I generally eat very healthy.

Diane this is the promotional poster of McDonalds, right?

I can agree with this. The last few weeks have been absurdly busy for me, and as a result I've been eating fast food more and I can certainly notice a difference in my energy levels and in my ability to hear as I'm playing. I need to get back onto being more disciplined there.

Aren't we all making a mountain out of a molehill?

Diet isn't rocket science - it's not even quantum mechanics, or string theory.

It's just eating what homo sapiens were designed (by your favorite deity, or by evolution, depending on your predilection...) to eat - i.e. 'real' food that's real and looks real, not something churned out by a huge machine (or several machines) which bears no resemblance to what it was fed with.

Do any other animals eat processed junk (other than our pets, and what we choose to feed them with)?

+1

Not really piano related, but just a point of information here. Butter has a very small amount of naturally occurring trans fat, but the really high amounts are in artificially processed fats like margarine and other foods with hydrogenated oils.

Some manufacturers have tried to avoid trans-fats by replacing the disgusting hydrogenated stuff with palm oil (especially in USA, where everything has to be labeled), but don't forget palm oil is saturated and works the same way as lard on your blood vessels.....

The thing is, eating well for a healthy lifestyle and eating to strengthen the mind to make playing the piano easier are not always a match. For instance,
meal plan 1:
Breakfast: whole wheat bread with peanut butter, glass of milk, orange.
Lunch: yogurt with banana and mango, peppermint tea
snack: raisins, nut and seed mix
Dinner: Pork chop, steamed cauliflower, baked potatoes, glass of red wine; pumpkin pie.
Extra supplement. daily vitamin

Meal plan 2:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with blueberries, cinnamon , vanilla and honey; Decaf coffee.
Lunch: Omega 3 egg sandwich with whole wheat bread,carrots and spinach; green tea.
snack: walnuts, sunflower seeds with fresh strawberries; glass of almond milk.
Dinner: salmon with almonds, broccoli, whole grain brown rice; Jasmine tea with 80% dark chocolate.
Extras: b complex vitamin(25mg), zinc supplement,omega 3 supplement, cranberry supplement, vitamin D. Sage leaf before bed.

Meal plan 3:
Breakfast: Honeynut cherrios with milk and banana; two coffees
Lunch: kraft dinner , diet soda
snack: cookies,chocolate raisins, sport drink
Dinner: T-bone steak , mashed potatoes, and canned cream corn; ice cream , 2 glasses white wine.

So there's three meal plans. The first one is healthy and will help a bit, but there are no real mind building foods in the list. The second meal plan if full of mind strengthening foods, the brains supper foods. I make sure I eat the foods in Meal plan two, 2-4 times a week, and I really notice a huge difference in my playing, HUGE!!!. Meal plan three, in my own personal experience, has created learning and memory problems and helped create injuries and pain while playing. Now, playing is pain and injury free, and learning is easy.
Google the foods in meal plan three along with tag words: research,prevention, university, cancer, alzheimer's, dementia, memory,diabetes. You will notice a positive pattern.
Then google the foods in meal plan three along with the words sugar, processed food, alcohol and hearing loss to the tag list and you will find they are linked to the cause of the above mention diseases.

Foods that help with ________

motor skill and proprioception sense: strawberries, cranberries
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkUir-ne7tg

Stage fright and perspiration:
sage, raw garlic
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030901091846.htm
http://www.prevention.com/term/new-herb-ease-anxiety
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-best-tips-for-controlling-cortisol.htm

memory: salmon, walnuts, strawberries
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110327191040.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106122843.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307145825.htm
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/hea...O6sJ/story.html


Foods that slow us down(mentally), improve sight reading, help focus:
cranberries, strawberries; Flaxseed and almond milk drink.

Prevent hearing loss:
carrots,zinc supplement, Ginkgo Biloba
http://american-hearing.org/disorders/tinnitus/

Love of playing: 80% dark Chocolate

Muscle joint strength: Brazil nuts(one a day is all you need), raw garlic, spinach, zinc, strawberries(yah, strawberries are a musicians super food), vitamin D.


Fewer mistakes: strawberries, exercise, cranberries, ginkgo

thats it
Disclaimer, I am a guy on the internet, not your Dr. . Do some research into the foods above -pro's and cons before taking them.Don't overdose.


