Archive for March, 2010

The Paleo Post has been updated

Monday, March 29th, 2010

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.

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Food or Poison, Crap or Ham Sandwich

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

The following post is dedicated to Diana Hsieh and her colleagues who recently launched: Modern Paleo

I have been a reader of Diana’s writings and those of some of the contributers to Modern Paleo long before “going paleo.” In a recent piece I noted the overlap between those with classical liberal (in the current vernacular that would be libertarian or independent minded world view) and those in the evolutionary living community that favor a human birthright diet, healthy metabolic fitness, and a lifestyle that is in harmony with the world. Go here to find out more about Modern Paleo Principles and why and how to subscribe to their Paleo Bloggers email list.

Yes, folks that means meat eaters (along with vegetables and fruits) may make grass fed beef purchases that are more environmentally friendly than a grain-eating vegan/vegetarian buying tofu, and the paleo diet adherent may not even be conscious of it! In fact, a primal adherent’s food purchases may respect property rights and voluntary division of labor much more than an objectivist’s purchasing twinkees. But that is neither here nor there.

One doesn’t have to define themselves as one or the other (Paleo or Objectivist), or even know what they have in common, but it’s an interesting overlap that may draw one “camp” to the other’s lingo. Other than reading her masterpieces I’m not an expert on Ayn Rand’s objectivism philosophy, but as a layman disciple of the Austrian economics school, let’s just say that we’re on the same side of the barricades here. Peace and Freedom.

Again, you don’t have to read or for that matter agree with everything that Hayek, or Mises, or Rand espouse to understand the underlying economic and environmental principles of how “things need to be” to allow the paleo/primal lifestyle to be obtainable and allowed for the human race to thrive in health and continue with mutual benefit towards each other with optimal efficiency. Ok, so, this one’s for you folks over at The Modern Paleo Blog.

Food or Poison, Crap or Ham Sandwich

“In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.” — Ayn Rand, ‘The Anatomy of Compromise,’ “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”

Please suspend your political thinking for 2 minutes. This post has nothing to do with left, right, socialism, capitalism or a fantasy of a return to a paleo libertarian communal life. Believe me, I’m not even suggesting that people who don’t eat like me or advocate a different diet than me are evil. But when there is a choice between food and poison….

Ayn Rand’s quote above in context was talking about an analogy of if you were given a choice between FOOD and POISON, there is no compromise. If you eat all or a just a little bit of poison as a “compromise”, poison and death win. It’s like a ham sandwich and crap (h/t Joe Rogan). If it’s a 95% ham sandwich and 5% crap, you may call it a ham sandwich but would you eat it? If it’s 95% crap and 5% ham sandwich, can you really even call it a ham sandwich?

Here’s a quote from an MSNBC article (h/t Free The Animal) that really does a decent job explaining that high levels of bad cholesterol come NOT from fat, but from high carbohydrates. On the third page of this article we have a quote from Dean Ornish, who, in addition to being a devout believer in phrenology, is also a believer that a nonhuman highcarb/highsugar/lowfat diet full of Healthy Whole Grains is what’s best for you.

Here’s the quote from Ornish:

“I like Ron Krauss and admire his work,” says Dean Ornish, M.D., a fellow Bay Area heart-disease researcher and surely the most visible proponent of the idea that a diet low in saturated fat and high in carbohydrates can help reduce the risk of heart disease. But Dr. Ornish says Dr. Krauss shifted his study participants from pattern A to pattern B by having them eat more of the processed carbohydrates. “The carbohydrates they fed people were predominantly refined, like sugar and white flour,” says Dr. Ornish. “That’s not what I’ve been recommending.”

So what exactly is Ornish recommending?

He’s recommending Healthy Whole Grains. And as I’ve seen elsewhere on paleo sites, since “whole grains” are always preceded by the word “healthy”, I shall disparagingly call them HealthyWholeGrains, and ask you to read that phrase a bit louder and out loud when you see it, as if you’re overfilled with joy. HealthyWholeGrains!!! Yippee!!

I remember listening to a Jimmy Moore interview of Michael Eades, when Eades said that Ornish’s recommendation of eating “healthy” whole grains (I’m paraphrasing here) to someone who may be intolerant of high levels of glucose (and may be gluten intolerant, too) is like saying eating sugar is OK as long as it’s wrapped in a coating of fiber. Great old school interviews by the way with both Michael and Mary Eades, Part I here and Part II here.

