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Before the pandemic, when Mary Calliste, 32, traveled, she would try to hit as many tourist attractions as she could. But in early December, Ms. Calliste, who works in the financial services industry out of Plainfield, N.J., went to Guatemala and stayed at an eco-friendly hotel called Lush Atitln. There, she ate vegan meals, walked around the natural reserve and listened to music.

And loved it.

From now on, she said, I see myself incorporating a lot more of my needs into my travel instead of what I can see.

As the pandemic lingers into its third calendar year, its probably not surprising that travelers are increasingly looking to their vacations to work on their mental and physical wellness. In a recent American Express survey, 76 percent of respondents said they wanted to spend more on travel that improved their well-being, and 55 percent said they would be willing to pay extra for these services or activities.

That has hotels ramping up their wellness offerings, from outfitting rooms with Peloton exercise bikes to adding programs that address mental health. Hilton has created a program called Five Feet to Fitness, which includes an interactive kiosk with fitness tutorials and a gyms worth of equipment in some rooms.

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Wellness vacations go beyond massages and diet tips during the pandemic. - The New York Times

The pastyear has certainly been an interesting one and, from a dietary perspective, things have not been all bad. More time at home has meant that many of us have been able to commit a lot more time and energy to food preparation and healthy eating, which is only a good thing.

Interest in plant-based eating continues to grow exponentially, with a growing number of plant and nut milks a routine part of coffee orders. More than ever, you can find zero-alcohol wines and beers, along with lower calorie alcoholic water and wine spritzers, some of which are quickly taking the place of our favourite wine or spirit. And the snack food section of supermarkets continues to expand, with more products boasting nutritional claims of less sugar, more protein and fewer 'bad' fats.

It is not all good news, though, with a growinghabit for ordering our mealsstraight to our door,as well as desserts and alcohol, resulting in plenty of fat and calories sneaking into our diets each week. With this has come a few extra kilograms, collectively blamed on COVID,although it's almost two years since the pandemic began.

At the start of a shiny new year, before you spend money on yet another diet program that promises that you will look like a supermodel before the end of January, here are the diets that are scientifically proven give you the health- and weight-related results you are hoping for, as well as a few diets to avoid.

1.Lower Carb Diets

Lower carb or moderate carb diets contain 30-40 per centcarbs, generally with a taper at night. Programs such as the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet follow this formula. It is an effective, sustainable way to shift half akilo each week whilst still enjoying some fruit, bread and grains in your eating plan. How to make Adam Liaw's greens and egg salad, pictured.

2.The Mediterranean Diet

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Whilst it is not specifically known for weight loss, when it comes to health outcomes, you cannot go past the Mediterranean Diet. The simple formula involves plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, lashings of extra virgin olive oil, nuts, seeds, fish and little to no processed food, and it is the recipe for a healthy heart and long life.

3.The 5:2 or Fasting Diets

Fasting diets have been shown to help kickstart a number of the body's hormones, including those that regulate fat metabolism. The 5:2 diet involves twolow-calorie days each week, while for the 16:8dietyou consume allof your calories within an 8-hour windowand then fast for 16 hours. While you won't lose 1-2kga week using fasting, if you can consistently follow one of the regimes you can lose a couple of kilograms a month without overly strict dieting.

4.Very Low-Calorie Diets (VLCDs)

Not for everyone, Very Low-Calorie Diets contain roughly 800 calories and are often sold as a program in which all meals are replaced by formulated dietary shakes, bars or soups for a period of time. When followed, VLCDs can be extremely effective in supporting relatively quick weight loss of 1-2.5kg a week and are especially effective for those with Type 2 diabetes. For less intense weight loss, followers can replace just one to twomeals each day to support calorie control.

Andrew McConnell's vegan tomato and chickpea curry. Photo: William Meppem

5.Vegan

A vegan diet, unlike a vegetarian diet, includes no animal foods whatsoever meaning that the diet is based around legumes, grains, seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables. While these foods are all exceptionally healthy and mostly lower in calories than diets that include animal-based protein, vegan diets are not necessarily lower in calories than other diets, meaning they will only result in weight loss if they are also calorie controlled. How to make Adam Liaw'sPiyaz salad and Andrew McConnell's tomato and chickpea curry.

Lemon detox diet

Basically, this is a starvation diet. Deficient in all the key nutrients and even dangerous for those with hormonal conditions such as insulin resistance and diabetes, there is nothing positive that can be said for this diet, especially since you are likely to regain most,if not all, the weight you lostonce you start to eat again.

Avoid juice fasts as long term they are deficient in protein, fats, vitamins and minerals. Photo: Supplied

Juice fasts

Often referred to as a 'cleanse', a juice dietworks in a similar way to the lemon detox diet but with slightly more sugar and calories. Long-termjuice diets are deficient in protein, fats, vitamins and minerals and, again, any weight you lose is likely to be regained once you start eating again.

Alkaline diet

The alkaline diet suggests that alkalising foods (those with minimal acid-forming properties) help to restore the body to an alkaline state. It is believed by followers that an alkaline body is the key to new cell generation and disease prevention. While this may sound fantastic, the reality is that the pH of the body is largely out of our control which means the alkaline diet cannot do what it says it does.

Some carbs are good, such as those found in wholegrain bread. Photo: iStock

Susie Burrell is a dietitian.

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The dietitian's five best diets to focus on in 2021 (and three to avoid at all costs) - Good Food

THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE is an extract from The Keane Edge by Brian Keane.

Losing weight is a lot like baking a cake.

Yes, you read that right. Im starting this healthy eating book talking about baking a cake. As youll see over the coming chapters, this book is unlike anything you have ever read before. Im not going to be preaching the fat-burning capabilities of some random food found deep in the Amazon jungle, or selling you on some quick-fix solution that massively reduces your calorie intake by eliminating an entire food group. Nope, you wont get that here. What you are going to get in the following pages is a mindset shift.

Youre likely going to hear some uncomfortable truths about the sole contributing factor as to why you dont look the way you want to look. Ill give you a clue. When it comes to every single diet or nutritional plan youve followed unsuccessfully over the years, what has been the common denominator? Have you been too restrictive and then pressed the f*ck it button and binged on everything in sight? Possibly. Have you eliminated entire food groups in your desire to lose weight, e.g. six weeks gluten free, no dairy? Yeah, you might have.

