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Saturated Fat is Good For You!

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Can you think of a fundamental reason not to expect that it’s healthy and good, not particularly to be limited below what you have a taste for?

Stop and think about it. Forget everything you think you know (which, if we’re talking knowledge, is probably not much: many are just regurgitating). Why would it not be healthful, beneficial? Because it’s so tasty and we’re depraved by nature, naturally seeking mostly those things from "the devil’s playground?" Could it be, rather, that it’s because it’s so good for us that we have a such a taste for it? And then, if it turns out that it actually is good for us, does that not make the "experts" and "authorities" more evil than well meaning, and, does it not make us more childlike and foolish than inquisitive and honest?

Why wouldn’t it be healthful, naturally, when you find it in large percentages in the animal fats associated with all meats? You even find it in the animal fat associated with human meat, in roughly the same proportion as pigs (i.e., lard). …And what of a "lard ass," to whom you might recommend a low-cal, low-fat diet? Would that be advisable if saturated fat is unhealthy? After all, the fat is locked away in that large rump. A low-cal, low-fat diet is just going to release it into the bloodstream where it can wreak its havoc.

If we were all thinking straight — perhaps like a hunter-gatherer all on his own, responsible on a daily basis to look around, observe, think, integrate, plan, exercise extreme caution — and all that just to eat –we might scoff at the notion of animal fat being "bad for us." In comparison, supermarket cart-wheeling moderns are woefully ignorant — perhaps even those hunters and fishermen among us. Sure, you can get out there for a weekend or so, but do you go without any groceries? Could you do it for life?

So, would you expect these super informed and experienced HGs to eschew animal products in favor of leaves and various fibers? You wouldn’t, would you? What you would expect is for them to go after the most dense nutrition they could safely source, which would be various animals of all kinds — along with their saturated fat. And they’ve been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years, which is very clear from the anthropological record. Moreover, their skeletal remains are larger in stature, with healthier, straighter teeth when compared to those of ancient agricultural populations.

And, so, given our millions of years of evolution, one would naturally expect saturated fat to be not only "OK," or, "taken in moderation," but actually healthful! Really healthful. One would expect it to be quite an astounding shocker if that wasn’t so. In fact, the level of unabashed shock at such speculation should have been so profound as to have demanded decades of contradictory-free hypotheses, gold standard research…leading up to infallible proof…before even giving it a second thought.

Instead, we we were led down a fool’s path by opportunistic miscreants who, to this very day, ignore what honest people like Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD, have been saying for years. Not only that. These researchers are so opportunistic that they actually obfuscate with purposefully flawed studies designed to get the results they set out to get in the first place, which isn’t science, but rather the equivalent of a Ponzi scheme, just to keep the crap afloat. Dr. Ravnskov, author of The Cholesterol Myths and Fat and Cholesterol Are Good For You has up a three part series on saturated fat at Spacedoc.net.

For several years skeptical scientists including myself have asked the experts on the Swedish National Food Administration for the scientific studies that allow them to warn against saturated fat. Their usual answers have been that "there are thousands of such studies", or they refer to the WHO ( World Health Organization ) guidelines, (1) said to have been written by the world’s greatest experts.

The main argument in that document is that saturated fat raises cholesterol, but we now know that high cholesterol is not a disease. What we want to know is if we shorten our lives or if we run a greater risk of getting a heart attack or a stroke by eating too much saturated fat.

Recently the Swedish Food Administration published a list of 72 studies that they claimed were in support of their warnings. Together with eleven colleagues I scrutinized the list and found that only two of them were in support.

Eleven studies did not concern saturated fat at all. Sixteen studies were about saturated fat, but were not in support. Three reviews had ignored all contradictory studies. Eleven studies gave partial or doubtful support. Eight studies concerned reviews of experiments where the treatment included not only a "healthy" diet, but also weight reduction, smoking cessation and physical exercise. So how did they know whether the small effect was due to less saturated fat or to something else? Furthermore, all of them had excluded trials with a negative outcome.

Twenty-one studies were about surrogate outcomes. In most of the reports the authors claimed that saturated fat raises cholesterol. But again, high cholesterol is not a disease. Twelve studies were listed because they had shown that people on a diet with much saturated fat and little carbohydrates reacted more slowly on insulin than normally. From that observation the authors claimed that saturated fat causes diabetes, but they had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Saturated fat does not produce diabetes; on the contrary. More than a dozen experiments have shown that the best diet for people with type 2 diabetes is one with much saturated fat and very little carbohydrates. In a few days their blood sugar normalizes and many of the patients are able to stop their medication. (2)

That’s the first part of part 1, so go read the whole series, which isn’t very long. You might also want to go read about the generally good health of the highest saturated fat consuming people on the planet, the Tokelauans.

