Category: Unified Theory

  • Meals, or The appropriate use of discipline.

    I define structure as the space within which things can happen. And I think discipline (or “willpower” or “control” or “forcing yourself”) is best applied in the service of creating structure. It seems to me that everyone has a little tyrant living inside them. The tyrant, if it cannot be exorcised, must be exercised —…

  • Don’t be poor (and other New Year’s resolutions.)

    Diabetes death rate drops — primarily among rich people. This is my SURPRISED FACE. Especially since, in 1995, the World Health Organization identified poverty as “the biggest single underlying cause of death, disease and suffering worldwide.” In a hilarious-because-it’s-sadly-true list posted to the Wikipedia article on the social determinants of health, a typical list of…

  • Rules vs. trust in eating.

    So, for large swaths of us in the Western hemisphere, the holidays are approaching. Which means my favourite thing in the entire world is happening (it’s true!!!) — Magazines are giving out advice on HOW NOT TO BE A TOTAL DISGUSTING PIG, YOU FUCKING SLOB. Yessss. Seriously, I wait for this all year. Like Christmas…

  • Critical dietetics.

    The following is an excerpt from Critical Dietetics: A Declaration, something I was lucky enough to witness being born early this summer. …we acknowledge that food is more than the mere sum of its constituent nutrients. We recognize that human bodies in health and illness are complex and contextual. Moreover, we recognize that the knowledge…

  • The rules of nutrition.

    French version of this post here, courtesy Stéphanie Potin-Grevrend. First rule of nutrition: eat or die. Second rule of nutrition: there are no other rules. This is not something you are likely ever to hear from someone in my field, since we make our living by thinking up rules and then pretending they have been…