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Free The Animal

Ex Navy Officer. Owner of Businesses. Digital Entrepreneur. Expat Living in Thailand. 5,000 Biting Blog Post on Everything since 2003.

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Archives for February 2010

Sunday Rock for the Countrys

February 28, 2010 8 Comments

Well, I saw Crazy Heart yesterday and was left a bit wanting. I dunno. I like the title track enough — got it in the library now — but I could just think of so many western ballads that are so much better. Plus, Jeffie boy just couldn’t muster that much sympathy with me. Glad he got it together, though. On the bright side, if he can get chicks looking like that….

So hey, here’s a better country ballad, by Willie Nelson, with a little latin salsa thrown in for spice. Bet you listen twice. Its that good.

This is from Willie’s album — his best in my view — Teatro. And that’s Emmylou Harris singing close backup harmony. Pure gold. It’s very rare when I like virtually ever track on an album, but I sure do with this one.

Filed Under: General

Sunday Links & Food Porn

February 28, 2010 30 Comments

~ You’ll recall John Durant’s performance on The Colbert Report, but did you see the backstage showdown with a vegan?

~ Many were appalled at the state of school lunches highlighted in my post of a couple of days ago. Could the sorry state of school lunches be what’s partially behind something like this: The cigarettes, crisps and creme egg diet?

~ Were ancient Egyptian priests killed by saturated fat in their food? You be the judge.

~ Chalk one up for the paleo / evolutionary method of exercise: brief & intense.

~ It’s nice to be able to applaud a dietitian for a change: The truth is that saturated fats may not be the enemy. Thank you, Jennifer Sygo.

~ And here’s the obese, "official dietitian" for WebMD, Elaine Magee, MPH, RD. Check out how this fatass vomits "low-fat" over and over and over. What a fucking moron. She’s a menace to society. …On the plus side, she seems to be following her own stupid and ignorant advice to the tee.

OK, it was salmon the other night, sous vide method.

Food Shots
 

I got hold of wild caught sockeye. Beautiful color. Alongside was fresh asparagus done by tossing them in olive oil & onto the cookie sheet in a 350F oven for about 20 minutes or until the tops brown.

Then I made a tomato, yellow onion and anchovy salad tossed with my vinaigrette of dijon mustard, olive oil and vinegar.

The salmon was brined in a solution that’s 5 tbsp per quart of water for 10-15 minutes, dried, sprinkled with dill and then sealed in the bags with a good pat of butter and a tsp of fresh lemon juice. 120F in the Sous-Vide Supreme for 40 minutes. Just empty the bags, butter & all, right onto the plate. You’ll note that the butter is perfectly yellow & clear. All the juices remain in the fish, which you can observe by clicking this photo forfor the high res shot.

Sockeye Salmon Sous Vide
Sockeye Salmon, Sous Vide

Filed Under: General

In Macleans.Ca: Cavemen who walk among us

February 27, 2010 20 Comments

Well I think this is the best of the lot, so far. While I don’t like the "cavemen" moniker at all and still some aspects seem goofy or obsessed in the way they’re portrayed, the article greatly makes up for that by touching of the science from a number of sources and also the author, Katie Engelhart, shares her own personal exposure to paleo by means of her dad’s paleoesque practices.

That gives it a lot more credibility in my book.

Good job, Katie. Thanks for including me. Here’s the link again, folks. Go have a look. Comments, supportive or critical are welcome. Oh, and if you’ve got a story to tell the article itself accepts comments. Tell your story.

Filed Under: General

It’s The Crap; Just Eat Real Food

February 26, 2010 75 Comments

From my post yesterday at the never-ending Amazon discussion forum focussing just now on The China Study author, Dr. T. Colin Campbell, and his insistence that we need to at least try his no-added-fat plant-based diet.

…Never tried it, and I stated so long ago, back around the last time these discussions heated up. And I never would and, of course, why would I? I’ve achieved marvelous results as I’ve pointed out too many times.

Look, I’m not going to question that Dr. Campbell’s chosen foods work well for him. I believe it. I believe it can be workable, perhaps ideal for others. I’m not in the least threatened by that. But Dr. Campbell seems threatened by the notion that a WHOLE FOODS eater that includes lots of meat (and sauces from marrow bone & chicken broth I make myself) is just as health and well-being promoting. He doesn’t seem to get that the most likely explanation that his diet, Ornish’s and mine can prevent and reverse heart disease (see Dr. William Davis’ Track Your Plaque website) is because they all have one thing in common: elimination of modern processed foods.

I wholeheartedly agree with the Doc on that point, and we really ought to get on that focus. It’s just like Pollan. I respect him immensely for the education work he does. But mostly plants? Nope. Mostly meat for me. It’s the crap, folks. It’s that crap "food" of modernity, and even the Chinese eat it. Hell, I lived in Japan for 5 years in the latter half of the 80s and they too were already very big into junk. I used to joke (but it’s true) that you could sit at the window in a McDs in Tokyo and see 1-2 other McDs down the avenues.

It’s the crap, not WHOLE FOOD animal products.

Here’s real food. First, you take care and prepare it yourself.

