Archives for October 2009

News: Today, Free the Animal surpassed 50,000 visits and 90,000 page views in a month for the first time ever. Story to follow on Sunday or Monday, plus, a substantial post I’m working up about a research doctor in New Zealand who still doesn’t get it. jimmy moore has his hands in both of those stories. Stay tuned. in the meantime…

This should take only a few minutes. First, get your leftover spaghetti sauce going on low, covered, & be patient. No use in causing excessive oxidative damage in reheating.

Separately, get an omelet pan going with lots of butter. Get the pan very hot first, add the butter, turn the heat medium low and let the butter get past bubbly to slightly brown, toss in the eggs & stir. Even in a stainless pan without non-stick, they shouldn’t stick. Flip the omelet when ready, keep it open face, add sauce & freshly ground parmesan, and you have yourself dinner.

Spaghetti Sauce on an Omelet

The spaghetti sauce was the same basic recipe as here, except I used the very last pound of my brother’s venison kill instead of ground beef. A couple of nights before, I put it over spaghetti squash, like in the former link, right above. Delicious.

Now that it’s getting colder, a lot more hearty dishes like stew, chili, and curry are going to be hitting the blog. Rumor has it that I’ll be up for another chicken mole in my style come Saturday night.

Now for tonight’s dish: masaman curry (sometimes spelled "massaman").

Thai Masaman Beef Curry

The typical recipe calls for beef (I used sirloin filets), onion, carrot and white sweet potato (I used cubed butternut squash). As for the curry paste, minimum a huge heaping tbsp per can of coconut milk. I did about 1 1/2 tbsp plus maybe a half tsp cayenne pepper for heat. Ultimately, you’ve got to find your own taste. The recipe also calls for peanuts. I said "what the hell" and added a tsp of organic, unsweetened peanut butter.

I first browned the meat in 2 big tbsp of coconut oil. Then, add the coconut milk (1 can per pound of meat is what I do) and curry paste; bring to a boil, cover & simmer about 15 minutes. Then add the veggies and simmer another 15. Test for tenderness in the meat & veggies and go a little longer if you need to. This was the first time I used butternut squash. It was not as good as the sweet potato, but acceptable. (Anyone know offhand the carb difference?) Anyway, it got soft really fast, so next time I’ll put it in for only the last 5-10 minutes.

For the "rice" I took some cauliflower, broke it into small pieces and then used very brief pulses in small batches in the food processor. Way easier than chopping finely. Then the wok went on high with 2 tbsp coconut oil and about a heaping tbsp of almond meal. Let the almond meal brown, toss in the cauliflower and stir fry on high for a bit, then reduce to let moisture escape. Sprinkle with cinnamon to taste for an amazing taste combo with the curry.

Enjoy.

A Ponderable, For Sure

While I contemplate and pick at a couple of other posts for a day, or 2, 3… out, here’s some early, very Deep Dish rock for you. It’s Rush, 1976 live, Lakeside Park.

The video is primitive but gets better. The band is quite unpolished at this point. Geddy’s vocals are by far the weakest element (but later to equal guitar and drums). I have a number of later versions of this song and they get way better — more polished on every element. OK, so everything gets going at around 1:20. At 2:00, even better and by 2:45, we’re in full swing.

The title of the post comes in at 3:20, which ushers in a full minute closing of nothing but instrumental; and the good thing about that, is that it’s pretty much just as good as anything later.

Enjoy.

This isn’t appropriate for those on strict, low-carb regimes. I have found, however, that so long as it’s pretty real food (TM), I have no problem with occasional ingestion of potatoes cooked sensibly: do your fries in lard, coconut oil, or tallow and add lots of butter and cream to mashes & purées.

Here’s the prep, which is about 2 soup ladles worth of my homemade beef stock (frozen), reducing, as well as pats of organic butter in organic cream. This is for two helpings, which are two medium potatoes.

Sauce for Meat & Potatoes

I did the grassfed tri-tip in the oven at 250 with a temp probe, removed it when the internal was 125, then fired the broiler on high and did about 2 minutes on each side, rubbing them down with butter.

