Chain Reaction: America's Toxic Love Affair with Chain Restaurants

Chain Reaction: America's Toxic Love Affair with Chain Restaurants

An informative overview of the many ways modern eating habits and our love for comfort foods are affecting obesity and the overall health of the average American. Many of our most beloved dishes act as toxic time bombs, contributing to an unsustainable health epidemic in our country. A recent study revealed that several chain-restaurant comfort-foods contain more than 5,000 calories in a single entrée, several times the recommended daily allowance. We explain the risks and foods to avoid on your path back to a life and body in balance.  UrbanSculpt's Book-a-Day series was developed to provided our readers with a knowledgeable, insightful and sometimes provocative perspective of issues surrounding environmental-health, sustainability, positive sexuality, and whole-body wellness. Each volume typically contains less than 20,000 words and is designed to be consumed in a single, one-hour reading session.

Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine

Medical expert and health advocate Dr. Paul A. Offit offers an impassioned and meticulously researched exposé of the alternative medicine industry.

A half century ago, acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, Chinese herbs, Christian exorcisms, dietary supplements, chiropractic manipulations, and ayurvedic remedies were considered on the fringe of medicine. Now these practices—known variably as alternative, complementary, holistic, or integrative medicine—have become mainstream, used by half of all Americans today seeking to burn fat, detoxify livers, shrink prostates, alleviate colds, stimulate brains, boost energy, reduce stress, enhance immunity, eliminate pain, prevent cancer, and enliven sex.

But as Offit reveals, alternative medicine—an unregulated industry under no legal obligation to prove its claims or admit its risks—can actually be harmful to our health. Even though some popular therapies are remarkably helpful due to the placebo response, many of them are ineffective, expensive, and even deadly. In Do You Believe in Magic? he explains how

  •   megavitamins increase the risk of cancer and heart disease—a fact well known to scientists but virtually unknown to the public;
  •   dietary supplements have caused uncontrolled bleeding, heart failure, hallucinations, arrhythmias, seizures, coma, and death;
  •   acupuncture needles have pierced hearts, lungs, and livers, and transmitted viruses, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV;
  •   chiropractic manipulations have torn arteries.

Dr. Offit debunks the treatments that don't work and explains why. He also takes on the media celebrities who promote alternative medicine, including Mehmet Oz, Suzanne Somers, and Jenny McCarthy. Using dramatic real-life stories, he separates the sense from the nonsense, showing why any therapy—alternative or traditional—should be scrutinized. As he advises us, "There's no such thing as alternative medicine. There's only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't

Forks Over Knives

Forks Over Knives
Starring T. Colin Campbell, Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., Neal Barnard, Junshi Chen, Connie B. Diekman

What if one simple change could save you from heart disease, diabetes, and cancer? For decades, that question has fascinated a small circle of impassioned doctors and researchers—and now, their life-changing research is making headlines in the hit documentary Forks Over Knives.

Their answer? Eat a whole-foods, plant-based diet—it could save your life. It may overturn most of the diet advice you’ve heard—but the experts behind Forks Over Knives aren't afraid to make waves. In his book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn explained that eating meat, dairy, and oils injures the lining of our blood vessels, causing heart disease, heart attack, or stroke.

In The China Study, Dr. Colin Campbell revealed how cancer and other diseases skyrocket when eating meat and dairy is the norm—and plummet when a traditional plant-based diet persists. And more and more experts are adding their voices to the cause: There is nothing else you can do for your health that can match the benefits of a plant-based diet.

Now, as Forks Over Knives is introducing more people than ever before to the plant-based way to health, this accessible guide provides the information you need to adopt and maintain a plant-based diet. Features include:

  • Insights from the luminaries behind the film—Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. John McDougall, The Engine 2 Diet author Rip Esselstyn, and many others
  • Success stories from converts to plant-based eating—like San’Dera Prude, who no longer needs to medicate her diabetes, has lost weight, and feels great!
  • The many benefits of a whole-foods, plant-based diet—for you, for animals and the environment, and for our future
  • A helpful primer on crafting a healthy diet rich in unprocessed fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, including tips on transitioning and essential kitchen tools
  • 125 recipes from 25 champions of plant-based dining—from Blueberry Oat Breakfast Muffins and Sunny Orange Yam Bisque to Garlic Rosemary Polenta and Raspberry-Pear Crisp—delicious, healthy, and for every meal, every day. 
  • ay. 

Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live

An exposé of pseudoscientific myths about our evolutionary past and how we should live today.

We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football—or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived—and why we should emulate them—are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence.

Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening research, Zuk takes us to the cutting edge of biology to show that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized, meaning that we are not biologically the same as our caveman ancestors.

Contrary to what the glossy magazines would have us believe, we do not enjoy potato chips because they crunch just like the insects our forebears snacked on. And women don’t go into shoe-shopping frenzies because their prehistoric foremothers gathered resources for their clans.

As Zuk compellingly argues, such beliefs incorrectly assume that we’re stuck—finished evolving—and have been for tens of thousands of years. She draws on fascinating evidence that examines everything from adults’ ability to drink milk to the texture of our ear wax to show that we’ve actually never stopped evolving. Our nostalgic visions of an ideal evolutionary past in which we ate, lived, and reproduced as we were “meant to” fail to recognize that we were never perfectly suited to our environment. Evolution is about change, and every organism is full of trade-offs.

From debunking the caveman diet to unraveling gender stereotypes, Zuk delivers an engrossing analysis of widespread paleofantasies and the scientific evidence that undermines them, all the while broadening our understanding of our origins and what they can really tell us about our present and our future.

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Blind Spot

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
$18.37
By Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald
Buy on Amazon

Blind Spot is an excellent read for anyone interested in the the concepts of mental models /bias and the influences they have on our opinions of and interactions with others. 

This particular study focuses on what I refer to as affinity bias, the desire or tendancy to help those who are most like ourselves.  While different from overt prejudice and seemingly innocuous on the surface, these behaviours ultimately exasperate problems such as social stratification. 

By unconsciously support those most like ourselves we may be unintentionally  adding to the problem.

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