Lamb Chops
Lamb Chops

A little seasoning, rosemary, and you’re on your way. Gather some veggies and cook them up in high quality pastured butter for Christ’s sake. I kinda got carried away with the reduction  of the bone marrow stock on this one, a bit too thick but tasty and densely nutritious nonetheless. I did these sous vide, but unfortunately it was a while back and I can’t recall what temperature and time I used.

Lamb Chops Sous Vide
Lamb Chops Sous Vide

Now I ask you, is this really the sort of thing that’s destroying America’s health, or, is it more likely something like this?

Junk Food

And have you seen the blog by the school teacher who’s eating the school "lunches" every day for a year and photographing the "meals?" Go check out Fed Up With School Lunch, but you’d better not have recently eaten. And hey, if ever you’re fasting, get hungry and need a helping hand to completely lose your appetite, just keep that site bookmarked. Here’s a sampling of school lunch "food."

School Lunch Frankenfood
School Lunch Frankenfood

That crapshit makes airline food look gourmet. You know, when I was in grade school I did my time in the kitchen, and it was a real kitchen with real laddies cooking hot meals each and every day. There was always real meat, real vegetables, and so on. It was served from the lunch line onto plates with spoons, forks & tongs, not in sealed containers. Disgusting. And look how we generally fare in comparison to school lunches from around the world. Or, how about this one, from France.

School Lunch in France
School Lunch in France

As the author of the article where I nabbed this photo identifies, "In France, schoolchildren are served guinea fowl instead of chicken nuggets." And she goes onto describe her experience.

At one school, students were served a choice of salads — mâche with smoked duck and fava beans, or mâche with smoked salmon and asparagus — followed by guinea fowl with roasted potatoes and carrots and steamed broccoli. For dessert, there was a choice of ripe, red-throughout strawberries or clafoutis. A pungent washed-rind cheese was offered, along with French bread and water. Yes, the kids took and ate the cheese. […]

In addition to the goodness of the food, there were other good things about these school lunches. First of all, they weren’t rushed. About two hours are given for lunch, a portion of which is used for very loud and active exercise. Second, they were civilized. Food was served on heated plates; real silverware and glasses — not plastic — were used; and the lunchrooms were pretty and comfortable for the kids. […]

What impressed me most of all about the French school lunch was not just the deliciousness of the food, but that everything about it — the brightly decorated lunchrooms, the gorgeous kitchens, the lunch moms, the chefs — sent such a deep message of caring. To my ears it fairly screamed, “We care about and love our children. They are us, after all, and we want them to eat well and be nourished.”

Unfortunately, that is about the last message American school lunch sends to our children. Instead, we’re saying, “We have to feed you something; it’s gotta be cheap, and we don’t really care about it or you.” This doesn’t mean that those who put the meals out feel that way, but they are mostly given nothing to work with, be it pots and pans or the knowledge about how to do things, like ripen fruit so that it tastes good when it’s offered.

Shameful, isn’t it? …and by that I mean just doing an all-around crappy, not even half-assed job. You know what I think about the state, in general, but everyone with anything to do with this disgraceful mess ought to be made to eat this school lunch crap 365×3 until they clean up their act.

Sticking with France for a bit — since I lived there and understand very well the French relationship with food — I was happy to have been sent this article in Time by a reader: School Lunches in France: Nursery-School Gourmets.

"The food is very good, Madame. The meat is 100% French," the official said, picking up a brochure from her desk. I knew this brochure well, having e-mailed it to friends in the U.S. last year as a this-could-only-happen-in-France conversation piece. It lists in great detail the lunch menu for each school day over a two-month period. On Mondays, the menus are also posted on the wall outside every school in the country. The variety on the menus is astonishing: no single meal is repeated over the 32 school days in the period, and every meal includes an hors d’oeuvre, salad, main course, cheese plate and dessert. […]

I finally saw the system in action earlier this month. Caught short by a sick nanny, my son, who was accustomed to eating leftovers from the refrigerator, sat in silence with his 25 classmates at tables in the nursery-school cafeteria, while city workers served a leisurely, five-course meal. One day, when I arrived to collect him, a server whispered for me to wait until the dessert course was over. Out in the hall, one of the staff shouted for "total quiet" to a crowd of 4-year-olds awaiting the next lunch seating. "I will now read you today’s menu," he told them. "First, you will begin with a salad."

Americans struggling with obesity epidemics have for years wondered how the so-called French paradox works: How does a nation that ingests huge quantities of butter, beef and cakes keep trim and have such long lives? It could be the red wine, as some believe. But another reason has to be this: in a country where con artists and adulterers are tolerated, the laws governing meals are sacrosanct and are drummed into children before they can even hold a knife. The French don’t need their First Lady to plant a vegetable garden at the Élysée Palace to encourage good eating habits. They already know the rules: sit down and take your time, because food is serious business.

And that’s it folks. Food is serious business. It’s your first line of "pharmaceuticals" and the way we’re doing it here is about like feeding kids the equivalent of crack, by comparison.

Filed Under: General

Let’s Get It Started Assemblyman Anthony Portantino

February 25, 2010 28 Comments

Hey, Anthony: Go Fuck Yourself. And take that Sacramento Band of Fuckwads right along with you.