The idea with the purée is to make it somewhere between a mash and a hearty soup, such that you spread it out over your plate, using it as a bed for the meat. Food processors work best to get this level of smoothness. It should come out like a pudding in consistency.

Low Slow Tri Tip & Potato Puree

And there you have it: last night’s dinner for two.

One final note, and it’s a note of dismay. I did not particularly like the taste of the fat on this grassfed roast from La Cense. The lean meat was delicious, but the fat had an off-putting, gamey taste to me. Perhaps I just need to get used to it. On the other hand, all the grassfed steaks I’ve enjoyed have been excellent, including the taste of the fat.

Can this study get any better? Yes it can. The investigators broke down the data into two halves: the first ten years, and the second ten. In the first ten years, there was no significant association between margarine intake and heart attack incidence. In the second ten, the group eating the most margarine had 77% more heart attacks than the group eating none.

That’s Stephan, pitting butter against margarine*. Highly recommended reading.

Another tidbit:

People who ate the least margarine had the highest prevalence of glucose intolerance (pre-diabetes), smoked the most cigarettes, drank the most alcohol, and ate the most saturated fat and butter. These were the people who cared the least about their health. Yet they had the fewest heart attacks.

Ha, even smoking is less bad for you than eating industrially processed, fraudulently marketed, government backed and subsidized agri-crap.

*(nasty garbage unworthy of being fed to sewer rats)

I’m going to need reader help with this one. An email.

I was very impressed to read your path. I am currently 360 lbs and I am 5’10. I know it is decision time or I have to pack my bags and leave the planet. I do have the book primal blueprint but I find that I am unable to curb my sugar craving from time to time. I am curious if there is a supplement that would kill my craving and then I would like to let go of the extra weight to get back to 240 lbs.

For a long time until age 40 I was very fit. I competed on a couple U.S. OLYMPIC TEAMS as an alternate getting to the finals of the U.S. Team in 1996 but then I got hooked on the sugar and stopped training like a madman. I sure would like to let go of this weight and feel kinda stuck. I am not confident in other diet systems because they just don’t resonate with me like the paleo does.

Do you have any insights you can share?

My problem was always the indirect intake of sugar via processed food, fast food, bread, pizza, and so on. Sure, I could get a sugar fix on now and then, particularly around holidays when candies & baked sweets abound, but the sweet taste itself was never a big problem for me. That is to say: I would indulge if it was around, but I was never one to buy candies and other sweet stuff, and I always drank diet soda from sometime in my 20s.

So, all that I can say is that for me personally, the biggest craving killer for any sorts of cravings is fat, good fat. In fact, I’ve tested it. I make various forms of "liquid fat bombs" (I no longer use sweeteners of any kind). Currently, my favorite is one egg, 4 oz heavy cream, and 2-3 tsp of FAGE Total, until I have a volume of 8 oz total. I sometimes add some ice as well.

This just knocks hunger — indeed, all cravings — dead, for me.

As to supplements, there’s a couple of things you could check out. I mentioned a Jimmy Moore interview with Julia Ross in this post back in July. The idea is that cravings for various things (drugs, alcohol, sugar) can be seen as deficiencies of various hormones that can be helped by targeting specific amino acids and supplementing. She also says that lots of protein can work too, but that’s harder. But check out the interview and her website.

For me, fat seems to work the best.

Anyone else have insights to share?

Two substantive posts on line for tomorrow and Tuesday or Wednesday. In the meantime, here’s Friday night’s dish.

It was a 2.5 lb. cross rib roast; trimmed, cubed, and then browned pretty well in the cooking pot in a big tbsp of lard and another of bacon drippings — medium heat. Once browned, I added 5 ladles of my beef stock, a couple of cups of water, about 6-7 tbsp chili powder and 2 tbsp Thai massaman curry paste (just enough to have people go: "what’s that?!"). These were all rounded tbsps. Then: one cap of diced tomatoes, a can of tomato sauce, 4 cloves of fresh garlic crushed & chopped, a medium onion, chopped, 3/4 of a green bell pepper, cubed, and about a cup of chopped crimini mushrooms.