But none of those is the common denominator. Want to know what is? Its YOU! Yes, you, or more accurately your mindset and how you approach the diet or nutritional plan. But dont worry, were going to fix that. But first, back to my cake.

Surely cake is off-limits if youre trying to lose weight or reduce your body fat? Well, yes and no. Yes in the sense that in Part One of the book youll see that calories do matter and food portion sizes are important. Eating a whole cake is unlikely to support your weight-loss goal.

Equally though, one slice a few times a week probably has the opposite effect. It gives you the psychological and metabolic boost you need to stick to your nutritional plan over the space of a week, a month or even a year. But thats not why I bring up cake. The reason I bring it up, apart from the fact that cake is delicious, is the baking element.

If youve ever baked a cake (or any other oven treat), you know that you have to follow a recipe. You need to do things in the right order, following a step-by-step process to end up with an appetising baked good. But you also need the ingredient list.

Forget the flour and you have a pile of mush, forget the sugar and it tastes horrible, forget the eggs and it doesnt stick together you get the idea. Developing the Keane Edge is exactly the same.

To lose weight, you need the recipe, and you need to follow a step-by-step process. In Part One, well go through that: how calories work, what you need to know about macros the foods that make up your calories and food choices and the order of priority or fat-loss pyramid of prioritisation that comes alongside them.

At this point, you might be thinking, Oh God, not another diet book on clean eating, or To lose weight, consume fewer calories been there, done that oh no my friend, thats just the start of it.

Similar to baking a cake, you can know exactly how to make it but it still might taste like crap if you dont know what ingredients to use. Which brings me on to the meat and potatoes (pardon the pun) of this book the ingredients, aka your mindset tools.

The educational side of the weight-loss process is broken down into everything from calories, macros and food choices to using the correct metrics to track your progress. Randomly following dietary advice without context or knowledge is a recipe for misery. You might hit your weight-loss goal, but you might not. You always want to be able to replicate what you do.

For instance, if you lost 4 kilos to look your absolute best for a wedding or other event, you want to be able to replicate that any time you need to in the future. I only use the word diet as an adjective.

Its a skill you acquire to use when you need it. You diet to slim down for a date in the future. And unless you are morbidly obese or seriously overweight and youve been dieting for more than a year with no result, you are doing it wrong!

Over the course of our journey together, you will acquire the dieting skill but our primary focus will be on the nutrition side of things. That means finding a plan that is specific to your goal and then approaching it the right way. The ingredients come next and the first one on that list is discipline.

THE DISCIPLINE INGREDIENT

When I say discipline, Im not talking about gruelling workout sessions in a gym, or even avoiding your favourite foods to hit a weight-loss target. Far from it. What I mean by discipline is building habits that support your end goal, so that you dont feel like youre on a diet.

Being disciplined is about understanding how your daily actions and behaviours determine how well you do on your weight-loss journey. If you tell me how you eat every day, Ill tell you how much weight youll lose or how youll look in a year. Im also going to break down the myth of motivation and the misconception that there are motivated people out there.

Spoiler alert, theres no such thing as motivated people there are disciplined people: individuals with good daily habits or people who have educated themselves and conditioned their mindset to find a nutritional plan that works for them. We can remove that unsupportive belief system of discipline here and now because its nonsense and only serves as an obstacle to the correct mindset. More on this later.

So if discipline is one of our ingredients, what else is there? Im glad you asked.

THE FAILURE INGREDIENT

Failure is next on the list. Yes, failure is an important ingredient on your journey. But wait, how is failure helpful? Surely thats a bad thing, right? Nope.

Failure is one of the most important ingredients on your weight-loss journey because failure isnt final: failure is feedback! Feedback on what hasnt worked in the past. Feedback on how you avoid self-sabotage in the future.

In this section, well talk about the concept of pressing the f*ck it button. You all know what Im talking about; youve eaten poorly all day Saturday and then had a big fry up on Sunday morning, so you say, F*ck it, Ill start back on my plan tomorrow.

Yeah, you know the button. If its overused, or worse, worn out, well figure out why and put a plan in place around it.

Failure also gives us the tool of resetting, where you dont let one bad meal turn into two or a bad weekend turn into a bad week. We reset after a potential slip and we get right back on plan.

Thats failure as feedback and that brings me on to the final ingredient in this recipe: the mindset tools.

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THE MINDSET INGREDIENT

This book is ultimately a tool book, and your mindset tools are the most important ones. Well go through philosophies such as getting your ladder up against the right wall, or in other words, finding the plan thats in alignment with your goals, one that includes foods you enjoy and one that you can stick to. Well also go over the 01 principle on why the start of any new diet is the hardest part, even though its usually when youre at your most motivated (and why thats normally the problem).

We will go deep on the problem with waiting for Monday if youre feeling motivated on Friday, and the unsupportive behaviour of having a last supper a ritual that involves bingeing on your favourite foods because you start a diet tomorrow. Well also go deep on your why. Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to reduce your body fat? Why do you want to look a certain way? Knowing why youre doing it can be the difference between success and failure on a dietary plan.

You will come to see that its not the diet thats the issue: its your mindset towards it thats been the problem all along. The honest truth is that most diets work if you stick to them. But why cant you stick to your diet? Is it unsustainable? Does it eliminate your favourite foods? Do you feel rubbish on it low energy, crap sleep, poor sex drive?

Well uncover those tangibles and intangibles as we dive deeper into the book, but for now, realise that this book works with any diet. Although the final part will give you a nutritional plan to follow and some recipes with high-quality, nutrient-dense meals, truthfully any plan will work if you stick to it.

What tool do you need to help you with this job? Are you self-sabotaging? Cool, read that section and use the tools in there to help you. Do you lack motivation or have bad dietary habits? Great, check out that chapter and pull out the tools you need.

My mission with this book is to make you realise that outside of some fundamental educational principles that everybody on a weight-loss journey should know such as basic calorie intake its not the diet per se that determines your weight loss success: its your mindset towards it that matters. Thinking that the diet is the problem or what I call the diet mindset is not only flawed, its broken and downright wrong. And its time to upgrade your thinking.

You can leave that diet mindset at the door. Now were moving to the next level. The level that gets you exactly where you need to be and keeps you there until your goals change. Now were talking about the Keane Edge.

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

Part One of this book is for absolute beginners. If this is the first book on nutrition that youve ever picked up and are confused or dont fully understand calories, macros or how food choices affect your body composition, then I recommend reading Part One in its entirety. If you are already familiar with foundational nutritional principles such as calories and macros, you can skip to the end of Part One, where Ive recapped the main takeaways, and then jump into Part Two, which talks about developing the mindset around nutrition.