Californians had better start watching their mouths.

Try me, asshole.

And as for that petty, prudish, insolent little shit, McKay Hatch, well, a good ass-paddling before sending him off to bed without any dinner seems about right. …But I’m sure he’ll make an excellent installation to the ranks of the Nomenklatura when the time comes.

Filed Under: General

The Stupidest Thing I’ve Read Today

February 25, 2010 19 Comments

Well, other than T. Colin Campbell’s response to my post of yesterday, recommending a vegan diet to…"prevent erectile dysfunction," that is. I’m working up something kinda unique and creative in response to that and if it works out, should be amusing. Oh, wow, just in. Even more material.

Two readers sent me links to this bit of stupid nonsense apparently from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and some dingy Dr. Teri L. Hernandez of the University of Colorado at Denver. Now, beyond the opening where you’ll see that the whole piece rests on a faulty premise — that cholesterol should be lowered — I’ll just quote this one bit of astounding lunacy.

The low-carb group also showed greater increases in their levels of free fatty acids, which are released into the blood when the body breaks down stored fat. High levels of free fatty acids make it more difficult for the liver to store glucose, which in turn ups sugar levels in the blood. Consistently high sugar levels define diabetes.

Mind numbing. Of course, the reason the FFA in the high-fat, low-carb group is higher than the sugar-gobbler — and I presume calorie restricted — group in spite of both groups losing 13 pounds is of course because they are both high-fat diets as are all weight loss diets. It’s just that the low-carbers were higher in fat.

I wonder if they questioned the subjects on which group enjoyed those six weeks of losing 13 pounds the most.

Filed Under: General

The China Study and T. Colin Campbell on Amazon’s Low-Carb Forum

February 24, 2010 58 Comments

t colin campbell I’m going to address a couple of potential questions or objections right off the bat, hopefully avoiding taking up time & space in comments.

1) Seeing as I was taken to task by a couple of people for my “disrespectful” words toward Dr. Campbell here, is this going to be more of the same?

Answer: It’ll start off much milder than the title to that last, but no guarantees. We’ll just have to see how worked up I get. In any case, whatever it is, it’ll be what it is and I’ll make sure I enjoy it.

2) Why bother with Dr. Campbell?

Answer: I’m not. I’m using him. Look, it’s clear to me that he’s operating under his own agenda, in the making for decades. There’s no chance I’m going to convince him of anything. But with more than 100,000 visits to this blog each month and more than double that in pages viewed — combined with the fact that search logs consistently show vegetarian subject matter near the top, when not actually the top — I want to continually build material that meets that demand. The Amazon discussion is well over a thousand posts now. I’m taking a few important ones, bringing together other relevant material, and creating something more accessible for everyone, particularly those new or confused.

So let’s get on with it, now that my own agenda is unabashedly right out there in front. I had put this out on Twitter for laughs when Dr. Campbell showed up in the forum again the other day to whine at length about how badly he’s been treated by myself & others. I’ll excerpt a bit.

So what do I get? Mostly, it is hostility, anger and worse. It has been virtually impossible to find reasoned explanations in the midst of so many attacks and lies. Because there are so many kooks on this site, I have lost faith in almost anything that is said. […]

I am guided by the famous suggestion of President Kennedy, “Ask no what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country (i.e., others).” People on this site seem not to give a whit about the societal effects of eating animals and other high resource-requiring foods on our society and our environment. It’s all about you and only you. Have you heard the recent analysis of two World Bank people (of all things!) who recently published findings showing that livestock production causes more than 50% of global warming?

Yes folks: step right up; you too can put the spurious claims of unnamed “others” above your own health, well-being and enjoyment of your food in the name of general, various, unspecified environmental causes. …Oh, yea, the crumbling AGW movement.

You’d need to read a lot of the discussion yourself, but in actuality it has been Dr. Campbell who almost never answers questions directly (ignores most of them), never gives much in the way of reasoned explanations but spends pretty much all of his time telling us how well his book sells, how long he’s been doing this, dropping names, and letting us know how much he’s adored by so many. As poster Greg observed in a half-dozen or so posts — that are pure gold — in describing precisely the way Dr. Campbell operates (his posts start here)…

And THAT’S been shown in many studies, too, which you apparently won’t look at because you already know they’re wrong. How many more times should we link them? And how many more times should I call you to task for ad hominem attack? It’s just ridiculous. You just did it again in this post. Do you even realize this? I guess you obviously think it’s a valid form of argument, because it’s literally the only one you use: we’re wrong because we’re angry, disrespectful, have no experience in science, are pretentious, are primarily concerned with excess body weight, and “claim” we can lose weight and improve our health with low carb. That’s all in one paragraph! […]

Your arguments are all based on setting yourself up as the ultimate authority who can’t be questioned and then discounting everyone else – if they’re not credentialed, then they’re just making stuff up or relying on editors; if they have science backgrounds, then they’re not doing primary research; if they’re medical doctors, then they’re cynically writing harmful books and possibly faked their medical degrees. You are really Mr. Ad Hominem Ad Nauseum. Based on your biography it seems to me that you MUST have a lot more you could be contributing to the conversation, but I guess you just have no interest.

