Friday, March 19th, 2010

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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.

Posted in DeathAndLife, Lorette | No Comments »

Paleo Candy

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

by Lorette C. Luzajic

It’s one point five days into the no-carbs New Years and doing fine, just fine. But why oh why can’t there be nutrient-dense proteins in fine wine? Robust health in Canada’s pride prize wheat and its spectrum of beers?

The paprika-garlic marinated pork roast with peppery pumpkin seeds made day one easy sailing. Gotta love Alabama white BBQ sauce- mayo, vinegar, lemon juice, and black pepper. And no one wants to drink again on New Year’s Day. So it was kind of a no-contest success story to kick start things off with for this experiment.

The experiment I’m talking about is taking the final plunge into my unexpected role as the spokes-model of the Paleo re/generation. Because I don’t exactly look like that spokes-model- and never have, pretty as I may be “in my own way.”

Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life

But the more I learn from my writing, the more I share of my research, the better my own life gets. My health and mental health get better and better. The strides taken toward that modern jungle have cured me of a lifetime of pesky autoimmune disorders, you just can’t go all the way if enjoying alcohol is an important part of your life. Cancer, diabetes, dry hair- I have to start saying “no thanks.”

But aye, there’s the pub. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist such a corny pun.) Our ancient gods of grain and grapes are made of liquid carbs! Pure sucree. Pure sacree. What’s a girl to do?

Now that I know that life without carbs is not suffering, but the opposite of suffering, I’ve got to trust that knowledge and bid humankind’s favourite folly farewell. Goodbye, fair love.

Is today’s melodrama sugar withdrawal? Probably. I followed it to the Valu Mart across the street. I thought some fruit might ward off tempting fantasy options like a baguette with brie, or, well, wine with that baguette with brie.

So I paid for a nice crispy-feeling Spartan apple and wondered why humans and animals all love stuff that will kill them more than they love anything else. There’s no way a dog’s going to eat only one potato chip, either, given free reign of a couch and Sour Cream and Onion crisps. And wine and beer is a universal pillar of joy and compulsion in lives the world over. Ants head straight for the sweet stuff- you can spill some sugar away from the house and they’ll all leave your kitchen.

Our earliest ancestors were making candy, too- sun drenching fruits to make them sweeter; hunting out fermented fruit juices and intoxicating plants; making honey taffy. As soon as recorded history began, we were making candy by rolling nuts and berries in honey, from China to Egypt. Later, some genius added cocoa to the concoction and the real party started- the ancient rendition of the chocolate bar.

On the way out of the shop, I glanced over a Christmas product clearance to see if there was anything useful. With curiousity, I picked up a box of Christmas cookies. They were on sale for .79 cents, a savings of $3.19! Then reason washed over me. I’d never had these cookies before in my life, and there was no real point to start now, two days into a carb detox. My eyes skimmed a list of a dozen ingredients I couldn’t pronounce. Mister Christie, you make good cookies?

We’ve got to stop feeding this shit to our children.

I put the box down thinking, that’s a lot of bang for that buck. Heading back out into January’s clime, I went walking down the chilly, bright streets. The apple was delicious.  

Posted in Food ideas, Lorette | 1 Comment »

Carb Wars: Sugar is the New Fat

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

A Cookbook by Judy Barnes Baker

When I look around me in the low-carb community, I see muscles rippling ‘til kingdom come. I see lithe, toned women running through the grasses. I see strong men and women with fierce physicality and sharp, nourished brains.

Yeah, and then there’s me. Yikes.

It’s okay to admit that I got my pass card into this community by chance- perhaps even by mistake! As for many, it was the last stop on the search for health after a lifetime of various things that just shouldn’t ail a still-youngish woman. Not that long ago, I was still trying to keep my meat intake low and eat lots of – cringe- ‘whole grains.’ The rainbow of gorgeous vegetables was laudable by any standard, however, and a major advancement over the “low eggs, no meat, and lots of boxed health foods like Sludgy Soy Surprise” years that cemented the years of damage from hard living. The first light of dawn that struck me was the soy-thyroid connection. I didn’t usually write anything controversial about food- it was more like “my favourite restaurants” type stuff. But I wrote a piece about the great soy deception (Spilling the Beans) and was propelled headlong down the rabbit hole. I ended up in a Paleolithic paradise at a barbecue with all you buff beauties. Well, hey, the Venus of Willendorf had plenty to love, too.

Nutritional science has always fascinated me, and I almost went to a holistic nutrition school. Thank God I couldn’t find a way to pay for it. Instead of paying five grand, recommitting to vegetarianism, and being brainwashed to write useless, disproved ideas, like soy cures breast cancer or go vegan for diabetes or take massive synthetic vitamin bombs, I ended up discovering something else entirely. That I was riddled with annoying autoimmune diseases because I shouldn’t be eating any wheat at all. That soy was no friend of my thyroid, and that I should be hungry like a wolf at barbecues- lots and lots of meat and coleslaw, and not much of anything else.

The results are no surprise: glowing skin, and I can’t even remember how it feels to feel sick. No bizarre “skin pains” and phantom joint pains – fibromyalgia. No Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Functioning thyroid. Intestinal healing. And I write to pass on my exciting discoveries about nutrition, with the deepest thanks to the Weston Price Foundation for braving the truth so persistently and meticulously.

But I’m still a carb addict. I haven’t passed those merciful shores y’all are talkin’ about, where the blood sugar lies evenly in front of you for years, where you’re just never hungry past six pm or skipping breakfast, or scarfing back the basket of fries after worse offenses like gin and beer. I’ve even been dabbling back into the gluten after a solid year without touching so much as a grain of wheat.

Lushes like me have a hard time cutting out the feel good peptides of sweet fermented grains, and in turn, this constant sugar fix keeps the craving valves turned on full throttle, so we’re still seeking thrills and succumbing more than we would like to the sugarplum fairies dancing in our veins.

Enter Judy Barnes Baker’s Carb Wars cookbook. Judy very generously has those of still fighting carb wars over for dinner, and while we’re here, she shares her accumulated knowledge and experience. We all have really interesting conversation.

