Chicken, Buffalo Wings

The low-fat parts of farm fowl, such as skinless chicken and turkey breast, are good in modest quantities. You should reduce consumption of other parts as much as possible. All parts of duck and goose are fine. Wild birds such as pheasant, grouse, and pigeon are fully conforming.

A suitable choice for lunch is a mixed salad, and an appropriate quantity might be 12 oz. Weigh foods until you are used to estimating the quantities by eye— it's larger than you are used to. Get in the habit of thinking that a salad is often in two parts: The salad vegetables, comprised uniquely of foods from Food Group 3 (Non-starchy Vegetables), and some additions of protein-rich foods from Food Group 6 (Meat, Poultry, Eggs, and Fish). You can add tuna or chicken breast, for example, to the salad or eat as a side dish. Use a simple homemade vinaigrette of mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, and vinegar.

Eating in fast-food restaurants is a little harder. Find a salad, if you can; discard the packet of salad dressing, unless it is simple oil and vinegar. Consider carrying a bottle of your own vinaigrette. Or eat the all-day breakfast: Eggs with tomatoes and mushrooms (without bread or roll) are acceptable, but avoid the bacon, sausage, hash browns, toast, waffles, syrup, and muffins. It is not ideal to eat the processed meat in fast-food restaurants, but if you must, order the burger (no cheese) or grilled chicken sandwich and throw away the bun.

Government authorities allow meat packers to inject saltwater into products like ham, bacon, and chicken breasts. You do not need the salt and you might object to paying up to 25 percent of the price just for water. Take your fine reading glasses with you to the supermarket (even health food stores are not necessarily safe) and read the ingredient labels. Avoid the bad carbohydrates, shy away from products that have lengthy ingredient lists, and avoid oils and fat additives, particularly animal fats and hydrogenated fats.

Chickens would normally lay only about 170 eggs per year. With clever feeding, suitable lighting, and other stimulation, they now average 240 eggs per year. The ambition is to increase this to 700 eggs per year by the addition of sex hormones to speed up the chicken's egg-production cycle. They are fed dyes to make their yolks bright yellow, they are dusted with insecticides against parasites, and fed antibiotics to stop them from getting sick in the crowded conditions.

At the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), meat is the term applied to the flesh of domesticated mammals, such as cattle, pig, and sheep. More conventionally, this is known as "red meat," which is the designation used here. Similarly, "game" refers to the flesh of any wild land animal, such as wild boar or pheasant. "White meat" refers to flesh taken from domesticated birds, such as chickens, and "seafood" refers to fish and shellfish. We will look at both wild and domesticated sources of animal products. The USDA does not include certain classes of animal foods that were common in our ancestors' diet— the "exotic" categories of reptiles, worms, insects, and gastropods (snails and slugs).

Duck and goose consumption is minimal compared to chicken and turkey. Domestic ducks are descended from a hybrid of the Muscovy duck domesticated by Incas in Peru and the mallard duck domesticated by the Chinese some 2,000 years ago. Duck raising is practiced on a limited scale in most countries, usually as a small-farm enterprise, although large flocks of duck are bred in some areas of England, The Netherlands, and the United States.

Turkeys are native to large parts of North America. The Aztec of Mexico and the Zuni Indians of the American Southwest were the first to domesticate them. In 1519, the Spanish brought the Mexican species back to Europe. In 1621, the Pilgrims were able to put hunted wild turkey on the Thanksgiving table in New England. It was not until after World War II that turkeys were raised for meat on a wide scale. They, like chickens, are raised intensively in large covered sheds where they are crammed in so closely that they hardly have room to fall over. Their meat is now almost as cheap as chicken and American turkey consumption has quadrupled too, going from 3.5 pounds (boneless) per person annually in 1946 to 14 pounds annually in 2004.

( . . . ) wildfowl and wild fish are just fine. Poultry, particularly chicken and turkey, tend to be fattier and contain more of the unhealthy fats. The breast (white meat) of the bird is the best, when it has the skin and fat removed, and free-range chickens tend to be leaner and healthier. Duck and goose are also fatty birds, but their fats are semi-liquid at room temperature, indicating a low saturated fat content.

What are acid-forming foods? Not foods that taste acidic, but rather the ones that after digestion and metabolism have the effect of acidifying the body. They are foods that contain sulfur, phosphorus, and chlorine— found chiefly in proteins like meat, fish, eggs, and cheese. For example, bland roast chicken is one of the most acidifying foods around. Starches like bread, flour, pasta, and cereals are also acid forming.