Oh, but there’s more. And, since I have to thank Dr. Eades for alerting to these articles via Twitter, I’ll thank him for the other link too, which I’ll get to in a minute.

In part 2 of Ravnskov’s series, he brings to light some research done in India.

For six years Indian researcher Malhotra registered how many died from a heart attack among the more than one million employees of the Indian railways.

According to Malhotra’s report employees who lived in Madras had the highest mortality. It was six to seven times higher than in Punjab, the district with the lowest mortality, and they died at a much younger age. But people in Punjab ate almost seventeen times more fat than people from Madras and most of it was animal fat. In addition they smoked much more.(14)

Hmm. Well, there’s also this, just out, about how vegetarian Indians are dropping from coronary artery disease at an alarming rate.

Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi, India.

The incidence of coronary artery disease (CAD) is increasing at an alarming rate, especially in developing countries, such as India. It is often advocated that a vegetarian lifestyle could reduce the burden of CAD. However, in spite of a majority of Indians being vegetarians, the incidence of CAD is highest in this population. This may be due to deficiency of vitamin B12, a micronutrient, sourced only from animal products.

See how it all comes together? Vegetarianism is a myth, a menace. No wonder they’re such bedfellows with that other menace: those with the audacity to sweep aside 2.5 million years of evolution to implicate as unhealthy a core building block of our very bodies.

Curse them all.

Got Milk?

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Many people trying to implement the paleo way are confounded about milk. It’s not paleo and could not have been, for two primary reasons:

  1. Try milking a wild animal.
  2. We were genetically programmed to lose the ability to digest lactose (milk sugar) in early childhood (weaning). What we refer to as "lactose intolerance" is actually the previous normal human state of affairs.

Here’s a good overview of the whole issue, in USA Today.

Instead, people who are lactose intolerant can’t digest the main sugar —lactose— found in milk. In normal humans, the enzyme that does so —lactase— stops being produced when the person is between two and five years old. The undigested sugars end up in the colon, where they begin to ferment, producing gas that can cause cramping, bloating, nausea, flatulence and diarrhea.

If you’re American or European it’s hard to realize this, but being able to digest milk as an adult is one weird genetic adaptation.

It’s not normal. Somewhat less than 40% of people in the world retain the ability to digest lactose after childhood. The numbers are often given as close to 0% of Native Americans, 5% of Asians, 25% of African and Caribbean peoples, 50% of Mediterranean peoples and 90% of northern Europeans. Sweden has one of the world’s highest percentages of lactase tolerant people.

Curiously, it now seems that the genetic mutation to allow lactose persistence took place independently in several populations (technically different genetic adaptations with similar end results), from 2,700 years ago in parts of Africa, to 7,500 years ago in the Balkans and Central Europe.

Now, to tie some things together and connect dots, there’s this from Mail Online: White Europeans ‘only evolved 5,500 years ago after food habits changed’. The idea is that the change from hunter-gatherer to agriculture is what drove a rapid evolution of skin color for those living at increasingly higher latitudes.

Scientists at the University of Oslo believe this change in diet may have led to our dark-skinned ancestors evolving paler skin to overcome this problem.

The link between skin colour and Vitamin D from sunlight has been suggested before.

It had previously been believed that our ancestors’ skin had gradually lightened to generate more Vitamin D the further north they moved away from the equator to places where there was less sunlight.

Now scientists believe that the change in their diet away from foods rich in Vitamin D also played a major factor in the skin lightening in colour.

And the particularly pale skins of people in Scandinavia may have evolved to maximise the amount of Vitamin D that could be produced, the research suggests.

If the theory is correct it would mean that until this period in history, the ancient inhabitants of Britain and Scandinavia – our ancestors – would have had a dark skin tone.

Johan Moan, of the university’s Institute of Physics, said in a research paper: ‘In England, from 5,500-5,200 years ago the food changed rapidly away from fish as an important food source. This led to a rapid development of … light skin.’

The research paper, written with Richard Setlow, a biophysicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state, states : ‘Cold climates and high latitudes would speed up the need for skin lightening.

‘Agricultural food was an insufficient source of vitamin D, and solar radiation was too low to produce enough vitamin D in dark skin.’

So, could milk have played a role in why "the food changed rapidly away from fish as an important food source"?

