Archives for October 2008

I've created a static page that I can edit over time with worthwhile books about food, diet, cooking, exercise, and intermittent fasting. It's quite spare in terms of design, so it can only improve over time.

Thanks to Lisbon, Portugal reader Richard Carvalho for kindly compiling this for me.

I was going to try to design a poll, but let's just get on with it. Do your own personal poll; discipline yourself to create an actual list of probable causality, in oder of most likely to least likely. If you think the causation is likely multiple factors, then place two or more categories next to each other, like 1, 2, 3. In other words: in order of priority, of likely cause.

The most certain vector for approximating the level of heart disease is a data point relatively easy to obtain: death from myocardial infarction ("heart attack"). It's well established that heart attacks are typically caused in first-order by heart disease (generally used to describe a number of related conditions). Naturally, everyone is thusly focussed on second-order causes: what causes heart disease?

Let's take in some statistical data. Myocardial infarction was almost non-existent in 1910 (heart attacks were unheard of). By 1930, deaths from MI had escalated to 3,000 per year. That would constitute a thousands of percentage increase, approaching infinite, the lower the actual number of deaths in 1910. It began to taper off in terms of percentage increase, so that by 1960, there were 500,000 deaths from MI per year. That's very important to understand, as health authorities proclaim that their low-fat diet prescriptions are lowering the rate of death from heart disease.

Now, here's the changes in consumption of various food groupings from 1910 to some point in the recent past, like a few years ago.

• Food category A: 100% increase
• Food category B: Moderate decline 
• Food category C: 100% increase
• Food category D: 50% decrease 
• Food category E: 70% decrease 
• Food category F: 437% increase 
• Food category G: 280% increase 
• Food category H: 46% increase 

  Now, in what order would you assign most likely cause, A – H? I'll give you the actual food groups in a post tomorrow, as well as references.

Three hours and counting…

Do yourself a favor: click on the link, then click the "Food" link in the header, then click on each of the photos in the left sidebar. I can't believe this restaurant has never been on my radar. That's about to change.

Have you gone over there yet? What are you waiting for?

OK, now are you going?

This is a derivative of a dish my mom makes sometimes. Pretty simple. It's a head of cauliflower steamed, then breadcrumbs browned in butter pored over.

Instead, I chopped up the head and quick fried it in the wok in coconut oil. In a saucepan, I melted ghee (a couple tbsp) on low heat and added 2-3 heaping tbsp of almond flour (almonds ground to the consistency of flour or meal). Even on the low heat they browned to a nice dark pretty quickly. That's a whole head and a third, and Bea & I finished off all but 3 pieces, along with grilled jajapenio burgers from Whole Foods (amazing — try them).

Speaking of Whole Foods, here was my shopping run the other day. Notice the lack of processed foods, sodas, and junk in general. Do notice things like fresh sauerkraut (to go with the pork spareribs in the large brown package). The "beef" in the clear package is actually buffalo, with which I made a Thai mussman curry Friday evening to the astonished delight of Bea and a couple of friends.

He and his wife, eating a high fat, low-carb diet since 1962. See how he looks, now, at 72.

Despite following this shockingly high-fat diet for more than 40 years, Barry now weighs 6lb less than he did on his wedding day in 1957 when he tipped the scales at 11st 7lb.

He and Monica break every single diet diktat that has been trumpeted as “healthy eating”. And yet, here they are, trim, fit and full of beans, albeit metaphorical ones. How on earth do they do it? And where are the rest of us – eating piles of fruit and veg, and steering clear of cholesterol-laden butter – going wrong? After all, we’ve never been subject to so much education on good dietary practice, and yet prey to so many illnesses, ranging from diabetes to heart disease.

“Most people are eating in a way that is unnatural to us as a species,” says Barry, who holds a doctorate in nutritional science and has just written a book called Trick and Treat: How Healthy Eating Is Making Us Ill. “We’re a carnivorous species – our gut is identical to that of a big cat. Yet we’re encouraged to eat foods that have been padded out with modified starch and vegetable oils, and complex carbohydrates such as bread, pasta and rice, which have all been labelled healthy – but not the fatty meat that our body actually recognises.”

jimmy moore has a two-part podcast interview with Barry Groves.