Throughout this feast of a book, Judy sidebars fascinating content: “”If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease.” (Dr. Walter Willet). And the very fitting, “Will power lasts about two weeks and is soluble in alcohol” from Mark Twain. But Judy greets her guests with the real kicker: how the Goliath casket making company has a “52 inch supersized casket…wider than the bed of a standard pickup truck…capacity of 1200 pounds.”

How humiliating for the victim in that casket, a human being who has the same dis-ease and addiction I do- that the whole human race is spiraling towards. And it IS addiction: the mechanism of alcoholism- alcohol equals carbs, sugar- is the same as the compulsion to finish off the entire Lemon Pound cake or French Stick.

The problem is that starvation and weighing 1200 pounds is the same thing- people, whole countries being fed the empty calories of grains and sugars. This is madness. Judy tells us of “sheer audacity” with Kellogg’s Heart Start Healthy Heart cereal- it contains hydrogenated oils and twelve kinds of sugar. Dr. Kellogg was one father of “natural hygiene” who sold us the idea that his cereal and fibre, along with a meatless diet, would prevent constipation and help us avoid certain death by animal poisoning. His reasoning was that meat inflamed lusts by pushing its putrefaction against our organs of excitation. Today his legacy is creating people who actually can’t even have sex, and that’s what his nature-hating soul was hoping for. It shows that corporate grains have been brainwashing us from the beginning. Taking our money and our health, too.

I prefer to refer to my “book reviews” as “response” or “experience” because I don’t really “review” them. I’d rather share them. And the best way to respond to or experience a cookbook would be to use it. The Sesame Pork seemed like a simple way to get started. Indeed it was, very, very simple and delicious. Garlicky, with a ginger underbite and a sesame snap, I’ll be working with this one again very soon- probably adding loads of chilies. I’ve never made fennel, and the Braised Fennel was incredibly easy, too, and simply delicious. Judy suggested having it with fried fish- I actually just thawed a tilapia fillet from the supermarket- not exactly gourmet- and did the usual butter and lemon thing. With a simple spinach and tomato salad on the side this was a lovely meal. For Christmas in a few weeks time, the Mixed Greens With Glazed Pecans and Cranberry Dressing will be gorgeous.

I’ve enjoyed my mom’s gluten free tapioca and farm egg pancakes, but Judy’s got Faux Potato Pancakes made of, of all things, celery root. I’m going to make those for sure. But it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to use the dozens of recipes for various dessert and bread substitutes: I’m really aiming toward a meat and vegetables approach (with my divergence allowance going to good wine, of course!) I’m not interested in chemical foods like Splenda, unless they are substituting for another sin- I keep sugar free ketchup, for example, because I’m still a kid when it comes to loving ketchup. So I’ll share this book with my sister who desperately needs the information, all of which will be new to her. She needs Judy’s reassuring touch and substitution solutions, because my incessant worried yammering hasn’t helped. And for myself, I’m going to recommit to even better health in the upcoming year- with Judy’s help, my sister and I can support each other.

It’s empowering to win our bodies back from the battles, and if I fall into a well of beer and toast, well, I’ll just climb out again and head back to that barbecue, where you guys are waiting for me.

Duck in a Boat Publishing, 2007

www.carbwarscookbook.com

Posted in Lorette | 4 Comments »

Putting Pork Back on the Fork

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

by Lorette C. Luzajic

Bruce Aidells is a man who loves ham. And salami. And spareribs. “I’m a fan of the rib,” he tells me. “I always like meat that’s still on the bone.”

Indeed, Bruce Aidells’ likes meat so much that he writes about it for Cooking Light, Gourmet and Bon Appetit. He also wrote several cookbooks on the topic, including The Complete Meat Cookbook, The Complete Sausage Cookbook and Bruce Aidells’s Complete Book of Pork: a Guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World’s Favorite Meat.

Pork is not just the world’s favourite meat- it’s mine. But even so, the salami still hides guiltily in my secret vice cupboard, along with the Cheetos and the white merlot. It’s been hard to get over pork’s bad reputation, what with the fat, the maggots, bacterial death and nitrite fear mongering. I’ve only been cooking it at home for a few years, and though my maple pecan roast is killer delish, I thought it was time to discover new inspiration. So I picked up Bruce’s awesome book and donned my apron, plunging headlong into the Jerk-Marinated Ribs.

Bruce’s book affirms what good cooks know- pork’s versatility is astounding. It tastes spectacular with nothing but salt and pepper, yet no meat pairs so perfectly with sweet, fruity salsas. Complex, fiery flavours also make a sensational fit. “It starts with really good pork,” Bruce tells me. “The breed is a critical factor.” The Berkshire is one of the best breeds, he says. (The Boston Globe would agree, having called it “the Kobe Beef of the pork world.”) Bruce also likes the Tamworth and Duroc breeds. “It’s not just the marbling,” he explains. “The flavour of pork is called ‘porkiness.’ A strong pork flavour is important.” It’s true that many supermarket selections have almost no flavour at all. Pigs that have been especially stressed from farm to market will be “dry, tough, really bad stuff.” (This is called PSE meat, or “pale, soft and exudative.”) Other pork is so water logged that you’re paying for water, not meat.

Hunting down decent pork in your region will mean a better tasting roast or chops, but finding a trusted source can also mean meat with fewer or no chemicals and antibiotics and more humane animal treatment. Finding a small farmer who feeds his or her pigs scraps and acorns in addition to grains, soybeans, and corn will mean more nutritious and delicious meat, too.

More families are raising their own pigs, guaranteeing superior, safer pork. Tiffanie Tasane and Carl Burgess of Whitehorse, Yukon, bought a house that already had a pigpen. They decided to try raising a few hogs, teaming up with several neighbours. Though regulations mean they can’t sell butchered meat, they enjoy excellent meat for themselves and barter with others for chickens or other foods.

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“The meat is fantastic, far less fatty than what you buy in the supermarket. And sweet. We feed them a mix of grains for protein and produce as well as any scraps/compost we produce,” Tiffanie says. “We don’t raise them for anything other than the meat, though the compost is an added bonus for my garden! It is amazing how they dig up and unearth all the rocks, etc. I am contemplating moving the pen around every few years and using the cleared and manure rich areas as new garden beds.”

