My approach isn’t total abstinence; that’s a little excessive. But these are the foods I avoid on a regular basis.
1. BREAD Bad bread—that doughy, gummy kind you can mash up and turn into a Super Ball—is gnarly. You can throw a wad of that stuff into water and it doesn’t even break apart.
Better-quality bread is slightly more tolerable, like a baguette fresh out of the oven if you’re in France, but if I eat any bread, it makes me want to go to sleep. I don’t go for sandwiches, either. They make me feel bloated and stuck.
In general, I avoid wheat and other starchy foods. I’m not big on potatoes, rice, or pasta, either. I’m not saying I’ll never eat a waffle, but it’s a rare thing, and I’m not going out of my way to do it.
2. PIZZA I know most people love it, but to me, you might as well wet down some cardboard and add ketchup. My teeth get a chalky feeling just thinking about it.
3. SODA Can’t imagine drinking the stuff. Soda contains zero nutrients—no vitamins, no minerals, nothing beneficial. Plus, it makes you fat and acidifies your system (which is meant to be slightly alkaline), so to buffer that, your body leaches calcium from your bones and teeth. With all its refined sugar and chemicals, soda’s about as far as you can get from a healthy, living food.
4. CHEESE Although on occasion I don’t mind some nice Brie on a cracker, I’m not a big cheese guy. When I do eat it, I want it unpasteurized (see page 107). In the US, our selection of raw cheese is small. You go to Europe, that’s when you get spoiled. In France they tried to get rid of raw cheese and almost had a civil war.
In our house we love sashimi, especially tuna. Fortunately, it’s easy to get fresh, locally caught ahi and yellowfin in Hawaii. But these days, all tuna comes with a health warning due to the high levels of mercury found in its flesh. Children and pregnant or breastfeeding women are most at risk, but no one wants to ingest a neurotoxin. Most mercury pollution comes from industrial sources like coal-fired power plants, which release it into the air. Then it settles into the environment, where it accumulates in the food chain. Tuna and other predators like sharks and swordfish are at the top of this chain and therefore consume other animals—and more mercury. Because of this, tuna isn’t something you should eat every day. A good source for information about mercury in tuna is www.oceana.org.
As if that’s not enough bad news, tuna also faces the problem of being unsustainably fished in many places. Bluefin populations are in dire straits worldwide. And while ahi and yellowfin are still rated among the best seafood choices, it’s important to understand where your fish came from and how it was caught. For instance, yellowfin or ahi caught by trolling or with poles (as they are in Hawaii) is good, but you want to avoid fisheries (in other parts of the world) that catch them on a longline. Longlining produces bycatch, which means that other ocean creatures like seabirds, sea turtles, dolphins, and sharks get wastefully killed in the process. The Monterey Bay Aquarium produces up-to-date regional guidelines about which kinds of seafood are best in which regions and which should be avoided: www.montereybayaquarium.org.