Part Three deals with nutrition itself and training, while Part Four looks at the pivotal but often misunderstood area of fat loss: sleep and stress.

The books final part gives you The Plan. Its not the unsustainable kind of one and done formula you may have come across in other diet books; Im interested in mindset, nutrition and how to efficiently lose weight or reduce body fat over time. That being said, the plan will help you get started if youre feeling motivated right now.

The Keane Edge by Brian Keane is published by Gill Books. More info here.

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'Losing weight is a lot like baking a cake' - The42

Iryna Veklich/Getty Images

As we usher in another new year in the throes of a global pandemic, it's time to call BS on diets that don't serve us and habits that distract us from what we want to be doing with our lives. For 2022, I'm playing hardball by tossing soft and meeting you where you are -- in your home, trying to make the best choices for your own health and that of your family.

New Year's resolutions are personal and, crucially, optional -- you don't necessarily need to make any. But if you're inspired to make small changes that could have big impacts on your overall well-being, here's a list that might help.

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Think about the best possible start to your day. Does it involve savoring a cup of coffee while you read a book? Working out as the sun rises? Going for a quiet walk around the block? Listening to music or playing with your dog? Whatever it is, use the New Year as a new opportunity to refine your morning routine and slow it down for the things you love. Everyone's ideal "slow morning" will be different, but carving out time for things that bring you purpose early in the day can lead to a more present work day, whether it requires waking up 30 minutes earlier or just reprioritizing your time in the AM.

Starting your day off in the right headspace makes all the difference.

We live, communicate and work through our phones, so it makes sense that they're the first things we turn to when we open our eyes. And it doesn't take much scientific study to conclude that scrolling social media or going through your inbox isn't the best way for your brain to start (or end) the day.

But there is some science behind it. As Forbes reported, by reaching for your phone first thing in the morning, you're "priming your brain for distraction" and disrupting the brain's flow of different waves that allow you to be more creative and purposeful about your day. Staying on your phone for work-related matters hours after signing off can also inhibit you from getting a good night's rest.

If you're like many people who've considered cutting back screen time, there's no better time than 2022 to start. There are different ways to improve screen hygiene, like using blue light glasses for work and reading a book instead of scrolling through your phone before bed. To cut back on screen time this year and reorganize your screen time, check out these tips.

Finding an eating pattern that's both intuitive and satisfies your nutritional needs can be tough, and daunting New Year's resolutions that require you to completely switch gears for a diet that might be downright unhelpful.

This year, try subscribing to the advice of nutritionists and experts that work with you to create sustainable meal habits (also called the "anti-diet dietitians"). Chances are, you'll start honoring food as the fuel our body needs to live and be healthy, make nutritious choices accordingly and become more expert about what your body needs.

Restricting calories can sometimes trigger binge eating, which can make you feel ill or lead to unhealthy habits. If you want to eat healthier but don't want to sign up for a restrictive diet,make sure your plate is full of things your body needs first.

Stopping the scroll first thing in the morning is a more ambitious goal than it sounds.

In 2009, caregiver Bronnie Ware wrote a blog post detailing the top five regrets of dying people. A lot of news outlets reported on the list, it turned into a book and even inspired aTED talk. The number one thing on the list? "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

Many people may push aside their more creative pursuits because it doesn't make them money or they feel they don't have the time.

For 2022, I suggest you make the time, whether it's 10 minutes of active daydreaming or an hour of active crafting, writing music, poetry, painting, graphic designing, figure skating, playing chess or anything else that inspires you. If you've been keeping it on the back burner, imagining the day you'll have the time, 2022 is your year to make the first step.

Be as understanding with yourself as you are with other people: It's the inverse of the Golden Rule. If your friend set a goal for themselves to exercise for 15 minutes each day, but they missed two days in a row, would you consider them a failure or would you tell them to just pick it back up tomorrow?

Probably the former, because unless you're a robot, you know that someone experiencing a hiccup or less-than-productive day doesn't undermine the value of their goal and all of the work they've put in so far. Sometimes, people just need a break to reconvene and figure out the best way to fit their new passion into their busy schedule. So why can't we see that in ourselves?

Many people fall into the trap of thinking something has to be done perfectly or not done at all. While you may have already heard the phrase "done is better than perfect," it's worth repeating here. Picture it in the context of someone else's creative journey, then give yourself the same space and grace. By learning to understand yourself the way you understand others, you'll also start practicing self-compassion and you might just end up accomplishing more in the process.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

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5 New Year's resolutions to get your 2022 off to the best start (even in a pandemic) - CNET

The food we eat every day keeps us alive, but it can also incur big health and environmental costsheart disease, carbon emissions, soil degradation, and more. Arecent study published in Nature Food finds that small shifts in the food choices Americans make could have outsized benefits to both health and planet.

Because many foods with a high health burden, including processed meats or red meats, also have high environmental costs, switching out just a few of themabout 10 percent of a persons daily caloric intakecan cut a persons food-based environmental footprint by over 30 percent, the study says.

The really good thing is that, not for every food item but many, foods that are healthier and more nutritious tend to be more environmentally sustainable, so it ends up being a win-win, saysMichael Clark, a food systems researcher at the University of Oxford not involved in the study.

Between growing it, packaging it, moving it around, cooking it, and often wasting it, food production makes up about one-fifth to one-third of all annual greenhouse gas emissions globally. For an average American household,food makes up about as much of the greenhouse gas footprint as the electricity. Food production is responsible for major water quantity and quality problems, often requires herbicides and pesticides that endanger biodiversity, and engenders forest and wildland losses when lands are converted to agriculture.

Its impact is substantial, saysOlivier Jolliet, an environmental scientist at the University of Michigan and one of the authors of the study. Its like, Houston, we have a problem, and we really need to be serious about it. So far the U.S. has not been serious about it.

Its not up to, or the responsibility of, any single person to solve nationwide or global health and environmental crises, he stresses. But insights like those he and his team developed can help people, institutions, and even governments figure out where to direct their energies to make the biggest influence quickly.

To learn how to reduce negative impacts of food production and consumption on the planet and the body, researchers first assessed damages related to food. But figuring out where an apple came from, let alone what its impact on the planet is, has become an increasingly complex question as the global food system evolves. For example, it has taken researchers at the Stockholm Environmental Institute years to unravel the supply chains of crops likecocoa and coffee, even if they come from a single country.