Chili in the Pot

Be patient. Once I brought it all to a boil, it’s about an hour covered on your smallest burner low. Then, take the cover off and increase heat –if needed — until you get a light simmer. This will reduce and thicken the sauce — essential.

I was very pleased because inside of the first hour, the roast was already tender enough to break apart with a fork.

Chili for three

It was garnished with — get this! — FAGE Total yogurt. Way better than sour cream.

Chili No Beans

Nope, I can’t get enough of this sauce (the 2nd one), and neither will you if you try it. Any sort of beef will do, and it’s easy as can be.

Here’s a kinda "recipe" for a pound of ground beef, which in my case was La Cense grassfed. But first, here’s what it ends up looking like, flash enabled.

Meatballs & Blue Cheese Sauce

OK, we’ll presume you know how to make balls out of ground beef. Get your cast iron or equivalent online & fatted up with tallow, lard, or bacon drippings (I used the later, about 2 heaping tbsp — don’t be shy). Fry up your meatballs, but on low to medium low heat. Be patient, they have to cook through. You’re not merely browning them.

When done, move to a plate in the oven on warm. Now comes the fun.

1/4 cup of any red wine will do to deglaze the pan using a spatula. Then, in goes two soup ladles of beef stock (whatever you have and obviously, this will effect quality). I used my own beef stock and the last batch was particularly rich. Bring it to a boil, reduce to simmer, add three pats of butter and then three heaping tbsp of crumbled blue cheese. Let it simmer a while until smooth and reintroduce the meatballs.

1 tbsp at a time, stir in crème fraîche, sour cream, or even yogurt until smoother, tasting after each addition. I think it came out to 2 tbsp for me (of crème fraîche). Here’s a view without the flash.

Same without the flash

Aside from the recent abysmal nature of my blogging, my neighborhood dog-walking friend Kara emails:

You are on the cutting edge.

Indeed, I am. She forwards a great review of The Vegetarian Myth (reviewed here, here, here, and here) in an email newsletter from Fourfold Healing.

The vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith

Very occasionally powerful, life-changing books are written that give one the palpable sense that "if people would only listen" the world might be a different place. The vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is one such book. In this book Lierre essentially tells two intertwined stories. One is the story of the deterioration of her own health as a direct result of adopting a vegan diet. The second is the related tale of the destruction of our planet essentially as a result of the widespread adoption of agriculture, specifically agriculture based on the growing of grains. Her central premise is that, unlike what we are all led to believe, the absolute worst thing that could ever befall humans or the earth is if we all adopted a vegetarian or, worse yet, a vegan diet. To many, this is such an unbelievable head spinner that they simply will not even be able to entertain the ideas that are presented by Lierre. The ideas, the argument she presents to make her case are powerful, coherent and irrefutable – grains and in fact a grain-based (i.e. vegetarian) diet are literally killing us all.

First, the ecological argument. We are told that the biggest users of fresh water and the most wasteful, ecologically speaking, food we can eat is meat. We are told that if instead of feeding grains to cows to get meat, which is anyway poison for us to eat, we should feed that grain to people thereby feeding at least 30 people with a grain-based diet for every one person we can feed on a meat-based diet. We are told to eat low on the food chain to conserve resources and be ecologically friendly. And, finally and crucially we hear people proudly announce they don’t eat anything with faces as a sign that they are living out their deeply held convictions about social justice. The facts actually tell a completely different story.

