It’s been about 10 days since the 6K word-whopper went up: Iron, Food Enrichment and The Theory of Everything. So far very well received—as an hypothesis to investigate—by various communities. We were purposely diet agnostic in that post for, we consider the hypothesis also unifying in terms of at least partly explaining why vastly different diets provide…
Archives for June 2015
Iron, Food Enrichment and The Theory of Everything
This is the promised greatly expanded post that we touched on here: How Food Enrichment Made Us Fat, Diabetic, and Chronically Diseased. The Duck Dodgers team has been working on this for months and the purpose of that earlier post was to kinda crowdsource the idea, see if there were serious objections we weren’t aware of prior to putting it all out there more formally. In addition to the home team, we’ve also run this by a number of others and received lots of valuable feedback.
Keep in mind that we’re floating a hypothesis here, not claiming causality. And we think it’s solid, as it appears to work in every single obesity / disease “paradox” worldwide we can think of. Contrast that, say, to a hypothesis were dietary carbohydrate is per se behind the obesity epidemic. Well, right off the bat you have to contend with The Blue Zones where longevity is highest, and every single one consumes a carbohydrate rich diet…
Iron is an essential element for human beings—you can’t live without it. However, too much of it can be harmful. The US, UK and Canada are the only developed nations to have mandated iron enrichment of white flour, white breads, pastas, rice and cereals—no other developed countries do it. And as we’ll suggest, the policy has potentially been disastrous for our health, contributing to most of the major diseases of civilization including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s. Some countries, like Denmark, have even banned the imports of fortified foods. In fact, flour fortification is a practice that is almost exclusively practiced by third world countries
The reasoning behind iron fortification stems from the idea that some women are believed to have iron deficiency due to menstruation. Besides the fact that skewing the micronutrients of the food supply for a fraction of a population can be counterproductive for the majority, it turns out that the entire concept of women becoming anemic due to normal menstruation was recently disproved. There is no anemia epidemic due to menstruation. And even if there was, it would not warrant a modification to an entire nation’s diet.
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The Baja Six-Month Challenge Update
It’s an understatement, really. Particularly contemplating that I have almost 5 months of challenges left to go under my lease. I’m not going to get into lots of detail now because it’s really too complex, intertwined, involves personal motivations and goals towards molding a different person in myself; one I like a little better….
Pick Your Comment
The ocean is pristine right now. The weekend mini-storm here at the tip of Baja really pushed the reset button and we’re back to more of a seasonal dessert weather pattern (cool, breezy evenings matched by hot days) and seas coming more from the south than west (Pacific). I went and played around in the…
More Crazy Probiotics Stuff
People are really getting good at refinements. Including myself. I now ingest probiotics (when I do, which is occasional, high dose) first thing AM with water, and wait hours before eating anything. The reason is simple. Your aim is to get them to the colon to establish as floral community members. You don’t want them…
Survivorman: Hurricane Blanca On The Tip of Baja
Preparations had been going at levels of concern, up to hysteria, around Los Zacatitos for days. Some of these folks got bulldozed in the Cat 3 Odile, last September, and harbor short memories. For me, the problem was science. There exist physical absolutes in the universe, and Earth and its conscious inhabitants are not excluded….
The New Science of Probiotics
I’ve previously blogged about my use of a new high-dose probiotic called Elixa. It’s not one you take all the time, but a 6-day course you take now & then. I’ve written about it twice before: Gut Bugs, Probiotics, Prebiotics…And how our microbes make us who we are FODMAP Prebiotic Arms Dealing, Probiotic Mercenaries, and…
I Have Off The Grid Internet Now
Battery operated. Ubiquitous, reliable sunshine gets stored from 4 solar panels into 7 truck batteries during every day. Lets me run lights, internet, computers, water pump…even a fan: because it’s not hot…it’s fucking hot. But this line of sight deal into the network smokes. So far, way better than endless video steaming spinning wheels…