So over the past few decades, scientists including Jolliet developed ways of doing life cycle analyses for specific itemssay, a head of broccoli or a box of corn flakesthat take all the steps from farm to store into account and assign the items a hard number signifying its environmental impact, such as an estimate of the greenhouse gas emissions or water volume their production requires.

Concurrently, epidemiologists and public health scientists were doing similar analyses for human bodies. They carefully examined the links between food and health, teasing out how different diets and even specific foods might influence things like disease risk, general health, or life expectancy; they assigned hard numbers to those risks.

For years, researchers and governments considered the issues to be separate: Health researchers focused on their priorities and environmental scientists on theirs (though as early as the 1970s, scientists were linking diet choices with planetary health). But it became increasingly obvious that what we eat is intimately connected with planetary health, saysSarah Reinhardt, an expert on food systems and health with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The global demand for beef, for example, has increased the demand for soy protein to feed to cattle, and in response to that demand,vast swaths of the Amazon are deforested every year to make space for new soy farms and cattle, hastening the loss ofcarbon-absorbing and biodiverse forest.

Agriculture is a huge piece of the climate puzzle, and agriculture, food, and diet are all intricately linked, Reinhardt says.

So Jolliet and his colleagues built a system that merged both concerns, looking at health and environmental impacts of specific foods.

They had previously worked with other researchers on a vast database that quantified the health burdens of dietary choices, like eating too much processed meat or too few whole grains; the University of Michigan team turned those dietary risks into an estimate of disability-adjusted life years, or DALYs, a measure of how much life expectancy someone might lose or gain by changing their actions. The team drilled down into how choosing to eat or forgo specific foodsnot just categories, like vegetablescould impact DALYs, detailing the advantages of some foods and the detrimentalimpacts of others if someones baseline diet changed. Eating a lot of red meat, for example, is linked with diabetes and heart disease, while substituting plenty of vegetables helps decrease heart disease risk. They caution, though, that their analyses are relevant for the whole population, not necessarily an individualeach person has their own unique set of health risks that may change their susceptibility to diet changes.

To determine that, the Michigan team looked at the nutritional makeup of nearly 6,000 foods, from hot dogs to chicken wings to peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to beets. A hot dog would probably cost someone about 35 minutes of living; eating most fruits might help someone gain a few extra minutes; and sardines cooked in a tomato sauce might add 82 minutes. In the calculations, apple pie is just about neutralsome boost from the apples, some losses from butter, flour, and sugar.

Nothing particularly surprising emerged in this analysis. Epidemiologists have long known that processed meats, red meats, and heavily processed, high-sugar foods are linked to higher risks of many diseases. But by breaking down the potential effects of so many products, researchers could rank them, order them, and create a detailed understanding of how specific habits might affect consumers.

In parallel, the team evaluated the environmental effects of those thousands of food items. They looked beyond just the carbon costs, incorporating 15 different ways the environment absorbed food productions impact, from the effects on surrounding water systems to the rare minerals needed to grow products or package them to thelocal air pollution caused by production.

When researchers looked at both issues at once, a heartening pattern emerged. Many foods good for peoples health were also relatively gentle on the environment. Not particularly surprisingly, beans, vegetablesnot those grown in greenhouses, thoughand some sustainably farmed seafood like catfish fell in what they termed the green zone. Amber zone foods, like milk and yogurt, egg-based foods, and greenhouse-grown vegetables balanced health and environmental costs. Red zone foods, which included beef, processed meats, pork, and lamb, had high health and environmental costs. A serving of beef stew, they calculated, has the carbon cost of driving about 14 miles.

The pattern held for most environmental indicators except for water use. Foods like nuts and fruits have substantial health benefits, but are often grown in water-scarce places like California. When youre talking about the foods were eating now to the foods we should be eating like nuts and fruits, there are big implications for water use, Reinhardt says. That doesnt mean we shouldnt be eating more of them, it just means its a problem we have to solve.

For some climate challenges, there are relatively straightforward fixes. For example, renewable energy sources can already replace much of the energy needed to power buildings, cars, and more.

Theres no substitute for food, but shifting what we eat is possible. If everyone on the planet ate vegan, greenhouse gas emissions from the food system could be cutby more than half; a planet of vegetarians would trim food emissions by 44 percent. If we stopped eating food as we know it, existing entirely off anutritional slurry grown in a lab instead of in soil or water, we could prevent about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of future warming, according to a recent paper that considered the unique thought experiment.

What this work says is: Hey, look, we can still get pretty big wins even if were not making these really big changes in dietary composition, says Clark. I think thats really powerful, because a lot of people just dont want to make those really big dietary changes, for many reasons.

While vegetarian and vegan diets are becoming more common in the U.S. and Europe, its an absolutely absurd to assume that everyone will be eating a vegetarian diet 30 years from now, he says.

Food choices are personal, deeply connected to culture, religion, emotion, economic concerns, and so much more. Rather than dictate, its much better to try to give choice, saysNaglaa El-Abbadi, a food, nutrition, and environment researcher at Tufts University. This approach aims to inform people so that they can make choices that align with their needs and values. In aggregate, those choices can benefit both human health and the planet.

For that to happen would require working in tandem with large-scale efforts to reshape industrial food production, she stresses.

But what people choose to eat daily is far from insignificant, says Clark, We dont all have to become vegan overnight, he says. Small changes can make big impacts.

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How small changes to our diet can benefit the planet - National Geographic

As we celebrate the beginning of a new year, many people often look at making resolutions to improve their health. The best place to start is your diet or way of eating. Its not the easiest place, but the food we take in is information to our cells, our blood, and our organs and if we take in crappy information, we get crappy results.

Humans around the world have had varied diets for millennia. Focusing on dietary ideology is less important than focusing on principles. And the key focus of any dietary strategy should be ensuring what you are eating has the necessary components to support optimal cellular biology.

The good thing is that several different dietary approacheswhen thoughtfully craftedcan give you these components. The study of food and nutrition are complex. First, nutrition research sometimes gets bogged down in too many details. While the molecular biology of food is critical to understand, the epidemiology of food can also help guide us. We also know that people who eat ultra-processed foods, too many Omega-6 fats, and excess sugar tend to have higher rates of chronic disease and early death. We know that including Omega-3 fats, adequate micronutrients and phytonutrients, and antioxidant-rich foods supports longevity.

