Sevai (shevaya/ vermicelli) upma, apple slices, baked fish crackers, tilgul vadi

Shevaya/ sevai / Vermicelli Upma : This is a south indian dish. Kids love it. It is made from homemade sooji Shevaya or rice vermicelli. I used rice vermicelli here.
Dry Roast vermicelli for 2 min until it changes its color.
Heat a tablespoon oil, add mustard seeds, cumin seeds. add 1 chili (optional). Add curry leaves, finely chopped onions, soaked urad dal. I added grated carrots and squash (lal bhopala). Add 1 cup of dry roasted vermicelli. add nuts. add salt, sugar and lemon juice as per taste. Now add 2 cups of hot water and let it cook. Stir occasionally and cook until it becomes soft.

with apple slices and whole grain baked fish crackers.
Tilgul vadi. Roo is been snacking on it the whole long weekend.
Left box was all gone...She ate it first and ate less than half of upma.

Banana bread with grated carrots, Strawberry jam, grapes and straberries

Banana bread : All the ripe fruits bread :

3 ripe bananas, 1 ripe pear, 1 orange - all cut into small pieces, 1 cup finely grated carrots, 2 cups of whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup flaxmeal, 1/2 cup sugar (u can add 1/4 cup more sugar as per taste), 1/4 cup milk, 1 egg, 1/2 cup walnuts and pecans, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon baking soda.

Mix egg, sugar, salt, soda then add fruits, carrots, flaxmeal and flour. I use kitchenaid stand mixer to mix. This becomes a cakey mixture and not dough. bake it 350F for 50min in small pans...to avoid moist center. If you use large pan bake for longer time.

with Strawberry jam.

grapes and starwberry on the side.

Roo ate 2 and 1/2 slice of bread and kept 2 bites for me. She ate all the fruits.

Mirror Image Acorn Squash Supreme

Hi! Long time no post! A lot of changes have been going on in my life, not the least of which is that I now aspire to the label "nutritarian" rather than vegan. That transition has been happening for a long time, as anyone who's followed me in the past or spoken to me personally probably knows.

For example, I would no longer pack Oreos or potato chips in a lunch box just because they contain no animal products. Vegan does not automatically equal healthy. I would also not turn down something that contained a modest amount of an animal product if it were the healthiest choice available. I don't believe that animal products are unhealthy in the amounts that would have been present in humankind's natural diet before SAD came along. Rather I think of modern processed foods as the enemy: white flour, white sugar, oil, etc.

I wanted to go on record with this because I've kept pretty quiet about it out of fear, and I'm tired of living in fear of being who I am openly and honestly, 100%. I fully support and admire Voracious, the once-vegan blogger who shared in this now-infamous post about the health problems she experienced on a strict vegan diet. That took a lot of courage. I can relate, and I think that when being vegan becomes more important than listening to your body, or when it becomes a "vegangelical" fundamentalism that leads to actual death threats against those who don't agree with you, it has become something unhelpful, unkind, and unworthy of us.

That doesn't mean that I will be changing the fact that all the lunches I post here contain no animal products. I mean, I did write two vegan cookbooks and stand behind the idea that most of our meals should be entirely plant-based for optimal health.

And speaking of "coming out", let me also add that my divorce has been final for almost a year and I'm now with a beautiful woman that I love very much! For the first time, I'm in a relationship with someone who not only supports and encourages me, but also likes the same foods that I do and has transitioned to a mostly-nutritarian diet alongside me. It's amazing to be with someone who doesn't make fun of my food or hightail it to McDonald's when she sees what's on the table. Instead, she's loved all the dishes I've made so far and is even surprised that some of her long-standing health problems have gone away with this new way of eating.


We have a deal that she makes breakfast for us, usually a green smoothie or maybe oatmeal with fresh fruit, and I pack lunch. Today I packed us each some Acorn Squash Supreme from Eat To Live and big fresh salads with salsa for dressing and half an avocado each. I added a pear for a snack or dessert.


I even used a pear cozy!

crepe roll with cream cheese and sugar, veggies with dip, orange bites

Cream cheese and Sugar (white homemade butter/ Loni/Makkhan and Sugar) is yummy mouth watering combination. Kids love it. Can go well with poli, roti, paratha, any dosa, bread, bagel, crepe etc.

