Thursday, July 29th, 2010

  • Milestones at The Paleo Garden

    June 2010 and The Paleo Garden’s 1-year anniversary came and went without me taking notice.  I suppose that this is as it should be.

    My article “Fiat Money, Food, and Health All Go Bust” was published on the premiere libertarian website in the world carrying on the legacy and ideas of the great Austrian economists like Mises and Hayek. I have written elsewhere about the common principles between Austrian economic thought and biological systems that cooperate together to perform various actions. The Paleo Path, Part I and Part II. Wooden Nickels and Metabolic Syndrome.

    A lot has happened over this last year. Now is a good time to go over our most popular posts of the last 6 months.

    1. Bread is like sugar on the tongue

    This outrageous post shows how quickly sugars from bread break down on the tongue and register on a glucose testing strip. The indifferent reaction of the lady still recommending heap loads of bread as part of a diet to manage diabetes is THE exemplar of maintaining the lowfat/high sugar dogma regardless of the scientific counter evidence literally right in front of your face.

    2. Sex. Lies, and …Fibre to Combat Vice? (Part I)
    and here’s     Part II.

    Did you know that the fiber movement (no pun intended) had its origins in some seedy, sleazy thoughts about SEX? And these same “sordid” opinions in a completely ironic way are now being used by these same fiber pushers (no pun intended)? Lorette C. Luzajic gives you the straight poop (and I do admit that that pun was indeed intended).

    3. Wolves Among Dogs: Paleo-riffic

    “I’ve always been fat.  Not “fat fat” and not “American fat” in that I have always been able to walk, and touch my toes with a little grunting and straining…    I always knew I could get in shape, with sufficient effort, and I always thought that the effort would be high and prolonged.  Although it pains me to admit it, I was flat-out wrong.  I’m losing weight, I’m getting stronger, I’m getting healthier, I sleep better, I feel better . . . and it’s easy, and getting easier all the time.”  Uncle Lew explains why after going paleo he feels Paleo-riffic.

    4.  Kairos, the right time to start evolutionary living

    Learn about the word Kairos, it may help explain why you “got it” and why others don’t.

    5.  Evolutionary Women

    If you’re looking for role models for your daughters…. or sons, or YOU!, then look no further. These Evolutionary Women are making paleo less brutish sounding. When we can get to the point where when initially explained about the paleo perspective the first thing a woman thinks of isn’t a caveman pulling a cavewoman by her ponytail then we’ll have really made progress. By the way, this list was compiled just a couple of weeks after Melissa started Hunt, Gather, Love, so her “honorable mention” at the end of this list is hugely outdated!

    6.  Vegetarian Lies

    Lorette C. Luzajic sheds some light on the stories we’ve been told that not eating a vegetarian diet will make us unhealthy.

    7.  High Carbohydrate Diabetes Inducing (HCDI) Diet

    There is ONE diet that does exactly what it sets out to do, and you can look at reams of research from Nutrition and Metabolism if you have any doubts. The HCDI diet is promoted by various camps all doing their part in making sure that this diet lives up to its name. Good job, guys.

    8. Inside Baseball

    Are you sometimes going off about paleo with such incomprehensible lingo that it’s like explaining baseball to a cricket player? Or better yet, like explaining cricket to anyone living in North America? If so, then you’re talking “Inside Baseball.” Uncle Lew explains how you may get your point across more lucidly.

    9. They’re Happy Because They Eat Butter: Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions

    Lorette C. Luzajic gives a spectacular overview of the accomplishments of the evolutionary woman, Sally Fallon, and her work to carry on the legacy of the great Weston A. Price.

    10.  How Dr. Bernstein Rescued my Health: A Diabetes Adventure Tale

    This piece by Andrea Isom was the first guest post ever on The Paleo Garden. It is a wildly popular post which is no surprise given Andrea’s awesome professional writing skills. Thanks, Andrea, for sharing your story so that people who were in your shoes may find a safe ending to their Diabetes Adventure Tales.

    My wife will be participating in the Ancestral Health Symposium next year presenting how bariatric psychology may incorporate a Paleolithic perspective.  There is much to say about this and about what she’s doing between now and then, but there will be time to talk about that later.

    By the way, in this Fiat Money, Food, and Health All Go Bust piece there’s a link under “produce prodigies of Keys” for Denise Minger’s article “The China Study: Fact or Fallacy.”  Kudos to Richard Nikoley of Free The Animal for mobilizing our community to highlight Denise’s findings.  I hope by linking to it in my “Fiat Money, Food and Health” article, I may humbly further contribute to the attention being given to exposing the faulty data/science on which rests the lowfat/high sugar dogma that’s causing so much horror.

    And lastly, on the left hand column of the The Paleo Garden you will find The Paleo Post, the latest snapshot of an attempt to find the various points in the Venn diagram where our old Paleo Garden’s ways may overlap with the modern world.