What could whole-food, plant-based eaters and carnivore devotees possibly have in common? One group eats only plants, and the other only eats meat. But in fact, these dietary ideologies share traits:

Both focus on the nutrient density of food, striving to get as many nutrients as possible from what they eat.

Both eschew processed foods, and in particular, abstain from processed grains, sugar, food additives, and seed or vegetable oils.

Both take a thoughtful approach to food sources and sustainability, with an appreciation of the importance of soil health.

Heres an example of the complexity that makes research and dietary recommendations challenging. Omega-3s can come from various sources: fish, meat, eggs, nuts, seeds, algae. But there are different forms of Omega-3s, and typically, plant sources contain the upstream Omega-3s (like alpha-linoleic acid, ALA) that need to be converted through multiple chemical reactions (enzymes) to the downstream form that is most active (EPA and DHA) for making up cell membranes, and promoting anti-inflammatory reactions. Eating fish or other omega-3-containing animal products will give you straight EPA and DHA, but if youre eating plant-based sources, you are mostly getting upstream ALA and have to convert it.

Heres the catch: converting ALA to EPA requires the function of three sequential enzymes, and these enzymes require regulating nutrient cofactors, including vitamins B3, B6, and C, zinc, and magnesium. So you need to eat targeted, diverse foods to get the vitamin and micronutrient levels to make this conversion possible. Eating plant sources of Omega-3s but being deficient in nutrient cofactors could mean youre missing most of the Omega-3 benefits.

Nutrition research is one of those areas that will never, ever be settled. Were learning more and more about nutrition science every day. But you have to be careful where that science is coming from and who is paying for the studies. Many doctors use bias to make their points meaning they will cherry-pick statistical data to prove their point. Youll find hundreds of studies saying that veganism is best or Paleo is the way to go, or everyone should be eating a raw food diet. Research your diet thoroughly from numerous sources to get a well-rounded point of view.

To choose the best diet or way of eating for your body, consider your preferences and sensitivities first. Do you like meat, fish, grains, and loads of vegetables? Then consider your lifestyle and time needed to grocery shop, prep and cook meals. Luckily, there are lots of healthy meal delivery services for those who are time-crunched these days. I love and use Territory Foods myself when extra busy. You may have to shift your priorities to align with your new lifestyle. Next, consider your health concerns. Do you have an autoimmune disease or family history of an illness youd like to prevent? This will drive your decision.

Whatever dietary protocol you decide, you need to make sure you are getting all of the vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, protein, fiber and micronutrients necessary for optimal health. I recommend my clients get blood work when changing their diet too.

Dont be afraid to make mistakes along the way. I once tried to eat raw foods for a week and had such tummy troubles that I was miserable. Be open to trying new foods and diets, but remember to be in tune with your body and how you feel. Remember, your plan can change too its an evolving process.

Creating your personal diet plan can be fun. Remember to consider your overall health goals, what you want to achieve, take into account your dietary preferences, sensitivities, and one that suits your lifestyle. If your diet isnt sustainable meaning something you can do for the rest of your life then it wont work for you. Try to create a plan or way of eating that works for your body and your lifestyle.

It all comes down to common sense, so we must respect the physiology of the human body to determine what our nutritional needs really are and then tweak for bio-individuality. If you need support, I am here for you at wwwUnlockBetterHealth.com.

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What's the best diet for you? | Health & Food | fairfaxtimes.com - Fairfaxtimes.com

Ultra-processed foods high in sugar, fat and empty carbs are bad for the mind as well as the body. Lack of micronutrients affects brain function and influences mood and mental health symptoms.

Emotional, non-rational, even explosive remarks in public discourse have escalated in recent years. Politicians endure insults during legislative discussions; scientists receive emails and tweets containing verbal abuse and threats.

Whats going on? This escalation in angry rhetoric is sometimes attributed to social media. But are there other influences altering communication styles?

As researchers in the field of nutrition and mental health, and authors of The Better Brain, we recognize that many in our society experience brain hunger, impairing their cognitive function and emotion regulation.

Obviously, we are not deficient in macronutrients: North Americans tend to get sufficient protein, fats (though usually not the best fats) and carbohydrates (usually not the good complex carbs). But we are being cheated of micronutrients (minerals and vitamins), particularly in those whose food choices are dominated by ultra-processed products.

Ultra-processed products include things like soft drinks, packaged snacks, sweetened breakfast cereal and chicken nuggets. They generally contain only trivial amounts of a few micronutrients unless they are fortified, but even then, only a few at higher amounts.

Three published analyses from the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey and the 2018 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey revealed these sobering statistics: in Canada, in 2004, 48 per cent of the caloric intake across all ages came from ultra-processed products; in the United States 67 per cent of what children aged two to 19 years consumed and 57 per cent of what adults consumed in 2018 were ultra-processed products.

Most of us are aware that dietary intake is a huge issue in physical health because diet quality is associated with chronic health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The public is less aware of the impact of nutrition on brain health.

Given that our societys food choices have moved so strongly toward ultra-processed products, we need to learn about the substantial scientific evidence proving that micronutrient intake influences mental health symptoms, especially irritability, explosive rage and unstable mood.

The scientific evidence base for this statement is now vast, though it is so rarely mentioned in the media that few in the public are familiar with it. A dozen studies from countries like Canada, Spain, Japan and Australia have shown that people who eat a healthy, whole foods diet have fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety than people who eat a poor diet (mostly ultra-processed products).

Correlational studies cannot prove that nutritional choices are the cause of mental health problems: for that we turn to some compelling prospective longitudinal studies in which people with no apparent mental health problems enter the study, are evaluated for their health and dietary patterns, and are then followed over time. Some of the results have been astonishing.

In a study of about 89,000 people in Japan with 10-15 years of followup, the suicide rate in those consuming a whole foods diet was half that of those eating less healthy diets, highlighting an important new direction not yet covered in current suicide prevention programs.

Here in Canada, similarly powerful findings show how childrens dietary patterns, as well as following other health guidelines on exercise and screen time, predicted which children aged 10 to 11 years would be referred for diagnosis of a mental disorder in the subsequent two years. It follows that nutrition education ought to be one of the first lines of treatment for children in this situation.

