Archives for September 2009

Meat “Crust” Pizza; It’s Meatza!

September 30, 2009 31 Comments

So here’s my attempt at "Meatza," which I mentioned a couple of posts ago, and where you’ll find the basic recipe.

Meatza Makings

I used two pounds of 80/20 ground beef I had in the freezer. I also had the idea to create an edge, to keep in toppings. See the recipe for the other ingredients in the "crust."

The Pre Cooked "Crust"

Here’s how it looks after 10 minutes at 450.

Cooked "Crust"

I used standard Pizza sauce from Trader Joe’s, and do notice that the veggies should be sauteed, which I did in lard rather than olive oil. I used mushrooms, green pepper, and very thinly sliced onion, which I did not sauté.

Ready for the Broiler

And Its Meatza

We all liked it very much, and I liked it better than the various paleo crust recipes I’ve tried, like cauliflower and such. Also, this was very easy and quick to make. To my mind, this is sort of like a good meatloaf you eat like pizza.

It’s definitely worth a go.

How’s Your Blood Pressure?

September 30, 2009 36 Comments

Reader David rings in with some interesting blood pressure experiences on paleo. Good weight loss, but very high BP, but looks like he may have found a solution that worked in just a few days.

~~~

I am 6′ even, 47 year old, ex-infantry (so my fair share of abused joints, and strongly aware of what the body can do when in condition). I’ve been out for about 10 years and not been working out enough, in part because it just hurt.

We eat well and have taken some herbal supplements for years, with proven effect – they have stopped my migraines. Several years ago we ditched wheat for a while to address some health issues with the kids, but once they seemed to be under control, we slid back.

About 9 months ago I hit about 195 lbs and seemed to be racing to 200, whereas my fighting weight had been about 155. Something had to change. Coincidentally, a friend of mine got me interested in glutathione and after doing some research I was intrigued. Very quickly I was able to run every day with minimal knee pain (now I am doing about 6-8 km most days, in comfort and good wind). Shortly after that initial success with the joint pain, I figured I had to dump weight too and decided to drop what grains I still had in my diet. As of today, I have lost over 30 lbs and am approaching my old fighting weight – and I feel stronger than I have for years.

So several months into this process I was feeling great, losing weight, joints were more comfortable and so on. But, I was a bit concerned with cardiovascular progress.

My resting pulse has always been on the low side and is now 46 to 56 bpm, which is back down to where it was in my 20’s. BP was high though and just wouldn’t come down. Yes, my work can be very high stress, and yes, I often have to go with far too little sleep, but I figured that between exercise and losing weight my BP should drop. If anything it seemed to be creeping up. I eliminated as much sodium from my diet as I could (and already ate almost no processed foods and rarely ate in restaurants even when on the road). Then I started pigging out on high potassium items, especially dried apricots and small potatoes (lots of skin for the amount of the potato itself). No change. Four days ago I hit 160/98 and was not happy. I figured I needed to do something a little more aggressive to change the sodium/potassium balance in my body and bought a potassium supplement at 50mg per day. This morning I went to the mall to get a few things. There are two stores in that mall with BP machines, so I thought I would check to see if there was any effect. The first one gave me readings of 130/81 then 123/74 five minutes later. I was amazed. I also know that this machine tends to read a bit low compared to the other one, so I figured I had better go see what it would show. 124/79. That indicates the readings were real and not just one machine needing to be calibrated.

In four days I dropped over 30 points systolic and about 20 points diastolic. My hypothesis in starting the potassium supplement was that my sodium/potassium balance was off and that for some reason, my body was holding that balance even as I lowered sodium intake and increased potassium intake. So I figured I needed to do something to surge the potassium level in my body.

I would like to know what thoughts your readership has on this. My intent at the moment is to stay with the potassium supplementation until I hit my goal of 110/70, then start weaning off the supplement to see if the body holds the BP or not. Ideally, I will hold at 110/70 without the supplement and with eating properly. In other words, I hope my body establishes a new potassium/sodium balance facilitating normal BP.

~~~

Wow, that’s quite a normalization in a very short time. Back in 2007 when I embarked on my own journey, one of the things that really gave me pause was my BP, which was consistently 140-150 / 90-100, sometimes higher, rarely lower than 140/90. At first I didn’t alter diet much, just twice per week to the gym for 30 minutes, but intense resistance training. I have a measuring device that stores your readings and I was able to plot them on a chart as my BP readings began to come down immediately and within only a couple of weeks I was typically in the 130s / 80s, and that’s about what it seems to be most of the time now.