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Tiffanie’s family brines and cures their own bacon, and would like to start rendering lard, eventually. There’s very little wasted- a Slavic family requests some heads and feet, both used in traditional eastern European cookery. But the best part is the new tradition- an annual pig roast garden party enjoyed by friends and family.

It’s bizarre that North Americans are so afraid of pork. We’re fatter and less healthy than just about everyone else (with obvious exceptions such as populations suffering from starvation or malaria). That pork is super healthy may come as a surprise, even to those among us who wear t-shirts proclaiming Real Girls Eat Meat. Raising our own like Tiffanie and her family, or finding tasty, healthy meat from traditional farms is best. But even the humble offerings of the supermarket are filled with more good stuff than bad.

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In addition to the benefits of saturated fat (it’s still hard to get used to saying this type of thing!), there are further benefits in the mineral and vitamin content of pork. Pork is rich in iron, protein, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, potassium, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B12, B6, and fat. (One of the biggest, deadliest debacles to come out of the industrial vegetable oil scam sham has been the idea that vegetable oils and unsaturated fats are healthier than the fat we’ve been using since the beginning of time- lard. But that’s another story.) There has been much ballyhoo about “the China study” and the “plant-based” diet of Asia. We hear a great deal about how the paragons of longevity, The Okinawans, live to be centenarians because of their veggie soy diet. This is outright propaganda. You might be surprised to find out that Okinawa is known as The Island of Pork. The Okinawa Prefectural Government says, “It is no exaggeration to say that the present-day Okinawan diet begins and ends with pork.” (www.wonder-okinawa.jp) And you might be surprised to know that the Chinese aren’t vegetarians- they eat masses of pork, their staple meat.

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So, wow, pork helps burn off fat, build bones, deflect fatigue, maintain skin tissue, and protect the heart. But what about a little matter of trichinosis? I’m surely not the only one who cremated a pork roast, waiting for the little food thermometer to hit 170, hoping to kill off deadly bacteria. I was surprised and relieved to find out in Bruce’s book that this fear is much ado about nothing. Yes, he writes, American (not European) pork was often infected with the parasitic worm trichina, but that was 50 years ago. The pigs were often fed garbage, and today that is not the case. The officials today can’t be 100% sure that every single pig is free of trich worms, so they continue to recommend cooking pork at high temperatures just to be sure. Bruce advises not to be hysterical, since there have only been eight cases in the U.S. since 1997. “…Cook the pork to an internal temperature of 137 degrees and hold that temperature for several minutes,” he writes. Most of the delectable recipes in The Complete Book of Pork call for a done-temp of 140 or 145- which will rise 5 or 10 degrees when resting before eating. No more burnt offerings!

It seems the whole maggots hysteria is nothing but an urban legend. Yes, flies will lay eggs on rotten pork; so don’t leave pork chops on the counter for six days and then eat them. Obviously.

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Finally, about that salami. Raised German, I have a taste for the stuff and suffered a tremendous longing during my stint as a vegetarian, longing that didn’t go away no matter how many ways I learned to skin a carrot. I dreamed of dancing salamis, not unlike the dancing sugarplums. Sweet and fatty, or dry and peppery, velvety, sharp- all other deli meats pale in comparison. And so I read about Bruce’s salami-making adventures with my mouth watering onto the cookbook. I learned with fascination how salami is cured and fermented. Now, it’s been a while since I knew that pork was back on board, along with all the other meats I’d been depriving my body of. But salami stayed on that verboten list, acceptable only for PMS and other emergencies. After all, we all know that nitrite preservatives are carcinogenic.

Nitrites and nitrates are chemicals that can turn into nitrosamines in the body, another chemical that has long worried scientists and consumer citizens. I asked Bruce if they’re really so bad. Much to my shock, he’s not that worried about them. Sure, we don’t want to overdo anything and eat 12 pounds of salami a day and nothing else, but Bruce says nitrites have been used in meat curing for thousands of years.

Wondering if it’s really possible that I can indulge fearlessly on nitrate heaven, I did some googling and found that there is zero consensus whatsoever that cured meat nitrites are carcinogenic. Nitrites do seem to be implicated to some degree in gastric cancers, but they also appear to protect the stomach from ulcers.

Nitrites may also be- wow- beneficial for the heart. They also have antimicrobial properties, which is why they are added to preserve meats. But they appear to destroy bad microbes in us, too. Finally, the much-maligned nitrite appears more commonly in foods other than lunch meat- and those foods are vegetables! These veggies include green beans, carrots, squash, spinach, celery and beets. Should we automatically assume that veggie sources are healthy and meat sources deadly?

At www.preventcancer.com, they state, “Nitrite containing vegetables also have Vitamin C and D, which serve to inhibit the formation of N-nitroso compounds. Consequently, vegetables are quite safe and healthy, and serve to reduce your cancer risk.” I admire this consumer site’s prevention goals, but unfortunately, vegetable foods DO NOT contain vitamin D. There are no veggie sources of this nutrient. Pork lard, however, is the highest source there is, save for cod liver oil. Though the body uses sunshine to make vitamin D, it must have cholesterol to do it’s work, and cholesterol is not available in beets, squash, celery, or carrots. These veggies are all loaded with vitamin C, however. Does that mean pork sausage AND beets are all nitrite safe? Does that mean as long as I’m lying on the beach, I can eat hot dogs with green bean salad? I’m not sure yet, so I’m going to do a lot more research, and in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy all things in moderation.

One final and amusing note to add to the confusion is an interesting tidbit. Bruce told me that many sausage makers are now using celery as the source of their nitrates.

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Bon appetit!

Stay tuned for a complementary article, this time about the pig and the origin of pork taboos in history and folklore.

Posted in Lorette, Meat | No Comments »

Congrats to Lorette on her latest book

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Lorette, a regular contributer here at The Paleo Garden, has recently just published another book.  Please go to her fantastic website to learn more.