In the end, my suspicion is that’s it’s some of both. Otherwise, how do you explain white skinned Asians, with significant fish in the diet? At any rate, interesting ponderables.

Which is what we like to do as practitioners of a paleo / primal / evolutionary / ancestral life way. We get to figure this stuff out on our own, because we have the information to do so. We don’t have to wait for "experts" and "authorities" to tell us that in order to prevent all the diseases that have cropped up over the last couple of hundred years of civilization, we need to eat way less of the foods we evolved to eat over millions of years, instead eating more of (even when not hungry) the foods and concoctions that have cropped up in…the last couple of hundred years.

So, should milk be a part of your diet? Well, obviously, if lactose intolerant, or you know you do worse on it, no. But what if you do quite well on it (you should go for whole, raw milk if you can get it, otherwise organic whole pasteurized)?

I see no problem, even from the perspective of the "paleo principle," i.e., the idea that we restrict ourselves to pre-agricultural food sources. Why, when clearly we have evolved to handle this food? Yea, I know there’s talk about hormones and such (which I know little about), but there’s simply no doubt that animal milk is loaded with excellent protein and fat nutrition.

I make raw milk, cream, butter and cheese part of my diet. In terms of milk, due the higher carb count, I tend to keep it pretty intermittent, like a half-gallon in a week or two. Raw milk keeps very well.

As a final note, I find it interesting, given the above, that when rickets showed up in kids, it was milk that they chose to fortify — which is now essentially worthless, as D is fat soluble and everyone’s drinking skim (those "experts"). Vitamin D deficiency is now epidemic. Now, the other part of it, again given the above, is that if you can’t have whole milk as part of your diet, perhaps you should be getting a lot more fish…

And, you should be supplementing with vitamin D in any case, especially the darker your skin and the farther north you live.

Links and Quick Hits

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~ Most people aware of lowcarb and paleo dieting are well aware of insulin’s role in promoting fat storage. But how about the role of leptin and leptin resistance? Dr. Mercola gives a good overview.

You become both insulin and leptin resistant by eating the typical American diet full of sugar, refined grains, processed foods … and not a whole lot else.

The solution is fairly straightforward, and this is to instead eat a diet that emphasizes good fats and avoids blood sugar spikes — in short the dietary program detailed in my nutrition plan, which emphasizes healthy fats, lean meats and fresh vegetables, and restricts sugar and grains.

~ So how many saw the latest news? Low-carb Diets Linked To Atherosclerosis And Impaired Blood Vessel Growth. "…mice placed on a 12-week low carbohydrate/high-protein diet showed a significant increase in atherosclerosis, a buildup of plaque in the heart’s arteries and a leading cause of heart attack and stroke." Yea, well, my friend Peter, the UK veterinarian, takes the study to task both here and here. The bottom line?

One offspring from the impatience of cardiologists is the apoE-/- mouse. This mouse is a genetic cripple who’s ability to process fat has been severely damaged. There are a very, very, very small number of people in the world who are homozygous for defective apoE.

~ More bonus footage from Tom Naughton & Fat Head. The eight minute clip includes interview portions with Dr. Al Sears, Dr. Mary Dan Eades, and Dr. Mike Eades.

~ Don Matesz, in addition to many great posts at Primal Wisdom, has the definitive list of ten reasons you can’t lose fat.

Most people simply don’t understand that reducing calories and increasing activity just don’t work for many people in the short term, or for most people in the long term. Hard losers may have a slow metabolism, but its not genetic, and their problem is hormonal, but not due to estrogen, testosterone, or thyroid.

~ And from Time Magazine, for once getting some things right, Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.

I have exercised like this — obsessively, a bit grimly — for years, but recently I began to wonder: Why am I doing this? Except for a two-year period at the end of an unhappy relationship — a period when I self-medicated with lots of Italian desserts — I have never been overweight. One of the most widely accepted, commonly repeated assumptions in our culture is that if you exercise, you will lose weight. But I exercise all the time, and since I ended that relationship and cut most of those desserts, my weight has returned to the same 163 lb. it has been most of my adult life. I still have gut fat that hangs over my belt when I sit. Why isn’t all the exercise wiping it out?

~ While I have yet to go through all of this carefully, it has been sitting in my inbox courtesy of reader Rachel, for over a month: Vitamin D and Vitamin K Team Up to Lower CVD Risk.

