Bittman 'n' Katz (OT)

I completely understand those who take a dim view of my nutrition enthusiasms, and I hope they have noticed (please) that I've gone very light on the subject in the past year or two.

However, in the meantime, many readers have contacted me to report good to outstanding results with their own change of diet, which in more than a few cases has been revelatory and/or health-changing for them.

So click through if you wish; it's short. Otherwise, please feel free to ignore!

...For you, if you're still reading, an excellent video from WIRED's Tech Support channel:

I'd never heard of David Katz before (he was a few years behind me at Dartmouth, so I might know people who know him), but I thought the question-and-answer format was well suited to the subject—if I've observed anything where this topic is concerned, it's that people have questions—and questions, and questions.

It turns out that Dr. Katz, the guy in the video, has a whole book that follows the same question-and-answer format. He wrote it with Mark Bittman, the cooking expert, columnist, and writer of bestselling cookbooks. Mr. Bittman had come to a crossroads after being diagnosed with prediabetes (high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol), when his doctor told him he either had to eat vegan or take medication. Kinda creates a difficulty for a guy who made his living for decades as an authority on gourmet cooking and as a food columnist. So the book—it's called How to Eat: All Your Food and Diet Questions Answered—"filter[s] the science of diet and nutrition through a lens of common sense, delivering straightforward advice with a healthy dose of wit" (publisher's description). That's code, actually: technically the diet it advocates is called flexitarian, meaning predominantly plant-based but allowing for some meat, alcohol, sugar etc. Which is, let's be honest, how a fair number of vegetarians actually eat.

That is all. That wasn't so bad, was it? And there shall be nothing more on this heading any time soon—so, first group I mentioned, hold the complaints!

—Mike, your ever-courteous but somewhat wary host

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

David Maxwell: "Well I would like to offer an alternative viewpoint—your nutrition posts are my favorite of all. I feel like I have read a lot of useful information here that has helped me considerably on my own health journey. Plus I just like the updates on how it is working for you."

Joseph Kashi: "Thanks, this is a very worthwhile short post. I've ordered the book."

Comments

[John Krumm]

I’ll see you one better : ) . After twenty years of experimenting with dieting, from vegan to fasting to all meat to Mediterranean to obsessive calorie restriction, my wife and I both finally found success with the most boring, mainstream commercial approach, Weight Watchers. Thanks to the abundant “zero point” foods we are never hungry. The official recipes tend to be bad, but it’s easy to cut out the fat, starch, and high point meats from good recipes. My wife has lost about 45 lbs so far, I’m 15 down. She’s a doctor, and says it’s still the only approach that is shown to work in the medical literature.

[ASW]

As Michael Pollan suggested: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Note that Pollan distinguishes "food" from the industrial products most Western diets are full of - McDonalds, Twinkies, soda, etc.

Add regular mental and physical exercise and you're well on your way to a long and healthy life. It really doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

[Kye Wood]

I clicked through and read every word. But I can't find the link to enter the prize draw for one of your prints?

Worst clickbait ever. Disappointed but would read again. 3 stars.

Also, favourite hobby is writing product and service reviews that sound like first generation AI. Interspersed with quality crafted wordsmithing.

[Keith B.]

No complaints from me about your occasional nutrition posts. Every individual human has their own relationship with food. I did the "find the good foods, identify the bad foods" thing early in adult life. As an adult, I practiced my "Dilution Theory": Eat mostly the good (harmless) foods, in order to dilute the effects of the occasionally-eaten junk foods. Now, as I pass into older age (69 currently) apparently I don't need to eat as much to survive the day AND not get fat. I have to work on quantity---to eat less. Oh, as for that fasting stuff: if you eat dinner at, say, 7PM, aren't you essentially fasting for 15 hours if you subsequently have breakfast at 10AM? That's plenty of fasting for me. Good luck on your own personal food journey!

