Whyizzit that "Healthy Cooking" recipes have to contain so many outside the supermarket ingedients?

I have an even dozen cookbooks and health related books that contain recipes for delicious meals that the writers claim are easy to make in a short time. However, when one looks at the ingredients list, you find stuff used in the recipe that even the most exhaustive pantry would not contain. I always wonder, "If I leave this out, will it change the taste very much? Will it ruin the dish? Is it rteally necessary, or is it just something thrown in to get you to buy a product that the author promotes on his/her web site?"
     As a result, I have passed over the majority of the recipes I have even if the flavor profiles appeal to me. If I like a particular combination, I may try my own spin on it using most of the ingredients and proportions in the recipe. I believe a recipe is not a scientific formula and should contain only what it really needs. Most people's palates are not so sophisticated that they need a bunch of exotic ingredients that cannot be reasonably found on the shelves of most grocery stores. If yours is, go for it!
     Not everyone lives within a few miles of a health food store or farmers market though those things are beginning to proliferate. I am seriously considering a cookbook of my own based on what I have just said. If a book tells me to incorporate an ingredient for a specific purpose like boosting its fiber content, can't I use some leftover quinoa instead of the more exotic (and expensive) fiber powder. Doesn't that do the same thing? Does it affect the taste? Maybe it does, but is it enough to ruin the recipe? Not if the other ingrdients have strong flavor profiles.
     The way I see it, the problem is that people do not have the cooking skills that were required a few generations back. Fast food and packaged junk have become a way of death promoting easy-way-out living.  Since I know how to cook, I can freely make substitutions without drastically changing the taste of whatever I am cooking. Americans need to get back to basics and learn how to cook.

My friend Kevin

The old saying is: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink." That pretty well describes my relationship with Kevin. Here is a guy who is 15 years younger than me who has had multiple heart attacks, stents implanted, and with a pacemaker that recently saved his life yet resists living a healthy lifestyle. He is overweight, diabetic, and determined not to make any significant changes. His cardiologist has told him to move, but his fat ass stays glued to his chair or he lays in bed. He treat the insulin needle that he injects into his stomach as the magic solution to his excesses.
The most frustrating thing about him is that he is extremely intelligent and knows what I have tried to get him to do is only in his best interests. I have begged, cajoled, and pleaded with him to do something by way of exercise and diet, but it simply fails to have any effect. I thought that the heart eproblem that put him in the hospital a week ago would have awakened him, but I can see no difference. I am at my wits end! He is my friend, and I don't want to lose him, but neither can I find a way to motivate him. I realize that he has to come to that conclusion on his own. If a near fatal heart episode didn't do it, what chance have I?

I exercise, why can't I lose weight?

I have been asked that question numerous times by friends who know I have lost 130 pounds and am continuing to lose even more. Many of them are fairly active people who exercise faithfully believing that is the answer. The truth is all the exercise in the world is not going to take off an ounce, if you don't eat right.
     The Standard American Diet is stacked against us. Americans, for the most part, have fallen prey to the slick advertising that convinces us that one packaged product or another is going to give us the healthy nutrition we want by putting it first into the microwave then into our mouths. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have heard the LOW FAT mantra for decades, and the simple truth is we need fat in our diet. Our cells are made of fat, including cholesterol of which our brains are made. What we don't need is sugar in any of its many forms which packaged foods producers put in to replace the fats they have removed. When they take the fat out, they take out the flavor, so they use sugar to put flavor back in.
     Sugar is twenty times more addictive than cocaine and works on the same receptors in our brains as the drug. That is why the cravings for sweets and starches are a by product. Our primitive ancestors only got sugar one way. By eating natural sources like fruits and berries. And it was a seasonal thing. Those items were only available during the limited growing season that produced them in the area in which they lived. Not so today. Fruits, even exotic ones, are available all year long through international transportation. But fruits are good foor us, isn't that so? Yes, fruits can give us needed vitamins and minerals,fiber, and phytonutrients if they are eaten in their natural form, not made into fruit juice drinks sold inbottles. They can be as bad as soft drinks that are loaded with sugar, or even worse, High Fructoe Corn Syrup.
     The biggest culprit is high fructose corn syrup that is cheaper than sugar and twenty times sweeter. That is why it is used extensively in the soft drink and fast food industies. Did you knw that sugar and salt are added to the french fries you get at the local McDonalds or Burger King? Did you know that they have scientists working for them to find new combinations that will act on the addictive areas of our brains so we will get a high when we eat their laboratory created concotions and lure us back for more. The fast food industry is not alone. General Mills, Kraft, Post, and every other  manufacturer of packaged trash you find on super market shelves does the same thing. Why do you think our children are becoming obese at earlier and earlier ages. Why is ADD and ADHD on the rise. Add in Autism and food allergies and the picture becomes more clear. Do you think the cause might be their constant diet of quick and easy foods we shove in front of them? Perish the thought!