Conclusion

As research documenting the widespread and significant beneficial actions of vitamin D continues to appear in the peer-reviewed medical literature accompanied by reports that the majority of the U.S. population is deficient in this nutrient, more clinicians are evaluating their patients’ vitamin D levels and prescribing supplementation, often in amounts as high as 5,000 to 10,000 IU/day, without awareness of the risk of provoking an imbalance among vitamins D, K and A. Consideration of the synergistic relationship among these vitamins could allow vitamin D to be administered in doses of greater therapeutic value without incurring the risks of osteoporosis and vascular calcification associated with hypervitaminosis D.

Here’s the link to part 1 of the article.

DISQUS Comments

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While I really love the new commenting system, look, feel, threaded functionality, be aware that the email part (both notification of comments and replying to comments via email) is very unreliable. For instance, I have yet to receive email notification of any comments posted since last night, of which there are about 10, now.

In addition, comment replies I sent via email often don’t show up, so if you have replied via email to a comment, you might want to verify.

Their support people are very responsive and I’m working with them. As long as you work directly from the post, everything seems to function fine.

in addition, there is a new all comment feed, which I’ll be switching out with the current comment feed link in the header. The new feed is:

http://freetheanimal.disqus.com/latest.rss

Leftovers Done Right

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I thought I’d put this up, since all my plated photos from the original were blurry. Here’s the second tour of my Braised Lamb Shanks (click on photo to enlarge).

Leftover Lamb Shank
Leftover Lamb Shank

It’s garnished with Italian parsley from the mini herb garden my wife set up this weekend. We only had about a cup of the cauliflower & goat cheese puree, so, I coarsely chopped three un-peeled carrots, boiled them until tender, then combined them with the heated cauliflower and a bit more butter and cream in the food processor.

If you don’t have a good food processor, I highly recommend it. It is quite fun exploring the world of vegetable purees, and what I’m learning is that potato is the puree of choice for no other reason than agriculture tends toward fewer crops, grown in enormous quantity. It also makes vegetables far more palatable to me, particularly with the huge amount of fats I always include.

“Bad Bad Bad” – Tales in Modern Ignorance

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From the Modesto Bee, via my dad.

BAD, BAD, BAD

No breakfast at all

Some people say they’re not hungry when they wake up, but because you’ve fasted all night your metabolism — and fat-burning ability — slows down. Those who skip breakfast are also more likely to be overweight and eat more fat and calories the rest of the day, said Susan Biali, a physician who specializes in dietetics in Vancouver.

Bypassing breakfast also makes you less productive and less likely to excel at school or work. If you think eating breakfast makes you hungrier the rest of the day, you’re probably starting off with too much sugar. But if you’re wrestling between a bad breakfast and no breakfast at all, choose the doughnut and try to limit how much you eat.

The short version: "experts" say eat when you’re not hungry. Now stop and think about that, and how astoundingly stupid it is.

Grassfed Beef Special – La Cense Beef

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Friend and reader Nancy was kind enough to think about me and sent this email, yesterday (click to enlarge).

La Cense Beef
La Cense Beef

Click here to go to the page with the special, which, is 8 grassfed New York Steaks, regularly $128 for $96, plus 4 pounds of grassfed beef burger ($23 normally), plus free shipping. All in all, I saved $45, not including what shipping would have been.

I got the 8 New Yorks, the free 4 pounds of burger, 2 hanger steaks, 1 tri-tip roast, 2 filet mignon, two packs (8 total) of no-additive all-grassfed-beef frankfurters, and 2 pounds of sliced beef liver. Total price: $201.

At La Cense Beef, we take great pride in the quality of our beef. La Cense Beef is committed to a more natural and compassionate approach to ranching. We are not part of a consortium of ranchers, nor are we middlemen. We do the ranching, the selling and the packing. Our 100% grass-fed beef goes directly from our ranch to you. That’s how we can ensure its quality and guarantee your satisfaction. We pride ourselves on using sustainable methods that have been around since our ranch began in 1869. But when it comes to our customers, it’s all about convenience.

If for any reason you are dissatisfied, just give us a call and we’ll send you a replacement or a refund — your choice. That’s what we mean by "Satisfaction Guaranteed."

Has anyone tried La Cense? Care to comment?

Since my review of the film Food, Inc., I have been more interested in farmers’ markets, free range eggs (I got some duck eggs the other day, but alas don’t care for them, other than in my protein smoothies), and grassfed beef & lamb. Ultimately, I’d rather head out and visit some farms and ranches, try their products, and then buy locally from them. That’s going to take some organizing and time. In the meantime, there’s La Cense. Any other recommendations on grassfed beef (or other meats) sources that ship?

“…and we soaked up animal protein and fat like parched ground in the rain.”

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That would be the very last phrase from the four pages I’ll link to, but later.