Lorette also wrote a 2-part piece here on the late Michael Jackson regarding looking at his life as A Matter of Life and Myth in The Paleo Garden:

http://www.thepaleogarden.com/2009/08/02/a-matter-of-life-or-myth-why-immortalizing-michael-jackson-is-just-human-nature/

http://www.thepaleogarden.com/2009/08/11/a-matter-of-life-or-myth-why-immortalizing-michael-jackson-is-just-human-nature-part-ii/

Lorette’s latest project is titled “goodbye, Billie Jean: the meaning of Michael Jackson”

goodbye, Billie Jean: the meaning of Michael Jackson

goodbye billie jean pic art
goodbye, Billie Jean: the meaning of Michael Jackson

fifty-one writers, curated by Lorette C. Luzajic

Handymaiden Editions, 2009

316 pages

$27.95 (shipping approx. $6 to Canada, $9 to U.S.)

to order, pay with paypal.com- direct funds to thegirlcanwrite@hotmail.com- include your mailing address and note that you want MJ book!

or contact Lorette at thegirlcanwrite@hotmail.com.

book will also be available shortly online at Amazon etc.

Dearest friends, I am thrilled to announce the project that has occupied the last four months of my time. Please join me in celebrating the most fascinating person of all- Michael Jackson. I am honoured to have worked with fifty amazing writers to bring this book to you, a collection of thoughts, opinions, ideas on the meaning of Michael Jackson. These very interesting contributors range from therapist to Pulitzer-prize winning journalist to bestselling author to friend of Michael himself to monk to drag queen, and so many more. In addition, I thank internationally renowned pop artist Iaian Greenson for the custom cover commission. And I thank Toronto’s premier graphic designer, newly branched into fashion- designing shoes- Gonzalo de Cardenas for cover design.

The Writers

Jason Bourner
Russell Bowers
Coline Covington
Kevin Craig
Michael Davidson
Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Antony Di Nardo
Joseph Dispenza
Donnarama
Sherman Fleming
Eddie Ford
Timothy Gabriele
Stephen J. Gertz
Andreas Gripp
Andy Guess
Rohin Guha
Stan Guthrie
Chris Hedges
HiScrivener
Obiwu Iwuanyanwu
Reuben Jackson
Pat Kane
Jamyang Khedrup
Willie James King
Jeff Koopersmith
Kimberly Krautter
Raymond Lawrence
John Lee
Lorette C. Luzajic
Jonathan Margolis
Ralph Martin
David Masciotra
Angela Meyer
Rev. Irene Monroe
Georgianne Nienaber
Jess Nevins
(O)CT(O)PUS
Onome
Dion O’Reilly
Carolyn R. Parsons
Samuel Peralta
Michael Hureaux perez
Javad Rahbar
Dr. Pamela D. Reed
Lauren Reichelt
Ralph Remington
Steven Rybicki
Tara Stevens
Edwin Turner
David R. Usher
Uwineza Mimi Harriet

Thank you to all of these amazing contributors. This anthology would not have been possible without you.

xoxoxoxo Lorette

Congratulations Lorette! 

Posted in A Matter of Life or Myth, Lorette | No Comments »

A Matter of Life or Myth: The Drunken Monkey (part IV)

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

The Drunken Monkey

why humans love getting high (Part IV)

by Lorette C. Luzajic

For Part III of The Drunken Monkey, please click here

You may already buy drugs on a regular basis- for your cat. Isn’t it so cute the way some cats go nuts for this green leafy thing? Who among us would say, “Felix, I’ve made you an appointment because I’m worried about your catnip use”? Sure, if Felix pants by the special spot you keep his stash and stops eating or cleaning himself, you may have reason for concern. But chances are, you think it’s sweet and quite healthy the way he licks, paws, and clambers for the weed, then frolics about the house before falling into a dreamy slumber. And yes, it is what it appears to be- your cat is getting high, very high, and then coming down. It is less widely known that cats also enjoy getting high- or low, rather- from the relaxing valerian plant, which humans also use in tea as a relaxant.

The big cats have appetites for much stronger intoxicants. The jaguar seeks out and chews on a poisonous vine, then trips out of his mind. Naysayers say we can’t prove the jaguar is hallucinating, and that he chews the vine simply to purge, much as housecats chew grass in order to barf. But the shamanic tribes of the same Amazon jungles just happen to use that same plant to make ahuasca tea, that brew which sends users flying into alternate worlds for days on end. Some Peruvians say they learned to use the plant FROM observing the jaguar, which is a sacred, totem animal.

This is not farfetched. In Ronald Siegel’s Intoxication, he talks about the probability that coca leaf chewing was a habit South Americans first learned from llamas, whose gnarly temperament became cheerful and energized after chewing on the shrub. Then there’s the old legend about the goats in Africa eating coffee beans. This may well be how humans discovered the wonders of coffee.

Among dozens of other stories, Ronald Siegel talks about lab monkeys who will press a lever thousands of times to make it drop some cocaine once in a while. These monkeys will starve themselves and ignore their young to get at crack. Then there are the reindeer up north that fight over the fly agaric mushrooms that grow each year- those pretty red and white ones that are probably responsible for our conception of fairies and elves.

Birds are stoners, too. Science writer Stefan Anitei recounts in “Animals on Drugs” how Australian red-browed finches enjoy smoking. They are delighted by brush fires, parking themselves nearby and inhaling the fumes. They may get scorched or choked up and fall over, but they’ll get back to their post and continue inhaling. It may be hard to believe, but Anitei tells us that birds have built their own bonfire with twigs and lit it with a match- on their own, having learned the skill- just so they can smoke!

Other birds practice myrmecomany- “ant mania”- allowing themselves to be covered in ants, then doing strange little dances. It was long hypothesized that the ants somehow participated in cleaning the feathers and wings of the bird- but now it’s known that their venom, en masse, treats the bird to a little mind trip. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit in Stefan’s report is that chimpanzees enjoy smoking tobacco so much that they blow smoke rings and take great joy in watching them form.