Imagine the Middle East 10,000 years ago when the only people living in what we now call Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, etc., were nomadic hunter-gatherer types. This area was referred to as a paradise; it was lush, fecund; Lebanon was the land of the cedar forests. The area between the Tigris and Euphrates was literally paradise on earth. Then came agriculture, specifically the growing of grains. As happens where grains are grown and irrigation is used, the soil began to lose its vitality, the humous layer was lost. The irrigation and the converting of perennial grasses and the animals that live on these grasses to annual crops is akin to mining the nutrients and the fertility out of the soil. Without sufficient animal manure and animal bodies to put nutrients back into the soil, without the annual flooding of the plains that is stopped when irrigation systems are used, the land loses its nutrients, the soil becomes more salty and, as evidenced in the Middle East, eventually, inevitably the land becomes a desert. Lierre describes this process in intimate detail so the reader is left with no doubt that in human history, whenever the transition from perennial grass- based land – alongside naturally flowing lakes and rivers, co-existing with verdant forests – is converted into grain based agriculture, the inevitable result is everything dies. Everything – the plants, the insects, the wild animals and eventually the people.

If this wasn’t reason enough for conscientious people to shun a grain-based diet, Lierre spends the second half of the book detailing the negative health repercussions from adopting a grain-based, vegetarian or vegan diet. For those familiar with the work of the Weston A. Price foundation or The Fourfold Path to Healing, this will come as no surprise. What will be eye-opening for many is a detailed chart that compares the physiology of meat eaters with that of herbivores. If you still have any doubts that humans are literally physiologically required to live on mostly an animal food diet, I recommend checking out this enlightening chart. Lierre has done her homework. She references many studies that have been done in the last 100 years documenting the superior health outcomes, the absence of chronic disease, and the total absence of cancer and heart disease in people who eat the food that comes naturally out of a perennially based grass and forest system. What do these people eat? What is the "human" diet, the diet that works back to heal the land? Conveniently it is one diet, called the GAPS diet. As probably more than a hundred of my patients can attest, those who have literally regained their health as a result of the GAPS diet, it is no surprise that the very diet that can heal so many sick people is the very diet that,when applied to agriculture, can heal a "sick" earth.

Get this book, read it, pass it to your friends, especially your vegetarian friends, for as Lierre often says in our current situation, it is not enough any more to just have good intentions. You also have to be informed about what it is you are fighting for.

By the way, some people have emailed me that they have not been able to get it from Amazon. Me too. I have an order pending; I initially read it on Kindle, but wanted a copy to mark up. Still waiting. At any rate, Lierre informed me via email today that she has had the 2nd edition for weeks and anyone can order directly from her.

She might even sign it for you, if you ask. Click here to order.

A couple of weeks ago I posted this on fatty liver reversal. Around the same time I was asked to submit an article to Passionate Fitness and submitted the same one after checking with Rafi to make sure that would be OK.

The time for submitting articles is now past, and now it’s time to vote. Just go to Passionate Fitness where you’ll find the six contest submissions on the left sidebar, and the voting widget on the right sidebar. Please vote for the article you like best.

I’m pressed for time, with a court trial (business related; contract dispute) in which my company is the defendant begins tomorrow morning. We have an excellent case — otherwise I’d have easily settled long time ago — but you can never predict an outcome. So, I’m…preoccupied. Perhaps I’ll briefly tell you about it later, but no guarantee.

So, here’s two meals of recent preparation that I’ll just toss up without a lot of hullabaloo.

The first is a Chicken I grilled and prepared a sauce of chicken stock reduction, butter, crème fraîche, and tarragon.

Tarragon Chicken

Next up is a grilled grassfed New York from La Cense, pan grilled, deglazed with some red wine, then add in melted butter (lots), then crumbled blue cheese (rounded tsp+ per serving), get the butter & cheese melted, slightly browning (be very careful & quick), then enough crème fraîche to get it creamy.

Steak & Blue Cheese Sauce

With pressing business issues throughout the week I might not have a lot to post about. But, for now, here’s some of the more interesting things I’ve seen whilst clearing my head at the cabin this weekend.

~ In the American Journal of Epidemiology, which cholesterol level is related to the lowest mortality in a population with low mean cholesterol level; a 6.4-Year Follow-up Study of 482,472 Korean Men? You guessed it.

