"read the book 'how to eat to live' by elijah muhammad/ it's a brown paperback/ for anybody/ either white or black"

Actually, this blog post is not about the Elijah Muhammad classic but the much more recent book Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman which I happened to pick up at a used bookstore last weekend and am starting to experiment with. The concept behind the book is fairly simple. Eat lots of good food. And the way Dr. Fuhrman measures the quality of food is in terms of nutrients / calories. More specifically, he recommends a plant-based diet with lots of green leafy vegetables, other nutrient-rich vegetables and whole fruits; supplemented with beans, legumes, nuts and whole grains and sparing use of other foods. I've been pesco-vegetarian for years, I literally don't remember the last time I ate red meat. So mostly the new plan means I'm trying to cut out the fried food and eat more fruits and salad. We'll see how it goes.

what happens in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen...

I'm currently in an extremely carnivorous (not vegetarian-friendly) city and I think it will be much harder to eat halal. Up until now, I've been able to avoid meat almost completely and would only eat meat if it was zabiha and a Muslim friend was specifically inviting me to a homemade meal. (I wouldn't go out of my way to eat meat). But now it seems like being vegetarian would mean eating salad all the time so I think I'm going to supplement my diet with seafood. I'm basically Hanafi so I'm still thinking about how shellfish is going to fit into all that.

Another consideration is if I go out to eat, even if I order the veggie burger or the grilled fish, I don't really know what else was cooked in the same wok or grill. In my previous location I knew how the food was being prepared so that was only an occasional passing thought, but now I'm eating out all the time so it is more of an ongoing concern. At the moment I'm thinking "what happens in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen" (or else I'll be left with eating salad all the time). Hopefully I'll be able to transition to a situation where I'm doing almost all my own cooking eventually.