This question has been bopping around my head for several years now. Everyday, I watch a neighbour power up our hill, pedaling slowly on his e-bike. I know it's an e-bike because I've pedaled up this same hill and wheezed and plodded and ground along in first gear. Pedaling up the hill is not as easy as the e-bike makes it look.
I have a regular bike. Which, as of this writing... I still haven't taken down to the bike shop to get its tune-up. By this time of year... I would have done that already. But it always seem a less important task than everything else on my list.
And I wonder... if I had an e-bike... would I take it out more? Would I pedal off to Starbucks in the mornings instead of taking the car? How much would that affect our carbon footprint? Would I ride it enough to justify the costs? What if it got stolen?
All of this soul-searching has been triggered by a radio ad which said that the provincial government was offering up to a $1400 rebate on e-bikes that cost at least $2000. Ooohhh... that is almost too good to pass up. The rebate scales down based on your net income but... still...
In previous years, you could only get an e-bike rebate if you brought in your car through the scrap-it program. That seems to be gone... and now you can just get an e-bike rebate without turfing your car. So it is appealing.
Pros
I think of all the benefits...
I could go farther than I can on a regular bike
The hills won't affect me like they do on a regular bike
It will get me out and about more (theoretically)
I could even pop down to the grocery store for odds and ends without feeling guilty about using the car
I could even ride it in the spring and fall when it's inclement weather (neighbour dude does...)
Good for my health!
Cons
And the negatives...
How do you maintain an ebike? I have no idea...
What if the bike seat is just as uncomfortable as my regular bike?
Where to park it? The garden shed?
How to charge it? Run an extension cord from the house to the shed?
How to protect it? Will it be thievable?
I see that the negatives are mostly a list of questions. With a fair degree of uncertainty. That is what holds me back - all of these unknowns. I could find the answers to these questions fairly easily. Friends of ours on Gabriola Island have e-bikes and love them... They will have answers to a lot of these questions.
Regular Bike?
Or... do I just stick with my regular bike? Just bite the bullet and get it tuned up and get a saddle fitting? Presuming that the bike shop does that. Or just do little mini-bike rides until sore bum bones get used to the bike saddle.
Ack. Sometimes I wonder at my indecision. It's annoying! Just choose! Make a damn decision and go for it!
And just an FYI... e-bikes in the local shops are running at around $5000. Eek!!!
Ok... enough wiffle-waffling... I am going to take my regular bike down to the bike shop this afternoon. They are open until 6 pm... so I can walk it down in 30 min and walk back without it. I don't know if it fits into the back of the car but... whatever. I can walk down.
While I'm there, I'll see about the bike saddle and whether they do saddle fittings and figure out if my saddle works for me or if I should buy a new one. Heck... they might look at my bike which is... ooohhh... 30 years old... and decide it really needs to be replaced. WTH... will handle that when it comes to that moment.
Do you have an e-bike?? How does it work for you???
I'm writing this on a Monday morning and I'm dragging my butt around. I have this yucky fatigue that came on me yesterday. All my zip and energy that had been coming back in the week since I gave up sugar... vanished. I was doing so well! What the heck happened?
Well... I think I got glutened.
I know... gluten isn't a verb... but out in the Hashimoto and Celiac Disease world... it is. It describes the fatigue and brain fog that happens when you eat gluten.
And it's a direct correlation to what I ate and drank on Saturday... the day before the fatigue hit me like a brick wall. I had a beer around the campfire as we roasted some sausages at lunch time. And then I went out with a group of colleagues for an appy dinner and... I threw caution to the winds and had another beer (gluten) and then munched on several appies... all of which apparently had gluten.
The lady next to me was only eating the salad and when I asked why... she has Celiac Disease. But can't she eat the yam fries? Nope... because they are all fried in the same oil as the gluten appies... Great. But I thought to myself.. "Ah, it's just a bit of gluten"... and now I am apparently paying the price for this.
I keep bumping up against this and I keep thinking I can have a bit of gluten and be fine. But I don't think so. Every time I do this... I pay the price. My TSH was fine in October 2022, but by January 2023, it was out of range again. Why? Because we went on vacation to Mexico for 2 weeks over Christmas and I ate whatever I wanted... all sorts of things with gluten in them... lots of beer... lots of baked treats. It's a direct cause & effect.
I don't want to face this though! I really don't! It's just too hard right now to admit that I should be eliminating all of these things from my diet:
sugar
refined foods
gluten - wheat, barley, rye and maybe oats (they get contaminated)
beer and probably all alcohol (converts to sugar)
soy
dairy
eggs
legumes
And those are just the worst offenders. If I cut out the first 4 though... I'd probably see a marked improvement. But I'm really struggling with all of them. The thought of no sugar (ever), no junk food or sausages or bacon (ever), no cake (ever), no beer (ever)... just crushes me.