And here’s how he operates in debates with other scientists who actually do their own research. This one, The Protein Debate (PDF) between Cordain & Campbell. Dr. Eades was going to review that but one of his readers did an excellent job of it. An essential excerpt:

Cordain’s paper contains no less than 134 references, and his rebuttal to Campbell contains another 30. Campbell, in support of a low protein, low fat, diet provides, uh, let me count, ZERO citations. He manages a few in his rebuttal to Cordain, but a couple of those are to himself, and only one that I saw appeared to be a peer-reviewed article. He makes some fairly bold statements, like “overwhelming findings on the adverse health effects of dietary protein” and “remarkable healing effects now being routinely accomplished by my clinician colleagues”, again with no citations to supporting peer-reviewed literature.

Campbell’s stance appears to be largely one of “because I said so”. The first sentence in his rebuttal is “My critique of Professor Loren Cordain’s proposition almost entirely depends on my philosophy of nutrition”; as opposed, say, to evidence gathered via the scientific method? In fact, he goes so far as to argue in favor of what is essentially sloppy research in nutrition science.

Alright, so now you know what we’re up against. So then…this morning, a bit of a different tone from Dr. Campbell.

Greg and Richard et al,

Why don’t you comment on my reporting of evidence that animal protein-based foods, when exceeding the amount of protein (as in dairy) that the body needs, causes cancers to grow robustly, increases blood cholesterol, increases atherogenesis, increases calcium loss and bone fracture incidence, increases formation of kidney stones? Are you interested in the idea that cow’s milk protein is the most relevant carcinogen that humans consume? Are you interested in the idea that this protein-specific effect is only the tip of a much larger story? Are you interested in why it is so easy to cure heart disease in its advanced stages? Or that the dietary effect, when done right, acts so fast that for those on diabetic meds, they could go into glycemic shock if they failed to decrease meds in the first day or so?

Do you want to know how I got those conclusions?

Well, though I’ve read all of these before, poster Markus from Germany helps us out on the protein issue. As to most of the rest of it, note the supplementation section in my reply which I cover below.

From: The Protein Debate (PDF)

Aflatoxins are naturally occurring toxins ….The toxin is also found in the milk of animals fed contaminated feed. Aflatoxins are metabolized in the liver to become potent liver carcinogens for all mammals including humans (157). ….

Colin’s research group developed a rodent model of liver cancer in which they dosed the animals with high concentrations … of aflatoxin and then fed them diets containing varying amounts …) of casein (158-161). Regardless of the casein dose, all animals developed cancerous or pre-cancerous liver lesions (161), however the animals fed the higher amounts of casein developed more cancerous lesions, particularly when a level of approximately 12 % casein was reached (160)….

Although Colin has inferred from his experiments with rodents that high protein diets promote cancer and low protein diets repress it following cancer initiation by a carcinogen, this interpretation is incorrect. The only logical conclusion that can be reached from his series of experiments is that only the milk protein, casein, when consumed at more than 10% of energy, promotes liver cancer in rodents exposed to high concentrations of aflatoxin. His experiments cannot be generalized to other animal proteins, such as those found in lean meats. …. Accordingly, current consumption of casein in the U.S. diet would have little or no bearing on cancer incidence rates if we assume Colin’s rodent model of cancer is correct and applicable to humans.

From: The China Study: More Vegan Nonsense, Anthony Colpo

Extrapolating from the deleterious effects demonstrated by casein in rodents, Campbell goes on to warn that all animal proteins are a deadly threat to humans.

Campbell’s position constitutes little more than a totally unscientific leap of faith. Casein is one of the major protein-containing fractions of milk; the other is whey. Campbell does not mention that while casein is often observed to promote cancer in rats, whey protein does the exact opposite. Numerous experiments have shown that rats lucky enough to be fed whey experience greatly reduced tumor incidence when compared to rats fed casein, beef, soy or standard rat chow[Badger TM][Hakkak R][Hakkak R][McIntosh GH][Papenburg R][Bounous G].

From: The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Chris Masterjohn

Campbell is aware that casein has been uniquely implicated in health problems, and dedicates an entire chapter to casein’s capacity to generate autoimmune diseases.17 Whey protein appears to have a protective effect against colon cancer that casein does not have.18 Any effect of casein, then, cannot be generalized to other milk proteins, let alone all animal proteins. Other questions, such as what effect different types of processing have on casein’s capacity to promote tumor growth, remain unanswered. Pasteurization, low-temperature dehydration, high-temperature spray-drying (which creates carcinogens), and fermentation all affect the structure of casein differently and thereby could affect its physiological behavior. What powdered, isolated casein does to rats tells us little about what traditionally consumed forms of milk will do to humans and tells us nothing that we can generalize to all “animal nutrients.”

So I ask you dear reader: how far do you want to go down that rabbit hole of finding out that, because casein by itself (without the whey as occurs naturally) in high doses gives rats cancer, we ought to be overwrought with fear of eating what our ancestors have been eating for millions of years? And while we’re at it, let’s refresh our memories as to the overall association with dietary protein in The China Study. From Masterjohn’s review, linked above.

