By Pete Wells, The New York Times
In 1976, David Bowie moved to West Berlin. He would make some of the most original music of his career there, but that wasn’t why he went. He was trying to kick cocaine, which had taken over his life in Los Angeles, destroying his memory and producing round-the-clock hallucinations. “I felt like I’d fallen into the bowels of the earth,” he later said.
Obviously, there are major differences between a life-threatening drug addiction and the struggles of an overfed restaurant critic, although my former life could get downright hallucinatory at times. But one of the ways I pulled myself back to health was the same method used by Bowie and countless other people who decided to get clean: I changed my environment.
I needed to eat more of my meals somewhere that wasn’t a place filled with temptation and where nobody ever said no, least of all me. I had to replace all the habits that were slowly killing me with new ones that might keep me alive. The only way to do this, I knew, was to stay home while I taught myself how to eat again.
If I was going to clean up, I needed to start with the place where I lived. My apartment became my Berlin.
Master the Market
Lisa R. Young, an adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University and a nutrition consultant, tells clients that the success or failure of any diet is largely determined by what’s in the kitchen.
“Willpower is overrated,” Young said. “It doesn’t exist, really. What’s in your house is what you’re going to eat. By focusing on healthy foods that you could add to your plate, you’ll end up eating more of those and then you’ll cut out the cookies, just naturally.”
To turn my Brooklyn home into a retreat where I could unlearn my self-sabotaging behaviors, I had to look a few blocks away, to the stores where I shopped for groceries.
I became a regular at the food co-op I’d joined as an experiment during the pandemic. The store was small and patchily stocked, with an emphasis on brown rice and dried beans. The refrigerated cases were so weak they barely kept lettuce and herbs cool. Every week, a different section of the floor seemed ready to cave in. But the prices were a lot lower than at my corner grocery, and that made a difference now that I was eating at home most nights.
It turned out that this scrappy little co-op, with its faint aroma of a 1970s commune, is ideal for somebody trying to remake his diet. It is full of things I wanted to eat more of. The overworked produce section is stuffed like a Tetris grid with interlocking bunches of greens and baskets of roots. An entire wall is taken up by plastic bins filled with almonds, unsweetened papaya and other dried fruit, lentils in a surprising range of colors, and grains that seem to be inviting me to take my cooking in new directions: fonio, millet, amaranth.
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It’s easier for me to walk past a basket of free kittens than to pass up a bargain on perfectly good produce. Wilted kale is as close as I come to an impulse buy at the co-op, though. I try not to shop hungry, which history shows will result in a basket full of cider doughnuts. No, I stalk the aisles like a cold-blooded assassin whose targets include persimmons and ginger tea. I walk in with a list and try to stick to it, although I might work an attractive squash that catches my eye into my plans.
Now, after pulling the makings of dinner out of this store hundreds of times, I can walk into a bigger, gaudier supermarket and see the bones of my food co-op hidden inside. I can head straight to the canned white beans, the bags of barley, the chartreuse fractals of romanesco. (And right there, I’ve got the makings of a filling soup built to withstand the cold northern Italian winters of Friuli.)
And I know which aisles to avoid. This is a strategy known as shopping the perimeter, because most supermarkets display the least-processed foods — vegetables, dairy, meat and seafood — along the outer walls, while stacking the Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the interior aisles. By sticking to the perimeter, I can strip-mine the good stuff out of a food environment that’s loaded with bad ideas.
Program the Kitchen
When I get home, clutching my chia seeds, I have another food environment to clean up — my kitchen. I have no radical new ideas about putting food away, but I do have some tricks.
Fruits that will quickly collapse in a wet puddle of mold, like raspberries, have to be stored in plain sight, either on the counter or at eye level in the refrigerator, where I’ll come along in an hour or two and think, “Ooh, berries!” (This is what magicians call forcing a card.)
Produce that should last a few days is written down on a list that I stick to the refrigerator door, where I’ll see it every time I think about my next meal. Radishes, cucumbers and small carrots, which will keep for a while, go into a small, clear bag in the crisper drawer to be made into salads or antipasto plates.
