Tracy came up with this awesome meal. She made these green chili burgers, and topped them with beef bacon (from Trader Joe's) and eggs. The recipe for the burgers:
2 lbs. ground beef, 80/20 preferred 1/4 to 1/2 cup canned green chilis 1/4 large onion, diced 1 tsp crushed red pepper lemon zest from about 1/2 lemon 1 tsp oregano 2 -4 T fresh mozzarella cheese, pulled apart into small chunks salt and black pepper to taste
Mix all ingredients, form into patties, and cooked in a mix of olive oil and butter in a skillet over medium heat. Meanwhile cook the bacon and eggs in a separate pan. When you finish the burgers, put fresh spinach in the pan to collect all the fat and juices. Serve burgers topped with bacon and eggs, and spinach on the side.
I made the turkey legs for this meal by roasting them for about 8 hours in a 200 degree oven in my Le Creuset pot. I seasoned them with mild Mexican red pepper, poultry herbs, and liquid smoke. I made gravy by thickening the turkey juices with arrowroot powder. We had sauteed onions, cabbage, carrots, and kale on the side.
We made these burgers by mixing some fresh mozzarella, about 10 chopped Kalamata olives and olive juice, some dried oregano, and two cloves of pressed garlic into a pound of lean ground beef. Tracy fried them in a mix of butter and olive oil. We topped them with slices of beef bacon. We had leftover vegetables with them: sauteed kale, carrots, and onions, and a mixed salad.
Here's a video series about harvesting cattails that Xavier and I did for HerbMentor.com. This series shows you exactly how to harvest all parts of the cattail through the various seasons, as well as how to actually prepare the cattails for your dinner plate.
If you’re looking for the latest in home exercise equipment, you may want to consider something with four legs and a wagging tail.
Several studies now show that dogs can be powerful motivators to get people moving. Not only are dog owners more likely to take regular walks, but new research shows that dog walkers are more active over all than people who don’t have dogs.
One study even found that older people are more likely to take regular walks if the walking companion is canine rather than human.
Probably because most humans live at the fatigue-inducing effect of hyperinsulinemia. Which reminds me, dogs, not chimps, behave most like humans (or is it, humans behave more like dogs than like chimps?).
Cooperation, attachment to people, understanding human verbal and non-verbal communications, and the ability to imitate are just a handful of the social behaviors we share with dogs. They might even think like us at times too, according to the paper, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Advances in the Study of Behavior.
While there is no evidence to support that dogs and humans co-evolved their laundry list of shared behaviors over the past 10,000 to 20,000 years, the researchers believe adapting to the same living conditions during this period may have resulted in the similarities.
Research has shown that exerting self-control makes people more likely to behave aggressively toward others and people on diets are known to be irritable and quick to anger.'
David Gal of Northwestern University and Wendy Liu of the University of California found that people who exerted self-control were more likely to prefer anger-themed movies, were more interested in looking at angry facial expressions, were more persuaded by angry arguments, and expressed more irritation at a message that used controlling language to convince them to change their exercise habits.
In one experiment for the study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, people who choose an apple instead of a chocolate bar were more likely to choose movies with anger and revenge themes than milder movies.
I think these people have the mechanism wrong. I don't think these subjects felt angry because they exercised self-control, I think they felt angry and aggressive because they felt hungry. Do you think those same people would be angry if they had chosen steak instead of either apples or a chocolate bar? I doubt it.
But these researchers are stuck in the self-control model of weight management. They think it is all about going hungry and self-discipline. In contrast, the nature says that appetite regulation and weight management occurs spontaneously when you feed the animal its natural diet.
Nature didn't make a mistake. You don't need much aggression to go for apples. When you choose to live on apples and go hungry, you get aggressive, because that's what you need to go out hunting for real food, i.e. meat.
New research finds that people who frequently attend religious services are significantly more likely to become obese by the time they reach middle age.
