Really good video!

Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat | Video on TED.com

Um, WOW! I loved this talk - my pal sent it to me! It's 20 minutes of your life, and it's well spent!

After watching this, I was thinking about MY meat consumption since I started this...and it has severly declined! For example this week, with the exception of dinner on Monday (ham), lunch on Tuesday (ham), and a taste of chicken on Thursday, I hardly ate any meat (I did have some eggs, some tuna (in a pouch, not a can), and the best piece of rockfish I've ever had too. But I am talking meat meat, like pork, beef, and chicken.) And yesterday was the best example of all...I had zero meat without even planning it that way! I had tons of veggies and fruit and protein and carbs. None of which came from meat!

Speaking of meat...we had our cooking club on Thursday and the theme this week was "Baked" (of course I brought bread!)- I had some DEEEEEELICIOUS Mac N Cheese (that I am making as soon as I get back from the store!) yummy Oat muffins (I am making these, but I am afraid I'll eat them all at once!), super pumpkin squares, baked chicken with pear salsa (making this too!) Anyhow, we got to talking about fiber, and WHY it's so good at lowering cholesterol...apparently, when you eat fiber it binds itself to some kind of salt thing in your digestive track and escorts that out of your body. Well, your body absolutely needs this salt thing in order to digest food, so it has to make more of it. It needs cholesterol in order to make this salt thing, so it uses whatever you've got stored up. And that's how you get lower cholesterol by eating more fiber! Cool huh?

A lady at work and I were also chatting about beans (oh, I have the most entertaining conversations!) and she introduced me to dry roasted edamame (soy) beans...I am not a big fan of soy beans, I find them stinky and slimy! But dry roasted they are DELICIOUS! I'm a very snacky person (unlucky me, I am a grazer), so it's been a bit of a challenge to find good for me snacks with CRUNCH (since I've all but given up on crunchy morning cereal, replaced by oatmeal which is surprisingly yummy now that I 'fixed' it!)
They have more protein but less fat than peanuts...perfect - not that I am a big peanut fan anyways, but they are a good alternative to almonds which I eat often! These are lightly salted, which is ok for every once in a while!