Part I

Part II

Jimmy does a lot of work getting some really good interviews. You can subscribe to his podcasts at iTunes, and even access the vast array of past interviews. I like to listen to them in the car on long drives.

Sorry for the must & dust around here last few days. I have reader questions in email to get to, some reader food pics, and oodles of other stuff.

Have been very busy with another project, but I'm beginning to get a handle and so should be able to channel more energy to the blog very soon.

Thanks for the support and for the patience.

So, how much would you pay to make sure your neighbor doesn’t drink milk or cream in raw form, i.e., non-pasteurized or homogenized? How much? A few bucks a month? No?

I guess The Girly-Man Governor thinks otherwise, having recently vetoed popular, bi-partisan legislation (SB 201) that has the effect of making it even more difficult (AB 1735) than the already ridiculous level of compliance California’s two raw dairies had to go through in order to sell raw milk products to the 40,000 Californians who already enjoy them and have been enjoying them for years. I drank both raw cow milk and goat milk as a kid, and we made various products like butter and cottage cheese ourselves. We didn’t need anyone’s help, especially not from a girly-man (pdf).

I am returning Senate Bill 201 without my signature.

This bill weakens food safety standards in California, something I cannot support.

Translation: it removes onerous, unreasonable ”safety standards” designed for pasteurized milk, lobbied for by Big Dairy in California.

[…]

Based on fears with no basis in fact…

Now it ought to be the plain obvious truth that the baseless fear-mongering taking place is and has always been the hysterical fear mongering contra raw milk. So he’s a lying girly-man too; but, of course, he’s now a politician and he opens his moth, so nothing so surprising there.

I now consume raw milk from Whole Foods Market in pretty modest quantities and have been for the past several months, even though not strictly a paleo food. But I tollerate it very well and have no adverse effects; whereas, pasteurized milk sometimes makes my stomach and intestines churn for several hours. Never happens with the raw. There are two dairies, Organic Pastures and Claravale Farm. Whole Foods has both. I had been getting the Organic Pastures but they were out of whole on the last trip, so I got Claravale. Big, huge difference in taste, with Organic Pastures being so superior I can’t even describe it. Apparently, Organic Pastures are exclusively grass fed, whereas, Claravale uses organic feed (grains). Again: big difference. Here’s Organic Pastures’s Mark McAfeee describing his relationship with his customers. Looks to me like he cares a lot more about them than the Girly-Man, the Dairy Lobby, you, or anyone else. They’re doing just fine without anyone’s “help” or “protection.”

I wish both dairies well, and hopefully, more tax dollars aren’t put to work to “protect you.” Like this, where Mark Nolt, a farmer in Pennsylvania, gets hauled away in cuffs for selling raw milk products to his friends.

Just another day in the “Land of the Free,” as I like to say. But let me end on a note of magnanimous conciliation for governor Schwarzenegger: next time Big Dairy comes a callin’ for your periodic milking, you might consider applying some old fashioned Bag Balm. I understand it’s udderly fantastic and effective.

It's just hard to beat several million years of evolutionary adaptation, even accounting for the fine craftsmanship of Church's handmade English shoes (all the rage in France, when I lived there).

Nonetheless, just as I blogged in my entry Learning to Walk a few months back, barefoot or nearly so is best. I love my Vibram Five Fingers (which have been dubbed my "feet" by my wife; as in: "should I toss down your feet?") and I even walk just plain barefoot now and then. People tease me about the soles of my feet, often on display, and thoroughly black.

It's quite easy to get used to.