What is most shocking about the China Study is not what it found, but the contrast between Campbell’s representation of its findings in The China Study, and the data contained within the original monograph. Campbell summarizes the 8,000 statistically significant correlations found in the China Study in the following statement: “people who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease.”26 He also claims that, although it is “somewhat difficult” to “show that animal-based food intake relates to overall cancer rates,” that nevertheless, “animal protein intake was convincingly associated in the China Study with the prevalence of cancer in families.”27

Let’s take a look at Table 1 from Masterjohn’s review.

Table 1
Table 1

So for those not used to postitive vs. negative correlatioins, the plus sign means the more they ate it on average, the more average death from cancer. The minus signs mean that the more they ate it, the less death from cancer. Finally, only one of the above reached statistical significance, which is sort of an arbitray line of 5%; meaning, an association (more or less of A is assocated with more or less of B) must be less than 5% due to simple chance. What do you notice? Of all these associations (among a total of 8,000 identified associations in The China Study) all Dr. Campbell seems to wish to place focus is on…

…animal protein intake was convincingly associated in the China Study with the prevalence of cancer in families.

Amazing. Oh, and one other thing. There was another negative association orders of magnitude higher than animal protein and unlike animal protein which wasn’t significant at all, was highly significant (2 **): home-made cigarettes. That’s right, those smoking their hand-rolled tobacco had a highly significant negative correlation in death from cancer.

I won’t be holding my breath for Campbell to be coming out with that. Which — and given the shocking nature of the above picture and what he’s out rabidly promoting — scaring people off the high-density nutrition of animal products — means really only one thing. He’s merely — as mentioned earlier in his own words — promoting “[his] philosophy of nutrition.” Now, if he were out there dissing processed foods, flour and sugar in favor of his veganesque philosophy, I wouldn’t have a complaint in the world. Instead, and it’s critical to understand, he’s promoting his philosophy of nutrition by tearing down your animal food, relentlessly and, as you can see above, quite dishonestly. And then when you combine it with the tripe about environmental concerns you begin to get into areas of public policy and how do you think that’s going to go?

And he’s good at it, which is why I make the effort. No doubt about it, in terms of sales, The China Study is a phenomenal success. As of this moment, Amazon lists it as #84 in sales rank. And of course, that’s only because people are swallowing the message and telling their friends. So, I think that a compilation like this is worthwhile, given the power of Google.