The study doesn't prove that attending services is fattening, nor does it explain why weight might be related to faith. Even so, the finding is surprising, especially considering that religious people tend to be in better health than others, said study author Matthew J. Feinstein, a medical student at Northwestern University in Chicago.
"It highlights a particular group that appears to be at a greater risk of becoming obese and remaining obese," he said. "It's a group that may benefit from targeted anti-obesity interventions and from obesity prevention programs."....
The researchers found that 32 percent of those who attended services the most became obese by middle age, whereas only 22 percent of those who attended services the least became obese. Does God give girth, or what?
Levin said one possibility is that those who attend services, along with activities such as Bible study and prayer groups, could be "just sitting around passively instead of being outside engaging in physical activity."
Also, he said, "a lot of the eating traditions surrounding religion are not particularly healthy; for example, constant feasts or desserts after services or at holidays -- fried chicken, traditional kosher foods cooked in schmaltz (chicken fat), and so on."
How about those donuts served after sermons? The pancake breakfasts used for fund raisers?
Slow roasted beef with a side of kale, onions, and raisins sauteed in olive oil. Following Richard Nickoley's lead, I've taken to preparing all of our 2-4 pound beef roasts, ribs, and turkey by this method:
1. Heat the oven to 500 F while putting a dry rub on the 2-4 pound roast. You might also cut large chunks of carrots, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, or celery. 2. Put the roast and any vegetables in a covered roasting pot (I use my 20 year old Creuset French Oven). 3. Put the pot in the oven at 500 F for about 5 minutes. 4. Turn the oven down to 150 F and let the meat slow roast for 8 to 12 hours.
The result is very, very tender, moist, rare to medium rare meat. You have to be careful not to leave the oven at 500 F for very long. I plan to try this using only the 150 F for 8+ hours.
Tilapia In Coconut-Curry Sauce
We got some tilapia filets for $2.97 per pound from Sunflower Market. Here's the recipe I created:
1 onion, diced 1/2 red pepper, diced 1/2 to 1 green chili, chopped finely (adjust to your liking) 3 cloves garlic, pressed 2 T olive oil
1 pound of tilapia fillets (5 fillets) 1 bunch of kale greens, stems removed and leaves torn into bite-size pieces.
salt to taste
1 T arrowroot powder
In a shallow stainless steel pan that has a lid (we have Emerilware), I sauteed the first 4 ingredients in the olive oil, then added 1/2 of the coconut milk with the spices. I added the tilapia fillets and kale, covered the pan, brought it to a boil, and simmered the mix slowly until it just cooked through, probably 5 to 10 minutes. I then removed the whole tilapia filets, then dissolved the arrowroot in the remaining coconut milk and added it to the pan, stirring constantly as it thickened up (if you like it thicker you can use more arrowroot).
I put the tilapia on the plates, the veggies on the side, and spooned the coconut curry sauce over it all. The result:
Another follow up to my Meat Is Earth Medicine post. Savory's holistic land management methods have worked in Africa, Australia, and North and South America. In this video he displays uncommonly astute thinking outside of the box.
BACKGROUND: The etiology of excessive infant crying is largely unknown. We hypothesize that excessive infant crying may have an early nutritional origin during fetal development.
AIMS: This study is the first to explore whether (1) maternal vitamin B-12 and folate status during pregnancy are associated with excessive infant crying, and (2) whether and how maternal psychological well-being during pregnancy affects these associations.
STUDY DESIGN: Women were approached around the 12th pregnancy week to complete a questionnaire (n=8266) and to donate a blood sample (n=4389); vitamin B-12 and folate concentrations were determined in serum. Infant crying behavior was measured through a postpartum questionnaire (±3months; n=5218).
SUBJECTS: Pregnant women living in Amsterdam and their newborn child.
OUTCOME MEASURES: Excessive infant crying, defined as crying ≥3h/day on average in the past week.
