Book “Eat Like a Pig, Run Like a Horse” subtitled “How Food Fights Hijacked Our Health and the New Science of Exercise” by Anastacia Marx de Salcedo
The premise of the book is that your health isn’t affected by what you eat (and weigh) anywhere near as much as cardiovascular fitness; in other words, a sedentary lifestyle is the fundamental problem.
The reference to “food fights” refers to the idea popularized by Ancel Keys, et.al in the 1950s and 60s that low fat (and in particular, eliminating saturated fat) diet is the key (pardon the pun) to good health have been largely discredited.
For our purposes here, she mostly personally talks about exercise as in running…
Whenever I can, I do my errands as my daily run. I go to the bank on my neighborhood circuit with checks to deposit zipped into my back pocket of my Lycra capris. I lope the mile to the branch post office, wait in the inevitable line, and order sheets of beautifully decorated stamps, then trot through the city streets clutching my glassine envelope. I sprint to Whole Foods, a cloth grocery bag clutched under my arm, then stagger the half mile back home with it brimming with four packs of 365 morning buzz coffee, a half gallon of milk, and two baguettes. And when I have medical appointments I jog to one of the two Network health centers within a 2-mile radius… p.139
I do something similar, but using my bike; I live in a suburban setting that is likely significantly more spread-out than where the author lives (Boston).
It just kindof annoyed me that she doesn’t call out what seems obvious to me: car lifestyle and its attendant land-use choices has more-or-less destroyed the will of the vast majority of Americans to do something like this.
Some random thoughts…
the book was loaded with fascinating stories regarding lab rodents, the man vs. horse race, bat physiology, worm/parasite (“helminths“) infections. The work of Katherine Flegal was central regarding the overweight vs fitness idea.
Only time will tell but she sees a dark alliance between the way research is being performed (e.g. shouting down Flegal’s statistical research) and there’s a sort of push presumably coming from pharma to have obesity (or even overweight?) declared a disease; that will open the door to requiring insurance/gov’t to pay for expensive drugs for the masses (the majority, 70%!, are obese or overweight)… but of course, simply losing weight won’t make people fit.
Kudos on bringing the impact of social lifestyle on public health for discussion. It’s easy for this layman to connect the dots between how we get around, to obesity and complications resulting from it, including diabetes and heart disease. It begins with choices we make to drive our kids to school, to drive ourselves to work, to shop, to worship, to play, and to anywhere we go, regardless of distance or weather conditions. Some of them are driven by our choices to live where pedestrian and bicyclist safety are less than optimal – no sidewalks, no protected bike lanes, little or no enforcement of public safety laws, high speed arterials too wide to cross safely, abundant parking lots and drive-throughs, etc.
I’m not sure it matters. I started commuting by bicycle in the fall of 1971 and rode at least twice a week for the next 45 years. For a couple of decades, I rode 5K to 6K per year and did all the long-distance and hilly rides. These included the Salt River Canyon, Answer to the Challenge, and the 252-mile, one-day Cochise County Cycling Classic.
In June 2024, I had open heart surgery, a triple bypass to replace the clogged arteries leading to my heart. My heart is still in great shape and I likely inherited a tendency for plugged arteries from my dad.