I did have my own reply on the forum this morning that I’ll recompose to follow, perhaps with a few edits.

~~~

Markus:

Excellent digging, sir. I had read all those in the past but this was a good review. Since Dr. Campbell adressed me in his last and this discussion forum is explicitly about low carbing, I ought to perhaps lay out where I differ.

I’m a paleo lifestyler, and that applies to things beyond diet as well; such as the way I exercise, the way I intermittently fast, the way I spend time in the sunshine, the way I sleep and the way I interact socially — eschewing modern collectivist politics completely, i.e., I don’t vote as I’m not interested in a 1/270 millionth say in my own affairs. Rather, I cultivate close bonds and relationships with family and a manageable number of close friends.

At to diet specifically, I practice avoidance behavior rather than seeking behavior.

I avoid grains, flour, sugar, processed foods in general, and industrial vegetable & seed oils. All else is fair game; however, due to concerns about the overload of fructose and omega-6 poly-unsaturates that ancient man would not have gotten chronically, I limit fruit to berries now & then and I keep nuts to a minimum, sticking mostly to macadamias with a fatty-acid profile similar to olive oil.

As to carbohydrate, here’s a study that demonstrates a profound difference between 100% fructose carbs and 100% glucose carbs (starch).

Dr. Stephan Guyenet:

The investigators divided 32 overweight men and women into two groups, and instructed each group to drink a sweetened beverage three times per day. They were told not to eat any other sugar. The drinks were designed to provide 25% of the participants’ caloric intake. That might sound like a lot, but the average American actually gets about 25% of her calories from sugar! That’s the average, so there are people who get a third or more of their calories from sugar. In one group, the drinks were sweetened with glucose, while in the other group they were sweetened with fructose.

After ten weeks, both groups had gained about three pounds. But they didn’t gain it in the same place. The fructose group gained a disproportionate amount of visceral fat, which increased by 14%! Visceral fat is the most dangerous type; it’s associated with and contributes to chronic disease, particularly metabolic syndrome, the quintessential modern metabolic disorder (see the end of the post for more information and references). You can bet their livers were fattening up too.

The good news doesn’t end there. The fructose group saw a worsening of blood glucose control and insulin sensitivity. They also saw an increase in small, dense LDL particles and oxidized LDL, both factors that associate strongly with the risk of heart attack and may in fact contribute to it. Liver synthesis of fat after meals increased by 75%. If you look at table 4, it’s clear that the fructose group experienced a major metabolic shift, and the glucose group didn’t. Practically every parameter they measured in the fructose group changed significantly over the course of the 9 weeks. It’s incredible.

Here’s the link to the table he references.

And it makes perfect evolutionary sense. Paleoman, at least in most times & places would have had far more access to starchy tubers than fruit, and keep in mind that the fructose concentrations in wild fruits were significantly lower than our selectively bread fruit of today.

Moreover, if you look at what happens to bears when they consume massive amounts of wild berries, they pretty much become obese & near diabetic in advance of hibernation. It’s reasonable to speculate that for humans, seeking out fructose when available in the summer and fall was a specific mechanism we evolved to fatten up a bit so as to help us through the leaner months. Speculative, but I’m practicing a precautionary principle, here. It’s easy enough to just toss another piece of meat, fish, or fowl on the barbie.

So, essentially, unless you are trying to loose weight or are diabetic, I don’t think “low carb” is that essential for most people; but, those carbs should come primarily from starch and not fructose and in particular, not refined sugar and all the foods loaded with sugar.

My supplementation regime is pretty simple (there’s a couple more, but this is the foundation):

Vitamin D3, as I’m not in the sun nearly as much as our ancestors would have been and as well, the epidemiology of cancer when plotted against latitude is pretty interesting.

Omega 3s, to balance out the n-6s I get from trips to restaurants and so on.

Vitamin K2 (MK-4, menatetrenone). This is the form made from K1 by ruminants (found in marrow, organ meats & milkfat) and is also found in eggs, particularly fish eggs. This is Weston Price’s “Activator X.”

The combo of D and K2 in particular has had profound health effects for me. My personal anecdote is that I have always had huge plaque / calculus buildup on my teeth, particularly around the molars & the inside lower front. In time, this created places for bacteria to grow, invade the gum tissue, finally resulting in deep pockets, inflammation, bleeding gums and eventually two surgeries in 2001. But the surgery was only successful in setting back the clock. I still had to have four deep cleanings per year just to hold things at bay.

But when I went paleo and dropped the grains, flour & sugar, something interesting happened. My gum disease began to reverse, as documented by the dentist’s measurements. I still got the plaque and calculous buildup but it wasn’t having an adverse effect on my gum tissue.

Then I began taking the D and K2 and now, I have zero plaque or calculous. My teeth are like smooth pearls every morning and in fact, I only brush now & then — and I use wooden toothpicks instead of floss. The last cleaning I had, well over six months ago demonstrated my gums to be in better shape than when the dentist began warning me back in 1993, 17 years ago.

What do I take away from this? Well, if you read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price and take stock in the huge disparity in tooth decay and malocclusion (crowded teeth) between people existing on their traditional diets and those who left for contact with civilization it becomes quite clear that replacing high nutrient-density foods like raw milk, eggs, organ meats, meat, fish and organically grown vegetables with flour and sugar has profound costs.

And, I think that dental health is a great surrogate for asking: how healthy are your bones? How about your arteries? The combo of D and K2 helps to ensure that calcium and other mineral salts go everyplace they should (bones, teeth) and no place they shouldn’t (artery walls, kidney stones, etc.).

Here’s my links on K2.

And you might want to read Dr. Stephan Guyenet’s nine part series, Malocclusion: Disease of Civilization. Go to the bottom and read the posts in reverse. This is amazing work on Dr. Guyenet’s part.

In the end, everyone needs to decide for themselves. I took charge of my own health going on three years ago, now. Rather than paralyze and scare myself to death with contradictory, agenda driven, profit driven “science,” I sought to find out what healthy people were doing, then copy and experiment. Now I’ve lost 60 pounds, am stronger at 49 than ever in my life by far, sleep an average of 7 1/2 hours every night, have far better relationships, never watch the news or fret about quotidian politics, have dispensed with prescription medications for allergies & GURD and above all, feel great and happy.

You have to figure this out for yourself. Gather information, think about it, use what makes sense in your own life, but let no one — including me — tell you what’s right for you.

~~~

Well, as you can see by now, I didn’t end up blowing a gasket in this one. That’s fine. As I got going into it I was caught up in the idea of creating a fairly decent narrative of the whole shebang, and I’m pretty happy with it. In particular, if you read some of the links and look especially into Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and search posts using that title at my blog & Dr. Stephan’s, what begins to emerge is a picture of a time when health was a cinch. They simply ate the unadulterated, natural foods available in their environments without silly discrimination, like not eating animal products.

Propose to any currently living true hunter-gatherer group that they forego animals as a source of food. You will leave them befuddled.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: vitamin d, Vitamin K2

Simple: Filet & Veggies

February 23, 2010 17 Comments

This sort of thing is probably my favorite meal. This time, I pan fried the filets in cast iron with ghee. Brown all over, then cover for a couple of minutes per side, then keep turning & browning until your desired doneness is reached. These thick ones take a while, but they’re also pretty forgiving. Notice how the butter from the vegetables loves the sauce reduction and vice versa. Animal fats are such nice & loving people. And we love them too around here.

Filet Veggies
Filet & Veggies

Veggies were fresh, put in a covered sausepan with a hunk of butter on low until soft. Simple pimple. Sauce was beef stock reduced, couple tbsps of butter, sprig of fresh rosemary, clove of crushed garlic & a few crushed blackberries. Once under boil for a while, strain, reduce, and thicken with a dash or two of potato starch if needed.

Oh, almost forgot dessert.