    On many issues we may be on different ends of the spectrum, but we’re on the same side of the barricades in The Paleo Garden. Be excellent to each other.

    By zachary on July 26th, 2010 Posted in Popular Posts, The Paleo Garden Party | 2 Comments »

  • Top 10 people you’d like to see go paleo

    Awhile back I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Richard Feinman. Feinman is someone about whom I never would have even known had it not been for Jimmy Moore promoting his work. Dr. Feinman made the point that if someone of considerable “Q score” (e.g., name recognition) adopted a low carbohydrate ketogenic diet (LCKD) then perhaps enough critical mass would follow of other notables and people in general (e.g., your brother Larry, etc.) that the science and healthy results behind a “normal carb” diet would actually get the proper forum it deserves.

    So, I thought I’d come up with my Top 10 list of people that might make little dents in the lowfat ceiling if they adopted an evolutionary diet.

    10. Dean Ornish

    Can you imagine if Dean gave up grains or at least limited them? Dr. Andrew Weil is the only doctor with any former name recognition in the lowfat world that has come out to admit that the relationship between insulin and metabolic syndrome may have something to with carbohydrates, and fat may not be the culprit after all. Good for Dr. Weil. If Dean could stop pushing nutrient poor grains in favor of even a modest nudge toward a paleo diet, he would literally be welcomed with open arms.

    9. Rush Limbaugh

    Telling Rush Limbaugh he’s Full of Crap (by Leftake.com)

    Al Franken once called Rush Limbaugh a big, fat idiot. I’m not going to comment on the idiocy part, but I always kind of thought Franken’s “big” descriptor was a cheap shot that was only apropos because Limbaugh was…well, “fat.” “Rush Limbaugh is a Lean, Skinny Idiot” probably wouldn’t have been published and Al Franken might not have been elected to the Senate. Now, if that doesn’t sit well with you, at least consider that if Rush went paleo all of the ditto heads would follow and adopt a paleo diet. Unfortunately, when you’re living paleo you can’t be a ditto head and just parrot what other people say… that’s not how we roll in the paleo world. So either Rush would change a lot of his message or the ditto heads would become paleo heads.  So, whether you’re politically left or right leaning, it would be a wash with Franken out of the senate and ditto heads going paleo.  Not a bad deal.

    8. Gwyneth Paltrow

    My goodness. Her recent health problems are a direct result of her simply unhuman diet. She’s a smart lady and a memorable actress. If Gwyneth went paleo and basically said that the diet she used to follow was like an Emperor with no clothes, I mean we all see what it did to her and others, right!?, then I wonder how many other starlets would rethink starvation, marathons, and whole grain mainlining.

    7. Christopher Hitchens

    I mostly read Hitchens’ articles to see just how much I will disagree with him. However, when I am on the same page as he and even when I’m not, he’s a brilliant writer. He uses his pen as a very effective propagandist when that’s what he thinks is called for.

    I remember once Hitch saying that he enjoyed while going through school and starting out in his career having the sense that he was just simply smarter than so many of his teachers and rivals. I don’t consider the fact that Hitchens smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish as a sign of stupidity. However, it’s been my experience on a paleo diet that it’s a bit difficult to drink heavily. And not to give smoking a clean bill of health either, but it would be fascinating to see a study of lung cancer among smokers eating the Standard American Diet (with or without junk food) and lowcarb dieting smokers.

    What pains me, though he be a Trotskyite, is to see someone so intelligent, currently having health problems, throat cancer to be specific, that will be recommended to cut back to a healthy lowfat diet. I don’t know Hitchens’ opinion of Tim Russert, but it’s a good bet that he’s going down the same medical care path though they be afflicted with different ailments. If Hitchens meets the same fate, smoking and drinking will be blamed and his probable lowfat diet prescription will get off scot-free, because after all it was just too little too late. I hope that this isn’t going to be the sad stupid way to die for someone so smart. I’m calling you out Hitch, right here, right now. Give proof that on the subject of healing yourself that you’re as smart as you say you are.

    And no, I’m not saying a paleo/lowcarb diet can cure cancer, but would it be more advisable than what’s going to be prescribed to Hitch?  Absolutely.

    6. Kirstie Alley

    I remember having my doubts about Kirstie when she first took over for Diane during the era of the Cheers television program on Thursday nights. She won me over. Though her weight issues in a way have prolonged her time in the limelight, it’s a good bet that she’s had about enough of the spotlight’s pressure. Every pound gained or lost is guessed at in every new picture. I can’t help but see it on the magazine rack when I buy groceries. Someone like Kirstie going paleo, eating when hungry, working out 20 minutes per week (maximum), and speaking out that it’s not that hard to follow would put paleo and her in the tabloids. Maybe the soccer moms (and dads) that I see at the store would then purchase less of the lowfat yogurt for themselves and the juice boxes that they buy their kids. Come on, Kirstie, go paleo, go where everybody knows your name.

