[B]aptized Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body – it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being [which is genderless, actually] and, must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will. By crying ‘mine, mine’ and changing this body-tool, we are essentially living in ego and creating a seperateness between ourselves and the divinity within us. By transcending societal views of beauty, I believe that I can focus more on my actions. My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it? When I die, no one is going to remember what I looked like, heck, my kids will forget my voice, and slowly, all physical memory will fade away. However, my impact and legacy will remain: and, by not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can. So, to me, my face isn’t important but the smile and the happiness that lie behind the face are. :-)

I <3 this!

Kaufman points out that most of us aren’t trying to become experts at a skill (where the so-called “10,000 hours” number comes from). What really prevents us from becoming skilled is the difficulty getting past what Kaufman calls the initial “frustration barrier” — when we’re really aware how bad we actually are at the skill. At this point, we’ll often use any distraction (TV, email, etc) to keep ourselves from practicing and getting over this hump, and thus don’t get any better.

There are four basic steps to Kaufman’s “first 20 hours” approach:

1. deconstruct the skill
2. learn enough to self-correct
3. remove practice barriers
4. practice at least 20 hours

Committing to practicing 20 hours is meant to get most folks past the steep part of the learning curve where the “frustration barrier” is found. It’s pretty much the 80-20 rule … you get 80% of the benefit from 20% of the work (and 20% of the benefit from the remaining 80%, a la the 10,000 hours):

Interestingly, Kaufman’s approach is very similar to Tim Ferriss’ in The 4-Hour Chef. And this is what intrigues me about my recent comments about wanting to improve my cooking skills. A few commenters said something pretty similar: just practice!

Point taken ;).

BTW, Kaufman’s book — The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast! — is available June 13th.

We don’t need a new “skinny.” We don’t need a new beauty standard, nor do we need yet another physical ideal hanging over our every thought and move like a little black cloud of doom. What we need to do is change the paradigm so that we value our bodies for all of the amazing things they let us do. We need to expand our standards of beauty to recognize that beauty shows up in all kinds of bodies. And we need to get over this idea that the most important purpose we serve on is to be beautiful for other people. We have a right to have healthy bodies, to take up space, to have appetites, to cultivate our strengths in whatever form that may take. Our time on this planet is precious and we will never, ever get it back, so let’s stop squandering it in pursuit of meaningless ideals we will most likely never attain anyway. We deserve so much better than that.

HT Shari on Facebook.

The better cooks we are, the richer and more varied our diets can be. The principle worked for our ancestors’ collective health, and it applies to us individually today. Like our ancestors, the right techniques open up new food possibilities for us – like cheaper and otherwise tougher cuts of meat. Additionally, many foods may be wholly uninspiring on their own but become fast favorites when paired with the right sauce or some novel herbs. As we expand our repertoire, we lessen the chance that we’ll get bored with our choices.

It occurs to me that if I could cook like Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet, I’d find far less reason to deviate from the Perfect Health Diet!

Aye, there’s the rub. I suspect cooking is a skill that is best learned the traditional craft way — essentially by apprenticing yourself to someone who knows how. Using your average cookbook seems to me a terrible way to learn (unless you like to be intimidated by scary ingredient lists) and with a few exceptions (like America’s Test Kitchen or the now retired Good Eats), food TV isn’t a great route to learning to cook either.

But where there’s a will there’s a way I suppose! Here are the books I’ve found that seem reasonably promising in terms of teaching actual technique (in no particular order):

• Cook’s Illustrated The Science of Good Cooking
• Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything
• Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for the Food
• Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Chef
• Michael Ruhlman’s Ruhlman’s Twenty

Bon appétit!

Image and downloadable print from Peter loves Jane.

The above quote — “It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” — showed up in my Facebook feed today. It really resonated with me, as I spent the last couple of days doing a lot of cursing the darkness.

Alas, it turns out that the above isn’t actually a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, though something close was said of her. In his 1962 eulogy of Roosevlelt, Adlai Stevenson said that she “would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.” But Stevenson isn’t the originator of the quote either; it’s actually a Chinese proverb.

But whatever the origin, I like the sentiment. Note to self: start going in search of some candles for the future!

Those who argue that our salvation lies in meals cooked at home seem unable to answer two key questions: where can people find the money to buy fresh foods, and how can they find the time to cook them? The failure to answer these questions plays into the hands of the food industry, which exploits the healthy-food movement’s lack of connection to average Americans. It makes it easier for the industry to sell its products as real American food, with real American sensibilities — namely, affordability and convenience. …

To get Americans cooking, we need to make it possible. Stay-at-home parents should qualify for a new government program while they are raising young children — one that provides money for good food, as well as education on cooking, meal planning and shopping — so that one parent in a two-parent household, or a single parent, can afford to be home with the children and provide wholesome, healthy meals. These payments could be financed by taxing harmful foods, like sugary beverages, highly caloric, processed snack foods and nutritionally poor options at fast food and other restaurants. Directly linking a tax on harmful food products to a program that benefits health would provide a clear rebuttal to critics of these taxes. Business owners who argue that such taxes will hurt their bottom lines would, in fact, benefit from new demand for healthy food options and from customers with money to spend on such foods.

HT Melissa.

Ha! HT FB friend Gail and HuffPo.

Plant nachos? LOL!

Stephan Guyenet, who tweeted the study had an interesting conversation with a follower that pretty much sums up my thoughts:

Interestingly, Michael Prager just tweeted a link to a researcher who holds a very different view:

The socioeconomic dimension of the obesity epidemic becomes apparent once you start looking at maps where the obese people live … obesity rates in Seattle can vary by a factor of five depending on address.

It reminds me a bit of Gibson’s quote on the future: it’s here, it’s just not very evenly distributed. Apparently there’s a lot more personal responsibility in those wealthy white neighborhoods, eh?

I’ve gone on record before as not being optimistic about nanny statism (and I don’t use that term pejoratively) as a solution. But I do think it’s ludicrous to look at the rise in obesity as a global failure in personal responsibility.

So true!