Irritability and unstable mood often characterize depression, so its relevant that multiple independent studies have found that teaching people with depression, who were consuming relatively poor diets, how to change to a whole foods Mediterranean-style diet resulted in significant improvements. A Mediterranean-style diet is typically high in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, seafood and unsaturated fats such as olive oil.

In one such study, about one-third of the people who changed to a whole foods diet in addition to their regular treatment found their depression to be in remission after 12 weeks.

The remission rate in the control group using regular treatment but no diet changes was fewer than one in 10. The whole foods diet group also reported a cost savings of about 20 per cent in their weekly food budget. This final point helps to dispel the myth that eating a diet of ultra-processed products is a way to save money.

Important evidence that irritability, explosive rage and unstable mood can be resolved with improved micronutrient intake comes from studies evaluating micronutrient supplements to treat mental health problems. Most public awareness is restricted to the ill-fated search for magic bullets: studies of a single nutrient at a time. That is a common way to think about causality (for problem X, you need medication Y), but that is not how our brains work.

To support brain metabolism, our brains require at least 30 micronutrients to ensure the production of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, as well as breaking down and removing metabolic byproducts. Many studies of multi-nutrient treatments have found improved mood regulation and reduced irritability and explosive rage, including in placebo-controlled randomized trials of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and mood dysregulation.

The evidence is clear: a well-nourished population is better able to withstand stress. Hidden brain hunger is one modifiable factor contributing to emotional outbursts, aggression and even the loss of civility in public discourse.

Bonnie Kaplan receives funding from no organization currently, because she is retired. But during her career she received many grants from private foundations (donor funds) and from provincial funding competitions. Her only current affiliation is as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the John W. Brick Foundation.

Julia J Rucklidge receives or has received research funding from Health Research Council (NZ), Waterloo Foundation, Vic Davis Memorial Trust, University of Canterbury Foundation, Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, GAMA Foundation, and the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care.

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Junk food and the brain: How modern diets lacking in micronutrients may contribute to angry rhetoric - Vancouver Is Awesome

FANS are worried for Ryan Seacrest after he posted a photo of his new diet to social media, which consisted solely of broth.

The 46-year-old was said to be suffering from "exhaustion" due to his various entertainment gigs.

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Ryan took to Twitter in late December to share a photo of his "Post Christmas diet," as he captioned the post.

It featured three bottles on a table. They were labelled "first meal," "second meal," and "third meal" respectively, and under that they were each labelled a different type of broth.

Fans quickly expressed their shock and concern over Ryan's new diet.

"I hope this is joke," one Twitter user wrote.

"Bro, eat some food," wrote another.

Broth is a liquid made of water with solids such as bones, proteins or vegetables cooked down. It is frequently used as the base for soup, but all-broth diets are popular for losing weight.

Last month, Ryan was spotted in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, enjoying a break from work with girlfriend Audrey Paige, 24.

But even then, the executive was seen taking phone calls.

The trip came after The Sun exclusively reported that Ryans friends held an intervention to get him to take a "breather" from working so hard.

"Hes been go-go-go for 20 years now and he is almost 50" a source close to the DJ told us.

We thought he would have slowed down and settled down by now. But that hasnt been the case. Hes only gotten busier so everyone is worried about him and has been for years.

He works hard and works nonstop he will often skip solid meals and drink a green juice as a supplement so he doesnt 'waste time' by sitting down and eating."

Fans were worried when the TV personality was not present onLive With Kelly & Ryanalongside his co-host,Kelly Ripa, for multiple episodes in November.

Kelly Ripa's husband,Mark Consuelos, filled in when Ryan was out.

During a 2020 episode ofAmerican Idol,fans were left concerned for Ryan's health after a segment saw the host slur his speech and appear unable to focus properly.

His right eye also appeared to be drooping.

Following the health scare, Ryan reportedly considered apermanent moveback to Los Angeles.

He has nothing against New York, but he feels that he was healthier in Los Angeles, a sourcetold Closer Weekly at the time.

Ryan admitted hes been exhausted since his health scare in mid-May. Ryan knows the show needs the hosts in the same room - but right now, hes dreading the thought of not living in California."

Afterwards, reps for the host released the following statement: "Ryan did not have any kind of stroke last night."

Speaking to People magazine, the rep added: "Between LIVE with Kelly and Ryan, American Idol, On Air with Ryan Seacrest, and the Disney Family Singalong specials, he has been juggling three to four on-air jobs over the last few weeks and hes in need of rest."

Often dubbed the "hardest working person in Hollywood,"the American Idol host has never been married and doesn't have children.

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Ryan Seacrests fans are concerned as he reveals hes on broth diet just months after suffering exhaustion... - The US Sun

REVIEW OF THE YEAR

T Lyric FM, Newstalk, RT1

Of the many devices which enable me to listen to the radio at home,one is an ancient TV screen. Venerable though it is, recently we noticed something that suggested the end might finally be nigh behind the TV picture we could now see a circular shape, about four inches in diameter, permanently imprinted on the screen.

Ah yes, this must be how it goes when even the most loyal of TV servants is ready to expire soon, we reckoned, the circle would start expanding until it all went kaput. And then one day, on closer examination, we realised that not only was this circle imprinted on the screen, there was something imprinted on the circle: RT Lyric FM.

Initial stupefaction gave way to a simple explanation: from Marty in the Morning through to The Full Score with Liz Nolan, then on to Mystery Train with John Kelly and The Blue of the Night with Bernard Clarke, or even Vespertine with Ellen Cranitch, the music from this station has been playing so routinely on this screen, the logo has actually become embedded in it. Lyric FM has burned itself into the machine.

Of course we dont just listen to the radio on TV screens, we listen to it on phones, in cars, on the laptop, even sometimes on an actual radio. But its fair to say that on that particular old TV screen, Lyric FM has been the go-to station for some time.

Indeed when the plague is over, we may find this source of reliably decent music in the background or in the foreground, has been of immeasurable benefit to the mental health of at least some of the population.

And you would need all the mental health you can muster at this time if I could select one theme from the public realm that dominated my radio listening last year, it was the struggle of broadcasters to hold back the floods of misinformation and bad political faith in general, and to do this armed mainly with tools such as balance or impartiality that dont really work any more.

Or maybe theyre just being used in the wrong way oddly enough on the last episode of the year of Gavan Reillys On the Record on Newstalk, there was a blast of inspiration.