Then there’s the primate known as slow loris, who enjoys a tipple time to time from the bertam palm, where shot glasses metaphorically grow on trees. The fruits are in a perpetual state of fermentation, nearing four percent alcohol. For this reason, it’s the favourite tree of many, especially the Malaysian tree shrew, to whom we are distantly related. The shrew can drink even us Germans under the table, with barely a wobble.

New Scientist magazine reports some interesting party animals:

Morphine is one of the wonders of the world, a true gift of painkilling when you’re having your leg cut off or your heart cut open. But growing them poppies is quite difficult, what with those wallabies gobbling up the crops and all. Yes, marsupials break into the poppy fields to get more heroin, just like the junkies we dismiss as depraved. “We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” said Australia’s attorney general in The Mercury paper.

Female macaques love booze so much they’ll take it until they stop ovulating.

Recovering methamphetamine addicts may have the least hope of all addicts, as much of the brain damage is permanent. The only thing that can temporarily haul you out of the pit of despair is the speed, which causes more damage. Given access to meth, mice binge on it, too, and their cravings continue long after they have quit, just like in humans.

South American cocaine growers worry less about the law and more about the Eloria noyesi caterpillar. This caterpillar loves the leaves of the coca plant. When researchers investigated why the silkworm doesn’t bother with blow, sure enough, he is resistant to the drug, while the poor eloria noyesi’s dopamine receptors go off like fireworks, making him eager to partake over and over.

The facts go on forever: sheep and horses favour astragalus, a common weed that makes them run in circles and leap and frolic like ravers on ecstasy. Also known as locoweed, ranchers have a real problem because the stuff grows everywhere, and though once or twice won’t hurt you, a long-term habit does a lot of damage.

The legendary marula fruit tree in Africa draws a veritable Noah’s ark lineup of revelers with its rotting fruit. Most scientists dismiss the idea that the elephants get drunk as folklore, because it would take a lot of marula fruit to inebriate a few tonnes. The story began in the ‘70s with a staged “documentary.” Yet elephants DO love getting drunk, though it’s hard work, and have been known to break into liquor supplies and ransack villages for booze.

The Canadian bighorn mountain sheep has problems of its own. It likes rare yellow lichen that grows sparsely in the Rockies. This mountain moss offers no nutritional value, and it grows in dangerous rocks way up in the mountains. But it messes the sheep right up, and they will clamber to incredibly dangerous locales to get at it. And while that’s all fun and games, it’s not that great when the sheep rubs his teeth against the rock, scraping them pretty much off completely, just to get every last bit of moss. So anyone who has experienced the humiliation of scraping the last traces of whatever it was out of their bag, bowl or pipe, or licking the last of the vodka up from a spill on the table, can rest easy. We’re not alone.

What does all of this mean, then, this secret history of the world, including the natural world?

It means we’ve been barking up the wrong marula fruit tree for too long. Clearly, complete abstinence is an aberration of reality- history is soaked in just as much booze as blood. But obviously addiction and physical damage are also realities, problems we haven’t solved by stuffing our prisons full, by demeaning addicts as defective, weak, nihilistic sinners. Facing the truth is our best bet at finding balance, in becoming responsible about our natural instincts

Life is hard. The gods sent us salves to ease the pain, provide pleasure, relieve boredom, create community, and expand our spirituality. Nature is often brutal, but built into us is a desire that can lead us to relief, however temporary, so that we can catch our second wind and tarry on. What might happen if we look truthfully at history, at the economy, at those we consider to be the lower echelon of the social ladder? What would become of crime, of health, of the mental health care industry, of church, of prisons, if we acknowledged reality for a change? What might happen if we develop a reverent relationship with these primal, built-in needs? I’d love to find out.

Check out Lorette’s wildly popular series, “A Matter of Life or Myth”, here on The Paleo Garden.

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A Matter of Life or Myth: The Drunken Monkey (part III)

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

The Drunken Monkey

why humans love getting high (Part III)

by Lorette C. Luzajic

For Part II of The Drunken Monkey, please click here

Drug addiction or abuse or even use is considered part of an “unhealthy” mind by most therapists and shrinks. It’s a “deal breaker” for relationship gurus like Dr. Phil. Yet the pursuit of intoxication rules the vast majority of the world, and for those rare animals who don’t drink coffee, take painkillers, drink, smoke, smoke up, snort, pop, puncture, inhale, inject, and so on and so on, abstinence is a harsh mistress. In fact, the “normal” model is not abstinence, but use.

But how does use turn to abuse? Why do so many of us fail at strict regimes of avoiding alcohol, or slip from moderation into persistent drunkenness? Well, it’s obvious: we love the feeling.

It may end bitterly the next day, or later on in our lives, but in the here and now, we love the feeling of two or three or four or five or six glasses of vino, lines of cocaine, cigarettes, cups of coffee. We are wired, according to more and more discoveries about the human mind, to seek out pleasure, a brief distraction from the hell of survival, the stress and sorrow of life.

See, the fact that anthropology and history textbooks skirt over drugs, except to mention that they’re bad, is really a disservice to understanding the world and humankind. Mention of drugs as religious ritual, community binding, medicine, economics, export and import, trade, migration, etc is fleeting or nonexistent, which falsely gives us the idea that drugs are of minor importance.

Yet that’s a fallacy, as any careful analysis of the global economy or religious history would show. Yet hard facts about hard drugs are left out all the time. It’s just a wee bit important, for example, that Hitler was pumping vast quantities of methamphetamine. It doesn’t take much meth to cause paranoid, psychotic breaks with reality. It also creates megalomania and grandiosity, and keeps a user awake and energetic for days or even weeks. Adding this cocktail to a mad maniac with drive and charisma may have been the poisonous icing on the cake.

It’s ridiculous to believe that drugs have been of minimum importance in understanding our world. But does that mean just because “everybody else is doing it” we should do it, too?

Of course not. It’s all fun and games until someone loses a life. Plus, there were a lot of things our ancestors did that we shouldn’t try at home- from bloodletting to cutting our penises in half to sacrificing widows at the husband’s funeral.