Crepe : Mix milk and flour (any flour like jawar, ragi, whole wheat, all purpose/ maida). Make crepe(like Dosa). Spread cream cheese and sprinkle sugar and roll it.

soaked and cooked chana.

some orange bite size slices and brocolli, celery, carrots with dip.

State Bans on Municipal Obesity Prevention Measures?

As states make hard decisions about budgets, some lawmakers are eying up public health initiatives to cut costs. Under pressure from the restaurant industry and business owners to reduce burdensome restrictions, some legislators concerned that government intervention in private industry will harm economic growth, feel emboldened to pass measures that effectively tie the hands of municipalities to regulate harmful business practices that affect their local residents. Many of these legislators justify such measures further because they believe that consumers are to blame for their “choices”. For example, on the topic of labeling requirements and restrictions on trans fats, Ken Johnson, a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, recently stated in a New York Times article that “It’s a lack of self-discipline many times, and even if we, say, limited a hamburger to being no more than 200 calories, it doesn’t mean I won’t choose to eat four of them.” He supported legislation in Alabama to prohibit municipalities from passing regulation on restaurants even though no municipality in that state had adopted regulations around nutritional labeling or nutritional standards for to date. Ironically, as a measure to reduce obesity, these types of regulations are aimed at helping consumers make better choices by giving them knowledge about what they are consuming. 

If economic austerity is the concern, then nothing provides a better return on investment then prevention. The US Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) estimates the potentially preventable costs of diabetes to Medicare was .3 billion in diabetes-related hospital costs and 6 million in potentially preventable hospital stays costs to Medicaid(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2005). The American Dietetic Association’s Diabetes Care and Education group’s cost-effectiveness review of preventive programs found that lifestyle interventions were cost effective and in their findings state that “prevention is more cost-effective than intensive treatment of diabetes”(Patti Urbanski, Wolf, & Herman, 2007).

Obesity and obesity related diabetes are multifaceted health problems that are much more complicated then saying people need to make better decisions. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics just issued a policy statement based on new research calling for a reduction in screen time for children and a ban on junk food advertising because it encourages sedentary behaviors, mindless eating and targets children as consumers for poor quality foods (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2011).  In that statement, Victor Strasburger, MD, FAAP, a member of the AAP Council on Communications and Media, stated that “Thirty years ago, the federal government ruled that young children are psychologically defenseless against advertising.  Now, kids see 5,000 to 10,000 food ads per year, most of them for junk food and fast food,”. Clearly, the problem of obesity and obesity related diabetes can’t be reduced to a moral argument about “self-control”. 

Municipalities need to be able to implement disease prevention programs and initiatives. Without the legal authority to do so, the Santa Clara County supervisors would not have been able to adopt a policy that forbids fast food restaurants from selling meals with toys in an attempt to reduce the influence of marketing on children’s eating habits. The AAP clearly thinks that this type of advertising affects children. While the jury is still out on the effectiveness of these types of regulations, state level prohibitions on a municipality’s ability to control harmful business practices will eventually end up costing rather than saving money.  These types of bans make it harder for cities and towns to implement effective policies aimed at reducing public health concerns specific to the conditions and drivers of that community.

Many communities are introducing interesting and potentially fruitful policies to encourage healthy eating and increased activity. (Check out the links below) Should State legislators be able to prohibit these measures?

Boston’s Mayor Menino Issues Order to End Sugary Drink Sales on City Property http://www.bphc.org/Newsroom/Pages/TopStoriesView.aspx?ID=217

Santa Clara’s Fast Food Toy Ban

http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-04-28/news/20877374_1_toys-santa-clara-county-california-restaurant-association

Sugary beverages bans see earlier post -

http://hkhcbuffalo.blogspot.com/2011/06/cities-battling-sweetened-beverages.html

Sources:

               Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2005). Economic and Health Costs of Diabetes: HCUP Highlight 1. . Retrieved from http://www.ahrq.gov/data/hcup/highlight1/high1.htm.

              

               American Academy of Pediatrics. (2011). MEDIA, KIDS AND OBESITY: IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT COUCH POTATOES.

              

               Patti Urbanski, et. al.  (2007). Cost-effectiveness Issues of Diabetes Prevention and Treatment. Retrieved from http://www.dce.org/pub_resources/files/cost_effective.pdf

              

               Strom, S. (2011). Local Laws Fighting Fat Under Siege. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/business/01obese.html