The millet, popcorn, red lentils and other bulk ingredients are lined up along a shelf on the freezer door, so they won’t disappear into the tundra. Pistachios, sardines and dates are stuffed into a crowded cabinet. (Together with a hard-cooked egg, the sardines and radishes make a handy lunch.)
The point of all this strategic resource deployment is to surround myself with non-sabotaging snacks and a few simple, intelligent meals before I’m actually hungry.
Corby Kummer, executive director of the Food and Society program at the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit effort to make food systems healthier and more equitable, said that what I had done so far was nice for me but would be extremely challenging for many people. The average American, he said, would have an easier time eating sensibly if supermarkets offered a greater variety of foods that are more wholesome, less processed, easier to prepare and more affordable. Like other nutrition experts, he believes that the best way to help large numbers of people eat better would be government action to control what food manufacturers are allowed to sell.
In the meantime, he added, it’s worth any effort you can make: “Changing your food environment is the single most important thing you can do for yourself.”
Redo Your Shopping List
— Whole grains, such as brown and black rice, millet, fonio and farro
— Dried beans, including colorful ones such as red lentils and cranberry beans
— Canned beans and fish, such as tinned sardines and mackerel
— Vegetables for salads and snacks, such as cucumbers, carrots, radishes and cherry tomatoes
— Long-lasting vegetables for cooked dishes, such as winter squash, kohlrabi and broccoli
— Fruit for salads and snacks, such as apples, mangoes, berries and citrus
— Other staples for easy meals and snacks, such as eggs, nut butter, unsalted nuts and hummus
A recipe for Broccoli, Barley and Cannellini Bean Soup. In the second part of a monthlong series, Pete Wells and experts say the easiest way to a better diet is to surround yourself with the right foods. Food styled by Spencer Richards. (Rachel Vanni/The New York Times)Recipe: Broccoli, Barley and Cannellini Bean Soup
This hearty broccoli soup, adapted from Marcella Hazan’s recipe in “Marcella Cucina” (HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), comes from Friuli, a region in northeastern Italy where barley is a favorite grain. It is Hazan’s version of a recipe traditionally made with cauliflower, and it is good that way, too, or made with romanesco. The high fiber quotient of the vegetables, beans and grains make it filling enough to serve as a light meal on its own. Instead of pearl barley, you can use hulled barley, which is even higher in fiber but takes longer to cook.
Recipe from Marcella Hazan
Adapted by Pete Wells
Yield: 4 servings as a main course, 6 as an appetizer
Total time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Ingredients
1/3 cup pearl barley Salt 1 head of broccoli (about 1 pound) 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving 1 1/2 tablespoons chopped garlic 1 cup cooked cannellini or other white beans (from a 15-ounce can), rinsed and drained 1 beef bouillon cube or 1 teaspoon beef stock concentrate Freshly ground black pepperPreparation
1. Put the barley in a large saucepan with enough water to cover by 3 inches and a large pinch of salt. Bring to a slow, steady simmer, then cover, and cook until the barley is fully tender, 30 to 45 minutes. Drain, saving the water in a bowl for the soup.
2. While the barley is cooking, detach the florets and any small leaves from the broccoli. Peel the main stems and the florets’ stems. Rinse the broccoli well.
3. Fill a large soup pot with water and bring to a boil. Add 2 tablespoons salt and the thick, main broccoli stems. (The salt is to keep the broccoli green and it will not make it too salty.) Cook for 7 or 8 minutes, then add the florets. When the water returns to a boil, cook for another 10 minutes or so, then drain. Chop the broccoli rather fine and set aside.
4. Put the olive oil and garlic in the soup pot, turn on the heat to medium, and cook, stirring frequently, just until the garlic turns a deep ivory, about 1 1/2 minutes.
5. Add the broccoli and cook for 2 or 3 minutes, turning it over from time to time to coat it well. Add the cannellini beans and cooked barley and stir once or twice.
6. Add enough of the barley cooking water to cover by at least 2 inches, using fresh water if you need more. Put in the bouillon cube and several grindings of pepper, and stir for 15 or 20 seconds. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 5 minutes. Taste and correct for seasoning. Serve with a trickle of olive oil in each bowl.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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