That said, we might be sipping wine even as we rail against the crackheads ruining our neighbourhoods. We’re just like the drunken monkeys. We’ll take what’s available, and once we’ve developed a taste for it, we want it to keep on coming, whatever it is. We’ll find it. We’ll get it. Commonly, we’ll steal, rob and kill for it.

But why is it that humans and our ancestors are the only morons who want to cut ten years off of life to live the high life?

The answer is, we’re not. Getting high is not uniquely human. We share the fourth drive with most species. Yes, that’s correct: animals use drugs, and lots of them. Like us, they’ll use anything they can find. They’ll take as much as they can- curiously enough, like us, and they’ll take more in stressful situations. And their favourites are remarkably the same as ours- alcohol, cocaine, morphine.

Ronald Siegel’s Intoxication: the Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances argues that the pursuit of inebriation is not cultural, it’s natural. Omni Magazine says that Siegel knows more about drugs than anyone else alive, and indeed, the psychopharmacologist is a guru to the likes of Albert Hoffman, the man who invented LSD. The book is a veritable compendium of facts about the animal world’s pursuit of intoxication, animals from insects to humans. Spanning more than twenty years of lab experiments, field observation, and research, Siegel gathers in one place a cornucopia of information that is known but ignored.

It is unconscionable that the facts never make it to addiction treatment centres or psychiatry schools or therapy offices, where outdated misinformation about “self loathing” or “deal breaking” is still doled out religiously with no basis in fact. The “disease” model of addiction may be more relevant than the nurture people care to admit- but only because it acknowledges the biological. There is nothing sick about the desire for intoxication- it is, as Siegel writes, universal. Just as humans are hardwired for opiates, so are all other creatures.

So if this is all true, why does no one know about it?

They do. It’s just that rewriting history thing again, leaving out important parts we might not want to accept. Like Hitler’s methamphetamine psychosis, or like Aspirin’s dirty little Heroin secret.

Acknowledging the facts means we’ll require a new paradigm for drug laws and for treatment of addiction, and we’ll need to stop pathologizing moderate drug users- they are actually the paragon of truth, as opposed to abstainers or addicts. We would have to stop lumping all drugs together in our dependency literature and acknowledge specific effects, good and bad, of each “poison.” We would have to accept the spiritual connectivity millions have claimed come from drugs. We would have to acknowledge that alcohol, our drug of choice, is indeed a drug, not separate from the illegal ones, but among the most wonderful and dangerous. We would have to identify with the addict, realizing he or she is no different from us, not a victim but not weak, either. It is our poor understanding of our nature that can catch anyone unaware.

It is our all or nothing thinking that makes responsible models of consumption difficult, as we consume either in private, or to show off, both leading to potential danger.

And we would have to accept our disconnect- for the United States, the nation of zero tolerance, the nation that hates drugs more than any other- uses the most.

(Stay tuned for fun facts from the animal kingdom- monkeys on crack?)

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A Matter of Life or Myth: The Drunken Monkey (part II)

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

The Drunken Monkey

why humans love getting high (Part II)

by Lorette C. Luzajic

For Part I of The Drunken Monkey, please click here.

What on earth would Fred and Barney FLintstone order at their local wet spot? How did we satisfy our bottomless thirst without shot glasses, stir sticks, and little paper umbrellas made in China?

Patrick McGovern is an archeological chemist who has a fun job: alcohol experiments that bring history to life. He makes booze out of beets, berries, and roots, emulating as closely as possible ancient brews. Discovery Magazine writer Larry Gallagher wrote an amazing story about him back in 2005, and that’s where I learned about molecular archeology. McGovern uses spectrometers and chromatographs to analyze traces of whatnot on old artifacts. That’s how a little pot shard told him that our Neolithic pals in Jiahu, China over 9000 years ago were already enjoying the, uh, fruits of the Chinese hawthorn berry, and the Chinese’ other favourite staple, rice.

Patrick wrote Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, and Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages. In the latter, we learn a few things they forgot to tell us in grade ten health class: “The human liver is specially equipped to metabolize alcohol, with about ten percent of its enzyme machinery, including alcohol dehydrogenase, devoted to generating energy from alcohol.” (Abstainers actually have shorter life spans, he says, than drinkers. But slow down, there, my friend- so do binge drinkers. Moderation, as with everything, is king.)

Patrick is pretty sure that humans were sniffing out alcohol since we could walk upright, and maybe before, given that we’ve always loved fruit. Spoiled fruit split open in the hot sun is an easy target for airborne yeast spores, resulting in boozy goodness that we wouldn’t resist.

Patrick tells us about biologist Robert Dudley’s “drunken monkey” hypothesis, that alcoholism is as natural as human history is old, which is difficult to prove given the paucity of physical evidence. Fragments of our earliest selves are scarce, and there were no wildlife cameras available to witness our first habits. Nonetheless, it would be a big leap of the imagination to assume that ancient hominids abstained from gorging on pomegranate toddy, given what Dudley tells us about monkeys. The biologist witnessed howler monkeys in Panama greedily sucking back the ripe fruit of the palm tree, imbibing about ten standard drinks worth in twenty minutes. Like humans, apes, chimps, and monkeys of all sorts love booze, and most of them don’t stop after a small glass of wine. They drink as much as they can.

A far cry from the idea that we wouldn’t pour a highball to go with our tubers and game, McGovern says the opposite is true. We would find fermented juices wherever possible, and then look for ways to make more on our own.

Some anthropologists are sure that it is the thirst for easy access to alcohol that made us settle down to farm grains in the first place, which would mean that the pursuit of intoxication indirectly gave us everything we have accomplished. It IS pretty widely accepted that booze preceded bread, so the possibility is real. We made beer from whatever was on hand in our part of the world- sorghum, wheat, millet, corn, rice, barley.

But don’t think our hominid forebears stuck to our legal preference. They enjoyed any other plants that tripped them out without directly killing. Magic herb tinctures, fungi, cacti, steeped leaves of every sort occupied us. We hallucinated for spiritual ceremony, imbuing the highest honour and reverence to anything that made us high. In our puritanical culture of denial where we demonize “illicit” drugs, marginalizing them to the fringe of society, it’s hard to understand how important intoxicants are to human society. They were integral to religious rites in the far reaches of the world. They still are used in shamanic societies for ceremonies. Ahuasca rites promise a three day bender that makes even the best LSD seem like a pre-party. The Greeks had the true breakfast of champions- to break an overnight fast, they consumed a beverage made from barley and ergot, a potent hallucinogen. The Eulesian mystery festivals celebrated with kykeon as a sacrament, one that would send anyone into a revelatory trance.