How about you? Anyone have any insights for Dave?

Links & Quick Hits

September 27, 2009 4 Comments

~ Attention all: David-Dorian Ross wants everyone to know that he has "lectured on exercise science for the past 15 years, as well as having been on the executive committee of the National Association of Health and Fitness…" and on that basis rather than argument, wants you to know that I "really have no idea what [I’m] talking about on just about every point," and further, that "the ‘paleo diet’ — when generically applied — is bad science." What do you think?

~ Dr. BG’s posts are often pretty challenging for the non-professional, but if you can follow along, here’s an amazing rundown on cholesterol particle sizes and what they mean to you (link removed).

~ I’ve blogged this before, but it pays to review. Jack Lalanne always knew what he was talking about.

~ Monical Reinagel, MS, LDN, asks whether Paleo is the new Mediterranean over on The Nutrition Data Blog. Lot’s of excellent comments from paleo practitioners, too. Bear in mind that Paleo Trumps Faux Mediterranean.

~ Some pretty wise words from the world’s oldest living man. in addition to eating only breakfast & lunch and skipping dinner for the last 35 years, his favorite meal is liver & onions.

~ Here’s another take on paleo-primal pizza: a meat crust from Chef Rachel. Meatza. I did this Friday evening with excellent results. Photos to follow. And by the way, if you missed my interview of the Chef, be sure to take a look.

No Fear: Pork Belly; It’s What’s For Dinner

September 24, 2009 8 Comments

Before I place a montage, there’s inspiration. Back ’round the 4th of July weekend, we happened to have missed being with friends who happened to be with mutual friends. Make sense? OK, they ended up going to Gordon Ramsay’s LA restaurant and posted more than a dozen pics of what they ate. This was one.

Pork Belly at Gordon Ramsay, LA

The caption read: "Slow braised pork belly, crispy pig’s head, pickled red onions and pea purée." Count me in.

But this is merely the beginning; the inspiration.

My friend Robert features prominently on this blog, as does his wife, Julie. They both do. While not usually mentioned, much, most of the cooking for friends I do is for them, and they do equally for us. And we play cards — advanced Spades, if you must know.

But sometimes the girls and their friends get tired of Robert & I winning all the time, so they have their once-monthly girl’s-night-out get-together, and, you get it: Robert & I were on our own last night.

And we decided to push boundaries.

…Well, actually, he did. My original idea was grilled burgers.

He wasn’t moved. I knew this when I called him yesterday afternoon about various arrangements and found him at the meat counter acquiring the pork belly I’m about to feature. We decided at that point to go outside boundaries. He decided to do pork belly, and I, Belgian endive. …I began, not liking it much when first encountered in France — always sauteed — it seemed to have a bitter taste. But I got to like it, but always wondered if I could do better. I believe I did.

Pork Belly & Co

This was a lot of fun. The pork belly is simply seasoned with a little (a little) coriander, cumin, salt & pepper. It’s then roasted at 450 for 15, then down to 350 for two hours. At the end, baste it with its juices a couple of times and fire it under the broiler.

I decided on Belgian endive, sauteed, then braised for 15 minutes covered, in 350 (lower rack in the same oven). Right before it went into the oven.

Belgian Endive

I used no spices or herbs. Endive. Two slices of bacon. Onion. Pecans. I sauteed in the drippings from very lightly cooking the two strips of bacon, leaf lard & butter. Once soft, into the oven.

The other notable thing is that Robert made a roux with the pork fat drippings out of the oven. He sprinkled in a bit of dried basil, then it was 1 1/2 tbsp potato flour and about one cup heavy cream. Even more to be fearless about…

Dinner Service

Plate Number One

Plate Number Two

Note to Angela F. Braly, CEO, WellPoint, Inc.

September 24, 2009 11 Comments

Dear Ms. Braly:

I’m writing about the July 27, 2009 letter you received from Tracy Reiman, Executive Vice President of PETA.

I figured that in case embarrassing typos ("…denied every everything;" "…many have their throats are cut;" paragraph four; "Dieticians;" paragraph two) from an Executive VP of a major organization with 2 million members wasn’t enough to cause you to shake your head, chuckle, and round-file such letter, then I’d go ahead and point out a few other glaring problems in Reiman’s logic — not that one would necessarily expect logic to be the forte of one who engages in the sorts of antics Reiman does.