Eggs Butter
Eggs & Butter

Filed Under: General

Exposing the Cholesterol Con

February 22, 2010 75 Comments

[Just a quick off-topic aside. Darya Pino at Summer Tomato did a mildly critical but fair & balanced post on paleo dieting. Go take a look and drop a comment about your own experience if it suits you. From my perspective, we out to be able to take fair criticism to refine & strengthen our message.]

This is just a rather quick hit & run with some excerpts and commentary that I wanted to post because it’s nice to finally see something in the mainstream news that echos what I and my fellow bloggers have been saying all along, for nearly three years in my case. From MSNBC:

Bad cholesterol: It’s not what you think

Yea, no shit. And it never was. And there was little justification to ever create the "tidy narrative" in the first place.

For decades, a tidy narrative about the relationship between LDL cholesterol and heart disease has affected everything from the food we eat to the drugs we take to the test results we track and the worries we harbor. This oversimplified view of cholesterol — that all LDL is the same and that all LDL is bad — has enabled the adoption of an accompanying oversimplified dietary belief, that all saturated-fat consumption raises your risk of heart disease.

Oversimplified view of cholesterol –> oversimplified view of diet –> complex and dangerous drugs –> obesity –> diabetes –> more complex and dangerous drugs –> lots of drug company profits –> lots of assholes still out needlessly scaring people to death.

The LDL hypothesis has also encouraged many of us to swallow the most-prescribed class of drugs in recent history. Americans spent more than $14 billion on LDL-lowering medications in 2008. Whether that money came out of their own pockets — straight up, or through ever-escalating co-pays — or out of the hemorrhaging U.S. health-insurance system known as Medicare, it’s a huge expenditure. Twenty-four million Americans take statins, and the latest health directives suggest that those numbers should be higher. And why stop at grown-ups? Some pediatricians want to start feeding Lipitor (and the like) to kids.

$14 billion for something with tons of side-effects and of dubious, nonexistent value for all but a small subset: men under 65 who’ve already had a coronary event. Sure, if you’ve had a heart attack already, go right ahead and "trust your heart to Lipitor."

LDL comes in four basic forms: a big, fluffy form known as large LDL, and three increasingly dense forms known as medium, small, and very small LDL. A diet high in saturated fat mainly boosts the numbers of large-LDL particles, while a low-fat diet high in carbohydrates propagates the smaller forms. The big, fluffy particles are largely benign, while the small, dense versions keep lipid-science researchers awake at night.

But here’s the problem: The typical LDL test doesn’t distinguish between large and small LDL particles — it can’t even spot the difference. And people can have mostly large LDL or mostly small LDL in their overall LDL, depending upon a host of genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Your own personal mix may make all the difference between living to a heart-healthy old age and becoming a Monday-morning casualty at your desk.

Right. And Americans are spending $14 billion per year on statins and it’s based on irrational, uncorrelated, unproven associations with a measurement technology that "can’t even spot the difference." I’ll bet the drug companies are all over getting this new measurement technology into wide usage. Yea, right.

Now, to heap even more outrage on the deal, how long back has it been since it was known that the small-dense sub-particles associated and reasonably predicted heart disease risk? 1976, almost 35 years ago. Dr Krauss recounts:

The heart-disease community was not impressed. "It took me 4 years to publish that paper," he says, recalling his early work on sub-particles in the late 1970s. "That’s beginning to tell you some of the obstacles I was going to face."

Big surprise, eh? There’s more.

But during experiments, Dr. Krauss discovered that while a diet high in saturated fat from dairy products would indeed make your LDL levels rise, "saturated fat intake results in an increase of larger LDL rather than smaller LDL particles," as he wrote in an American Journal of Clinical Nutrition review he co-authored in 2006. A diet heavy in full-fat cheese and butter — but not overloaded in calories — triggered the relatively harmless health profile described as pattern A. […]

Not only is dairy fat unlikely to increase heart-disease risk, Dr. Krauss and others have learned, but reducing saturated fat in a way that increases carbohydrates in a diet can shift a person’s LDL profile from safe to dangerous. That’s pretty much what happens whenever some well-meaning person with "high LDL" starts eating "low-fat" frozen dinners filled out with corn-derived additives, all the while engaging in the customary ravaging of a basket filled with dinner rolls.

Well that should do it. You might want to check out the inane comment from Dean "Chubby Faced Diet" Ornish.

Filed Under: General

The Paleo, Primal, Evolutionary Distinction: Avoidance Behavior

February 21, 2010 61 Comments

Right off the bat I have to thank Dr. kurt harris for alerting me to this simple — and therefore — elegant and powerful idea.

What do all diets have in common and is that which also serves to differentiate all of them from paleo, primal, evfit? Whether you’re low fat, low carb, Mediterranean, South Beach, Ornish, Weight Watchers, or what have you, you will be engaging in Seeking Behavior. That is to say, you seek to eat things the diet prescribes and hence, you end up with low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb, or some "exchange" level foods that can be composed of almost anything and everything, with some exceptions. Eat whatever, so long as it falls within the range of calories, fat, carb, or protein you seek. Some are purer than others, of course.