I added some links

I would like to point out that walnuts are high in good fat, not like butter
You can google that

Drinking water only when thirsty may be a bad idea for a musicians. A lot of musicians also sing a bit, the vocal chords require water, or they will get damaged. Drinking 6-8 glasses of FLUIDS is still recommend by some. Drinking 8 glasses of water + fluids a day may be overdoing it.

a little off-topic, but I was thinking years ago to take up martial arts.. maybe kung-fu? the precision and fine motor movements associated with it would seem to stimulate the area of the brain that is responsible for coordination..the martial arts and piano playing would seem to complement each other. just an idea though..

no input on diet, except moderation and balance.

Well, I love McDonald's "sausage Mcmuff & egg". and I have a "Burger King Whooper every Tuesday. It's just "fun" food . . . but my body has a mind of it's own!!! Oh yes it does. It's like a child that wants what it wants and I'm discovering it's selfish and doesn't have "my" interests at heart.

Just like practicing the piano takes discipline, so does my mind have to discipline my "crying baby body needs"

My body wants "chocolate" 24/7, it wants ice cream every day, cheese cake, chips, etc. it doesn't want to get on the treadmill, and it doesn't want to push weights. But . . . I force it to do things and as I said, it's a "fight" to the finish. I have my own personal reasons for this.

Anyways, treats are treats. Not everyday luxuries. I have to stop and think what is best for my body not the other way around.

I know there are a lot of Naysayers, but do you have any experience or research that disclaims the above.

It is clear to me that musicians really, really underestimate diet. Diet and exercise helps to prevent injury and hearing loss; improves memory, processing, proprioception sense and recall. This is a fact!!! Get your head out of the piano; do some research.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4ITy5ZuhB4

DAVE_250, the burden of proof is not for us to disclaim anything you state. The burden of proof is on you.

I could build a case that unicorns exist and are beneficial to my piano playing. I wouldn't ask you to disprove the existence of unicorns or their effect on my playing; the burden of proof would lie with me.

OMG, I suddenly remembered the Nanna's apple pies (already praised in another thread).

It is also responsible for mass deforestation and the destruction of endangered species natural habitats.

I have a friend who does kung fu and he claims it has also improved his practice. It's probably a mental discipline thing.

That is a point I alluded to earlier in this thread. What many fail to take into account, but certainly backed up by recent recommendations by dieticians, is that those of us who regularly eat fresh vegetables and fresh fruit - particularly the latter - are getting a larger quantity of beneficial liquids than we might originally think. Many vegetables are more than 50% water and some fruits are 60% to 70% water.

To the water, milk and (only) two cups of coffee per day that I drink, and to the cantaloupe, grapes, apples, bananas and pineapple that I eat daily (add or substitute the many fresh fruits that are available locally in the summer), if I were to add as well eight glasses of water, I'd never be able to be ten minutes from the nearest bathroom.

If one were to eat a wholesome diet for physical well-being and good health and then try to add all the supplementary foods that are reputed to increase mental capacity and acuity, I fear that the list would be so long that it would lead to confusion and/or over-kill.

As for MacDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, etc., etc., they would have been out of business years ago if they depended on the likes of me. I haven't been in one of them for decades nor do I plan to in the near future. Their food is the closest to tasty poison that I can think of.

Regards,

'Tasty' is debatable, 'poison' is not debatable. The book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser has some interesting -and most appetizing!- commentary on McDonald's, et al.

That said, the coffee at McDonald's (both in the US & UK) is rather good, if without the classier atmosphere of a Starbucks.

I was mainly talking about what happens when you cook oils to a high heat for a period of time. They change properties quite dramatically. That's why frying oil should be changed regularly. Butter heated up for 15-20 minutes is transfat city. But most fats will do this. Olive oil is slower to react so if you cook reasonably quickly, the transfats are negilible.

Well, there's no question that the Diet of Augsburg led to some really good church music.

I remember hearing somewhere that Van Cliburn was very selective about what he would eat before performing (white potatoes was one of the things to avoid).
Along with that, I have read before (maybe on this site?) that simple carbs are known to derail accuracy.

I agree that diet does affect how I play, but maybe not down to the specific foods, more just on a broad scale. I know if I eat poorly, I feel bad. If I feel bad, I generally am too lethargic to practice efficiently. If I am not practicing well...my playing suffers.