And I see the impact of all of those foods on me... when I let things slide, I pay the price. I can't keep ignoring that. But it's too hard on my body.
So, it's time to pull up my Big Girl Panties and grab the steering of wheel of my life away from my cravings. I can't keep giving in to them. The cost is too high. The benefits too low.
No, seriously, I hate tofu. I hate the texture of it. I hate the idea of it... soft, tasteless, dissolve in your mouth ickiness.
I am not a big fan of tofu.
I know I've eaten it because I've had lots of Thai food that has snuck tofu in under the radar. "Wait... was that a piece of chicken... that didn't feel like chicken... ick!". I never got to the point of doing a seek pick-out mission in my Pad Thai... not like I would do with mushrooms. I just tried to pretend it wasn't there...
And, going whole-food, plant-based... well... you know tofu and I were due to have a show-down. I know it's a great source of protein but I had also heard all sorts of horror stories about it mucks with your hormones and causes breast cancer. So... I kept a wide berth around tofu. We could just eat legumes... yes... lots and lots of legumes.
Last fall, we tried a meal delivery service and... one of their meals was sesame-crusted tofu. We thought... let's give it a try... it can't be that bad.
Just take a hunk of tofu, cut it in half horizontally... coat it with sesame seeds and fry it up. Easy... and it looked tasty on the picture (at left). Right?? Looks good, doesn't it! But... photos can lie...
As we tried our first bite of pillowy tofu... both of us looked at each other. "Umm... not the greatest... let's try another few bites." After two bites, my partner couldn't take it anymore. I think I made it halfway through my slab of tofu but... eventually even I had to admit defeat. We looked at the poor, sad tofu... then at each other and both agreed... "Let's go get take-out burgers". That was our one and only fail with that particular meal delivery service.
Fast forward nine months and we are trying another meal delivery service... one that offers animal-protein-free options (i.e. vegan). And... as part of that... they use a lot of tofu. We were a bit skeptical but... a friend of ours who eats plant-based had said that the trick with tofu is to cut it into cubes and then stir-fry it... make it nice and golden and crispy. This new meal delivery service seemed to use that method. So... we sucked up our courage and tried again.
The first meal we had from this new meal delivery service was a teriyaki stir fry with tofu... and... cue the music... it was amazing. We both licked our plates. What the heck?? It was easy to cook... and... it was yummy and, since it used extra-firm tofu, we could almost convince ourselves that it was a piece of well-cooked chicken. (see pic below) Yum!
We dove into tofu recipes with both feet and have tried different options... some from the meal delivery service and some from home.
Last week we made a Yellow Thai Coconut Curry with potatoes, carrots and tofu. It is one of our favourite meals from Thai restaurants and we thought... we'll try it at home, except, instead of chicken, we'll make it with tofu. It was seriously scrumptious.
Now... I know what you're thinking. Our massage therapist expressed the same concerns... tofu is bad. It mucks with your hormones and causes breast cancer.
No.
You would need to eat boat loads of tofu and drink tanker trunks full of soy milk to get those sorts of problems. In moderation (like all things), one or two servings of soy products (soy milk, tofu, edamame beans, etc) per day is beneficial. And, like most things, try and get soy in the least processed form... the more processed it is... the worse it can be (like all foods).
When I met with a dietician last fall, she recommended soy products for menopausal hot flashes. I asked her about the "dangers" of soy products and she told me what I just told you. For those interested, Runner's World has a nice overview of the whole soy debate. There are other articles out there but I liked this one because it was fairly comprehensive and accurate.
Now... the one thing with stir-frying tofu is... it has to be fried in oil... which isn't great so... we are going to pull back the reins of this method of consuming soy and restrict ourselves to once or twice a week. We still have our excellent stable to legume recipes and are going to treat stir-fried tofu recipes (like Yellow Thai Coconut Curry and Pad Thai) as treats... Sigh...
Did you know you can sauté without oil? I had no idea! The dietician at the hospital suggested this when I met with her last year. She showed me graphs and charts of all the different cooking oils and none of them are really healthy, especially when you are looking for a high-heat oil. And, no, coconut oil, despite all the advertising is NOT good for you... it has a ridiculous amount of saturated fat.
But... the idea of sautéing without oil had never even crossed my consciousness. Oil was just a necessary evil, I thought... Turns out, you can actually sauté with water. Yep... who knew? Just use small bits of water at a time (1 to 2 Tablespoons) and it works really well.