Reilly talked to Ros Atkins of the BBC News Channel, presenter of these explainer videos entitled Outside Source, which have become enormously popular. Atkins speaks straight to camera for several minutes, relentlessly picking the bones out of various scandals, not least the ones that emanate almost daily from the personage of Boris Johnson.

What Atkins has done, is to show that you can be balanced and impartial all day long, without simply creating a space for various delinquents to spread their propaganda. I recall Philip Boucher-Hayes, in a more languid style, doing something similar on RT1s Drivetime.

But Atkins has struck oil at this particular time. He described his working methods to Reilly, the way that he and his team deconstruct the stories and then reassemble them with the untrue bits taken out Outside Source is then delivered live, giving it an extra few ounces of energy.

Neither Atkins nor Reilly addressed one highly significant aspect of this work, the fact that people have clearly been desperate for something of this nature. That they will watch it in their millions, mainly because they are not getting it in the regular current affairs programmes. Then again it would be unwise for Atkins to suggest that he is doing what his more famous BBC colleagues have been singularly failing to do.

It has been called aggressive impartiality, this attitude which he is bringing. But it also exposes the failings of the more passive impartiality which many of our esteemed broadcasters still regard as settled science. Atkins is just doing it better, driven by this controlledintensity. He is deeply opinionated in the sense that he has clearly formed the view that a lot of bad actors are getting away with a lot of bad things then he takes them down with the remorseless accumulation of factual accuracy.

From Morning Ireland all the way down our current affairs ecosystem, there is an urgent need for that aggressive impartiality. And Atkins, after all, is mainly just talking straight to camera it would probably work just as well on the radio.

Eventually it might even get burned into it.

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Lyric and Atkins offer a perfectly balanced diet - Independent.ie

Our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrate something deep in the grain, something unadmitted.

The past is entered through creaking iron gates laced with fog.

We who love Joan Didion each have our own, a version that, when we think of her, glides smoothly through the recesses of our minds just as the Monorail circles Disneyland. Most likely this version also includes an image of ourselves, who we were, where we were, when she first imprinted herself on our consciousness, our subconscious when she changed how we see, and, if we write, undoubtedly and most distinctly how we do that as well. Always she returns, circling.

Im 24, riding the L train from Lorimer St. in Brooklyn to Union Square in the city, where Im a junior at Eugene Lang, having transferred from Pasadena City College in Los Angeles, where Im from. I turn pages reverently, gingerly: Slouching Towards Bethlehem. The book has been assigned in my intro to nonfiction class. I stand rocking between the heels and balls of my feet, pulling a slim green peacoat around my small frame, leaning, looking into the darkened tunnel, waiting for train lights to bloom out of the darkness and whoosh to a stop before us, the doors opening onto a florescent city. Eager to sit and read again: a coronet of seed pearls held her illusion veil.

I saw Eve Babitz before I ever laid eyes on her writing. A high school classmate was the daughter of photographer Julian Wasser. I was hanging out at the long defunct Penny Lane on Melrose, it was the late 90s, and the street had become slightly more famous, caught up in the glitz of the television show but still holding on to its punk grunginess. In the middle of the store stood the rotating postcard rack. I stood before it and from a sea of James Dean, Drew Barrymore, Salvador Dal, and Edward Scissorhands emerged Eve, hunched forward, breasts voluminous, hair shrouding her face, playing chess with the then unknown to me Marcel Duchamp. I plucked her from the display. Alexis dad took that, a friend said casually. What? I asked. Yeah, like, a bunch of years ago. Its some writer and a famous artist. I returned the card to its place but never forgot the image. This was the most Babitz way to have first encountered Eve Babitz, through gossip and a tenuous connection to celebrity.

The Stingray, the scarf, the glasses. Bobbed beach hair parted loosely down the middle. Didion was a master of persona. She gave modern women possession over car culture, so that they were no longer just objects in it. Freeways were that cultures veins and escape routes, but where? The beauty and irony in Didions work was that she made Southern California such a delicious velvet coffin that most of her characters had nowhere better to go. In many ways she herself appeared to be without needs, happy only to observe. She hardly seemed to need food, as evidenced by the many profilers who delighted in describing her diet: almonds, a single ice-cold diet coke, cigarettes, slicing edges off slim cucumber sandwiches, sipping, flicking. As Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times in 1979,

Wearing a faded blue sweatshirt over brown corduroy levis, Didion at 44 strikes anyone who sees her for the first time as the embodiment of the women in her novels: like Lily McClellan in Run River, she is strikingly frail (Didion is 5 feet 2, and weighs 95 pounds); like Maria in Play It as It Lays, she used to chain-smoke and wear chiffon scarves over her red hair; and like Charlotte in A Book of Common Prayer, she possesses an extreme and volatile thinness she was a woman with a body that masqueraded as that of a young girl.

Joan was cool to the touch and helped paint a picture of a new Californian, the woman girl or girl woman who was more interested in standing in the corner at a party than in the center of it. Before her eyes, swingers, rockstars, drunk struggling and non-struggling actors soaked up 1960s and 70s reverie, while just outside the tall, wide glass windows, coyotes stalked the Hollywood Hills, traipsing through Beachwood Canyon as lights blossomed below. Bret Easton Ellis pays homage to the same coyotes in Less Than Zero, a book that borrowed heavily from Play It as It Lays detachment, malaise, the time we spend driving L.A.s wonderland of on-ramps and off-ramps, back alleys and city streets, afraid, apparently, to merge.

Like so many, myself included, Ellis tried to capture and emulate the mysterious drama of Didions prose, sun bleached, languorous yet taut. How can one write about L.A. without veering into her territory? She knew L.A. like the back of her hand. Not satisfied with Bukowskis one-trick-pony show of low-lifes, Didion moved through Los Angeles seeking the complete picture, from Malibu to the Ralphs in Hollywood.

Each piece of Joans writing was in service of a larger narrative, this story of the United States, often using California as microcosm for our American ailments. She looked through and under L.A.s facades, revealing the forces that shaped them:

Outside the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica a hard subtropical rain had been falling for days. It scaled still more paint from the faded hotels and rooming houses that front the Pacific along Ocean Avenue. It streamed down the blank windows of unleased offices, loosened the soft coastal cliffs and heightened the most characteristic Santa Monica affect, that air of dispirited abandon which suggests that the place survives only as an illustration of a boom gone bankrupt, evidence of some irreversible flaw in the laissez-faire small business ethic.

That she included women as prominent figures in this narrative, made her writing all the more meaningful, radical.