I’ll go a step further, Ornish is not just telling you to eat HealthyWhole Grains (yippee!), he’s telling you to make a compromise between your food and poison (e.g., a food that’s unhealthy for you). The whole gang advocating 6-11 servings per day of grains to complement a lowfat diet want you to be bipartisan when it comes to food and poison (e.g., a food that’s unhealthy for you).

HOWEVER, going along with the crap/ham sandwich analogy, Ornish isn’t recommending that you eat a 100% crap sandwich of refined sugar and white flour.

He’s not even recommending that you eat a 95% ham sandwich with 5% of refined sugar/white flour and/or HealthyWholeGrains.

Dean is recommending that you eat the equivalent of a 95% carbohydrate-crap sandwich with 5% of HealthyWholeGrains fiber. In other words, the HEALTHYWHOLEGRAINS distinction is really just fiber wrapped around the high level of carbohydrate that you’re eating. It would be like thinking an M&M is OK if it had a fibrous coating instead of a hard candy shell. Even though the M&M would have sugar in the middle, since it’s wrapped in healthy fiber, it won’t spike your blood sugar!!!!……. ahhhh, no.

Since this hypothetical M&M would be wrapped in healthy fiber, it just wouldn’t spike your blood sugar as fast. But if you eat 6-11 servings of M&M’s wrapped in a fibrous coating your pancreas is going to have a nice workout, your blood sugar is going to be spiked, and you’re going to march down the road to metabolic syndrome (coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes).

Unless you’re “metabolically talented” eating that much carbohydrate from grains devoid of any real nutrition while limiting your fat and protein intake from meat is going to make you, hmmm, how I shall I say?… the opposite of healthy.

Slice of White Bread from refined flour: 69.2 calories. Slice of Wheat bread from HealthyWholeGrains!: 68.9 calories.

White bread: 13.2g of carbohydrate (which will turn into glucose upon digestion). Wheat bread: 12.3g of carbohydrate.

WOW! If you were to switch from white flour to whole grain flour you’ll reduce your carbohydrate intake by 6.8%! 6.8% IS NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING.

12.3g of carbohydrate from a slice of Whole Wheat Bread is the equivalent carbohydrate level as 2.9 teaspoons of sugar. If you eat 6 slices of Whole Wheat Bread daily that would be eating the carbohydrate equivalent as 17.4 teaspoons of sugar. If you were to eat 6 slices of White Bread it would be eating the carbohydrate equivalent of 18.7 teaspoons of sugar. Like I said, WOW!!! About 1 teaspoon of sugar’s carbohydrate content less by switching to fantastic Wheat Bread! 6.8% is nothing.

I am not the food police here. I have wine on the weekends. Usually on a Saturday night I have Lindt 87% Chocolate. It got out of hand there for awhile with the chocolate, now it’s only once a week. I sometimes have BBQ sauce on my meat. Ketchup with some chicken breast every now and then. However, given my prior state of being 50+ pounds plus overweight, hyper tension, kidney stones, and probably prediabetic, the one thing I don’t do is eat wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, and anything with High Fructose Corn Syrup and think that any of it is healthy because I have fiber wrapped around carbohydrate.

My coffee is black, no sugar. I don’t drink juice. Decent amount of water. I eat meat, vegetables and fruits. Yup, that’s it. Dairy, nearly zilch. Cheese rarely and only on my salads. I eat nuts very rarely given my previous diverticulitis symptoms that magically disappeared the day I gave up grains, whether they were from refined flour or HealthyWholeGrains. The only time I ingest grains is if I don’t know about. I talk my way out of birthday cake now.

If you’re a person that handles grains, and you choose to continue eating them, fine by me. For me (and millions of others out there who are eating like I used to), it’s not an option. Again, choose your own path. But please don’t tell me for my health I must eat 6-11 servings of grains, or the carbohydrate equivalent of 17-32 teaspoons of sugar without any of the vitamin and antioxidant benefits that I would get from vegetables and fruit that also contain carbohydrates, but at much much lower levels. Just what is the benefit of eating grains again? If it’s simply that that’s the only way we can feed all of the people in the world today cheaply (not necessarily healthily) just say it. Define the choice with truth.

Ornish, you’re telling me to choose between Food or Poison (e.g., a food that’s unhealthy for you).