We ate scorpions, licked toads, chewed on “dream fish,” and smoked cobra venom. The Arabian Humor tribes hunted giraffes to scoop out their bone marrow, said to induce hallucinatory visions, though we hope this is anecdotal folklore…The Aztecs loved Teonanacatl, or “divine flesh” -mushrooms that sent you flying into other worlds. Many Paleolithic caves feature paintings that express therianthropic sentiments- that “we’re all one” sensation that the flower children were still trying to describe after thousands of years. Early Americans alone enjoyed some eighty species of mind-altering botanicals. Remains in a Neanderthal cave excavation in Iraq in 1960, the Shanidar dig, have convinced many archeologists that drugs were used some 50 thousand years ago.

Ancient Hindu Vedas reference Soma, “the food of the gods,” in over 1000 love letter-like praises. The mushroom made everything heavenly. But not all drugs did: some were horrific, and some awesome ones had a few hellish side effects or were a ‘bad trip’ risk. Is it possible that we began to perceive heaven and hell because of the worlds we witnessed?

But drugs aren’t always a religious experience. They are social, like chilling in our favourite bars. They take the edge off. They are painkillers. They put stress out of our minds. Legal drugs like booze, coffee, cigarettes, prescriptions are practically the backbone of legal commerce. The rest of our economy is bolstered by the illegal ones. In east Africa- Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia- the stimulant khat IS the GDP. It’s huge to think of that- whole countries subsist on khat, and coffee- the other big seller. And there is no South America without cocaine, for all the terrorism and grief it has caused. Before we all got greedy for a hastier hit, cocaine was an innocent and important staple, a small shrub whose leaves could be chewed or brewed, chock full of vitamins. Coca tea helped workers toil in high altitudes, and it was handy if your belly was empty because you wouldn’t notice. Today coca tea is still popular “slimming tea.” As a matter of trivia, Sigmund Freud was addicted to cocaine. Given how many find the aphrodisiac qualities of blow extraordinary, at least at first before they turn hellish and just plain weird, might that have had something to do with his unwavering emphasis on all things sex?

And then there’s opium. You may be surprised to know that most of the world’s opium- a powerful drug from a humble poppy plant- is made in Afghanistan. Not long ago, much of the world was addicted to opium- including our founding father Ben Franklin. Morphine, that miraculous killer of all pains, physical or emotional, was a potent lure for millions. Bayer, the maker of innocent aspirin, is the company that gave opium its brand name: Heroin.

Pulitzer prize winning science journalist Jon (not Benjamin!) Franklin talks about heroin in his book, Molecules of the Mind. He explains the nitty gritty of molecular psychology for the layperson. And this layperson was a little startled, despite my personal historical affinity for all manner of intoxicants, to learn that there is a human drive more powerful than hunger or sex. The human mind is decorated like a Christmas tree with receptors waiting with open arms for one thing alone- intoxication.

Yes, that’s right. The human body is equipped with zillions of phone jacks waiting to be plugged in to drugs.

Scientist Ronald Siegel calls this overwhelming desire the “fourth drive.”

The war on drugs is a joke, according to scientists like these, and let’s face facts- a joke according to statistics. Consider that less than five per cent of the world’s population- us- consumes most of the world’s illicit drugs. Seems Bob Marley was right, that we’d be better off to legalize it.  (Pot is, after all, the United States’ biggest cash crop.)

Siegel writes in his book, Intoxication, “This ‘fourth drive’ is a natural part of our biology, creating the irrepressible demand for drugs. In a sense, the war on drugs is a war against ourselves, a denial of our very nature.”

Would legalizing our human nature work better? We know it was impossible to prohibit booze. As Jon Franklin’s states, quite the population was high or addicted- to Heroin, barbiturates, amphetamine, Valium, cocaine.

But it took a while to notice the gravity of the problem. Why? Because “the American middle class was too drunk to worry about what was going on.”

(Stay tuned for some surprising discoveries that convince me that it’s only natural.)  

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A Matter of Life or Myth: The Drunken Monkey

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

The Drunken Monkey

why humans love getting high (Part I)

by Lorette C. Luzajic

Despite the major headway I’ve made these past few years in abolishing so many bad habits, the first thing I did after moving was head down the street to check out the neighbourhood pub.

I reveled in a kitchen much more spacious than in my previous flat, and I wasted no time making a ten-veggie super salad and a maple pecan pork roast. But the cheerful drunken faces laughing and toasting their pints behind the glass beckoned and the first night in my new home I headed over to join them. It was a scene straight out of the always-astute Simpsons: during a cook-off, Homer ingests a chile pepper so hot it bends his mind. And Chief Wiggum whines mournfully, “I want to hallucinate, too!”

What’s the point of avoiding bread if I’m throwing back the beer? Is there any point in cutting out candy and soda if I still drink loads of wine? Yeah, yeah, it’s great that I’ve moved from imbibing the good stuff every day to special occasions only (which inevitably happen about twice a week!) And that’s probably the reason I’m still fat.

I’m not the only one who finds nixing the mind-altering substances the hardest part of healthy living. And for the most part I have nixed them. But if the icons of fitness can’t always resist a drink, how can a weak-willed mortal like me?

Paleo purists who have achieved more success than I have may scoff, but the rest of you know exactly where I’m coming from. And our guru Loren Cordain knows no one will stick with a diet that has absolute no-nos, so we are encouraged to occasionally enjoy a glass of wine with dinner if we must. Still, in The Paleo Diet for Athletes, Dr. Cordain reminds us, “Obviously, alcohol was not part of any hunter-gatherer diet.”

Obviously? Certainly moderation is sound advice, but nonetheless the good doctor is wrong.

