Eat Like a Superhero: Foods for a Super-Strong, Super-Long, Super-Healthy Life

This summer camp course is organized around Michael Pollan’s (author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, and Food Rules) advice for healthy eating: “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.” 

Eat food:  Are Cheetos food?  How about Pop-Tarts?  The food we should eat most often is “whole” food, and we will learn about and learn to eat the “whole” thing.

Not too much: "I had six doughnuts for breakfast.  Why am I still hungry?"  The sugar-fat-salt conundrum.

Mostly plants:  Eat your broccoli and love it!  Really!  Fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, grains and seeds are magic foods, and can be great fun to cook with and eat.

We will learn how to choose real, whole food over processed and packaged food, how to eat what our bodies want and in the quantities that will make us satisfied and healthy, and how to happily “eat plants” like fruits, vegetables and grains.  Your instructor loves to cook and to eat, and we will not be forbidding foods or going on diets!  Rather, students will cook and eat something wonderful every day of the week, will play games designed to educate and intrigue, and will leave with plenty of resources to enjoy great food for a strong, long, healthy life.  Maybe they will be able to teach their parents something too!  (Note: Please let us know if your child has a food allergy.  We can work around it, but will definitely want to know before we start cooking!)

About your instructor:

Dr. Mandyck's first paid job was making spinach quiche for The Cheese Cupboard, a gourmet food shop in Atlanta.  She has also worked "on the inside" at Arby's and McDonald's, volunteered in dietary services at St. Joseph's Hospital, and worked in the dining hall at the University of Notre Dame while an undergraduate there.  Dr. Mandyck reads widely on the subject of nutrition, and cooking and eating good food is a lifelong interest.  She is excited about sharing her knowledge and experience with students to help them "eat like superheroes!"

What we ate!

Day One:  Popcorn (not microwave--here's why)
Day Two:  Crocodile Crunch
Day Three:  Homemade Whole Wheat Bread, Homemade Quick Brownies
Day Four: Salad with Homemade Honey Mustard Salad Dressing, Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Soup (we had Muir Glen Organic Tomato Basil)
Day Five: Homemade French Vanilla Ice Cream with Homemade Dark Chocolate Sauce (recipe to come!)

Core Principles

1. Eat food (real food, whole food, homemade food).

2. Not too much.

3. Mostly plants.

4. Eat a fruit or vegetable or both at EVERY meal.  Also for snacks!

5. Watch out for SUGAR.  Americans now eat 156 pounds of sugar a year, and it lurks in almost all packaged and processed foods. Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Read labels and aim for 3 grams of sugar or less per serving.  If there is more than that, read the ingredients: is it added sugar or natural, like in fruit or milk?  Natural is okay, in moderation.

6.  Live by the 5 ingredient rule as much as possible. 

7.  Have dessert or a treat sometimes...but make it homemade, and eat your healthy food first!

8. Avoid low-fat, no-fat and "lite"foods.

9. Avoid foods pretending to be something they are not.

10. Eat WHOLE grains.  Read the label: wheat is not whole wheat unless it says WHOLE wheat.

11.  Drink water.  Do not drink soda.  Do NOT drink soda.  DO NOT DRINK SODA. Don't drink diet soda either.

12. Eat slowly.

13.  Eat real food 80% of the time at least.

14.  Cook for yourself.

15.  Plan for leftovers (always make an extra salad).

16.  Have a "fallback" meal (scrambled eggs with veggies and cheese, for example).

17.  Take the meat out of the middle of your plate--have a vegetarian meal!

18.  Make a salad that includes every food group!

19.  Make your own salad dressing.

20.  If you don't like a food cooked, try it raw.  If you don't like it raw, try it cooked.  If you don't like it now (while you are young), try it later (when you are older).  Your tastebuds will change.

  

Resources

 ChooseMyPlate.gov--The website of the United States Department of Agriculture provides dietary guidelines.  Instead of the old food pyramid, we now have My Plate!