A low cholesterol level (<165 mg/100 ml) was associated with increased risk of total mortality, even after eliminating deaths that occurred in the first 5 years of follow-up. The risk of death from coronary heart disease increased significantly in men with the highest cholesterol level (£252 mg/100 ml). There were various relations between cholesterol level and cancer mortality by site. Mortality from liver and colon cancer was significantly associated with a very low cholesterol level (<135 mg/100 ml) without any evidence of a preclinical cholesterol-lowering effect. With lengthening follow-up, the significant relation between a very low cholesterol level (<135 mg/100 ml) and mortality from stomach and esophageal cancer disappeared. The cholesterol level related with the lowest mortality ranged from 211 to 251 mg/100 ml, which was higher than the mean cholesterol level of study subjects.

Like I’ve said before, all-cause mortality is the thing to watch, not just death from heart disease. In this study, the lowest mortality was in those men with total cholesterol between about 210 and 250, pretty close to the "sweet spot" I’ve blogged about before, this being the most recent. (Thanks to Ricardo for the link.)

~ Via Patrik, I’ve just got to put this up, even though it’s mostly about global warming. I think Winterspeak makes an excellent point regarding the parallels between the awful, politicized, big-corporate driven bad science we see every day in diet & nutrition and this sordid tale of the demise of the "Hockey Stick" graph that forms the foundation of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

The most amazing part of this story from my point of view was the way in which a dogged Canadian mathematician, acting practically alone with the help of his trusty readers, forced the establishment back step by step to explain where the conclusions upon which a trillion dollar public policy came from and insisted on reproducing the results. If ever there was a tale of triumph over dauntless odds — almost to the point of comparing it to breaking the bank — this is it. The story of man’s search for the scientific truth is still ongoing. Research doesn’t end with McIntyre. It may still prove to be the case that the Hockey Stick exists, but it must be shown on the basis of the data, not on the strength of “consensus” and public relations campaigns. What McIntyre showed is that nothing beneath the stars need be taken on authority. Whether the truth will set you free is a proposition not all will accept; but at least the search for it will.

Remind you of anything?

~ As far I can tell from reading the text of this entire article on Celiac (or Coeliac) disease and its link to osteoporosis, there’s not a single call for the obvious: eliminate gluten grains from your diet. Rather, as usual, it’s about drug therapy. (Thanks to Calvin in Anckorage for that one.)

~ Whoa! Loren Cordain, finally, at long last appears to be turning the corner on the saturated fat issue.

The Seven Country Study, a cross-cultural analysis, reported strong positive associations among a population’s average SFA intake, serum total cholesterol concentrations, and 25-year death rates from CHD. However, it is important to note that several groups with very high SFA intakes from coconut fat (up to 40% of energy) and apparently low CHD rates have since been identified. In the Nurses’ Health Study, a large prospective cohort study, a weak but significant positive association between SFA intake and CHD risk was initially seen. With long-term follow-up, this association was no longer significant. Any association between SFAs and CHD appears to be a small fraction of that observed for TFAs [trans-fatty acids]. Other observational studies and dietary trials have been unconvincing or even contradictory. In general, experimental evidence does not support a robust link between SFA intake and CHD risk.

Yes indeed. Traditional Tokelauans were getting about 40-50% of their energy from saturated fat and certainly were not dropping like flies from heart disease. But once they began migrating to New Zealand and became addicted to sugar and processed foods like the rest of the world, guess what happened?

Keep it up Dr. Cordain. I look forward to the day when this is past history.

~ A very interesting chapter on gout originally in Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, and got cut by the editors. Tim Ferris serves it up, courtesy of Gary Taubes. Now, go get a load of that and understand the suffering so many have endured because society will simply not accept the fact that our evolved hunter-gatherer bodies — many of which are the product of surviving ice ages — are ill adapted to sugar.

~ Check out this video footage of polar bears and sled dogs. Awww…

…And, how looks can be deceiving.

Before we get to the Steak Frites, how does this look?

Poached Cod in Coconut Milk & Relish

Not bad, right? And I’ve done this before. …Well, upon looking at that link, I guess I must have been trying to get by cheap on effort this time.