Lierre Keith; what a find. I opened what will doubtless be a series in promotion of her work, right here: The Vegetarian Myth. And, no, I’ll continue to be as ruthless with the opportunists who think they can get away with comment Bullshit here, in this post, as there, in that one. No quarter for those who would argue that you continue to evade…uh, reality. Ms. Keith can do what she does to try and talk sense to them; which, I gather, is nearly impossible for her, even as a 20-year ex-vegan. …Well, hey, I’ve been an atheist for 20 years and can’t count even a single theist who has embraced — due my influence — reality over sweet fairy tale — in spite of gargantuan effort (you can search the blog, as it used to be) — so I have some experience with what must be the frustrating-dumbfoundedness she might feel.

But hers is a far bigger battle — it’s a terrestrial one. Others: go have your innocent, heavenly fairy tales. And I’ll endeavor to leave you to them.

You see, Lierre may likely still hold the values she held as a vegan. She would — and I’m guessing — just love a cuddly world where every living organism — even down to microbes — didn’t have to die to support the chain that is life: from soil to crawlies, to furies, to skins, to vicious claws, to guns & steel, to edifice…to tops of Pacific Redwoods (provided humans could exist on the scraps).

And I wouldn’t fault her for it.

Everyone gets to go to hell in their own go-cart.

That’s my friend Billy, with a uniquely existential tinge on an ethical principle: you don’t get to decide or dictate other’s values; they do. The existentially implied part is that they’ll more often than not, value shit. Take a lookie, see.

That’s just modern conditioning. …Mushrooms.

I make it a practice not to shit on other people’s values, under two conditions:

  1. Those "values" don’t harm other people by their mere pursuance.
  2. And when otherwise, they don’t come in conflict with mine.

Spending a great deal of time on things Internet as I’ve done for many-a-year, number 2 is the far more frequent occurrence. Summary: when I tell someone to: "lighten up (then go fuck themselves all day long)" it’s not like putting a gun to their heads, or, even like voting, so that other people can put a gun to their heads.

To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.

— Ayn Rand (that’s from the whole Lexicon on her take on man, qua animal)

See?

Well, we’ll see.

What I deeply admire in Lierre’s writing is that she so struggles with her own values, but honestly so, laboriously, exhaustively laying out why — not the values themselves — but that the principles to her personal action she was smart enough to derive therefrom as a teenager, were infantile. Unworkable. Totally ignorant of a wholesome reality. Fantasy. Hopeful. Simply unreal. The values can stay — kinda like a cuddly whatever you might cherish but isn’t real. Differentiate. Integrate, then conceptualize knowledge and information

She found out that she had to choose whether to survive and flourish, or deteriorate, as a human animal. Guess what: in spite of 10,000 years of all-guns-to-bear to the contrary, you are an animal and to deny the fact is to your detriment.

It used to be easy; we didn’t posses the knowledge to synthesize "food." Now we do. How dumb. Even the veggies are falling prey to the marketing whizzes, and are even fooling Mackey (just look at the tor-fuck-you section in your local WF).

She implicates the world of vegetarians, and she does a masterful job.

Man is the only animal that can sink below his own nature. — Ayn Rand

Do cows eat fish? Do fish eat cows?

Cows eat grass, fish eat stuff in the water — and bugs — …everything eats bugs — there are no "vegetarians."

Well, I could go on. But, first, let me quote one more thing from the four pages I’ll give you the link to.

Then the diner bell rang, a gong that sang like gold across the mountainside. It was beautiful there, the hills the green of deep summer, gentled with sun. Fifty people lined up outside the dining hall, hungry. What we ate was bread and lettuce.

We repeated this meal six times over the next forty-eight hours.

Here’s the link. Read it from the images on page 67, up to the images at the end of page 70. She describes her 3-day visit to a vegan "farm" in upstate New York.

The next morning: Well, reading it now…that was a bit strong, eh? Well, no apologies — you always get the real me, and my ideas and passion ebb & flow like everyone, I guess. So, you get to decide whether it’s a fault or a virtue that I pretty much just lay it all out there. Onward.

“David, you’re not stupid, by any chance?”

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On the other other hand, the researchers are smart people simply doing what they are paid to do: bolster the status-quo.

The really, really stupid ones are those who think that saturated fat consumption is more tightly associated with…health problems than, say, toilet paper use, or sitting in chairs, or wearing shoes, or whatever.