    5. Fat Joe

    Yes, Fat Joe makes the list! I like Fat Joe’s raps, and think that he plays a unique role in the hip hop community. I would imagine that he (like many of my Mexican friends and I) enjoys the high carbohydrate diet of corn, beans, flour tortillas and rice. Thank goodness for gluten free Mexican restaurant menus on the one hand, but on the other hand you put me in a Mexican joint and one margarita later I’m eating burritos like that Japanese hotdog eating champion. If Fat Joe went paleo he could change his name to Phat Joseph and set a great example that life as a latino can go on without heaping helpings of starches.  By the way, I realize that Fat Joe aint Mexican.

    4. Arnold Schwarzenegger

    arnold-schwarzenegger

    Can you imagine if the Terminator Gubernator ate like a barbarian of old? “Arnold, how did you get back into such great shape at your age of 70 for the latest Conan film showcasing the warrior king’s last battles?” “It was easy,” answered Arnold, “I went paleo, raised more bison then Ted Turner, burned down all of the grain fields that got in my way, and delighted in the lamentations of the dietary advisory board.”

    3. Ricky Gervais

    I love Gervais’ sense of humor (and sense of humour), in other words I really enjoy both the US and UK version of “The Office” TV show. Do yourself a favor and check out Ricky’s comedy routines, especially the one about Humpty Dumpty. Now, our Brit funnyman recently came out saying that he doesn’t understand why anyone can’t find the will to make themselves less fat (fat like he used to be that is). All you have to do is eat less and get off your duff. Ricky went on to explain that his weight loss is due to running his arse off, cutting back on fatty foods, blah, blah, blah.

    I imagine Gervais’ diet consisting of lowfat yogurt, whole wheat toast, and skinless chicken breast, or probably some variant of a lowfat/high sugar diet. He’s lost some weight not because he’s eating less fat, but because he’s reduced his caloric intake of sugary foods, however his diet remains high in its % of carbohydrates. His chronic running is burning off a lot of his dietary sugar/carbohydrates, but the pounding of his joints and lack of fats and proteins are setting him up like an exhausted hamster on a treadmill. Not sustainable. When he stops spinning, that high sugar/lowfat diet is going to get old real quick. Ricky, I wish you all of the best, but if the wheels start coming off, go paleo. It would be rich in comedic material.

    2. Alec Baldwin

    I’ve already done posts on this: Part I, Part II, and Part III. There’s a lot of talk about Alec being more of a sex icon and a more successful comedic actor now with his heavier frame. Not a bad argument to just continue what he’s doing. Alec’s role on 30 Rock is iconic. However, being there for your family for another 30-40 years might be something you’d call a success, too. I wouldn’t want him to end up like his Jack Donagy heart attack prone character, he doesn’t have to. And I think a healthier Alec would still continue to win Emmys.

    1. Oprah

    The ultimate conversion. There is no doubt. Here’s a review of some of what has already been written by the paleo community about Oprah Winfrey and how paleo would benefit her rather than her trying to implement this torture plan.

    1.  Oprah’s Weight Loss Yo-Yo Woes

    2. Oprah’s Paleo Recipe for Success

    3. Clueless, how Oprah could go Paleo

    By going paleo, Oprah would do more for women (especially African American women) dealing with weight and self esteem issues than any conceivable person ever could. Heck, I’d even tell friends that I was on the Oprah diet instead of the paleo diet if she was on it. I’m still hoping that De Vany will be a guest on her show when he launches his book.

    Besides the person residing in the #1 spot, the others are in order of when I thought of them. Given that this is a dream list, I didn’t want to over analyze it too much. What do you think of this list? Who did I leave off?  

    Please understand that hunter-gatherer/paleo/evolutionary diets have a broad range of application and may not necessarily have the same low carbohydrate as the LCKD which researchers like Feinman, Volek and many others are studying. However, I think in either case the point is that these diets are closer to the default human diet than what is being advocated by the Standard American Diet. Therefore, my use of paleo in this post for the sake of argument is meant to be synonymous with lowcarb though for many paleo diet adherents your carb intake may vary upward to the point that lowcarb is not an accurate descriptor.  

    By zachary on July 21st, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

  • Top 10: you know you’re taking paleo too far when…

    Top 10 signs you know you’re taking paleo too far when:

    10.  You start actually seeing High Fructose Corn Syrup and Poly Unsaturated Fats (PUFA) containing products glow radioactively in the middle aisles of the supermarket.

    9.  You spend 95% of your non-work time writing your own paleo blog and reading and writing comments on other paleo blogs than just contently “living paleo.”