[MikeR]

I may have mentioned before a book that I took to heart, which made me scrutinize my food and other choices much more carefully. It was recommended by a nephew, who just turned 50, and was diagnosed with early onset dementia a few years ago.

"The End of Alzheimers" by Dale Bredesen M.D.

[Dave B]

(1) Ditto Keith B.! (2) When I have commented, it’s mostly to encourage more OT, but NOT on pool. I know it’s a PHOTOGRAPY blog, but…OT works for me, especially for the next four years, 😉. Just be well and keep up posting!

[Merle]

Another you might find interesting is Outlive, by Dr Peter Attia (Worldcat: :https://search.worldcat.org/title/1352494944), the whole goal of which is to have your healthspan be as long as your lifespan. I found it very interesting.

[Harry B Houchins]

At the tender age of 80 I have just been diagnosed as "pre-diabetic." I will look into this author and take his advice to heart. I don't think it's too late to learn...

[Chris Bertram]

Interesting, but I'm afraid that the stuff about Bluezones where people live to extreme old age has been exposed as bs: it is largely an artifact of poor or no recording of mortality or missing records. So, for example:

"In Okinawa, the best predictor of where the centenarians are is where the halls of records were bombed by the Americans during the war. That’s for two reasons. If the person dies, they stay on the books of some other national registry, which hasn’t confirmed their death. Or if they live, they go to an occupying government that doesn’t speak their language, works on a different calendar and screws up their age."

See

https://theconversation.com/the-data-on-extreme-human-ageing-is-rotten-from-the-inside-out-ig-nobel-winner-saul-justin-newman-239023

for more details (including other Bluezones).

[robert e]

I think it's kind and downright neighborly of you to share your nutrition finds. Thank you. It is understandable that some people are discomfited by the idea of critically examining something as personal and often emotional, even politicized, as the way they eat. I pity them, but I wish they'd stop scolding those of us who aren't so hung up.

Some hide behind the "skeptic" label, misunderstanding what the word means. But us food "hipsters" can fall into the same lazy trap, so thanks, John Krumm, for reminding us that some of the older methods can be effective. Though I'll point out that he and his wife seem to have taken the more conscious and enjoyable path of studying and applying a rationale and method rather than just following a script. That's where the real fun and rewards are to be found, IMO.

I like the idea of "flexitarian" (the word itself may grow on me), so thanks for that, too.

[Jeff Hughes]

I agree with David Maxwell and thank you for the book recommendations, MikeR and MikeJ. Now I just need to get my teenage son to watch that video as all he wants to do eat is more (meat) "protein" and complain about how much money I am spending at the grocery store on organic plants.

[Andrew]

I just listened to a podcast this week that talked about how blue zones are basically a myth.

Studying diet is incredibly complex. I think it's hard to go wrong with a mostly-plants approach, but there's frustratingly little research that we can really count on.

The podcast is Unexplainable, and the episode is titled, "New year, new diet, live forever?": https://open.spotify.com/episode/5G7DHzuaRSFzPd0p4i9F7y

[John Krumm]

Unfortunately, I'm now skeptical of Weight Watchers, the company. They just came out with their new list of "zero point foods" and after long excluding red meat from the list, now they even include lean ground beef, along with pot roast and tons of other cuts. I could sit down and eat 2 lbs of lean ground beef and still have zero points under their system. My guess is that the Beef Council had a word with them.

[Simon]

"technically the diet it advocates is called flexitarian, meaning predominantly plant-based but allowing for some meat, alcohol, sugar etc. Which is, let's be honest, how a fair number of vegetarians actually eat."

That is incorrect. Vegetarians do not eat meat or fish. Anyone who eats either of those things is NOT a vegetarian.

A flexitarian eats a mostly vegetarian diet but will on occasions eat meat or fish.

Strict vegetarians will not eat food containing animal products like gelatine or wine where Isinglass, a protein found in fish bladders, is used for fining.