Skipping Dessert … and taking the stairs

First, the picture:

What’s this, you ask?  Why, it’s how you get a better idea of what you’re buying if you have to buy at the supermarket instead of the co-op or the farmer’s market. Now, I don’t want to get into a discussion right here about whether or not genetic modification is the devil incarnate (there are actually good arguments either way, although I lean toward the “yes, it’s the devil” side).  What I want to do is arm you with a little information to make you and me better consumers.

As you see, a four-digit plu starting with 3 or 4, well, that’s “conventionally grown.”  That means it was grown with pesticides and commercial fertilizers.  It also means it looks and feels pretty standard and is pretty cheap. May not have a lot of flavor, but hey, it still grows out of the ground.

The five-digit code starting with 9?  That’s the expensive one.  It’s also the one with the most flavor and nutrients.  Your call.  I report, you decide.

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The link:  This CNN story about dieting.  A few simple, and one would hope, obvious, points that may help keep you on track.  Things like, even foods that are really, really, really good for you still contain calories, so if you find the most awesome wild salmon that ever swam upstream, and you eat the whole thing, you’ve eaten too much.  Read, learn. Just puh-leeze, don’t think of it as “dieting.”

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And the video:

There’s a good chance you’ve seen this (very) short film featuring an older vocal track from Alan Watts.  You might have even seen it a few days ago when I posted it on Facebook.  Regardless, I highly recommend you watch it.  The gist is that if we all did the thing(s) we love instead of the thing(s) we think we’re supposed to do, we’d all be better off and so would the world.  I got some interesting feedback on it, but the truth is, I think it was misunderstood.  It sounds simple.  And it is simple.  It’s also really hard.  As Malcolm Gladwell tells us in Outliers, mastery (which Watts talks about in the video) requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.

Trust me, just watch, then think.

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Thanks for stopping in, dear reader.  You know the drill – pass it along as you see fit.