T. Colin Campbell, you’re offering me an M&M wrapped in fiber.

Dr. Oz, you’re telling me that a sandwich that is 5% ham (whole fiber) and 95% crap (wheat carbohydrate) is a healthy choice.

Excuse me, gentlemen, though I certainly wish you health and success, I disagree with your conclusions and must refrain from becoming full of crap.

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Top 10 list Oct 09-Feb 10, thanks again to Darwin’s Table

Friday, March 19th, 2010

We last did a Top 10 list of our most popular posts back in September 2010. It’s been about 6 months. So, here’s a Top 10 list of the most popular Paleo Garden posts from October 2009 through February 2010.

1. Initial list of sites to recommend to those starting out on their evolutionary kairos moment (Get Kairos.)

2. A Matter of Life or Myth: The Enigmatic Etymology

3. Wolves Among Dogs: Gestational Diabetes

4. 10 Evolutionary Living Women (plus two more)

5. Wolves Among Dogs: Paleo-riffic

6. Yes, Protein is Poison! Got your attention?

7. Vocab Lesson: Catabolic state

8. Don’t call it backsliding!

9. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Grass of Forgetfulness (Part II along that thought….)

10. A Matter of Life or Myth: The Drunken Monkey (Check out Part II of The Drunken Monkey, and while you’re at it check out Part III .)

Though I’m still fascinated by how improved my life is after “going paleo”, I may be ready to follow Son of Grok’s example in coming months… meaning take some time off and concentrate on some other projects, concentrate on just living… especially with the spring and summer coming. However, I’m really glad what we’ve built here in The Paleo Garden thus far, there’s more to come.

One more thanks to Dan for his hosting 2 Paleo Gardeners At Darwin’s Table.

Uncle Lew’s guest post At Darwin’s Table may be found here. Here’s Part I and Part II of Zach’s guest post there.

Speaking of Dan, what sets him apart in this growing paleo diet/health/fitness community, aside from his scientific observations and great writing, is that he allows you inside his reasoning as he is learning, as he is applying what he knows to what he is finding out. There is no pride of authorship as he explores returning to his ancestral diet and energy expenditure paradigms.

What’s great about all of that is that it inspires you to do the same, it inspires you to listen to others, to be open to new knowledge. You learn with Dan, you learn a lot from Dan, and you learn how to learn. It’s up to you, however, to ultimately decide what works for you. I hope that Dan’s continuing journey and the ones he allowed us to share on his site truly helps some sick people out there find what works for them in this life.

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Uniting Freedom

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

I write here on The Paleo Garden primarily because I want to make a contribution in getting the good word out about the transformation I went through to some people that may connect with some of my perspective and/or writings of our other contributers here.

Over the last 10 years or so, my world view of life takes into account an Austrian economics perspective. In the same way that I’m fallible in a lot of things in life, I’m not necessarily able to wed all of my actions with this line of thought, in the same way, that I fall short of being “paleo” 24/7. I try to live my life the best way I can, make no enemies, and promote freedom.

I’ve come to the understanding that many people who grok Austrian economics (classical libertarian/liberal thinking) have the same core set of beliefs of the primal/paleo/evolutionary community, they just may not eat that way.

And vice versa. Many people who grok like grok have the same core set of beliefs of classical-liberal/libertarian/Austrian-economic/independent thinkers, they just may not talk that way.

I enter into the evidence Exhibit 1, Karen De Coster’s recent piece “On Mark Sisson’s Book and Vegans.” Great article, recommend you read it, but to keep this particular post short, I’ll just include my comments here:

“Keep uniting the clans, Karen. The paleo diet adherents (and all of its adherents of various persuasions) over time whether they realize it or not come to way of thinking that in order for this lifestyle and diet to be truly possible there has to be freedom, and that freedom is threatened by ag subsidies that cause us to overgrow cheap carbs, overpopulate, over pollute, overeat, over medicate…. Cheap credit and then the crash. Cheap carbs and then the sugar crash. Cheap subsidized carbs are akin to fiat money because it is fiat money that have made them possible.

I’ve said this before on your blog, and please allow me to say it again… it’s one thing to be libertarian and decry that fat taxes or soda taxes threaten our freedoms, it’s quite another thing to claim to be libertarian and not recognize that the obesity/metabolic syndrome epidemic ISN’T the price we pay by allowing the government NOT to raise taxes on unhealthy foods that are cheap to begin with because of government interference/subsidies.