Babitz was a child of Los Angeles, born to a film composer father and a painter mother. She wrote in a tone that in many ways was the opposite of Didions, even though they shared a love of Los Angeles. If Joan was in the corner smoking and observing, Eve was in the mix, laughing loudly, flirtatiously, but always with a sense of ownership. There is joy and levity in Babitzs writing. She makes you feel like her newest best friend. Despite her insider status she refuses to be a snob, and her openness about the pageantry of Angeleno society is one of her most endearing qualities. She hits the ground running on the first page of Slow Days, Fast Company:

This is a love story and I apologize; it was inadvertent. But I want it clearly understood from the start that I dont expect it to turn out well. Im not going to give you an although I am wry and world-weary, me and Sam have found the answer together which only we share and you cant come in except to press your nose against this book. Its bad luck for one thing. I know this lady who just made a fortune writing about her uplifting redemption, practically, from Falling In Love, and while she was on tour promoting the paperback the light of her heart ran into the night and disappeared off the face of the earth. Besides its being bad luck to even whisper that youre happy, its also not nice basically.

I discovered Babitzs writing after Id aged out of her characters demographic and was taken back immediately to my early 20s, before moving to New York, when I was still a drug-snorting hottie, hanging off bar stools. In those twilight years after high school and before a DUI that forced me to get serious about my future, life was a kaleidoscope of ascending hillsides viewed from jalopies into which my friends and I were stuffed like sardines, dressed in a feathery color wheel of thrift store clothes Id stolen from my job as the manager at the Buffalo Exchange on La Brea. Stumbling into crowded kitchens in search of cigarettes, booze, and warm bodies; shouting into cell phones the size of dildos at the end of the night to see if a friend was going to wake up next to a future member of Maroon 5 or was puking in a bush nearby and needed assistance getting back to the car.

Babitz had done it all, predicted it all. She makes you her uninvited plus one. She introduces you to her many lovers, opens her lingerie drawer and says, dont worry, only ignorant people think sex is taboo. I once wrote a short story about the artist Ana Mendieta that in many ways was influenced by Babitzs insider voice, in which I announced that having big tits at 13 was like getting a chainsaw for Christmas and being asked to carry it around in a bra: I had power but no idea how to turn it on. Babitz understood and utilized this power, as in the famous photograph of her and Duchamp. She understood that women had been reduced to objects and that their bodies were deemed consumables, like products at Ralphs, and yet she did not allow shame or fear to be deciding factors in her life. Instead she openly embraced her sexuality, leaning hard into her eras bohemian ethos. The L.A. women in her books defied classification.

Didion, too, had a knack for attracting the most fascinating and happening people into her orbit. Harrison Ford, still a carpenter, arrives at her home in Malibu to do renovations, stays three months, then explodes into a galaxy far, far away. In Slouching, Joan stumbles upon Sarah, a small child on Haight Street whos just dropped acid, licking her white-lip-sticked lips and turning pages in a childrens book. In a telling scene in her nephew Griffin Dunnes documentary The Center Will Not Hold, he asks Joan what it was like to stumble upon a child on acid. After some thought, replies, It was gold. Even Joans metaphors mine the depths of Californian consciousness.

Didion was a pure Californian, a fifth-generation descendent of manifest destiny. She wrote herself into the fabric of her larger California narrative. Even when she wasnt on the page, her persona loomed over it. When she was present, she was honest about her failings to compartmentalize, realizing that what she had created was in some ways a monster. From Where I Was From:

I began trying to find the point of California, to locate some message in its history. I picked up a book of revisionist studies on the subject, but abandoned it on discovering that I was myself quoted, twice. You will have realized perhaps by now (a good deal earlier than I myself realized) that this book represents an exploration into my own confusions about place and the way in which I grew up, confusion and misunderstandings so much a part of who I became that I can still to this day confront them only obliquely.

Although Babitz stayed mostly within the confines of L.A. County, her pages were full of striking insight. In Eves Hollywood, she announces:

Culturally, L.A. has always been a humid jungle alive with seething L.A. projects that I guess people from other places just cant see. It takes a certain kind of innocence to like L.A., anyway. It requires a certain plain happiness inside to be happy in L.A., to choose it and be happy here. When people are not happy, they fight against L.A. and say its a wasteland.

Despite almost unanimous critical acclaim there is the notion that what Babitz did was more akin to unadorned autobiography than fiction, which negates her very real and profound talent as an imaginative author. She had a gift for uncovering the secret desire for Los Angeles, specifically Hollywood, within its fiercest critics, despite their continual denouncement of the place as culture-less. In fact, she illustrated that Los Angeles was a continuous center of culture, one that had more pull then the Woody Allens of the world were willing to admit. Just as men wanted Babitz, the snobs wanted Hollywood, and she wasnt going to let them forget it.

In 2018, I was finishing edits on my novel Fade Into You, and it was time to accumulate blurbs. My editor asked if Id put together a wish list of authors. Eve Babitz was first on my list. She had opened a space for unabashed smart girls to exhibit their cleverness without putting on airs. As a fellow Angeleno and former wild child, my affinity for her was beyond measure. After long awaiting a response to our inquiry, her publicist informed us that Eve was no longer doing blurbs, but that she wished me and the book well. That quiet blessing was enough.

Each writer tells a story of a changing culture, of changing attitudes toward women, and their influence can be found everywhere. Not content to let stereotypes dictate the female experience on the page, Babitz opened her lingerie drawer so that I could write, and write about the Lolitas of page and screen on my own terms. Didions contribution to the world of letters is indisputable. Having helped usher in what was then called New Journalism, and has now become the Long Form status quo. That fact that we readers are so accustomed to the style of writing Didion helped pioneer speaks volumes to the force of her talent. Disaffected heroines outside in the pool chaise, plotting and painting their toenails; whip-smart journalist driving full-speed through a headlit Mojave, cigarette hanging from a pair of red lips, a soft pack and hardboiled egg by their side. Restless women in the sunshine, with time aplenty. A sports car and a highway out of town, and always coming home; circling.

Nikki Darling holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from USC. Her debut novel,Fade Into You,was published by Feminist Press in 2018, and is currently being adapted into a scripted series. She is completing her second book,The Call Is Coming From Inside the House. She lives in L.A. with her cat, small dog, and partner.

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Diet Coke and a Game of Chess: The Radical Work of Eve Babitz and Joan Didion - lareviewofbooks

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