    8.  You wait for the day that Vibram’s will start to make the dress shoe which is socially acceptable enough to wear to work. (Vibrams, if this idea is cool with you, how about comping me one of the first pair made? Please!?)

    7.  If the 90% Lindt chocolate bar is sold out, you feel like you’re splurging buying the 85% bar instead.

    6.  You interject evolutionary fitness, paleo diet and the primal blueprint no matter what the topic into every conversation that after while you become completely uninterested in talking to people about their other boring subjects AND/OR other people actually stop inviting you into the conversations altogether!

    5.  When you do your high intensity routine at the gym, the other people are moving so slow, talking and standing around that you feel like you’re Superman in the scene when people freeze in place when he stops the earth from spinning by circling around it a million times a second.

    4.  You forget how good smiling feels when regularly done because you’re WAY too caught up in the health consequences of family and friends (or even the entire world’s population) if meat from ~nomadic herding (e.g. grassfed) and unsubsidized agricultural products (e.g., not grains and sugar) aren’t included in their diets and produced on a large scale basis in the food supply.  (Thought I’d include at least one serious one on the list… don’t forget to smile…)

    3.  While out on a pleasant walk through the neighborhood when you see long distance joggers you imagine how funny it would be to see a squirrel or a raccoon or a chimp jogging down your street trying to keep perfect jogging form for an hour.

    2.  You use the litmus test of whether or not a person eats wheat to determine whether they’re worth listening to.

    1.  You imagine that Loren Cordaine is like Tupac Shakur and Weston A. Price’s Chris Masterjohn is like Biggie Smalls representing various factions of the paleo blogosphere a la the West Coast/East Coast Rap wars.

    You have any other items or your own list?  If so, please feel free to include it in the comments, or send me off a link to your site’s post on it, and I’ll include it here on The Paleo Garden.  

    By zachary on July 19th, 2010 Posted in The Paleo Garden Party | 7 Comments »

  • A Day in the Life of… (Part IV, the witching hour)

    A Day in the Life of… warts and all. I’ll go into meticulous detail assuming you have the same knowledge of food and cooking as I did 2-20 years ago. Here are Part I (breakfast), Part II (lunch), and Part III (dinner) of A Day in the Life of…

    The Witching Hour

    I don’t have any alcohol Sunday through Thursday evenings. I don’t drink beer anymore at home. On the rare once-every-6-months that I do drink a beer, it will be at a restaurant or someone’s house if wine is not available.

    WINE

    I’ll have 2-4 glasses of wine on Friday and Saturday nights. On Sunday through Thursday nights, I’ll stick with my water. The only three liquids that I drink are water, coffee (between 7am-2pm nearly daily), and wine (Friday-Saturday).

    I try (and the key word is try) to have a 12 hour gap between my last bit of food in the evening until I eat breakfast the next day. This 12 hour gaps is achieved probably 3-4 times a week. For those other 3-4 times a week I succumb to the Witching Hour, and this is what happens…

    CHOCOLATE

    I tend to have 90% Lindt chocolate about 3 times a week. Friday and Saturday nights either it’s a bar stretched over 2 nights, or a bar each Friday and Saturday evening. These weekend chocolates are purchased when I buy the wine. Probably about one night a week, somehow I end up stopping by the store to get the chocolate. Usually, it’s when I have a couple of more hours to do of work at home, and I’ll have some chocolate with my another ill-advised cup of coffee.

    BACON

    About two times a week on a work night around 8pm-9pm I eat bacon. Anywhere from 5-10 strips of it.

    Yup. I do.

    What I really want is some chocolate, or some wine or some Reese’s peanut butter cups.

    The chocolate aint a bad choice at all but I try to save that just for Fridays and Saturdays. The wine is simply not an option on a worknight with a 5am wake-up. Maybe for some people it’s not a big deal to have one glass a night, I just can’t handle it every night. I start feeling too wino-ish, I don’t like for wine to be a crutch for stress relief. I like my wine to complement a good meal with a good atmosphere.

    And the Reese’s, I gave up eating peanuts completely and only eat nuts of any kind very rarely. The only chocolate I eat is if it has 70% and above cocoa content.

    I have acquired an aversion to eating fruit right before bed, and rarely have it for dinner. I make it a point especially in the evening not to eat anything that spikes my blood sugar and insulin levels… Well other than the wine on the weekends, and the high quality chocolate, which has a sugar content 6.5 times less than a standard American chocolate bar. So, that leaves bacon.

    And if bacon isn’t available, I’ll eat part of the meat that I cooked for my next day’s lunch. Or, I’ll grill or fry up a hamburger.

    And that’s my strategy for dealing with the Witching Hour. For anyone in my modest readership dealing with compulsive eating issues, overeating, anxious eating, etc., especially in the evening, this is how I do it. It may work for you, it may not.