It showed, because this dish was awful. I overcooked it (fish was rubber), I didn’t have red onions so I used yellow, and far too much. Our eyes were watering. I also used fresh garlic, a whole clove — way too much; or, maybe leave out the garlic altogether.

But you know what? This is the only way you get better: dissapointment.

Embrace not failure, but the reality of failure and the opportunities for an improved reality it brings. -Me

OK, maybe that’s a bit melodramatic for ruining a dinner… So, just don’t be afraid to ruin a dish. Choke it down, or reschedule your weekly fast.

Here’s the one I did the next day to redeem myself. Steak Ftites. The sauce is a reduction of a new batch of bone broth, this one having quite a lot of lamb bone scraps. I did the fries in half grassfed beef tallow from drippings from the ground beef of the last meatza, and half coconut oil.

Steak Frites

The steak is a grassfed New York strip from La Cense. I did them in the skillet & deglazed with the broth.

The fries are "twice fried." You first do them until limp, but not brown. Remove them to a mesh strainer over a bowl and let them sit for 5-10 (time not to important) as you reduce the sauce and the steaks are in the warm oven with the door cracked open.

Then fire the oil, and when hot, reintroduce the fries. They’ll brown up in no time. Remove to the mesh for a very quick draining, then dump into a brwn paper bag, add a dash or two of sea salt, crimp the bag and shake.

An email crashes in.

Hi there,

I work with Silk on one of their latest new products called Heart Health.

As part of their new line of wellness products, Heart Health was specifically designed to reduce cholesterol. In fact, A recent study found that people who enjoyed three servings of Silk Heart Health per day for four weeks, as part of a sensible diet, lowered their cholesterol by 7%.

If you’re interested, I would like to send you some coupons for a free half gallon of Heart Health. You can use these for both product review, or as contest give-aways on your site. I can take care of shipping coupons to contest winners.

Also, I have Silk pedometers to give-away as well. They are pocket-size and perfect for the on-the-go lifestyle.

If you have any questions, please let me know and if you’re interested in participating, please send me your address for shipping. I plan to mail coupons and pedometers out this Friday, 10/9.

Thanks,
Tim

Well, Tim, it’s clear to me that before wasting my time with your email, you didn’t bother to do enough research on my blog (like search ‘soy’, maybe) to disabuse yourself of the silly assumption that, oh, I dunno…what: because this is generally a "health blog" that I must certainly and unquestionably be a whore to all the "expert" diktats out there, a supreme sucker for conventional "wisdom?"

…That when a major corporation maligns natural foods like meat and natural fats in order to tout neolithic garbage like soy and its hyper-processed derivative products, I jump to attention?

That being the case, then, I’m just going to assume that you don’t mind poisoning people for money.

Deal?

Alright, moving right along. Do you have any idea of the poison unfermented soy and soy milk is? Are you aware, for example, that infants on soy formula and children on soy milk and other products are getting the hormonal equivalent of about five birth-control pills per day?

According to the Weston A. Price Foundation, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability and Primal Body-Primal Mind: Empower Your Total Health The Way Evolution Intended (…And Didn’t) (quoting WAPF, here):

The most serious problem with soy formula is the presence of phytoestrogens or isoflavones. While many claims have been made about the health benefits of these estrogen-like compounds, animal studies indicate that they are powerful endocrine disrupters that alter growth patterns and cause sterility. Toxicologists estimate that an infant exclusively fed soy formula receives the estrogenic equivalent of at least five birth control pills per day. By contrast, almost no phytoestrogens have been detected in dairy-based infant formula or in human milk, even when the mother consumes soy products. A recent study found that babies fed soy-based formula had 13,000 to 22,0000 times more isoflavones in their blood than babies fed milk-based formula. Scientists have known for years that isoflavones in soy products can depress thyroid function, causing autoimmune thyroid disease and even cancer of the thyroid.