Well my lips are pure "poison" then cause I enjoy a Whopper at Burger King now and again! Poison Ivy is one of my favourite villians anyway. So I'm in good company. No worries of running into Bruce at a McDonalds or Burger King any time soon!

But it took about a hundred years for the true glories of Lutheran Church music to really kick in. The Thirty Years' War kept things musically in abeyance, but what a blossoming after its conclusion in 1648!

There were many great North German composers active prior to Bach's birth in 1685, not just Pachelbel, though IMO some of his organ works are absolutely delightful. And we all know about Bach's admiration for Buxtehude.

On a recent discussion on Dr.Oz TV show, the vastly entertaining worldly-wise doc interviewed a sassy bright thing (doctorate et al) who presented a theory (with proof) that body weight (and waist measurement amongst others)
is DIRECTLY related (and proportional) to HEALTH.

Fatties beware! ... also women prefer chocolates to sex!

I must be crazy to have bought her that box of chocolates.

Well that's convinced me.

If Dr. Oz lived in the US around 1900 he would have had no heart attack patients to work on. As long as people eat foods loaded with sugar, heart surgeons will always be in business.

(Fat is actually good for you ... but that's another long post.)

Whaaat...you've clearly got something wrong. It's Whopper Wednesday, not Tuesday...

Yes, well funny you should ask because every Tuesday when I'm enjoying my Whooper in Burger King, or is that my "Poison Whopper" in Burger King to Bruce, I'm thinking, Why am I here Tuesday instead of Whooper Wednesday?" Then I just forget the question and enjoy my burger.

Anyways, Tuesday became a "habit". That's the "short version" of how I got started going on TUESDAYS But if you want the "long version" I'll give it to you. Just ask.

I think it's kind of ironic that the "Bruce" in Batman doesn't get along with "Poison Ivy". Kind of a parallism between the "Bruce" here on pianoworld and I never saw eye to eye for some reason. And again, ...no need to comment . . . Bruce!

Diane, I used to have strong sugar cravings after a meal. I worked hard at cutting a lot of sugar out of my diet, but then I had these post meal sugar cravings that wouldn't stop. Today it's a different story, the sugar cravings are gone. I was doing some research on male testosterone levels, and this weightlifter's health article said to eat raw garlic to increase testosterone. I don't want to get man boobs when I get older, and I will try anything that's safe. So the next morning I ate two cloves of chopped raw garlic with a large glass of water before breakfast. That evening for the first time I had no sugar cravings after a meal or during the day, and it wasn't until three days later that I had a sugar craving. I don't know why it works , but it worked for me. If raw garlic sounds disgusting to eat alone, garlic pills may work.

Stawberries may also stave off sugar cravings.


"Strawberries contain substantial amounts of substances called ellagitannins and anthocyanins, which may help treat the hyperglycemia and high blood pressure associated with type 2 diabetes. Research published in the journals "Biofactors" and the "Journal of Medicinal Food" suggest that these substances can help reduce your blood sugar levels after you eat a starch-rich meal. They may also help break down the starches you eat. According to an article in "Nutrition Journal," these substances also have antioxidant properties that lowered cholesterol and risk of metabolic syndrome in a group of women. The National Diabetes Education Program recommends eating strawberries as part of a plan to increase fruits and vegetables and lower your weight. Weight control is an important part of managing diabetes; it can also help resolve pre-diabetes."



Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/351095-can-diabetics-eat-strawberries/#ixzz2EZAip2sL

Ha, as a fat guy, I can agree diet is very important, there are possible troubles if you become over weight to wrists and such, but also as mentioned eating unhealthy foods can hamper learning somewhat.

i don't think you're promoting very healthy diet. for some wheat or gluten rich foods are just as bad as sugar and red meat, and could cause inflammation and join pain, which i know first hand. the foods made of whole grain wheat flour are supposed to be 'healthy' according to FDA, but it is actually not true to many people.

milk isn't necessary to be healthy for some either especially non-organic one which is full of growth hormone and antibiotics which would make some sick or cause cancer. in fact, plant based milk such as almond would be a much better choice.

basically, be careful about what you eat, because it will either make you feel good or make you sick.