    Any fruit that I may have in the course of the day I try to have it just for breakfast and lunch. The exception is a sprinkle of raisins in my evening salad (if I have one). Bacon or another helping of meat or fish, it beats mainlining sugar. That simple.

    By zachary on July 15th, 2010 Posted in Daily Routine, EF-De Vany reference, Food ideas, Normal Carb Diet | 4 Comments »

  • July 21: National Junk Food Day

    Check this out.  Lorette C. Luzajic, a contributer here at The Paleo Garden, wrote this piece for Head Start For Baby.

    How do you plan on celebrating National Junk Food Day?  

    By Lorette C. Luzajic on July 14th, 2010 Posted in Lorette | 1 Comment »

  • They’re Happy Because They Eat Butter: Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions

    by Lorette C. Luzajic

    Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price Foundation have been enduring the ridicule and hostility of the food and medical industries and a brainwashed public for the past decade. Cheerful quotes like “They’re happy because they eat butter” and the Foundation’s relentless campaign against soy foods have earned them snide mockeries and patronizing eye rolling from every side. I was one of the latter, sadly, when I first came upon Sally’s Nourishing Traditions: the Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats.

    You all know the story by now: I was sick, tired, addicted, depressed, fat, puffy, slow, itchy, in pain, and constantly sick. I was pretty sure I’d have to become a vegetarian again because I was getting sicker by the day. Even though I was eating copious amounts of healthy whole grain foods- barley, couscous, quinoa, millet, granola, wheat germ, you name it, I felt like crap. I thought I was eating too much meat, though it barely made an appearance on my table. I picked up Sally’s book because I assumed that “challenges politically correct nutrition” meant she was going to combat the poisonous, prevailing attitude that humans are supposed to eat meat. But when I opened the book and flipped through it, I was told to eat bones, brains and raw meat. I dropped the book like a hot potato.

    But as they say in Narcotics Anonymous, “insanity is doing something you’ve done a thousand times and expecting different results.” It just didn’t dawn on me that I’d been struggling to be vegetarian, vegan, or almost-vegetarian for a very long time but wasn’t getting any healthier. I thought we were brainwashed by the “beef board” to reach for animal foods and line their pockets while making ourselves sick. This cookbook is responsible for my conversion- to health, to religious adamancy about the real human diet, and to writing about meat.

    It’s funny how far removed from health food “natural, health food” aficionados really are. Was I so malnourished that I wasn’t able to think for myself? Now, following the principles of Nourishing Traditions, it is obvious that real food means real food, the way our grandparents and ancient ancestors ate it. It’s insane that it is so radical to view vegetable oil as a health scourge. On the surface, what could be more wholesome than vegetable oil? But by giving it some thought, reality would show through the haze: vegetable oil is an industrial food. Aside from olive oil and some nuts here and there, we’ve never used it widely in history. It is foreign to our bodies. It goes against common sense- you have to press a lot of corn or soy to get oil. And for the most part, it’s hydrogenated. So what in the world is “healthy” oil? Using the words “butter” and “lard” still makes me cringe. Yet these are traditional, unprocessed foods. We have been taught that we’ve been taught to love these foods by the dairy board or meat industry. But the truth is, we’ve always loved them. We were taught to fear them by the monocrop industry.

    It’s painfully clear now when I set food in a “health food store” how few health foods are sold there. It’s more like a candy store except that nothing tastes good. It’s so obvious that whole, traditional foods means farm-fresh eggs, beef, pork, lamb, bone broth, fresh herbs, zucchini, collard greens, fish, butter, olives, apples, peas, cabbage, berries and so on. How can bottled, isolated supplements, powdered plant proteins, canned “organic” sauces, chemicals to replace eggs, and boxes of puffed, processed grains be health food? What are we thinking?

    Insanity is doing something you’ve done a thousand times and expecting different results. Though my diet had barely any meat in it, or none, for as long as I could remember, I kept blaming meat for my illness and fatigue. It was time to try something else. Sally’s book points out how pervasive these terrifying diseases are- cancer, diabetes, arthritis, mental illness, obesity, heart disease- and asks how old foods like meat and animal fat could be responsible for new diseases. Since we are eating less animal foods than ever before, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the diseases implicated by eating them should disappear? Why do we get fatter while obsessed with low-fat foods? Why do cookbooks by the heart and diabetes associations rail against saturated fat while offering recipes “loaded with sugar and white flour”?

    “This is politically correct nutrition,” Sally writes. “It singles out…eggs and beef, but spares the powerful and highly profitable grain cartels, vegetable oil producers, and the food processing industry…”

    “They take exercise seriously, many have stopped smoking, consumption of fresh vegetables has increased, …America has cut back on red meats and animal fats. But none of these measures has made a dent in the ever-increasing toll of degenerative disease…We buy foods labeled low fat, no cholesterol, reduced sodium, thinking they are good for us. Why, then, are we still sick?”