Wonderful suff, that. There’s more, but you can read it from the source. In brief: all these estrogens being pumped into infants and children is having opposite side effects: 1% of girls are now showing signs of puberty as early and age three (15% of whites and 50% of blacks by age eight), and boys are entering puberty with underdeveloped genitals and learning disabilities.

And the list goes on. Want more sources? Sure.

Now, as to the rest of it, "Heart Health?" Who in their right mind would trust anything a profit-at-any-price (see foregoing) company says about heart health? Want to know about heart health? How about consult a cardiologist like William Davis of The Heart Scan Blog, or a cardiac surgeon like Dwight Lundell, man enough to admit he made a mistake after holding 5,000 beating hearts in his hands and just observing the obvious. Or, why not another heart surgeon, this one specializing in infant heart transplant; also named America’s Top Doctor three years running, Dr. Steven Gundry. How about see what he says about heart health, but certainly, by all means, laugh your ass off when a company willing to cripple infants and children touts "heart health."

Actually, it’s not a laughing matter.

Finally, why would most anyone want to "lower their cholesterol?" What do you think you know about cholesterol, anyway? Do you have any idea how many people die who have low cholesterol? Seriously, do you have any clue? Are you aware that for the elderly in general and women in particular, the higher the cholesterol, the longer the average lifespan? Why are you admonishing people to engage in behavior that carries a risk of increased all-cause mortality and decreased longevity? Well, you don’t have a problem poisoning kinds, so…

If people started actually thinking and paying attention to these things, they’d be focussed on natural and ancestral eating habits that would often tend to raise their cholesterol, and they’d stop looking at it as a problem to be managed — as companies like yours would have them do out of ignorance and fear, all while the profits just roll in.

Hope that all wasn’t too mean.

Relax. You have been protected. No longer must you languish in uncertainty about whether I or anyone else who reviews a book, a film, or food is doing so for professional reasons with a reputation to build and maintain, or just for the goodies.

The Federal Trade Commission will try to regulate blogging for the first time, requiring writers on the Web to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

The FTC said Monday its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final Web guidelines, which had been expected. Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could bring fines up to $11,000 per violation. Bloggers or advertisers also could face injunctions and be ordered to reimburse consumers for financial losses stemming from inappropriate product reviews.

For the record, I think that if you want to build and maintain a reputation, then such disclosures are certainly a good idea. I think it’s good that you get to wonder, even question, and that it’s my job over time to work for a good reputation. Well, whew… now I can just dispense with all that work.

Thanks to being protected from your own stupidity, lack of discretion and discernment in the Federal Trade Commission’s eyes, you no longer get to see the difference between good business practices, values, and virtues, and plain old slimy operators.

Virtue has been taken out of the picture. Everyone’s just gonna follow the law, now. Isn’t it wonderful?

I’ve long wanted to dramatically increase the number of blogs and other good resources on the blogroll, but I really hate blogrolls that are dozens and dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of links. However, I’ve solved that by installing a widget that takes my whole list and gives a random slice of however many links I have it set to (currently 10). Each visitor gets a different mix at each visit.

Now I can have as many links as possible.

That’s where you come in. I’ve temporarily put up the whole list just to the right. Is you health, fitness, food, or workout blog or website on it? Or, do you know a good resource you think would fit in? Then drop a suggestion in comments, I’ll review the site, and if appropriate, will add it to the roll.

In general, blogs or websites should focus on health & fitness from a paleo, primal, evolutionary, or low-carb perspective.

Later: there’s a limit of 3 links per comment, otherwise the system thinks it’s spam. So, if you have more than three, either split the comments or just email them to me.

Later still: I’ve taken down the temp list to the right, but to see if your or another blog isn’t on it andnot already mentioned in the comments, then here’s a page with the whole list, except those here in the comments which I’ll add over the next few days.

So far as a search of the blog goes, I appear to never have mentioned probiotics in a post (others have brought it up in comments a coupla times).

There’s a good reason for that. For one, I never noted any benefit from drinking acidophilus-spiked milk. And, I’ve tried a few supplements from time to time and never got any benefit that struck me in particular.