See, the really, really stupid ones are those who can’t seem to define a starting principle, like, say, “hey, we evolved eating meat and natural fats.” So, the really, really stupid ones, for example, will look at a group of CVD victims and point to the meat they eat, not even considering what they wrap it in, bread it with, deep fry it in, or what sweet things they eat it with.

The really, really stupid ones look at the whole 2+ million years of natural evolution on natural diets and conclude that the way to combat the many modern diseases is to eat less of the ancient natural foods we evolved on, and more of the modern ones.

David, you’re not stupid, by any chance?

My comment in response to "David" at Mark’s Daily Apple (edited for clarity).

A Modest Bleg to Promote the Primal Lifestyle

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This is primarily directed at those dedicated readers who choose to be either Facebook friends, Twitter followers, or both.

You may have noticed that the links to my blog posts now look like this:

http://su.pr/2w6Wpq

That’s a link to my last post, the Bison New York Steak. If you click on it, you’ll notice a StumbleUpon bar at the top of the page. Would it be to much to ask for a "Thumbs Up" click if you like the post (or, a thumbs down if you don’t)? Once you have an account established on StumbleUpon, it’s very, very quick. And, you don’t need to write a review (unless you want to). Just click on the quick submit tab, confirm, and you’re done.

Why do I ask this? Well, it doesn’t seem like a lot of trouble, so that’s one. The bigger reason, however, is that it allows you to promote this blog, and by extension, the Primal lifestyle to the many Stumblers out there. Believe it or not, but I’ve found that every thumbs up a post gets generates about 60-80 Stumbles on the network. This means that for your couple of clicks, you can cause 60-80 people to see that post than otherwise would. That’s a pretty powerful impact, if you ask me.

That said, let’s keep it honest. I know that most of you aren’t jumping for joy at every single one of my posts, so exercise good judgment. I’m not trying to game the system, just making you aware of what you can do to promote the most effective lifestyle for healthy, lean, vibrant living that exists.

Now, if you don’t care to follow me on Twitter or Facebook, then you can simply use the "Share This" function at the bottom of each page to accomplish the same thing.

There’s your "Health Care Reform," right there.

Finally, both Mark Sisson and Dr. Mike Eades do the same thing via their Twitter feeds; so, I would encourage you to do likewise with their posts too.

Bison New York Steak

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Dinner last night for the wife & I (click to enlarge).

bison new york steak
Bison New York Steak

Two nice grilled-to-medium-rare bison steaks from Whole Foods, and some frozen broccoli prepared in a new way. I put the frozen veggies on a cookie sheet, along with a large dollop of coconut oil and placed it in the oven at 400. Some minutes later I was able to toss them, so as to distribute the oil, and then let it go for about 20 minutes, then finally about 3-5 minutes under the broiler to get the crispies.

The sauce was 2/3 beef, 1/3 chicken stock, a handful of blueberries about to go bad, and a pinch of rosemary, patiently reduced. I always get this started first and only when very near completion do I cook the steaks. Once reduced, I strain it, let the steaks rest a few minutes, and finally toss in the juices from the resting as the final step.

“Eat Stop Exercise” is a Despicable Rip-off of Brad Pilon’s EatStopEat

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I fist made mention of Brad Pilon’s excellent work, EatStopEat way back nearly two years ago. And since then, I have blogged a whole bunch about intermittent fasting in general and have mentioned Brad and ESE many, many times. And, because I was so pleased with the results, I even gave Brad a testimonial which I’m proud to have displayed on his sales page (it’s the third from the last).

Ensuring that people get proper credit for their work and contribution is a really big issue with me.

Moreover, if you read the posts on IF, you’ll see that I have been very big into working out fasted, which will happen once again at 4:30 p.m., today, not having eaten since dinner.

So, guess what I see in my Google alerts this morning but links to articles by one Natalie Pyles of Scottsdale, AZ, who touts herself a "Fitness & Weight-loss Expert, Nutritionist, Wellness Coach, Author,& Speaker" (sic). I’ll just call her a shameless thief. Her website: Fitness Elements & Associates.

Now, see this page, touting her "Eat Stop Exercise" regimen, clearly a title rip-off from Brad, and since so blatant, one may rest assured that the e-book will likely be a word-for-word robbery. Why do I assume so (click to enlarge)?

Picture 1
A word-for-word rip-off from Natalie Pyles of a testimonial I gave Brad Pilon

Now, in case she decides to get cute with me, here’s the web archive file, in case anyone cares to download it for the record.

Well, any enterprise that operates by theft is a cheesy little endeavor, in my book. So, if you want to get the real info from the original source, then please do the right thing and get it from Brad.

Natalie Pyles: you should be ashamed of yourself.