    This is the question on which Sally’s whole book is based. Her recipes and nutritional information take fake foods off of the table- sugar, chemicals, puffs, soy, flour, processed or industrial foods. And she puts real food back on the table, including real food that we forgot existed- yes, like butter, and yes, like bones, brains, and organs. What the heck is that soy-salt-chemical lump that now passes for “vegetable stock” flavouring? Forget it- stock comes the way your grandmother made it, with real vegetables and real bones simmered for hours. This is the most nourishing multivitamin in the world. Bones are made up of dozens of vital minerals.

    Furthermore, Sally teaches us to prepare grains and legumes the way we used to, soaking and fermenting. These practices are ancient and wise traditions that neutralized harmful anti-nutrients.

    The best part about this cookbook is the fascinating nutritional information provided. Sally explains how carbohydrates work; what’s wrong with hydrogenation; what cholesterol really does; what fats do what and why; how sugar causes decay from the inside and not just the outside; how the vegetarian inhabitants of India have one of the shortest life spans we know; why powdered milk and eggs or puffed grains are poor choices; the role of every mineral and vitamin; what is spirulina: why all cultures have traditionally consumed fermented foods like sauerkraut; how enzymes work, and just about everything else you need to know.

    But Sally doesn’t ask you just to accept her word against the word of all of your trusted medical associations. Instead, she asks for a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. We assume the “plant based” diet and food pyramid with 6 to 11 servings of grains as its mainstay came from both health and compassion motivations. But they actually come from the powerful lobby groups of monocrop manipulations, expressly to play on the consumer’s desire for health and compassion. And what is behind this science? Nothing, as she points out a thousand times. There is no such science. The “studies” we hear of and believe in don’t really exist. When said studies are studied, they say something very different than what we’ve been told.

    On every page of this collection, there are excerpts from hundreds of texts and studies, showing that Sally is not alone in her recommendations of traditional food sources. These are fascinating snippets that make for lively and surprising reading. Did you know that rats fed Egg Beaters all died before reaching maturity? Or that non-egg eaters have more heart attacks and strokes than egg eaters? Or that eggs contain all known vitamins and minerals save for Vitamin C? Did you know that saturated fat protects the liver from alcohol? That candy and cake exacerbate schizophrenia and other mental disorders? That Dutch researchers found that infants breastfed by vegetarian women had delayed motor skills and abnormal red blood cells? That sugar and white grains are implicated in cancer, fatigue, allergies, gum problems, and heart attacks? That meat fat contains antimicrobial fatty acids? That sugar creates the acidic condition we are supposed to avoid by giving up meat? That tooth decay is nonexistent in cultures that eat predominantly meat, even if no one brushes their teeth? That vegetarians don’t live longer than meat eaters, despite popular “knowledge” that they do?

    This was the book that helped me to change the way I was thinking. I suddenly felt the lack of a good stockpot in my kitchen- my grandmother never went three days without simmering the odds and ends of vegetables with bones. She would never even consider a cube, because the bones are not simmered for flavour alone. I started to ask myself obvious questions, like why didn’t we have cancer when we were hunters, if meat is so bad? And why are diabetics told to get rid of meat, which is the ONLY food that doesn’t affect the blood sugar and pancreas issues? Did the Eskimos REALLY live on nothing but fish and blubber- how valid are Sally’s sources? I began following her trails and finding great wisdom. For example, I wanted to know why everyone stopped eating butter, and sure enough, the trail led straight to soy’s hydrogenated nightmare, margarine. I realized that fake food manufacturers like Big Soy aren’t out to save us from disease, but to make money, and that to do so, they have to tell us we are being nice to animals and saving ourselves from disease.

    Incidentally, thanks to Sally’s tireless work and endured persecution, her foundation has become the foundation of new (well, old really) thinking. Thousands of us are learning more about real food and I’ve never felt healthier. And you know what? It’s better with butter, naturally.

    Lorette C. Luzajic
    www.thegirlcanwrite.net
    the girl next door tells it like it is

    “Luzajic, like Wonder Woman, is her own institution.”
    Paul Robinson, Blog Critics

    Goodbye, Billie Jean: the Meaning of Michael Jackson
    fifty-one writers, curated by Lorette C. Luzajic

    Buy all of Lorette’s books on Amazon!

    Check out Lorette’s popular series, “A Matter of Life or Myth”, and other articles here in The Paleo Garden.  You can also check out here her Fascinating People, gossip for smart people.