Matt Metzgar dug up a study, and guess what? Shoes increase stress on your knees and hips (pdf). He quotes a portion and I can personally attest to part of the speculation: "A final explanation of the biomechanical advantages of barefoot walking may be attributed to increased proprioceptive input from skin contact with the ground compared with an insulated foot contacting the ground." This is exactly what I have been noting when discussing the issue with people (the Vibrams are quite a conversation piece). Just as I have often commented that flexible, intermittent fasting gives you high resolution into your personal hunger and appetite signaling, so too does going barefoot outside where there exists all manner of things that can cause pain and injury give you high resolution into your walking. After a time, you don't even notice small sharp pebbles as you lighten your step on the fly, instantly. You also gain awareness of your peripheral vision and avoid stepping on things you shouldn't — without even being conscious of it. At first, it's sensory overload. After a time, it becomes thoroughly natural. Go figure.

Now, I don't know about you, but my gut reaction is that any modern thing that actually cuts me off from sensory perception (the root of knowledge of reality) had better be good and damn necessary. Guilty, until proven innocent, I'd say. Given the added stress on joins and hips, and the resultant chronic injury with surgery and replacement experienced by so many, I'd say the jury is in. …So go frollic barefoot. What the hell? You know people are going to envy you for it.

Walking. Bi-ped hominoid. It's pretty damn fundamental.

Just wanted to let my readers know that since Tuesday morning I’ve been absorbed full time (which means: mostly consumed in thought) in an emergent business project having to so with another company.

But fear not, valued patrons. I shall make my return soon, and I have a list.

I previously blogged about a couple of different cancer therapies a couple of weeks ago. That was to call attention to two previous posts dealing with what I'll just call a pretty obvious way to prevent cancer in the first place, or treat existing ones.

If indeed this evolutionary, ancestral, primal way of eating, going hungry, and engaging in activity represents an effective treatment for cancer, then what do you suppose that says as to the validity of this evolutionary approach, and how might you suspect this approach to living works to prevent cancer?

Now Dr. Eades blogs about this issue. Actually, it turns out to be about one of the articles I alerted my readers to way back in April.

Cancer cells get their energy, not like normal cells, from the mitochondrial oxidation of fat, but from glycolysis, the breakdown of glucose withing the cytoplasm (the liquid part of the cell). This different metabolism of cancer cells that sets them apart from normal cells is called the Warburg effect. Warburg thought until his dying day that this difference is what causes cancer, and although it is true that people with elevated levels of insulin and glucose do develop more cancers, most scientists in the field don’t believe that the Warburg effect is the driving force behind the development of cancer.

But it stands to reason that it can be used to treat cancer that is already growing. Since cancers can’t really get nourishment from anything but glucose, it stands to reason that cutting off this supply would, at the very least, slow down tumor growth, especially in aggressive, fast-growing cancers requiring a lot of glucose to fuel their rapid growth.

[…]

If you understand the Warburg effect and the metabolism of cancer cells, it’s easy to see why this therapy works, even in patients who at at death’s door. Since the cancers can use only glucose, and since glucose is made in the cancer cells slowly and inefficiently, the cancer cells have to rely on outside glucose to provide nourishment for their rapid growth and replication. People on very-low-carb diets produce ketones, which take the place of glucose in other cells that can use these ketones for fuel. But cancer cells can’t use the ketones since ketones have to be burned in the mitochondria, which are dysfunctional in cancer cells. If you can keep blood sugar low, then growth of the cancer cells may be held in check long enough for the body’s own previously overwhelmed immune system to rally and beat the vulnerable cancer back.

Just imagine it. How strange; and unlikely, eh? You take a diet that approximates that of pre-agricultural man, i.e., the diet he ate for 2.5 million years vs. the last ten thousand years, and you can slow or beat cancer in many cases. And if you fast three days prior to having chemo, contrary to not "building up your strength," it actually sets up your healthy cells to be five times more resistant to the chemical poisoning of chemotherapy than cancer cells.

No miracles or silver bullets. Just a simple and nutritious existence, and doing what animals do when they get sick: stop eating.

In only three minutes. It's all brief, and very intense. Remember: endurance and intensity are inversely related. The more intense, the briefer. Watch this and you'll soon understand why so many fool themselves about "working out" doing slow, boring "cardio." Very few of them could handle a minute of this, much less three or more. Right here is real cardio, modeled after the way nature intended you to get it: all in, but briefly.

