your run? Runkeeper can tell you.
The name is something of a misnomer, it can do running, walking and cycling. Runkeeper uses the iPhone’s built in GPS to track your activity, then overlays it with Google Maps to show you where you’ve been, how long it took you and other useful data.
This is me riding home from work on Wednesday, and it does include time stopped at lights, but it’s quite a neat application to track your fitness activities.
Unfortunately I won’t be using it for running when I start back up as it largely duplicates the functionality I already have with my Nike+ and my iPod nano. Plus the nano is just so much easier to carry on a run rather than a bulky and heavy iPhone.
Back on the bike
By · CommentsLong time no update, I know.
So recently I decided it was time for me to get back out into regular exercise. I haven’t exactly been doing nothing, I’ve been refereeing at least once a week, twice when I was doing mid week girls rugby.
But since the weather has improved slightly in that it’s not raining, it’s still cold, and petrol has gone up in price steadily, I decided to start biking to work again. It’s only 4km and takes around 15 minutes door to door which is roughly how long it takes in the car anyway.
It’s often freezing, as in 0ºC or lower, when I leave for work, but I’m not worried as I have a high visibility wind proof jacket, warm gloves and a full face balaclava. That’s right, when I bike to work, nobody can see my face.
One thing that I’ve noticed a lot since I’ve started biking again, and I know that six trips is not exactly a large pool of data, is that the cyclists’ mantra of “share the road” seems to be something of a one way street. I have yet to see any bad behaviour from drivers but bad behaviour from cyclists is a daily occurrence.
Today I stopped at a red light, a CYCLE red light might I add, it’s got a red bike and everything. There were two other cyclists waiting there, but as soon as a third arrived, slowed down and ran the red light, the other two joined him, leaving me behind to foolishly obey the traffic laws.
But traffic infringements aside, I’m quite enjoying my rides and I’m getting an extra half hour exercise a day and keeping my car off the road. I like to think I’ve already knocked 60% off my fuel bill for the week and will be on the bike again tomorrow, bringing the savings to at least 80%. And that makes it a win/win/win for me, the environment and my bank balance.
On the road again
By · CommentsWell, the road to another half marathon. Today’s run was not easy, plodded my way around the park a couple of minutes slower than I would have liked but I made it. But as I was making my way around I decided that I am going to do the Christchurch half marathon again.
Now why would I opt to do something that is that difficult? Partly because it is so difficult and partly because I find having a clear target makes me much more likely to put in the hard yards.
I did my first half marathon in 2005 and got a training plan from my brother. I followed the program almost perfectly, I missed only one run and felt so guilty for skipping it that I went out the very next day.
Last year’s training was almost ruined by a cold which turned into a chest infection, meaning I couldn’t train for almost three weeks. Had to put in some really hard work during the final few weeks but managed to achieve all three of my goals that year.
This year I’ve got just seven weeks of hard work ahead of me, but I’m already running 10.5km (a quarter marathon if you will) comfortably, and experience tells me that I just need to keep that up as a base and do some slightly longer runs at the weekend to stretch it out.
Ironically I don’t have a great deal to say about today’s run, it was good in the fact that I had virtually no aches, not so good in that I was going a bit slower than I would have liked. Still, speed’s not a concern, I know I can’t beat last year’s time but what I want to achieve is finishing, and that’s the goal.
I’m in the business of misery
By · CommentsToday’s run got off to an interesting start. Part of my pre-run ritual is to put my post run Nuun into the freezer to make sure it’s extra cold when I finish, as I did this I bumped an open box of hash browns and one fell out. Using my ninja like reflexes I caught the falling chunk of starchy carbs before it hit the floor, but the downside of this little incident was my hand smelled like hash browns for my entire run.
The run did not start well, with my right achilles complaining with every stride. It came right after some stretching but proved to be an omen as it seemed that as soon as one niggle came right, the pain just moved to another part of my body.
Once my achilles came right, my lungs started to really burn, then my ankle acted up, followed by an old knee injury reminding me that it was still there, and finally my achilles put up a final protest.
A great quote that I often think of on runs like this comes from Lance Armstrong who said: “Pain is just weakness leaving the body.” While pain is certainly an indicator of something not quite right, there is a difference between an injury and the body complaining about the increase in activity. My little niggles certainly fall into the latter category.
I went just over a minute slower than Monday but I’m really not worried about that at the moment. In fact, every time my iPod lady told me what my time and pace were I thought to myself, I don’t really care, although I did want to make it home in less than an hour.