    By Lorette C. Luzajic on July 7th, 2010 Posted in Evolutionary Women, Lorette | 4 Comments »

  • A Day in the Life of… (Part III, dinner)

    A Day in the Life of… warts and all. I’ll go into meticulous detail assuming you have the same knowledge of food and cooking as I did 2-20 years ago. Here are Part I (breakfast) and Part II (lunch) of A Day in the Life of…

    Dinner

    See Lunch. I try to sit down for dinner no later than 7pm. I usually eat dinner between 530pm-6pm when I’m going to work early and may return home early. On Saturdays and Sundays I prefer to have dinner around 5pm.

    MEAT

    Seriously, I grill up either chicken, pork, hamburgers or steak. I may grill up some sausage from time to time. The one thing that’s different is that I’ll eat seafood. I either broil or grill salmon, or fry up some scallops. Usually when I cook seafood, I’ll cook enough to eat for the next evening, as well. I don’t like eating seafood at lunch, it stinks up the plastic bowls. I eat seafood about 2 times a week for dinner. I have the goal to making that 3-4 times.

    On occasion, I’ll marinate my meat with a BBQ sauce and maybe have some sauce on the side, too. At the grocery chain store I buy the bulk of my food there are literally dozens of BBQ sauces. There is only one brand that has sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Same thing with ketcup. Many different kinds of ketchup, only a couple of brands with sugar instead of HFCS. These 2 items, BBQ sauce and ketchup, are practically the only remaining packaged/processed foods that remain on my menu.

    I know full well that they have sugar, and that to excess they’ll spike my blood sugar and insulin. Since I usually only have BBQ sauce and ketchup in the evening, and in particular it’s the evening when I want to avoid spiking blood sugar and insulin, I try to have just no more than a squirt or two.

    I want to go into starting my slumber with a full belly of nutritious food so that during the 12 hours between eating:

    -I don’t have elevated levels of blood sugar and insulin

    -I burn as much fat as possible

    -Autophagy occurs

    I’ll stop there and encourage you to note as always that these concepts are from the Prof’s work. If I have a workout the next morning, I want to hit it right. Excessive eating from the previous evening won’t put me in the state I want to be in for that morning’s workout. I want to heighten my insulin sensitivity after draining my glycogen stores after a good weight workout. There’s a lot of other positive adaptations, but I’ll post on that another time, or refer you to where you may piece together the diet and its relation to working out.

    SALAD

    See Lunch.

    If I didn’t have a salad at lunch, I’ll nearly always have it for dinner. If I had a salad at lunch, I probably only have it 50% of the time at dinner, and will then usually eat a lot more meat.

    While I’m preparing dinner, I prepare what I’m going to bring for lunch the next day, e.g., meat and salad. This is key. I’m tired from work and want to just focus on the here and now regarding dinner. It’s a struggle to make that extra effort to cook for the next day’s lunch. However, when go to bed in the evening, and lunch is already ready and waiting for me in the fridge for when I wake up the next morning, I go to bed with much less stress. Yeah, what an exciting life! But it’s the little things like this that keep me on track.  

    By zachary on July 5th, 2010 Posted in Daily Routine, EF-De Vany reference, Food ideas, Normal Carb Diet | 1 Comment »

  • A Day in the Life of… (Part II, lunch)

    A Day in the Life of… warts and all. I’ll go into meticulous detail assuming you have the same knowledge of food and cooking as I did 2-20 years ago. Here is Part I of A Day in the Life of…

    Lunch

    I don’t carry a lunch pail or fancy velcro lunch sack. I either lose them at work or they live in my car. I usually carry my lunch in a plastic grocery bag.

    MEAT

    The night before I cook on the grill one of the following options and this is what I take to work in a plastic container:

    -2 chicken thighs

    -2 pork loins or some other cut

    -3 hamburgers (no cheese, no bun)

    -Steak

    I put this meat into a plastic bowl with a lid. The key here is to cook what you’re going to take for lunch the previous evening. If I don’t do that, I usually buy my lunch, which costs 3 to 4 times more to get the exact same thing I could have cooked at home.

    SALAD

    On average, 3 out of 5 work days, the previous evening, I’ll chop up a salad and place it in the refrigerator. All or some of this is what I put in my circular bowl with the blue lid:

    -Mixed greens

    Either the Natural Select brand in a plastic box, or I buy some good lettuce and peel off some as I go along in the week. I almost always go with this.

    -Spinach (usually in the Natural Select plastic box)

    1 out of 5 salads I’ll use Spinach.

    -Red or Green Pepper

    I cut half of a pepper and put the other half in a sandwich bag for the next day. I almost always go with this.

    -Broccoli

    I buy a big head of broccoli and tear off 2-3 pieces, chop of a bit of the stalk, and then chop up the broccoli for the salad. I almost always go with this.

    -Cucumber

    I usually cut off about ¼ to 1/3 of the cucumber, cut them in thin circles, and then cut them into 1/8ths that resemble little triangles, or Spanish gold coin bits for the Austrians amongst my modest readership. I almost always go with this.