100 Days of Real Food--Website created and maintained by Lisa Leake, whose family of 4 swore off processed foods and refined sugar for 100 days!  Even if you don't intend to try such a thing, there is great information here.  Here are the Real Food Rules.

Jamie Oliver's TED Talk--Jamie Oliver is a chef who has started a Food Revolution.  His goal: "To create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity."  And here is the Real Food Family on Jamie Oliver!  Woo hoo! 







BrainPop Nutrition Video

BOOKS FOR ADULTS:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver (2007)
This is the book that changed my life--and my eating habits--for good.  It chronicles the year that Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores—those who eat only locally grown foods.  This wonderfully readable book will inform you about the environmental, human and animal cost of the Standard American Diet.  Great family stories and fabulous recipes throughout.  NOT just for the aspiring locavore, but pretty much for everyone who eats! 

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes by Mark Bittman (2008)

From the award-winning champion of culinary simplicity who gave us the bestselling How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian comes Food Matters, a plan for responsible eating that's as good for the planet as it is for your weight and your health.  Bittman offers a no-nonsense rundown on how government policy, big business marketing, and global economics influence what we choose to put on the table each evening.  Flexible, simple, and non-doctrinaire, the plan is based on hard science but gives you plenty of leeway to tailor your food choices to your lifestyle, schedule, and level of commitment.  If you can only read one book about food, read this one.

In Defense of Food:  An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan (2009)   
In Defense of Food shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes.  We can relearn which foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to its proper context— out of the car and back to the table.  

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (2006)

What should we have for dinner? Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from a national eating disorder. As the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous landscape, what’s at stake becomes not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.  The surprising answers Pollan offers have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us.  Meticulously researched, and beautifully written. 

FOR YOUNG READERS: 

Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about Fast Food by Eric Schlosser (2006) 

In the New York Times bestseller Chew on This, Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson unwrap the fast-food industry to bring you a behind-the-scenes look at a business that both feeds and feeds off the young. Find out what really goes on at your favorite restaurants—and what lurks between those sesame seed buns.  Having all the facts about fast food helps young people make healthy decisions about what they eat. Chew On This shows them that they can change the world by changing what they eat.

Don’t Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America by Morgan Spurlock (2005)

For thirty days, Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's as part of an investigation into the effects of fast food on American health. The resulting documentary, Super Size Me, earned him an Academy Award nomination and broke box-office records worldwide. But there's more to the story, and in Don't Eat This Book, Spurlock examines everything from school lunch programs and the marketing of fast food to the decline of physical education. He looks at why fast food is so tasty, cheap, and ultimately seductive, and interviews experts from surgeons general and kids to marketing gurus and lawmakers, who share their research and opinions on what we can do to offset a health crisis of supersized proportions.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan (2009)
Keep this one in the kitchen and read aloud at random! Pollan offers great advice about healthy eating in a series of short, sometimes funny rules (i.e. "Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk, " and "It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car.").  There is wisdom here. 

The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Secrets Behind What You Eat (Young Reader's Edition) by Michael Pollan, adapted by Richie Chevat (2009)
From fast food and big organic to small farms and old-fashioned hunting and gathering, this young reader's adaptation of Pollan's famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global health implications of their food choices. In a smart, compelling format with updated facts, plenty of photos, graphs, and visuals, as well as a new afterword and backmatter, The Omnivore's Dilemma serves up a bold message to the generation that needs it most: it's time to take charge of our national eating habits, and it starts with you. 

FILMS: 

Forks Over Knives

Fresh

Super Size Me  (We watched a version adapted for young people.)

RECIPES AND MEAL IDEAS: 

100 Days of Real Food

Bethenny Frankel

Care's Kitchen

Cheeky Kitchen

Deliciously Organic

Eating Well 

Kitchen Simplicity

Nourishing Gourmet

Prevention 

Savvy Vegetarian 

Simply Recipes

Vegetarian Times