And don’t fret over my title, was the best song lyrics I could come up with about busting through the pain. It’s from my current powersong Misery Business by Paramore, one of my favourite bands right now.
Today I decided to tackle the big one, the figure 8 run which is a total of 10.5km. I’ve been feeling pretty good with my running but have been aware that I need to up the distance if I want to really achieve some results, so today was the day.
For some reason the front half of this run is really easy, I get to my standard drink stops in North Hagley Park quickly and feeling nice and fresh. Today was no exception but I did notice that my lower calf muscles felt tight and sore whenever I stopped, fortunately the pain went away as soon as I started to run again.
Aside from some initial stiffness in one achilles tendon, the highlight of this run from a suffering point of view would have to be my foot going numb. (Bonus points if you get the reference in the title) I’ve had my right foot go numb on me a couple of times before, most notably between 13 and 18km in the half marathon but never my left foot before.
I’m not too worried about it happening as once I stop it immediately starts to come right, however it’s something I will be keeping an eye on as I don’t want to make this a regular feature of my running. Oddly it doesn’t seem to be related to distance, my foot started to go numb before I hit the 3km mark and was fully numb by 4km.
The run itself was enjoyable, I got around without ever feeling I was really struggling and turned in a respectable time. Not plodding, not setting any records, just getting from A to B (well back to A, it’s a round trip).
My iPod tells me that this run burns around 900 calories so no wonder I lost a whole pile of weight doing this every second day.
Tomorrow I’ll be taking it easy with some yoga and balance games on Wii fit. I have my eyes on Jess’s ski jump record, then Wednesday I’ll be off to referee training at Rugby Park. It’s free and tailored to referees so why not take advantage of it?
No rest for the wicked
By · CommentsSo it’s Easter and instead of gorging myself on chocolate and hot cross buns, I got my ninth season as a rugby referee underway. I’ve spent the last two seasons refereeing soccer, so I offered to be an assistant referee for the Boys’ High Easter Tournament.
After some initial confusion over when the tournament started (I thought it started on Saturday, turns out it was Friday, oops) I got to the ground and got in a warm up which consisted of me running from my car to the referees’ changing rooms to the ground.
As with these preseason tournaments, there tends to be a little disorganization and as a result the referees were constantly trying to figure out who was meant to be where. I just went with the flow, helping out wherever I could.
In terms of my running touch I noticed I’ve held over few interesting habits from soccer, notably running sideways to keep an eye on play and constantly having my flag in my inside hand. In football this is very important as the referee needs to be able to see the flag at all times, in rugby not so much but as I did it without thinking it’s not something I’ll be trying to change.
The only silly thing that carried over from football was a signal which we don’t have in rugby. A coach indicated to me he wanted to make some subs, I told him yes then immediately held my flag above my head, parallel to the ground in both hands, the football signal for a sub. Fortunately nobody really noticed but perhaps it’s a signal we can use in rugby, particularly when there’s no communication equipment available.
As the day wore on, I ended up picking up more games than the three I was down to do and finished the day with five. The final game was probably the hardest of the lot with a local high school demolishing a touring Australian side, meaning I needed to turn in a number of 50m sprints. While I had good speed earlier in the day, it was well and truly gone by this stage of the day.
I also managed to endear myself to supporter during this game, ruling out a try by flagging some earlier foul play. Certainly didn’t affect the outcome of the game, but I felt, given how the offending team were dominating, it was important to ensure that did not go unpunished. It’s that sort of thing that can cause a game to get out of hand, especially in games where one team is dominating the other.
Saturday was not quite such a hectic start to the day and I made sure I only did the two games I was down for, as my legs were suffering a little from Friday’s effort.
So a total of seven 40 minute games in two days means today is a well earned day off. Tomorrow, will be going for a run and taking it easy, the legs need some work but don’t want to over do it.
Back in the game
By · CommentsSo since plan B of my weight loss plan, slicing off body parts, proved to be unsustainable, I’ve switched back to plan A: Eat right and exercise.
Today I headed out for a run around the park, immediately I knew this was going to be a tough one. When I got to the corner where I cross into the park, my iPod told me I was “running” at six minutes per kilometer, sounds more like plodding to me.
But still, I pressed on and the run got easier and my speed increased to my usual 5:30/km, nowhere near my last run’s blazing speeds. Unfortunately I didn’t quite make the full 7.5km, had to take a shortcut to make an emergency toilet stop.
One thing I did note during this run, listening to extremely funny podcasts such as The Bugle is not a good idea, when the run gets hard and your lungs start to burn, fits of laughter are not your friend, despite laughter being the best medicine.