    -Celery

    In every salad bowl I prepare for lunch, I’ll tear off 2 big pieces of celery. I chop off the ends just a bit, I don’t like how the whiter part tastes at the bottom of the celery. Then I’ll tear these 2 piece in half and put them into the salad bowl. I usually eat them at the end of the salad.

    -Bacon

    I hardly ever eat bacon in my salad for lunch, but maybe 2 out of 5 times for dinner I’ll cook up about 4-5 strips of bacon to crumble in my salad.

    -Raisins

    A sprinkle a handful of raisins into my salad more often than not.

    -Carrots

    I put about 4-5 unchopped baby carrots in my salad about 1 out of 5 times.

    Strawberries

    I cut up about 2-3 strawberries in my salad about 1 out of every 10 times.

    -Onions

    Probably 1 out of 10 salads I’ll chop up about 1/3 of a raw onion to put into the salad. Most of the time I fry up onion in butter to serve on top of whatever meat I’m eating.

    -Avocado

    Probably about 1 out 10 of my salads I’ll put avocado. You have to wait until it’s brown/black and a bit squishy. I usually cut in 1/4ths, scoop out the green meat out of the skin with a spoon, and then cut those pieces into chunks.

    -Tomatoes

    I usually don’t buy tomatoes. If they’re on my salad at a restaurant, I’ll eat them. I don’t dislike them, but in my readings of nightshades, I somehow just grew accustomed to not purchasing them.

    -Cheese

    I don’t ever put cheese on my salad anymore at home. Only at restaurants when it comes with the salad will I have cheese.

    -Salad dressing

    Vinaigrette, that’s all I ever put on my salad.  But probably only do so one every 5 times. I don’t buy any store bought salad dressings anymore. They have too many PUFAs, especially soy. There are two things I go way out of my way to avoid. High Fructose Corn Syrup and anything with Soy. It’s usually pretty easy when you avoid all packaged foods.

    The key here is to prepare the salad the night before. If I don’t do that, I usually am only carrying a slab of meat of some sort and a piece of fruit for lunch.

    FRUIT

    Along with a portion of meat, I’ll pack into my plastic sack on most days an apple or an orange. I usually eat that around 2pm or so.

    All in all a rather bland lunch I know, but it gets me through the day along with another cup of coffee and a few glasses of water. I feel light with an “agile fullness”, and am hungry by dinner time without feeling groggy like I used to before paleo.

    Next “A Day in the Life of…” post will be about dinner.  

    By zachary on June 30th, 2010 Posted in Daily Routine, EF-De Vany reference, Food ideas, Normal Carb Diet | 1 Comment »

  • The Paleo Post has been updated

    In the left hand column of the The Paleo Garden you will find The Paleo Post, the latest snapshot of an attempt to find the various points in the Venn diagram where our old Paleo Garden’s ways may overlap with the modern world.

    Deficits are similar to carbs: the more you eat, the hungrier you get. –Nassim Taleb.

    Keynesianism is akin to binging on Neolithic foods.

    Cheap carb binging is to metabolic syndrome, as deficit spending is to an economy with a hyperinflated debased currency. After awhile even a wheel barrel of money won’t buy a loaf of bread, and no amount of insulin will provide your resistant cells energy.  

    By zachary on June 29th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

  • A Day in the Life of… (Part I, breakfast)

    A Day in the Life of… warts and all. I’ll go into meticulous detail assuming you have the same knowledge of food and cooking as I did 2-20 years ago.

    Wake Up

    I’ll wake up at ~515am. If I’m lucky I’ll have had the foresight to iron my shirt the night before, or maybe a few of them on a Sunday night. If not, I’m ironing for about 15 minutes.

    Shower.

    Breakfast

    While multi-tasking getting the house up and people in order, I start cooking. I’ll just go over my meal. I cook 4 scrambled eggs. I nearly have this every morning. And two sausage paddies. I eat these before heading out the door. For the drive to work, I have travel mug of black coffee filled to the top and a sandwich bag about half way filled with about 1/3 being blueberries, 2/3 raisins. This is what I have to eat as I listen to the radio on the drive.

    On weekends for breakfast, I will have scrambled eggs and probably about 5-8 strips of bacon. I eat about 2 dozen eggs a week. On the rare mornings I don’t eat scrambled eggs, I’ll eat something that I prepared the previous evening that was intended to be for lunch, but I woke up late and instead ate it for breakfast. On weekend mornings I’ll have some melon, as well.

    It’s that simple.  Scrambling 4 eggs and having some sausage takes about 10 minutes.  I won’t go into detail about supplements in this post, but some fish oil and vitamin D and a cup of coffee and you’re on your way to a great day.   

    By zachary on June 29th, 2010 Posted in Daily Routine, EF-De Vany reference, Food ideas, Normal Carb Diet | 5 Comments »

« Older Entries