We cook a lot of curries and we usually start by sautéing onions. All we do is add a bit of water to the pan, let it heat up and then toss in the onions. As the water evaporates, just keep adding more water in little bits and keep stirring. It's cut down on our oil use drastically... at least for frying and stuff. We still use olive oil in salads because that has healthy fats, or so we are told.
What the heck is Traffic Light Eating? I asked the same question a few months ago when I came across the concept. It's really quite simple... Green Light foods can be eaten with wild abandon, Amber/Yellow Light foods should be minimized and Red Light foods... well, they should be avoided.
I kind of liked the little comment in the diagram at right: "Just like running red lights in the real world, you may be able to get away with it once in a while, but you wouldn't want to make a habit out of it." So true!
If we break it down a bit more...
Green Light Foods
These are unprocessed plant foods, as close to how nature made them as possible. Whole grains, beans, legumes, nuts, seeds, fruits, veggies, herbs and spices. Some green light diagrams also include eggs and lean meats in here, which is a bit confusing. Given how damaging animal protein can be to our bodies, I can see why they should be included in the yellow category.
Amber/Yellow Light Foods
These include a lot of processed foods, things like refined grains, burgers, fries, pancakes, hot dogs, pizza, sugary cereals, etc as well as unprocessed meats. This would also include dairy, eggs and meat and fish.
Red Light Foods
Here, we are into a lot of the oh-so-yummy things - soda, chocolate, chips, cookies, etc. and ultra-processed foods.
The thing that I noticed, as I reviewed different images of Traffic Light Foods is... things move around. As noted above... some plans have lean meat as a Green Light food while in others its an Amber Light food. Or burgers can be Amber or Red... Dairy moves around... Oil moves around... which really makes me wonder what Big Industry lobbies are behind these different schemes.
I found an article on The Washington Post that explains why Traffic Light Eating is not so black and white... or red and green. Which just makes me wonder if its a useful concept at all?
The image I've used above is from NutritionFacts.org, operated by Dr. Michael Greger (author of How not to Die and How not to Diet). He advocates eating whole food plant-based as much of the time as possible and dipping into the amber and red foods on occasion, but only if it helps to encourage eating the green light foods.
If sprinkling bacon bits on a salad helps you to eat the salad... then sprinkle away.
On the other hand... we made a choco-zucchini loaf the other day since we are starting to get buried under our super-productive zucchini plants. Flour, sugar, oil, cocoa powder and more than a cup of chocolate chips helped us to eat one cup of shredded zucchini. In this case... I'm not sure that eating all that red light stuff is helpful in promoting the consumption of one cup of zucchini... Greger has also published a short (7 minute) video about how he sees traffic light eating, which makes a lot of sense...
Traffic Light Food Labels
But there is another form of traffic light food... looking at the actual sugar, fat, salt, calorie content of the food. I've seen this more in the UK... not so much in Canada yet... although it is coming! The idea is that current nutrition labels on food are confusing to the general public. Who really has time to figure out what is healthy and not so healthy on a nutrition label... but... add in colours and put a summary on the front of the package and... it becomes much easier to figure out what is healthy and what is not.
So in the label at right... half a package of the product has really high saturated fat, low sugar and is moderate for salt, fat and calories. I would say... not a great food.
But then... who determines what is low, medium or high? I came across this chart from the UK which outlines how much fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt qualifies as low, medium or high.
But... me thinks that this is really only going to be applicable to processed foods... which, in general... are either Amber or Red Light foods to begin with. Sooo... is this helpful or not?
I mean... if I want a Kit-Kat... is a label like the one below really going to stop me? I guess.... maybe... If I have one once a week... That little two-finger Kit-Kat has that much saturated fat? What does a regular Kit-Kat have!!?
And then... we have something like this oh-so-yummy Starbucks Double Chocolate Chunk Brownie - pure decadent deliciousness... Starbucks has nutrition information on their site... but just a bunch of numbers... I know that 9 grams of saturated fat is probably in the red category (judging by the Kit-Kat numbers above)... But what about the rest? How does it fall in the grand traffic-light food labeling scheme? Sigh... As I feared... red light for Fat, Saturated Fat, Sugar and... yellow light for Salt (200mg Sodium = 0.55 grams of Salt). Luckily, I only have one of these a week but still... If I had to barrel past all those red lights every time I ordered one... I might reconsider it.
I decided to play around in Publisher and...created my own Traffic Light food label for a Starbucks brownie... if I saw this every time I ordered one... would I still order one every week?
It's a good question... In the UK, they seem to believe that front of label packaging helps people make healthier food choices... and... this might be the case here too... I'm going to guess that all whole food, plant-based items will get green lights across the board... the question will be... what will meat, dairy, egg and processed food packaging look like? Can't wait to see!
