Another Diet Plan

Simple Till Six: An Eating Plan for Busy People
By Mark Bittman
From Reader's Digest

My route to saner eating was more or less accidental. Two years ago, I was 57 and weighed more than I ever had. When I graduated from college, I weighed 165 pounds; when I stopped smoking, about five years after that, I weighed 180. Then, when my first daughter was born and I had started writing about food and doing some serious eating and drinking, I hit 190. Over the next 20 years, I managed to gain more weight, reaching 214.

As a reporter and researcher for many years, I was writing a food column called "The Minimalist" for the New York Times and a book called How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I had (and still have) no intention of becoming a vegetarian, but I could see the writing on the wall: Industrial meat production had gone beyond distasteful and alienating to become disgusting and dangerous (its link to global warming didn't help); traditional, natural ingredients were becoming rare; and respectable scientific studies pointed toward the health benefits of eating more plant-based foods and fewer meat-based foods. Read More

There are nearly as many diet plans as there are opinions in politics. What bugs me about this one is that the author has grouped meat with junk food and also blames meat consumption for environmental damage. There is still no substitute for eating a balanced diet that contains meat and dairy products along with some physical activity in your life. Just looking at one’s diet will not give the entire health picture. It is your lifestyle that will ultimately decide how many years you will enjoy.