But now I’m convinced on a whole number of levels, at least for myself. Your mileage may vary.

A while back I started buying fresh — neither caned nor bottled — sauerkraut, both from a local supplier to Whole Foods and at a farmer’s market (from wooden fermenting casks, no less). The problem is that the various sauerkraut dishes I make (spareribs, pork roast, or sausages) require cooking, which kills the bacteria. So, I noticed I really liked the fresh sauerkraut raw, and it seemed to like me too, particularly if I had a few fork fulls with breakfast.

And then I discovered FAGE Total Yogurt (pronounced "fa-yeh"). You’ve gotta try this stuff, and only get the full fat version, unsweetened, of course (they have: 0%, 2%, 5%, and Total; 35% fat, 90% of that being blessed hearthealthysaturatedfat). Realize: whenever you use dairy and go for the crappy, shitty, awful, reduced fat garbage — for any volume you are ingesting — you’re trading fat for carbs, i.e., something critically healthy and nutritious and filling for: SUGAR. Yes, you’re trading real nutrition for sugar. Even if they don’t add any, just in removing the fat, the same 1/2 cup is going to have far more sugar to make up for the void created by removing the good part.

Modern ignorance. Don’t be fooled. Never, ever get any sorts of real food that removes natural fat. I guarantee you that the void that remains will almost certainly be filled with cheap shit that’s generally bad for you and good for profits.

Alright, didn’t know I was going to rant, but there you have it. Moving on…

So, my favorite ways to use FAGE are very simple. One is a heaping tablespoon or more in a smoothie, or often just right out of the tub by itself, and my favorite of all: about 1/2 handful of frozen berry medley, 1/2 handful of mixed nuts — or just fruit or nuts — and about 2 massively heaping tablespoons of FAGE. Mix it up and let sit and the berries thaw, mix again. I have been having something on this order every night. Last night was berries only; 1/2 handful of the medley, 1/2 handful of just blueberries, my favorite.

As I have continued to do this, trying to get some form of probiotic from real food in the morning and evening, and doing it for several weeks now, I’m just sold. It seems like everything is better, even mental attitude. Certainly, some digestive issues have also completely resolved.

FAGE TOTAL Yogurt is 100% natural. It contains no added sweeteners, thickeners or preservatives. We do not use powder milk, powder cream or powder protein in FAGE, just raw milk, raw cream and live active cultures which come together for a naturally blissful taste experience. In line with our All Natural approach to yogurt making, our milk and cream supply comes from farmers who have pledged not to treat their cows with rBGH*. FAGE is an excellent source of protein due to its unique straining process. Vegetarians can eat FAGE TOTAL and is also suitable for diabetics, pregnant women and people on gluten-free diets. It can also be used to cook with in your favorite recipes since it will not separate in high heat. FAGE is pure, creamy and can be enjoyed without adding anything to it. It is simply delicious and nutritious.

I’m really sold on it.

So back to sauerkraut. Last evening I decided I wanted a hearty meal. Bea’s out of town, so I considered going out, but then decided I absolutely should fix a good meal. But, I’d also downloaded two movies on Apple TV, so didn’t want to take a lot of time.

Raw Sauerkraut & Uncured Frankfurters

Yep, grassfed franks from La Cense. Now, how to prepare while keeping the good bacteria?

Franks in their juices & stock cooling down

So I cut up the franks, added water & chicken stock just to the top of the franks, brought to a boil and simmered a few minutes. Then I removed the franks to a dish in the oven, warming at 140 while I reduced and concentrated the stock. Took maybe 10 minutes or so, I reintroduced the franks and set the whole pan in cold water to cool it to where it was hot to the touch, but not scalding. I then took it out of the cold bath and introduced the kraut.

Sauerkraut & Grassfed Frankfurters

I like with both Dijon & yellow mustards. This was so very satisfying and the feeling of well being fantastic for hours. I had my yogurt later and ended up fully alert until 2am. Got up at 8am this morning feeling just fantastic in every respect.

So, any other experiences, positive or negative? Anyone think it’s all hype?