When I see an Austrian/libertarian author blab on about the evils of the Philadelphia city council considering a soda tax but NOT mention why and how that very same soda is killing people with HFCS made possible because of government subsidies… excuse me, they may know more about the business cycle than I, but they’re ill informed and actually PROMOTING the damn consumption of soda and all the other shit.

Again, Karen, awesome article on LRC today, unite these clans, sister, because they have more in common than either side truly understands.”

Of course, I should point out in case it wasn’t clear, I wouldn’t support the subsidy or the fat tax… both have to be bookends to any analysis of the issue, the issue of freedom.

It truly is a surge day for Mark Sisson. His book will undoubtedly be pushed up to #1 today on Amazon in the Health and Fitness section, and I hope this will cause a spike in awareness of evolutionary living, e.g., eating, laughing, sleeping, living how are bodies are designed to.

Here’s my thoughts on Mark’s success:

“Mark,
I may have been one of the first people to buy your book when it first hit the street (I remember hitting the purchase button pretty darn quick after it became available at any rate). My signed edition of PB is on my bookshelf. I have used it successfully on more than several occasions as a presentation aid to explain to my friends and family just what the heck I’m doing living this healthy way. I plan on hitting Amazon to buy a few early birthday gifts for people I know that would benefit from your PB construct. Truly am glad that you’re “doing well by doing well”, this community needs a successful entrepreneur such as yourself to educate and inform, I wish you continued success doing so.
Best Regards,
Zach”

So here’s to a greater understanding of what we truly have in common amongst us. Peace and Freedom.

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Inside Baseball

Friday, March 12th, 2010

I have always thought that the pursuit of ancestral fitness involved at least two layers. Maybe, like onions, and ogres, and parfait, ancestral fitness is simply a thing of layers. There is the simple game, and the deep game. Inevitably, the more one pursues this thing we call ancestral fitness, the deeper one goes. This is, of course, true of almost everything, not only onions, ogres and parfait. (That’s a Mike Myers reference, kids!)

shrek

The two levels? There is the advanced, complex level, where we throw around phrases like glycemic index, ketogenesis and epigenetics. And there’s the simple level, where we say things like “eat real food.” Both levels are working towards a similar goal—a basically fit human, but they’re vastly different in terms of the depth and sophistication with which they approach that goal.

Inside baseball is looking to build Mark Sisson, to build Arthur de Vany. Inside baseball is looking to maximize human performance. Inside baseball is all about applying the serious study of human anatomy and physiology to take the raw human meat and make it, in the words of the old Army commercial, all it can be.

Both Mark and Art provide excellent, introductory level guides to ancestral fitness, Mark with his Primal Blueprint and Art with his Essay on Evolutionary Fitness. Both of them, however, operate at a much higher level than just “eating real food.”

Unfortunately, the deeper you get into the game, the weirder and more abstruse you sound to outsiders. There have been times when I would attempt to explain ancestral fitness to someone and their eyes would glaze over. My enthusiasm would lead me to start reeling off phrases like “insulin resistance” and “ketogenesis,” “catabolic state” and “glycemic index.” TEGO. (Their Eyes Glaze Over) When you’re talking to a layman, even an interested layman, about ancestral/paleo/primal/evolutionary fitness and you launch into a discursion on the ratios of omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids in grass fed vice grain fed beef, you are liable to scare off a potential convert.

I mean, meat is meat, right?

On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, no. Come on—after delving into ancestral fitness and doing the background readings, we all know that grass fed, grass finished, hormone free, antibiotic free beef is an entirely different product than what I like to call “industrial meat.”

It’s fun to deepen our understanding of ancestral fitness, and to explore, further, how to self-experiment and tinker with our bodies. It’s pleasant to be able to converse with our fellows at a high level of sophistication. It’s tremendously satisfying to feel that we can pierce the veil of misunderstanding, and arrive at a better mythology of how our bodies work.

But that’s inside baseball.

While confessing this might jeopardize my status as a good American, I don’t really pay attention to baseball. I may watch a game from time to time, but I do so more to hang out with my friends in a convivial atmosphere than to actually follow the game. I understand the basics of baseball—three strikes and your out, four balls and you walk, nine innings with a stretch in the seventh. When things get beyond that, my poor head starts to ache. I think I’m smart enough to understand baseball, if I spent the time to learn more about it, but time is fungible and there are other things I’d rather understand, or try to understand. Baseball just isn’t that important to me.

