Why Americans are more likely to lose weight in October

We're not in the army now.

No, it's not the stress of watching your team fail to hit in the post season (come on, Phils!) or the increased hiking activity to look at fall foliage and walks through organic pumpkin farms. It's committing to kick single use disposables out of our kitchens.

So many of the changes that make a difference for our planet also make a difference for our own, individual health, especially when it comes to food, which is why we’re happy to support (and take the pledge for!) Unprocessed October. Led by Andrew Wilder at Eating Rules, it’s a month long challenge to see if you can go without eating anything processed. Everyone has a different understanding of what processed food actually is, and Wilder uses the “Kitchen Test.” Here’s what the kitchen test says:

Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available, whole-food ingredients.

In other words, if you could theoretically make something with items in your pantry or available at your super market, then it’s fair game. But if the ingredients list on the package calls for anything multi-syllabic that you can’t easily get your paws on, then it’s a no-go until November.

What’s great about this pledge isn’t just that it’s practically guaranteed to give you more energy, make you loose weight, and increase your appeal to the opposite sex (imagine that: a healthy diet sounds a bit like something you can buy for three easy payments of $19.95). No. It’s also guaranteed to decrease your consumption of single use disposables. No more chip bags or cans, no more frozen waffle plastic bags or boxes, no more cans of "soup."

The American environment and the American waistline both face challenges of an unprecedented nature, and the connection between the two is strong.  We developed means of extending the shelf life of food during wartime (see poster above for proof), but I would be willing to wager that it was the application of plastic and other petrochemicals to increasingly greater uses after the war that led to the proliferation of packaged junk foods.

And because our health is so closely tied with the environment's, when we kick one bad habit, we come closer to kicking both!