Say what? Humans have always been boozehounds. Always. Yes, since the Stone Age, since as far back as we can go and know. In addition to our more primitive ancestors, our first civilizations in Sumer and Egypt both considered alcohol a necessity for everyday living! The Egyptian god Osiris invented beer, and beer was offered to him. Just like we do, the people enjoyed a wide selection of beers and quite a few wines as well. Booze was so important that the dead were buried with it so that they wouldn’t have to teetotal in the next world.

Sumer’s goddess of beer and alcohol was Nankasi, who used honey and dates to sweeten her malt brew. (From here on, there was no shortage of wine deities, reaching from Rome to the remote pantheons of the world.) So it seems that civilization landed in all of its glory with a taste for the sauce already in tact. Winepresses, spirit cellars, and distilleries were magically present at the very dawn, and so perhaps the secrets of turning juice to gold was indeed imparted from the gods.

While civilization meant astonishing leaps forward in creativity, architecture, engineering, medicine, literature and more, it also meant grain and the beginning of degenerative disease.

Perhaps the price of living longer and recording more about ourselves for future generations to know was the deterioration of health. No need to sentimentalize the days of the cave man- death was early and brutal, often from exposure to the elements like cold and the jaws of wild animals. Learning what was safe to eat weeded a great many of us out of the gene pool- today we know the fast-acting poisons thanks to the mistakes of our earlier selves. But the plants of a lesser poison meant degenerative diseases, which anthropologists begin finding as soon as grain agriculture hits our imagination. And those diseases usually don’t accumulate through to death until after the age of reproduction, which means we repopulate before we die. So grains meant extended survival for humans, both in a lifespan and in a cosmic, “go forth and multiply” kind of way. The same poison that ruins our bones and teeth and pancreas slowly meant we could spend that slow death writing, inventing, philosophizing, enacting theatre. Now all grains have naturally evolved poisons- pesticides, actually, and carbohydrates. Humans gravitated instantly to grains- and every other available plant or berry- fermenting or distilling them into a much faster acting poison, one that would marvelously, wonderfully intoxicate it without killing us on that same occasion. Cheers!

The Irish often claim to be the world’s hardest, happiest drinkers. Archaeologists Declan Moore and Billy Quinn confirmed that long before Guinness opened its doors, Ireland had some 4500 breweries during the Bronze Age. There are thousands of fulacht fiadhs, or horseshoe shaped mounds, that mystified experts for centuries. Moore and Quinn date wrote in Archeology Ireland that these pits were in fact microbreweries dating back more than 3500 years, making the first generations in Irish history as beer-loving as all those cute bumper stickers boast.

So the Irish have been brewing and stewing for several thousand years longer than we previously believed. And those first amazing cuneiforms and hieroglyphics tell us that before we could record the story, we already loved boozing it up. Seems the Flintstones loved a bit of firewater just as much as we do.

(Stay tuned for some amazing stories from archeologists about the first party animals, and fascinating facts about our cousins who love to get down, too.)  

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Zinc: It’s Mainly Because of the Meat

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

by Lorette C. Luzajic

Zinc is associated with red meat and masculine virility, and for good reason. Red meats (and oysters, widely known as aphrodisiacs) are by far the best sources of zinc, and sperm and muscles are full of it.

The luckier you get, the more zinc you’ll need to replenish the fountain, as it were.

But zinc should also be associated with female sexuality, as it’s important to keep her piping in ship shape, her skin perfect, and her hair and nails strong. Zinc is lost in menstrual fluids, and men aren’t the only humans with muscles. We have some, too. Some of us would like more muscles and less flab, and zinc plays a huge role in the metabolism of carbs. It’s implicated in hormone regulation. For all these reasons, a nice slab should symbolize my feminine wiles, even as it alludes to your ripped and ready bod.

Our bones are made with zinc, not just calcium. You need zinc to fight infections. It’s a huge player in your immune system, in cancer prevention, hair growth, anti-inflammation, DNA synthesis, energy, mental clarity, cell replacement (great muscles, great skin, great intestinal walls and lung lining), wound healing, enzyme production, and sense of taste and smell.

Your body does not stockpile the stuff, so you need to eat lots of it each and every single day. Unless your doctor says otherwise, don’t take supplements of zinc. It requires all the other amazing nutrients in your beef for ideal balance and best results. We absorb less than half the zinc we eat, so our body is always anticipating replenishment. From plant foods, absorption rates are much lower still.

There is zinc found in plants, no doubt about it. Nuts and seeds, particularly almonds, pumpkin seeds, and cashews have lots of zinc. You can eat ten ounces of cashews to get about 10 mg of zinc- that’s 1 500 calories, nearly your day’s allotment. You can eat 30 oranges. In contrast, 3 oz of beef has your daily zinc requirement. A nine oz steak measures in at 250-500 calories, depending on the cut. Oysters are far and away the highest source- one of these little fellas packs the day’s zinc in one sensational slurp.

Not only is the zinc in animal foods far higher than plant foods, but it is far more bioavailable. Experts say animal zinc is about four times more absorbed than plant zinc. Does this mean you need to eat 120 oranges to get a few oyster’s worth? Or 5000 calories worth of nuts?

The very worst sources are grains, which contain phytic acid, an antinutrients that binds to minerals, taking them out of the body unused. These phytates also remove calcium, selenium, magnesium and more, veritably nullifying grain’s nutritional profile. Wheat germ is very high in zinc- about 16 mgs in 100 g serving. Wheat germ is also high in these pesky phytic acids, and gluten, and carbs, which rules it out as a regular zinc source for many.

Old fashioned fermenting of grains was a traditional way of neutralizing phytates. Plus, whole grain has more enzymes that naturally fight off the plant’s own phytic acid. So bread made the old-fashioned way is way better than refined breads. But you’ll still be eating a lot of bread- 20 to 80 slices a day!

I’m starting to see a pattern here. It keeps coming back to the same thing, over and over. Just eat lots of fish and meat and fresh vegetables, and not much of anything else, and you’ll find yourself in fine form.

To browse the archive of Lorette’s writings on The Paleo Garden, click here.  

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