Braised Lamb Shanks

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Lamb Shanks Stuff
Lamb Shanks & Stuff

Maybe, just maybe, the most satisfying dish I’ve ever made. As someone who cooks a great deal — for other people being a huge part of that — I am often confronted with a serious question: was it worth it? Often times, in spite of the tastiness of a dish, it’s hard to answer that in the affirmative. Although, I’d never give it up. It’s a weird — and enjoyable — "conflict."

This time, however, everything was on my side. I’ve never done braised lamb shanks — or any animal shanks in any way whatsoever, in spite of it being a restaurant favorite of mine —  and this was on my mind for a couple of days. Knew we were having guests and that’s what I set my mind to. The fore-thinking is, to me, the best part of the whole deal. Anticipation is a great value. Think grand, envision it with patience, then accomplish it, and  finally, relish and even wallow, in your own pride. Don’t worry: if you’re made of the right stuff and didn’t get it right, you won’t be proud. See, your own selfish pride is really the end goal. Is for me, anyway.

Alright, the menu: braised lamb shanks, cauliflower puree, and a Greekish salad (i.e., feta).

Lamb Shanks more Stuff
Lamb Shanks & More Stuff

So, I looked at a whole bunch of recipes and ended up setting on the top Google ht for its utter simplicity. Lamb is a strongly flavored meat. If cooked slowly and it’s quality lamb, why go out of your way to hide its natural flavor.

So, I chose this one and, I. am. so. glad. I. did. I’ll likely play with it in the future, but there’s no need messing with this. In looking at numerous other recipes, I was persuaded to do two things differently, one being in terms of ingredients and the other, method. I added one and a half sticks of cinnamon to the braise. Instead of braising stovetop, I did it n the oven at 325. The first hour and 1/2, I had the roasting pot covered with foil, then another hour & 1/2 uncovered, and you turn the shanks every 30 minutes. You want to have them 1/3 to 1/2 exposed so they caramelize. Then, you turn that into the braise.

So, for the final hour, take it out, remove the shanks to a platter and set in the oven, which you’ve now turned off. Put the braise in a pot on medium to high heat & reduce. Mash up the carrots & onion a bit, which will aid in thickening.

You’re done. The puree is a standard cauliflower puree, with a heated melange (see above) of butter, cream, and a tub of crumbled goat cheese. The mustiness of the goat cheese in the puree went perfectly with pungent taste of the lamb.

the plate
The Plate

The salad Julie put together, featuring both feta & dill, was as tasty as it was a work of art.

Greekish Salad
Greekish Salad

All in all, a wonderful Saturday dinner, punctuated, for me, by a good 9 hr sleep.

Exposing the Cholesterol Myth

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I probably get more questions about cholesterol than anything else. But cholesterol is not a problem to be managed. Your diet is to be managed, it should be a natural diet of meats, fowl, seafood, good fats (animal, coconut, olive), vegetables, berries & nuts.

Take nine minutes for Dr. Ron Rosedale to expose the cholesterol scam.

Tomorrow I’ll post a couple of advanced lipid panels from readers for discussion.

Ribeyes, Peppers, and Salad

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Here’s one I did at the beginning of the month and plain forgot to post it.

Ribeyes Stuff
Ribeyes & Stuff

Since there were four of us, I sliced up the steaks after grilling.

Sliced Ribeye
Sliced Ribeye

Then there’s the peppers, which as I recall were anaheim. This was a suggestion from my cousin Adam. It’s basicaly salt & oil. Rather than olive, which is what’s called for, I used about half leaf lard and half coconut oil.

Peppers
Peppers

Finally, a simple salad.

Simple Salad
Simple Salad

Well, I’m just about to get started on braised lamb shanks. Those’ll cook for four hours. I’ll post results tomorrow.

Big Salad

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I decided to do salads last night.

salads
Salads

First, I took an enormous whole chicken breast (both sides), with skin (from Whole Foods) and put it on the grill on low, skin side down, and then turned bout 15 minutes in for a total of about 30 minutes, then five or so on high to get the skin crispy.

In the meantime, I added a couple of pinches of parsley, rosemary, and basil to about 1/4 cup EVOO, and a dash of apple cider vinegar. This is tossed with the chopped chicken, later.

To the top right, you’ll see my dressing, which is EVOO, dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar and balsamic vinegar (salt & pepper, too). Begin with the EVOO, put in your dash of apple cider vinegar, then add the dijon and balsamic a bit at a time until it emulsifies with the fork. That had been sitting out for well over two hours when I snapped that photo. No separation.