I understand baseball at a very superficial level.

Let me hasten, now, to point out that there’s nothing wrong with having a superficial understanding of things. While I consider myself a student of history, there are vast swaths of history that I understand only superficially. I am aware that Sir Francis Walsingham was a counselor and spymaster to Queen Elizabeth I of England. That’s pretty superficial. I’ve spoken with a real student of Elizabethan history, who had devoted many long hours to Walsingham. I was humbled by how little I knew . . . but I was able to follow along when the information was presented in an easily digestible manner.

The world is full of people who are eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), who could be helped with even a superficial understanding of ancestral fitness. If we have any interest in helping people, we need to be able to communicate our information at a superficial level.

Fortunately, we can do that. Ancestral fitness is, at its base, a simple concept. For better health, eat like your ancestors did. There! Isn’t that simple?

Starting in the 1970s, the United States government changed its recommendations for what we should eat. A much higher emphasis was placed on a high consumption of grains, while foods high in saturated fat were deemphasized, shunned and abjured. A breakfast of bacon, eggs and buttered toast gave way to a breakfast of oatmeal. At the same time, processed foods became much more popular, as “food science” applied scientific principles to the production, packaging and distribution of food. These changes occurred as an experiment in making us fitter and healthier. If you are in (very early) middle age like me, you have seen the experiment play out before your eyes. Has it worked?

Have rates of obesity, diabetes, or coronary artery disease remained the same, declined, or increased? Are we healthier now than we were then? Have the changes we made to our diet worked for us? If your answers are that obesity, diabetes and coronary artery disease have all increased, and that we are not noticeably healthier now than we were then, how could we change things?

An easy answer would be “Eat real food.” What is real food? Real food is food your grandmother, when she was a young woman, would have recognized as food. Real food isn’t shelf-stable, for months and months. Real food isn’t highly processed. Real food doesn’t have a long, long list of ingredients. Read the ingredient lists and avoid anything with high fructose corn syrup. Eat less bread, pasta, grains and potatoes. Don’t buy convenient foods. Don’t buy food you have seen advertised on television.

There’s lots more we could say about ancestral fitness. There’s lots more, in fact, that we do say about ancestral fitness–that’s why we blog, that’s why we comment, that’s why we try to push our understanding further. The superficial description listed above, however, could serve as the introduction. Three strikes and you’re out, four balls and you walk, nine innings and a stretch in the seventh.

How much more do you need to know? Do you need to know the biochemistry of carbohydrate breakdown? Do you need to have a firm grasp on whether its carbohydrates themselves, or insulin, or inflammation, that supplies the underlying mechanism poisoning your body? How does the old joke go? “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Don’t do it any more.”

Inside baseball—or rather, inside paleo—-is about building Spartans, whether of the Leonidas or HALO versions.

king-leonidas-pretty-pissed halo-spartan

Outside baseball—or rather, outside paleo—is about reducing the chronic poisoning of the human body that is an inevitable consequence of the deficiencies of the standard American diet. We don’t all have to be Mark Sisson, we don’t all have to be Arthur de Vany. A lot of people will never have the time or interest in pursuing that level of health and fitness. But if we can explain a few simple steps that will help people get started on the way to better health, and better fitness, we can help a lot of people. Hundreds? Surely. Thousands? Probably. Millions? Why not.

With all due apologies to GEICO, ancestral fitness really is so simple even a caveman could do it.

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I See Dead People

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Today I took a human brain out of a Tupperware and held it in my hands.

It’s not every day that I play Dr. Frankenstein, poking around human dissections with latex-gloved fingers.

But today I was a participant in a cadaver lab. A good friend who was studying healthcare had invited me. As part of her studies, she had no option. I did, but given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see dead people I didn’t already know, I took it.

I confess that if I’d understood ahead of time that we’d be peeling back layers of skin and muscle from corpses, I likely would have declined. Somehow I thought it would be more of a morgue situation, and because I frequently write about death, I wanted to push my comfort limits, to get acquainted with the inevitable. I pictured bodies trussed up for casket display, or maybe fresh in from a hospital death, still on a gurney but certainly not opened or dismembered.

As the students and guests were given gloves and splotchy lab coats (ewwwww is right), we filed into the basement. My stomach lurched in terrible anticipation. The room did indeed have an unforgettable stench, but it wasn’t nearly as vile as I’d expected. I’m not recommending it or anything- just saying it was less awful than I’d thought it would be.