And Paleolithic man also engaged in seeking behavior. As a rule, eat anything and everything edible that satisfies hunger.

Then agriculture happened, followed by chemistry and industrial technology, and we have the emergence of all sorts of "foods," chemicals and synthetics paleolithic man never experienced. Those of us who practice a paleo-like diet do so implicitly or explicitly on the basis of a precautionary principle: foodstuffs that weren’t around during the vast majority of our evolution might be less nutritious, less optimal, even harmful. On a practical level, most of us follow paleo because we’ve seen our own results with our own eyes and we know how we feel.

But seeking is the wrong sort of approach in my opinion; or, at best, is less advantageous than the alternative: Avoidance Behavior. You see examples of this everywhere. Those new to this dietary approach often find themselves befuddled and lost because they see "meat, fish, fowl, eggs, natural fats, veggies, fruits & nuts," but then feel like it’s devoid of variety — it’s foreign to them: the Real Food we evolved eating exclusively. Where’s the [insert dietary prescription] pizza, Hot Pockets, sodas, ice cream, fettuccine Alfredo, chicken fried steaks, cakes, cookies, fucking Cinnabon and on and on?

Where’s my damn garbage? And it’s even worse because the collateral casualty of the modern industrial social and health genocide known as processed & fast food is that families don’t eat together and they don’t eat together because they eat outta fuckin’ boxes and packages, for shit sake. How in holy hell did it come to this?

Alternatively, how about, simply, "avoid Neolithic foods;" primarily grains, sugars, and vegetable/seed oils? Avoid anything processed. Everything else is fine and the macronutrient ratios, i.e., high vs. moderate vs. low carb is up to you to determine and so you have far more flexibility and options. High fat or moderate or even low fat is up to you. I’ll go out on a limb and say that high fat, low to moderate carb, and low to moderate protein in ratios sufficient to sustain you is going to end up being the best way to go for most — but admittedly not all. And you’ll learn that it’s not Real Food that’s foreign but garbage that’s foreign, and you’ll also learn or rediscover cooking your food and your familial situation will be the far better for it, I guarantee it. paleo is a health advantage on levels that go beyond diet. It’s going to be good for your marriages & families too — though you might have to introduce things gradually if you don’t get family support. Keep plugging away. Find the Paleolithic foods your family members love. Don’t give up, and don’t give in.

Picture 2 This is what makes paleo unique, even in contrast to a vegan diet which offhand is probably the closest thing other than paleo to avoidance behavior (avoid all animal products and derivatives). vegetarians long ago went the route of seeking behavior and now you can fill a supermarket isle with vegetarian junk food. The vegans are going the same way, in my observation.

And some paleos have also drifted more toward seeking behavior. I’ve been somewhat guilty of it (paleo pizzas, biscuits & gravy, chicken pot pies and maybe a few other things). Don’t get me wrong. Those are all concoctions made from real foods and they’re fine in terms of health. Not especially so for some of the other things I see people doing with massive amounts of almond flour and fruit. But, is it possible that an overemphasis on finding paleo-compliant substitutes for neolithic goodies just perpetuates the cravings for those foods long term?

The very unique thing about paleo is that you really can’t come up with a line of paleo junk. By principle definition, it excludes neolithic agents, and junk food is almost exclusively composed of neolithic agents including all the stuff you see to your left in this low-carb bake mix.

Dr. Kurt Harris, in a post entitled Smoking Candy Cigarettes recently talked about this specific aspect of what he sees out & about on the blogs.

Would it not be better to train your kids, and yourself, to avoid Neolithic food by the simplest expedient there is? So simple a child could manage it?

Something as simple as a simple rule.

A rule like:

Don’t eat anything that looks like Neolithic food, especially Neolithic food.

What is the point of all this? I just don’t get it, and I don’t think it is because I am just too lazy to make this stuff.

It’s easy to make fun of commercial junk in a box like “low carb” pasta, zone and atkins bars, etc. All stuff that may be gluten free or have sawdust in place of of high GI starch, but whose real reason for existence is just to appropriate what should properly be freestanding, honest, real food back into the maw of corporate big-agra commercial interests.

In conclusion, notice that the principle of avoidance behavior can be applied to other aspect of the paleo path.

– Avoid thick or hard soled shoes as opposed to "go barefoot."

– Avoid eating when not hungry as opposed to "go x hours between meals."

– Avoid carrying around enough effing Tupperware for six small meals per day as opposed to "eat x number of meals."

– Avoid excessive risks as opposed to "be safe."

– Avoid chronically stressful situations as opposed to "meditate."

– Avoid staying up too late when you have to get up to early.

Can anyone think of other paleo examples of contrasting avoidance behavior with seeking behavior?

Filed Under: General

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About FreeTheAnimal

I'm Richard Nikoley. Free The Animal began in 2003 and as of 2020, has 5,000 posts and 120,000 comments from readers. I blog what I wish...from lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social antagonism, adventure travel, nomad living, location and time independent—"while you sleep"— income, and food. I intended to travel the world "homeless" but the Covid-19 panic-demic squashed that. I've become an American expat living in rural Thailand where I've built a home. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances. [Read more...]

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