Blog Archives

How to eat healthily for £1 per day – version 0.2

In version 0.1, I laid out the aims of this project and put together a proof-of-concept £1-per-day diet that met most of the nutritional goals set by the UK government. In this post, I’ll be focusing more on a meal

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How to (actually) eat healthily on £1 per day

Last week, I stumbled across a BBC News article entitled How to eat healthily on £1 a day via a story on hacker news. Healthy eating on a budget is something I’m really interested in, but I was horribly disappointed by the

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The opportunity cost of eating candy

It seems to me there are two different ways of looking at diet. In the first model, which is the most common, foods are appraised on their strengths and weaknesses. Candy is bad because it’s high in sugar. Vegetables are

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What happens when you take public health advice to heart?

In a manner of speaking, the chart above demonstrates the success of public health education. Since the 1960s, public health officials have advised people to lower their consumption of animal fat and increase their consumption of unsaturated fats from vegetable

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What we eat: the most consumed foods in America

What are the five most consumed vegetables in America? I needed an answer to that question a couple of weeks ago for my post about grains, fruits, vegetables and fiber. I thought that finding an answer would be trivial, but

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Healthy food is cheaper than junk food, except by the only metric that matters

The USDA Economic Research Service published a report in 2012 called Are Healthy Foods Really More Expensive? It Depends on How You Measure the Price. The aim of the research was to compare the prices of healthy foods with unhealthy

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Whole grains are a lousy source of fiber

Eating more dietary fiber can reduce your risk of stroke. That’s the conclusion of a major meta-analysis to be published in the May issue of Stroke. The authors analyzed 8 large prospective cohort studies. Their results showed a pooled estimate of 7%

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Why you (almost certainly) shouldn’t take an omega-6 supplement

In November 1978, a six-year-old girl was admitted to hospital with a serious gunshot wound to the chest. Gravely injured, she underwent a long series of operations to repair the damage to her abdomen. More than three meters of her

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Why do we eat grains? Thermodynamics!

Around 12,000 years ago, a group of Neolithic humans living in what is now the Middle East conducted a remarkable experiment. For generations their people had collected the seeds of tall grasses, which they cooked and ate to supplement their

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Using a french press for tea

Tea leaves are preserved for more infusions.

Ever make tea in a french press? Try putting the tea leaves on top of the strainer instead of below. It works great for teas you want to infuse for a limited time (that is, most types of true tea.)

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