About twelve people were laid out, bagged in plastic and covered with white sheets, all on individual examining tables with bright lights overhead. The scene of shrouds in stark medical light was like something from a movie. My heart was beating wildly as I pondered whether I should turn back now, or stay.

I stayed.

Within moments, a serene calm came over me. The calm dissolved briefly when the plastic bag was peeled off of Exhibit Number One, and I gasped to see not just a naked corpse, but a corpse cut open completely so that med students could look inside of her.

The doctor who was teaching very casually pulled off a layer of fat and started pointing at connective muscle tissues and so on. The sight was far less traumatizing than I’d expected, and I felt strangely grateful that this generous woman had given herself to science. Cutting her open was not undignified in any way. It was terribly, terribly beautiful.

We are amazing. What is the spirit or consciousness that makes our beautiful, ugly bodies alive? We barely understand how our bodies work, but after meeting with several cadavers, I had a terrific sense of how I am put together. It is incredible.

I turned my attention away to another table, where a doctor was removing the white sheet. Something plopped out onto the floor. Yes, a piece of this human being spilled out and landed on the tiled floor. The doctor nonchalantly reached down and picked it up, as if it were just a pen or something. This poor chap was in a state of disarray, to say the least. As I approached, the calm inside turned to nausea very quickly as I saw a peculiar bowl-like bone, and realized that the dude’s skullcap had been sawed off. But I took a slow breath of formaldehyde-laced oxygen, and moved in for a closer look. The doctor was holding up a piece of skin that was still attached to the head of this poor chap.

It was part of his face.

At one station, there was a man whose leg bones were connected with a metal instrument. I realized that he had an artificial knee. At another station, one student was holding up a grey mass that looked like some kind of sea coral. “Intestines,” he explained. There were also the bones of a pelvis, and we discussed whether or not it had belonged to a man or woman. Then, there were some plastic bins. Someone opened one, and I looked inside to see a human brain.

None of the anatomy drawings or all of my years of studying psychology and reading up on how my medications affect my nervous system could prepare me for that second. It was one of the most stunning moments of my life. I took a human brain into my hands and held it. It was a grayish, dense mass like plasticine. Within this small organ in my hands was the most miraculous computer in the whole wide world. In this grey bundle in my hands, was the whole of a human life.

Underneath the ick factor and the deep emotional impact death has on the living, anytime, anywhere, I was deeply moved. I felt a well of tears inside, for our beauty and our hideousness. We are meat and bones. And we are something that makes that flesh come alive, something no one has ever yet been able to describe or know, though we have always tried.

I haven’t felt God for a long, long time. But here, the mystery was so big, so vast, so ineffable, that I found myself praying and giving thanks. I felt the dawn of history, when we traveled in small groups crossing the savannahs, hunting. I felt the electrifying miracle of technology, the bounty of today’s cutting edge. I felt a connection to everyone and everything in this moment.

Holding the human brain was one of the most profound things that have ever happened to me. I was feeling so peaceful- there’s nothing to be scared of in the physicality and the decay of death. The spirit or spark departs. The meat rots. Ashes to ashes.

The stench has lingered on me for the rest of the day, and a small wave of nausea rose up every time I remembered the peculiar stink. But part of me felt connected to life in ways I have never been before.

I wondered if my words would ever be worthy enough to outlast my body. And I felt a renewed inspiration to honour my body and take care of it, so that it could create more words. One day, I too, will be laying on a gurney with med students poking at me like I was a carved turkey. Soon, but not too soon- I’ve got so much work to do before the lights go out.

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.

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The Paleo Post has been updated

Monday, March 1st, 2010

In the left hand column of the The Paleo Garden you will find The Paleo Post, the latest snapshot of pretty cool stuff to read. In the mix, as usual, there’s some older posts thrown in, as well.

Other stuff to check out, too. Jimmy did a landmark interview with Lierre Keith, author of The Vegetarian Myth.

And in honor of Stephan’s fantastic write up of how corn oil literally is bonecrushingly healthy, I aim to ruin the song Killing Me Softly. Please DO NOT read below if you value this song, because after you read the revised lyrics, it will never be the same for you.

Here’s the original (youtube video below):

Killing me softly with your corn, The Paleo remix

Harvesting my pain with its kernels
Singing my life with its carbs
killing me softy with your corn