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters worldwide, I am writing to urge you to offer lower health insurance premiums to vegetarians and raise the rates of your meat-eating customers. With the possibility of an increased number of public and private insurance providers entering the field and the mountain of evidence linking meat consumption to some of our nation’s deadliest diseases, this change could improve WellPoint’s bottom line — while also helping to ensure that your policyholders don’t flat line.

There is not a shred of evidence anywhere linking meat consumption as an independent causal factor of any disease. Most people eat meat, but they also eat all sorts of other foods, including modern foods. In direct observation of hunter-gatherers and other primitive, non-industrial peoples going back at least two centuries — all of whom consumed meat, and most in significant quantity — exactly zero of the "diseases of civilization" show up. There’s no cancer, diabetes, stroke, auto-immune, obesity…and the list goes on.

Moreover, as Michael Eades, MD, has recently blogged extensively about, we’re human because we began eating meat, not simply because we can. It was the high-value scavenging of meat, bone marrow and intracranial tissue millions of years ago by our primate ancestors that permitted our guts to shrink enough to allow our energy demanding brains to expand, all while remaining in energy balance.

It would be hard to believe that evolution would produce a being where the very thing that caused his most profound evolution is the thing responsible for killing him.

The American Dietetic Association and the Dieticians [sic] of Canada conducted perhaps the largest review ever of all studies on vegetarian diets and concluded that vegetarians are less prone to heart disease, certain types of cancer, diabetes, and obesity than meat-eaters are. Vegetarians can get all the protein, vitamins, and fiber that they need without the artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat found in animal flesh.

Well this is the most egregious — if not outright fraudulent — aspect of Reiman’s letter. Meat eaters essentially represent the population at large. Vegetarians and vegans are — while woefully ignorant of nutrition — in large measure concerned about their health. You can’t compare a group of health conscious with the general population and come away with any conclusion other than an expected one: being health conscious is generally beneficial, regardless of specific diet.

But I wish also to challenge the lie that vegetarianism represents the epitome of health. There is a country where the situation is almost reversed from here in America: India. Most are vegetarians. Well, in 1967 was published some research in the British Medical Journal Heart (Malhotra SL. Br Heart J 1967;29:895-905). Uffe Ravnskov, MD, summed it up:

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.

Then there’s the recent Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology alarm over rapidly increasing rates of CAD in 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.

Unlike Reiman, however, I have a profoundly honest streak and so would not be so quick as to chalk that up independently to a vegetarian diet, especially when there’s a better culprit that holds for both vegetarians and meat eaters alike: modern processed foods, sugar, chemical and heat-extracted seed oils; all of them displacing the healthful food of the past that most people cooked at home.

By giving your policyholders a financial incentive to go vegetarian — and penalizing those whose meat-based diets fuel our nation’s worst health problems and rising health-care costs — WellPoint could save millions of dollars in the long run, ensuring your competitiveness in a broadened field of providers as your members begin to require fewer cholesterol-lowering medications, chemotherapy treatments, and diabetes drugs.

While the foregoing should be enough to give WellPoint or any health insurer pause when considering the future health risks of modern vegetarians — increasingly chowing down on highly processed junk "food" because it’s "vegetarian" — if not, then consider the words of Nora T. Gedgaudas, CNS, CNT, and author of Primal Body — Primal Mind: Empower Your Total Health The Way Evolution Intended (…And Didn’t).

Far and away, the most damaged and intractably dysregulated brains and nervous systems I have seen or dealt with in my practice have all essentially been vegans, with strict vegetarians a close second — hands down. I have numerous other colleagues who have made the same independent observation. A diet of starch, sugar, lectins, phytates and common allergens, or food-sensitivity-generating foods, coupled with chronic deficiencies: of numerous critical essential fats (EPA/DHA, healthy saturates), fat soluble nutrients (preformed A, D, E and K), amino-acid imbalances and/or deficiencies and other key animal source nutrients — not the least of which is utilizable B12 (and B12 analogs from seaweed don’t count) — lead to states of over-arousal, anxiety-related disorders, memory problems, cognitive dysfunction, sleep disturbances, brain degeneration, GI disorders and utter metabolic chaos. It is deeply problematic. These unnaturally restrictive diets, together with other carbohydrate-based diets dysregulate insulin and leptin function to the extreme.

Something to consider if WellPoint insures for psychological disorders.

In her recently published book The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, ex-vegan of 20 years, Lierre Keith, devotes page after page to descriptions of her seriously deteriorating mental and physical health as a vegan, as well as similar issues with friends and acquaintances.

One comes away with the impression that these issues are well known but not talked about in strict vegetarian and vegan circles.

(HT to Keith for the heads up)