That's from Chris, and the facility is Mountain Athlete in Jackson, Wyoming.

So there's no doubt about it: protein shakes are a processed food; but do they have a place in a Freed Animal's diet?

I think so, but in a very limited way. I'll have one about twice per week, usually on the morning after a previous day's workout for a real nice boost of good quality whey protein. Chris at Zen to Fitness lays out a lot of the nutritional benefits.

For me, sometimes it's by itself, and other times, along with something like maybe a few slices of bacon, a small 2-egger plain omelet, and/or a little fruit. The shake alone really appeals to me when I'm hungry but really feel like a very light meal — not so much in terms of calories, as just bulk. As far as the flavorings and sweeteners go, it's so infrequent, I don't do diet sodas or other artificially sweetened things, so it's one of those convenience flexibilities for me.

But as with all things, I just can't mix them like the package says (1 scoop in a cup of water). Yuko! Here's how it goes.

• 2 eggs
• 1 scoop of whey protein (chocolate or vanilla – I use Gold Standard) 
• (if vanilla whey – a dash of vanilla extract) 
• 1 heaping tsp to 1 heaping tbsp of Coconut Oil (critical secret ingredient — don't forget to lick the spoon clean) 
• 1/2 cup heavy cream 
• 1/2 cup whole milk (raw, non-homogenized, if you can get it)
• a handful of ice cubes 

All that goes in the blender. Bonus if you can get yourself a smoothie maker with the spout at the bottom. That's what I use and it's really convenient and it breaks up all the ice easily. Have a supplemental handful of ice cubes that you can add in one at a time until it gets to your desired thickness. Sometimes if I really want it light, I'll just do 1/4 cup cream and 3/4 milk. Doesn't make a difference in taste or smoothness that I can tell.

So, what you get is either an amazingly delicious chocolate-coconut or vanilla-coconut. The flavor of the very healthful coconut oil really comes through. I guarantee you're gonna love it if you try it. It's whey good.

I prepared it last night. Did it on a baking stone and it came out just fine. See for yourself.

It was a 15-incher, half & half. One side was pepperoni & onion, and the other ham & mushroom. Greek Kalamata Olives par tout — with the pits, which is the only way to go on a pizza. They shrivel just a bit and the tastiest part is the meat right up next to the pit. In order to get max flavor from both the onion and the mushroom, I ran them through a cheese grater. The canned sauces at the supermarket all had dammed high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). …The hell? So, I just got a small can of tomato sauce and added pizza spice (oregano, basil, garlic) and some additional garlic powder. Also, even though there's lots of cheese in the crust, I did put additional over the sauce in the standard pizza-making fashion.

I doubled the recipe, and like Debs, didn't spice the crust. For a 15" stone, I first spread some bacon drippings very thinly, then used a plastic spatula to spread the dough. The stone had an edge, so I was able to build it up around the side, rendering a pretty thin crust in the middle. The one downside is that it's not nearly as rigid as wheat dough. I think next time I'll try a thicker crust. I also intend to experiment with things like celery root and almond flour.

It was very filling. I had not eaten a thing since breakfast and I was stuffed midway through that second slice. Very filling and satisfying. All that said, and it's very good, it does lack the wonderful chewiness of standard pizza.

Final tip: get some of those red pepper seeds, and rather than sprinkle them on the pizza, add a load of them to a few tablespoons of olive oil, mix them around, and let 'em set for a while, as you're making the pizza. Then drizzle the olive oil all around.

Help promote the easy and fun Life Way that's working for me and others. Buy an FTA T-Shirt. Or, get sweatshirts, long-sleeve shirts, tank tops, hats, mugs, pet products and other odds & ends. Great to wear at the gym, around and about, or to give as gifts. Christmas is just around the bend.

More designs and other products to follow.

Adam sends this along. Meat & eggs, over some greens. Never thought of putting eggs with greens, but why not?

Do you sometimes want something light, different, and a little unconventional for breakfast? Brigitte emails this one.