So, what we have is a spring mix, tossed in the dressing, plated, and then red onion, mushroom, tomatoes, olives, blueberries (awesome — try it), avocado, and kalamata olives with the pits. Then just pile on the chicken, which as I said, is chopped and tossed in the olive oil and herbs.

salad
Salad

Admin Note

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Just a coule of notes.

  1. If you look at the store on the right sidebar, a new product has been added, and it’s by the guys — Mike & Scott — at FitnessSpotlight.
  2. I’ve added a new commenting platform, DISQUS, that promises to be quite an improvement over the threaded system I had up originally. Users have a lot more flexibility as well in terms of threading and using email.

That’s all, folks.

Julie & Julia

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I saw the film last evening.

Before she changed the world, Julia Child was just an American living in France.

– Julie, in narration

Ah, I identify with that, for, we had a thing in common. I lived in France for a couple of years. And, while being functional in the language upon arrival (such as was Julia’s diplomat husband upon arrival — I went to one of the same schools as they), I was pretty damn fluent in reading and conversation (not writing) about six months in — enough to hold my own at a French dinner party lasting hours. I got invited to dinner parties a lot, and even put on a few myself. Do that, for French people, and you’ll never have fear or trepidation in cooking for anyone.

A French dinner party is either done right — simple, actually — or just not done. It’s critically important. Elegance is appreciated. Simplicity and logic from top to bottom: a must. I just now realized this: it’s easy to refer to a French dinner party as logical. Not sure why, but it fits, and it’s the first time I ever realized it. [Afterthought: the elegance is the simplicity and logic of it all.]

Moving on, it’s not quite a stemement for a paleo diet. It is a statment for the absolute love of Real Food. If you love food, go see it and feed your soul.

And now for the funny. With great applause on my part, they managed to skillfully work in the Dan Akroyd classic SNL Julia Child skit.

More on Sugar and Cancer

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Interesting find, via Chris Highcock in my email.

Does sugar feed cancer?
New research sheds light on old saying

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 17, 2009 — Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah have uncovered new information on the notion that sugar "feeds" tumors. The findings may also have implications for other diseases such as diabetes. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It’s been known since 1923 that tumor cells use a lot more glucose than normal cells. Our research helps show how this process takes place, and how it might be stopped to control tumor growth," says Don Ayer, Ph.D., a Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator and professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah.

During both normal and cancerous cell growth, a cellular process takes place that involves both glucose (sugar) and glutamine (an amino acid). Glucose and glutamine are both essential for cell growth, and it was long assumed they operated independently, but Ayer’s research shows they are inter-dependent. He discovered that by restricting glutamine availability, glucose utilization is also stopped. "Essentially, if you don’t have glutamine, the cell is short circuited due to a lack of glucose, which halts the growth of the tumor cell" Ayer says.

The research, spearheaded by Mohan Kaadige, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Ayer’s lab, focused on MondoA, a protein that is responsible for turning genes on and off. In the presence of glutamine, MondoA blocks the expression of a gene called TXNIP. TXNIP is thought to be a tumor suppressor, but when it’s blocked by MondoA , it allows cells to take up glucose, which in turn drives tumor growth. Ayer’s research could lead to new drugs that would target glutamine utilization, or target MondoA or TXNIP.

Ayer says the next step in his research is to develop animal models to test his ideas about how MondoA and TXNIP control cell growth. "If we can understand that, we can break the cycle of glucose utilization which could be beneficial in the treatment of cancer," Ayer says.

Well, considering what I call "The Animal Principle," how did we evolve to eat? First we were wild animals, then domesticated. Generally speaking, sugar (glucose) was rare in the diet, while glutamine (an amino acid found in virtually all meats and some plants) must have been abundant. So, then, why focus on short circuiting glutamine when it’s so easy to restrict glucose via a natural very low carbohydrate diet?

Add to this the fact that cancer has been virtually unknown amongst traditional hunter-gatherers and non-industrial peoples (ref: Stephan).

Keep in mind that by sugar, I don’t just mean sugar the white stuff. I mean sugar, all the processed foods and drinks (even fruit juice) that contain it, and things that get metabolized into glucose like starches and grains and all the products that contain them. A low sugar diet is one that focusses on meat, fowl, seafood, natural fats (animal, coconut, olive), non-starchy vegetables, moderate fruit focussed on berries, and maybe some nuts and high-fat dairy. Bottom line? Eat meat, fat, veggies. Be sure to get adequate vitamin D.

I’ve previously posted on the sugary connection to cancer: