Archives for May 2011

Hope you all had a great long weekend, as did I. I didn’t read a lick of diet, fitness & health "crap," instead spending most of the time outdoors — in the sun when available — eating well, drinking well, and reading some classic fiction for a change (Heinlein, if you must know).

I’ve been eating more fruit, lately, have been enjoying it, and might just continue to do that. For one, it’s pretty self limiting for me. Since I’m typically eating it in conjunction with something else — such as with eggs and a breakfast meat, or perhaps after a meal as a surrogate for "dessert " — it’s rarely huge. In no way am I eating the pounds of it the raw vegan fruitarians do. And no, I haven’t bothered with sticking pins and needles in my fingers to make sure that feeling normal and good after eating a few helpings of fruit is not "spiking" my blood sugar and insulin. It may be. Don’t know — probably is a bit — don’t care.

…I should probably post on that too, one of these days, but to bottom line it: acute spikes in blood glucose and subsequently, insulin, in healthy people, constitute a perfectly normal physiological cause/effect. The problem is with chronically raised blood sugar and consequent chronically elevated fasting insulin. The latter is insulin resistance and the former is normal.

So once I got back into the swing of reading everything I’d  missed over the last few days I was quickly led to yet another Denise Minger masterpiece: Wild and Ancient Fruit: Is it Really Small, Bitter, and Low in Sugar? Uh, in a 4-letter word, fuck no.

Monkey Orange

Sure looks "fibrous, small, and tart" to me. Here’s Denise:

Contrary to popular belief, wild fruit—including the stuff we would’ve had access to during our evolution—is not necessarily any of the above. In fact, it can be bigger, tastier, and sweeter than anything you’ll ever find in the aisles of your grocery store.

Fruit is decidedly sparser once you get out of the tropics, but considering we were stationed in Africa until about 50,000 years ago, the flora of a backyard in Michigan might not be a great reflection of the plant life we encountered for the majority of our evolution. As a result, comparisons of cold-climate fruits to their wild ancestors (for instance, a Red Delicious versus a crab apple) tend to be misleading, and tropical fruits may offer more insight. Although we’ll probably never get a clear picture of the exact fruits available to early humans, we can look at the wild fruits growing today to get an idea of what nature is capable of producing on its own.

There’s a great book called “Lost Crops of Africa” (readable online) that has a brilliant section on wild fruit. The authors start by describing the vastness of Africa’s wild fruit supply:

Most of Africa’s edible native fruits are wild. One compilation lists over 1000 different species from 85 botanical families and even that assessment is probably incomplete. Among all those fruit-bearing plants, many of the individual specimens growing within Africa are sheltered and protected, some are even carefully tended, but few have been selected to bring out their best qualities, let alone deliberately cultivated or maintained through generations. They remain untamed. … Africa’s wild-fruit wealth is essentially unknown to science.

I won’t steal any more of her thunder or marvelous images of delectable looking fruit. Go check out the post.

As to connecting a dot or two, I always find it interesting that as soon as I begin to question something or even become more aware of an issue and begin to ponder, it’s never long until something comes along to grab my attention. In this case, first thing this morning: The effect of two energy-restricted diets, a low-fructose diet versus a moderate natural fructose diet, on weight loss and metabolic syndrome parameters: a randomized controlled trial. (via @chrismasterjohn)

One of the proposed causes of obesity and metabolic syndrome is the excessive intake of products containing added sugars, in particular, fructose. Although the ability of excessive intake of fructose to induce metabolic syndrome is mounting, to date, no study has addressed whether a diet specifically lowering fructose but not total carbohydrates can reduce features of metabolic syndrome. A total of 131 patients were randomized to compare the short-term effects of 2 energy-restricted diets-a low-fructose diet vs a moderate natural fructose diet-on weight loss and metabolic syndrome parameters. Patients were randomized to receive 1500, 1800, or 2000 cal diets according to sex, age, and height. Because natural fructose might be differently absorbed compared with fructose from added sugars, we randomized obese subjects to either a low-fructose diet (<20 g/d) or a moderate-fructose diet with natural fruit supplements (50-70 g/d) and compared the effects of both diets on the primary outcome of weight loss in a 6-week follow-up period. Blood pressure, lipid profile, serum glucose, insulin resistance, uric acid, soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1, and quality of life scores were included as secondary outcomes. One hundred two (78%) of the 131 participants were women, mean age was 38.8 ± 8.8 years, and the mean body mass index was 32.4 ± 4.5 kg/m(2). Each intervention diet was associated with significant weight loss compared with baseline. Weight loss was higher in the moderate natural fructose group (4.19 ± 0.30 kg) than the low-fructose group (2.83 ± 0.29 kg) (P = .0016). Compared with baseline, each intervention diet was associated with significant improvement in secondary outcomes. Reduction of energy and added fructose intake may represent an important therapeutic target to reduce the frequency of obesity and diabetes. For weight loss achievement, an energy-restricted moderate natural fructose diet was superior to a low-fructose diet. [emphasis added]

According to subsequent Tweets by Chris, this was apparently grains vs. fruit, so I guess you can take it with a grain of salt, too. But I think the wider and more general point to take is that a level of natural, real food fructose of ~60 grams per day was not harmful. A medium raw apple has about 10g of fructose, so you’re talking the equivalent of about a half dozen apples per day. A banana is about 6g, so ten of those (source: nutritiondata.com). For me, that’s more fruit than I would almost ever eat, except the once or twice per year I’ll eat a whole watermelon (150g fructose) or a couple of pounds of ripe bing cherries in season (50g fructose). You might take note that a coupla 12-16 ounce flavored sugar water drinks (they euphemistically call them Coke & Pepsi) per day get’s you in that 50-70g fructose range. And without benefit, if it exists, of fiber — but that’s nature’s way of delivering fructose, normally. No fruit for you!

But here’s why I’d not been much interested to blog lately, and then jumped on this with gusto this morning: we’re learning. What are we learning? Well…this just in via email from Chris Masterjohn, with his take on the full text of the study (with permission to quote him).

Both groups eliminated "added sugars from processed fruit juices and punch; sugar-sweetened soft drinks and beverages; and bakery products such as pies, cakes, strudels, doughnuts, and cookies, in addition to dairy dessert, chocolate, candy, and dried fruits." Members of both groups were overweight, reduced their calories based on a formula that took into account their age, sex, and height. Both diets were 55 percent carbohydrate. One group restricted total fructose to 20 grams per day, while the other group only restricted fructose to 50-70 grams per day, consuming roughly 30 percent of their calories as fruit. The low-fructose group primarily ate cereal grains in the place of fruit. The group eating more fruit rather than grains had a statistically significantly greater loss of weight, and had a somewhat greater loss of fat and somewhat greater improvements in blood glucose and insulin sensitivity, which approached but did not quite reach statistical significance. Ultimately what this study shows is that, over the course of six weeks, fruit produces better weight loss than cereal grains.

Unfortunately, the study did not include a group that continued eating added sweeteners and junk food, so there is no way to determine the effect of eliminating these foods and to distinguish it from the effects of caloric restriction or other confounders that are naturally present with enrollment in a study. Ideally, we would have liked to see the study include groups eating "paleo" safe starches or low-carb diets so we could make those comparisons as well.

Overall, the good news that comes with this study is not the rather small increase in knowledge about the short-term clinical effects of fresh fruit compared to grains, but rather the clear indication that some researchers are well aware of the need to study the effects of natural fruits and take them into account when studying "fructose." This means we should see more and more evidence in the future that can clarify just what the role of fresh fruits are in a healthy diet.

Yea, this came in (because of a Tweet I sent him) just as I was about to write, in summation, that it’s not about carbohydrates and now, apparently, not even about fructose. What it seems to me to be shaping up to is that real, whole foods that you get yourself and "process" yourself, with care and love is really the fundamental key. Yes, I do understand that some people are going to do well or better on very low carb intake, either because of insulin resistance (Type II Diabetes) or because of a significantly compromised metabolism over decades of abuse. I’m very quickly dismissing the notion that low carb is essential for more than a small minority and I think eating a reasonable amount of fruit will be fine, perhaps beneficial, for the large majority.

In a subsequent post soon I am going to address — head on — the issue of "individual optimality." Hopefully, we’ve dispensed with the notion that there is any such thing as optimal for any large group and certainly not, an entire population.

Tired of dogma, from all stripes & corners? Then energize the thing. Let’s go. Like & Tweet buttons have been provided up top for your convenience.

I love the emails I get, this one from Heather.

Dear dear Richard,

I stumbled on your blog about a week ago now, and I spent the next couple of hours reading reading reading, particularly the letters and posts about former vegans (funny how the ex and soon-to-be-ex vegan community has embraced your blog!). I spent about 14 years not eating meat. I had a long passionate love affair with the veg lifestyle that culminated in three years of raw veganism, and even a year of 80-10-10 (a la Durianrider, the vegan Menace). Fruity Land wasn’t good to me, but by far the worst health I experienced in all my life was during my cooked vegan years, when I strongly believe that I was headed on the road to diabetes (not to mention the 30 pounds of weight I put on, the constant need to sleep, and my flat and joyless emotional state).

I reintroduced animal products last fall, but didn’t begin eating them with any regularity until just recently, when I put myself on a 30 day trial of paleo eating. I have been documenting my progress in detail so far on my own website (lots of colorful pictures included) and I thought your you and readers might like to follow along as I chart these new waters:

A particular doozie of a post is here (you’re gonna love this one – I make it my business to lambast Kathy Freston, The Veganist).

There’s even a shout out to your blog on Day 3!

Wishing you much luck on your food journey, and keep up all the good work,

Heather

Well, what can I say? Getting a clue yet as to why I do as I do?

Question is, how long is it going to take Adrienne D to become a genuine human animal and engage her own mind? (If you want an idea of how the Religion of Raw Veganism works, browse that post and comments.)

Feel free to Like it or Tweet it, button up top.

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of recording a podcast episode of “Latest in Paleo,” a joint project of Angelo Coppola and the 5by5 network of podcasts.

And we had a blast doing it. After hours of post-production work by Angelo to work his magic of making it come off just like a 2-host morning drivetime show, it’s ready for a listen. I hope you enjoy it. We first discussed a bit about my personal background, the blog, and from there moving into talking about the Real Health Debate with 30 Bananas a Day, raw vegan promoter Harley Johnstone: why I did it, what the game plan was and so on.

Then we went back and forth on some of the current news of the day in food, from a paleo perspective.

• PepsiCo – New Yorker
• Beaver Anal Glands in Ice Cream – Jamie Oliver on David Letterman
• Fake Eggs
• Exploding Watermelons – Fox News
• Calcium Supplements Potentially Leading to Heart Disease
• 25,000 Big Macs – USA Today

And to wrap things up and take it to almost an hour, 40 minutes in total, we delved into some of my recent posts and what I’m up to with it all — and even how a couple of posts from the past prefigured what I’m actively doing today.

It’s long, but I hope the banter between Angelo and I, along with his creative, professional production abilities make it an enjoyable experience for you. Comments are wide open so give ’em a rip if you like, either on the specifics topics covered or other health, fitness and food news as well.

Well, it would not have been in the Paleolithic

…And, I’ll get to that later…

Lots of paleo shit brewing now. I’m not going to name or link any of it. It really doesn’t matter and if people want to allude in comments…well, I don’t moderate those unless someone has the audacity to write "fuck," or something. :)

To roughly summarize, we are getting beyond the low-carb emphasis, and bizzarely enough, there’s fat phobia encroaching on heels. But as I said, I’m not referencing any of it; and because, I actually have something more important to highlight: my post here.

What has happened, as alluded to above, is the result of the same fool’s errand: "The Search for the Wholly Optimal." You see, we’re all human animals. … But never mind that we have scoured the entire habitable portion of the globe from equator to arctic circle and sea level to 16K, and everything in-between, for the last 50-60K years Out of Africa…and that’s not even considering the vast ecological differences on that continent from rain forrest to dessert — and that would be over millions of years of natural selection (a term I far prefer to "evolution").

And yet we’re still infatuated with the bizarre notion that there is one specific dietary regime that works for everyone and us Paleos — always on the job — have a serious task ahead of us, and that is to "optimize." It’s probably nobody’s fault. After all, we’ve grown up in an increasingly obese culture with an increasingly voluminous library of dietary prescriptions intended for everyone. After all, who doesn’t want to write a diet book and sell a million copies? Nobody wants to write a million diet books. Hint.

And since you can’t write a million diet books, diet books are essentially crap — unless, of course, there are implicit or explicit principles one can extrapolate and apply to their own self-experimentation. And that’s why I’m "Paleo" -ish. Of anything out there, it’s the paleo books that truly have the principles, even if implying or explicating that this should work for everyone or is approaching some notion of optimality. And in many cases, the principles far outweigh any prescriptions — such as macronutrient ratios — so that in essence, the sound principles undercut errors and exuberance. That’s always good. That’s why I always endeavor to be a principled man, above all else. I really do loath the pragmatic paradigm. As well, I loath the word "paradigm." So there you go.

This need not be a long post so I wont make it so. Brevity always scores high on the virtue scale, in my opinion.

Optimality in dietary practice can only apply to an individual (or perhaps small group, to finally reference the subtitle of the post). And that means: all diet books are useless beyond the pure principles, and that’s why we’re "Paleo" in the first place, and…and, we have to finish the job ourselves. It’s not about low carb or high fat; it’s about cutting back or cutting out neolithic foodstuffs; i.e., processed foods and derivatives. But nobody can prescribe for you whether a diet of 40, 50, 70 or 80% natural fats work best for you, or, 40, 50, 70 or 80% STARCH. There, I said it.

For me, high starch is not going to work, but a decent amount does well, even damn white rice (hypoallergenic, BTW, for those who have problems with tubers and potatoes). But I have no idea what’s best for you, and the idea that I could write a book to tell you so, strikes me as absurd. I won’t go there. I will have a book. It will be 100% principle based. Working on it.

Individual optimality is not the best thing. Individual optimality is the only thing, in the context of your very one and only life. How do you know you’ve gotten there? You never get there. That’s just life. "Optimal," while possibly illusory, is not a bad thing to shoot for individually. The best benefit to that might be the simple exercise of discounting everything you’re told and actually working individually.

Update: I neglected to mention that this thinking is in part a result of a number of emails and phone conversations with kurt harris, MD.

Hopefully, we get a good comment thread going. If you’d like to see that action, then help out by sharing this on Twitter and Facebook, using the buttons up top.

I got an email from Anthony Johnson a while back about speaking at the convention he conceived of at the age of 17, made it real at 18 and now, at 22, has made international.

I didn’t immediately accept the invitation. And then, my Googling gave me a bit of pause. Apparently, Anthony and his convention are tied to the Pickup or Seduction Community (here, too) and some of the word on the street is that it’s just all about superficial pickups involving the skill of the con, going for the physically acceptable but intellectually weakest of the species human with vagina, and making the most of it. For a night.

But I’m glad I looked deeper. After all, casual glances at me often give people the impression I’m just an angry blogger when in reality, I’m trying to make things a bit more interesting than is my impression of a lot of stuff out there. So, after checking things out, learning of who has spoken there before (mentioned in the video interview, below), noting what a serious young man Anthony Johnson is by skimming his blog, I decided to accept. And if you’re so inclined, you can attend too.

Now, here’s the post of Anthony’s that really clued me in on what I was dealing with and made me affiramatively decide to pitch in and help: The PUA Community? – and Its Cardinal Sins (PUA: "Pickup Artist").

Regarding which coaches to avoid, oh boy. I do not even have a specific answer for this question, because the PUA Community is packed to the gills with thieves, liars, and shady business practices – but then again, how many coaching industries aren’t? …

Which brings me to one of my final points in response to your e-mail – the cardinal sins of the PUA Community. …

• Cardinal sin #1: Encouraging you to place anyone’s judgment over your own.
• Cardinal sin #2: Stemming from #1, give primary concern to observations (responses from women and your environment), and secondary concern to your own thoughts and emotions (if at all) in any given situation.
• Cardinal sin #3: Success with women requires compromise.

Well, that’s just bare excerpts and there’s a lot more in that post that I find quite impressive. So to sum it up for me, I’m convinced that this is a needed and wholesome movement, which Anthony and I discuss in a video interview lasting just under 10 minutes. [Do note that Anthony was kind enough to push forward on this scheduled interview even though his house had been broken into and robbed only hours before.]

The 21 Convention Interview with Anthony Johnson from Richard Nikoley on Vimeo.

One pound of ground grassfed beef, one pound of ground pastured lamb, cooked on medium low with 1/2 onion and clove or two of crushed garlic. Drained the fat, but used a fat separator to retain the juices from the meat. Then it was time to add in about 1/2 cup of beef stock, a can of coconut milk, a good tablespoon of Thai massaman curry, a couple of chopped carrots and 1/2 of a large potato, chopped. Cover and simmer until the veggies are soft. Click for the hi-res version.

Hamburger Helper

Very hearty and satisfying. Give it a try. Eat it with a spoon. Hundreds of possible variations. Get creative, and never be afraid to fail. And speaking of failing, my rule is that if I make something I don’t like, I simply push it aside and no substitute is allowed. I go hungry until the next mealtime. That happened to me last week when I did a curry using left over pot roast, but for some odd reason the roast cut into 1" cubes was super tough. I didn’t even take a bite.

I tweeted this pic yesterday as I had just gotten started with the process.

Getting Busy

In all, there were about 8 1/2 pounds of bone-in short ribs for a bit of a dinner party for eight I put on last night. Recipe was very much like this previous go at it, only I used that large roasting pan instead and employed the same method I used for braised lamb shanks, which in this case was that the braising liquid (red wine & beef stock) did not fully cover the meat and after 2 hours at 325 I uncovered the roasting pan and turned the ribs every half hour until done.

Braised Short Ribs

It was pretty tasty. Well worth it.

I typically pass my time driving by listening to podcasts. For the most part, I have listened to Jimmy Moore or Robb Wolf, and now and then, others. I listen to Jimmy mostly because he brings so many interesting folks to the table. On the drive back from our "Climate Change" wakeup call this morning, I listened first to Jimmy’s recent interview with Uffe Ravnskov (Ignore the Awkward.: How the Cholesterol Myths Are Kept Alive), after which I then went way back to where I’d left off, scrolling through a few podcasts I wasn’t particularly interested in, to finally land on an excellent interview with Dr. Mat Lalonde, a PhD Chemist.

Mat’s interview encompasses the subject of this post because he’s right, and "wrong" (as I think all good scientists are, if they’re good scientists). Mat said something at least a couple of times in the interview that I don’t believe I’ve heard before. It’s essentially true, but as I will argue below, misses the point a bit.

He made reference to the anthropological science — you all know the drill — that Paleos assert, that our primitive ancestors did this & that for a very long time, and therefore, that’s what we should do. He makes the point that such is not necessarily optimal and in particular, that there is a difference between toleration, or, in the context, survival — and optimal nutrition and health. It’s observational science. This much is true. So, he withholds scientific conclusions until tested; say, in a randomized, controlled intervention trial.

Mat is a scientist. As such, he behaves as one should. Let’s review. A true scientist; first, thinks (that’s the first problem because most of them know better how to fill out a grant whore application than think). That thinking, which can involve preliminary experimentation, is supposed to lead to a hypothesis. That hypothesis is supposed to be stated in such a way as to be falsifiable. This simply means that it should be testable, which is to say, hypothesized in a fashion that it could be proven false, if false. The classic illustration for this was the centuries long European observation that "Swans are white." Then they shuttled their penal colony off to the Down Under and it took only one observation to totally falsify the hypothesis: a Black Swan. With a quick glance, centuries of "certainty" was rendered wrong.  A more recent example might be the hypothesis that high cholesterol causes atherosclerosis, but rendered meaningless over and over and over again by the simple observation that on average, those with the highest cholesterol live the longest. This is not a perfect example, simply because as with almost all drug whore "science," reductionism is key. That is, they scare the shit out of you about dying from a heart attack (which probably isn’t valid, anyway), but always ignore total mortality. Bluntly: they’re happy to have you not die from heart disease, but if you die earlier of something else, their engineering (whoring) remains "technically" unaffected. Winning!

Real science is not a method for proving things true (shock!), but rather, a much safer, more sure method of enlightenment: proving things false because that’s the only certainty we can muster, as human animals. We can know for sure that something is bullshit, and beyond that, most bets are off. Through a process of knowing what all is certainly not true, we gain increased confidence of what just might be true; but not absolute certainty.

The primary reason that I was motivated to write this blog was because of the juxtaposition in hearing Ravnskov’s interview, later coupled with Lalonde’s. The former was about — to wrap it up in a nice package — what I’ll call confirmation fraud. I’ve long had a category on the blog called "confirmation bias," but what Dr. Uffe reveals is not bias at all, but simple grant whore fraud. FRAUD. And there are thousands upon thousands of PhD and MD whores engaged in this, and they are engaged in it to your and your loved ones’ detriment because whore bucks are a sure thing.  Merry Christmas! Chances are, if you meet an MD or PhD in nutrition and diet research, they’re figuratively working the dark street corners at 2am.

Mat’s not one of them and thankfully, there are a precious few others. If I had to guess, while not really guessing at all, he errs on the side of caution. He’s unwilling to take anthropologic science and conclude that what H-Gs did must be necessarily optimal for modern humans simply because they did it for a long time and survived. In other words, they had little to no choice, but we do. We can seek out and tease out the optimal and to do that, we have to conduct sound experiments.

But here’s my punchline: you have to start with a baseline and that’s why I chose The Human Animal, and so named my blog. When you look around, you do not see wild animals with any problems other than environmental and climatological — all things they have no control over. When the environment and climate are suited to what they evolved to exploit, they thrive. That’s because they evolved to exploit a particular niche. For us, it’s a bit more complicated because our "niche" is no niche at all; it’s equator to arctic circle and sea level to 16,000 ft elevation, and everything in between. We have many more options, which ushers in the idea of optimal, and one way to get clues about that is with real science. Then again, those clues may not particularly pertain to you individually so where does that leave you?

We’re generalists, but some may be more adapted to certain things than others, so you must find your individual optimality, and no study, no matter how rigorous, is ever going to give you certainty about that. I applaud the continuing science and hope it’s framed in a falsifiable (testable) way. But we have to begin somewhere and in no way ought anyone sit by the sidelines waiting for the science before dumping the bought & paid for "Food Pyramid," engineered by high-priced hookers, before going to real food.

If you stick to the basics — meat, fish, fowl, vegetables and fruits — it’s very unlikely that any hypothesis is going to be falsified and leave you in the lurch. It will only be up to you to determine if any science is really relevant to you individually, then test it out and see if you thrive.

In my view, if you eat as a human animal, almost no nutritional science is really particularly relevant to you. In fact, virtually all nutritional science is decidedly irrelevant to you. You know more about you.

Sound principles — the Animal Human — trump science. Science is a discipline. It’s a negative discipline, when done properly and as such, has very little to offer in the realm of diet and nutrition when one is simply eating as humans evolved, and tweaking accordingly in order to obtain maximum well being. What we seem to have now, more than anything else, is something called "science," but always focussed on enhancing various big food, drug and industrial financial interests (and their political bedfellows) rather than on being an endless process of tossing out everything that doesn’t work (like the SAD, bit by bit), until we finally arrive at the point where we should have been all along: real food.

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You know what they say — the "critics," that is: "Avoiding entire food groups is a mistake." Hand in hand with such unmitigated balderdash is the blank stare: "then what can I eat?"

Here’s a few modest ideas from some of my meals over only the last few weeks or so, here and there. These are all phone cam pics, so quality isn’t super.

Eggs, potatoes and a flank steak with green chili sauce

Mushroom omelet with bacon and sliced tomatoes

Baby back ribs and smoked chicken

Ribeye steak and salad

Salmon roe: "Ikura"

Steak, eggs & fruit

Mussels!

Steak & salad

Ground sirloin, eggs & fruit

Watermelon!

Carne asada, guacamole and salad heavy on the bacon bits

Grilled flank steak and red wine reduction

Surf, surf & turf

That last one was last night up here in the mountain home in Arnold, CA, along with my mom & dad, brother and his GF unit. Dave brought the lobster and clams, I provided the NY steaks cut in half, and the salad.

Dave broiled the tails, dad grilled the steaks, Beatrice made the salad and I did the clams and clarified butter. The clams are done the same way I do mussels (see above). Assuming you have enough to fill a big stock pot, crush & chop 2 cloves of garlic and either 1-2 shallot or about 1/3 of a yellow onion. Toss em in the bottom of the pot along with about 1/2 -1 tsp of dry thyme and 1/3 to 1/2 cube of unsalted butter and saute until the onion or shallot is translucent and slightly browned. Then in goes about 2/3 of a bottle of any white wine and about a cup of chicken stock. Sprinkle in more dry thyme. Bring it to a boil, toss in your clams or mussels, cover and simmer for ten minutes.

Serve in a bowl and be sure and ladle in lots of the cooking juice and bits of shallot & garlic. Eat with your hands and use the shell as a spoon.

Sorry, I have omitted all the Hop Pockets, Pop Tarts and other various and sundry crap in a box I had no need of eating over this time period. It’s not "Paleoish on a Budget" to be sure, but this is more to illustrate that there are tons of options without resorting to "Lazy mindlessness on a budget."