RESULTS: Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed for 2921 (vitamin B-12) and 2622 (folate) women.Vitamin B-12 concentration (categorized into quintiles) was associated with excessive infant crying after adjustment for maternal age, parity, ethnicity, education, maternal smoking and psychological problems (OR[95%CI]: Q1=3.31[1.48-7.41]; Q2=2.50[1.08-5.77]; Q3=2.59[1.12-6.00]; Q4=2.77[1.20-6.40]; Q5 = reference). Stratified analysis suggested a stronger association among women with high levels of psychological problems during pregnancy. Folate concentration was not associated with excessive infant crying.
CONCLUSIONS: First evidence is provided for an early nutritional origin in excessive infant crying. A low maternal vitamin B-12 status during pregnancy could, in theory, affect infant crying behavior through two potential mechanisms: the methionine-homocysteine metabolism and/or the maturation of the sleep-wake rhythm.
I find their report of "a stronger association among women with high levels of psychological problems during pregnancy" intriguing. Could B-12 deficiency due to meat avoidance increase psychological problems in adults? Sure enough.
Psychiatric manifestations are frequently associated with pernicious anemia including depression, mania, psychosis, dementia. We report a case of a patient with vitamin B12 deficiency, who has presented severe depression with delusion and Capgras' syndrome, delusion with lability of mood and hypomania successively, during a period of two Months. ...
At admission she was uncooperative, disoriented in time and presented memory and attention impairment and sleep disorders. She seemed sad and older than her real age. Facial expression and spontaneous movements were reduced, her speech and movements were very slow. She had depressed mood, guilt complex, incurability and devaluation impressions. She had a Capgras' syndrome and delusion of persecution....
Further investigations confirmed anemia (hemoglobin=11,4 g/dl) and revealed vitamin B12 deficiency (52 pmol/l) and normal folate level....Vitamin B12 replacement therapy was started with hydroxycobalamin 1 000 ng/day im for 10 days and iron replacement therapy. Her mental state improved dramatically within a few days. After one week of treatment the only remaining symptoms were lability of mood, delusion of persecution, Capgras' syndrome but disappeared totally 9 days after the beginning of the treatment. ...
To illustrate this illness we reviewed the literature regarding psychopathology associated with B12 deficiency. The most common psychiatric symptoms were depression, mania, psychotic symptoms, cognitive impairment and obsessive compulsive disorder. The neuropsychiatric severity by vitamin B12 deficiency and the therapeutic efficacy depends on the duration of signs and symptoms.
Conclusion - We recommend consideration of B12 deficiency and serum B12 determinations in all the patients with organic mental disorders, atypical psychiatric symptoms and fluctuation of symptomatology. B12 levels should be evaluated with treatment resistant depressive disorders, dementia, psychosis or risk factors for malnutrition such as alcoholism or advancing age associated with neurological symptoms, anemia, malabsorption, gastrointestinal surgery, parasite infestation or strict vegetarian diet.
If you search Pub Med you can find lots of articles on psychiatric complications of B-12 deficiency. Therefore, the finding that women with psychological problems during pregnancy were more likely to have cry babies probably means that those women were more severely B-12 deficient than others.
What else can happen if you don't get enough B-12 during pregnancy?
Vitamin B12 deficiency is known to be associated with signs of demyelination, usually in the spinal cord. Lack of vitamin B12 in the maternal diet during pregnancy has been shown to cause severe retardation of myelination in the nervous system. We report the case of a 14(1)/2-month-old child of strictly vegetarian parents who presented with severe psychomotor retardation. This severely hypotonic child had anemia due to insufficient maternal intake of vitamin B12 with associated megaloblastic anemia. MRI of the brain revealed severe brain atrophy with signs of retarded myelination, the frontal and temporal lobes being most severely affected. It was concluded that this myelination retardation was due to insufficient intake of vitamin B12 and vitamin B12 therapy was instituted. The patient responded well with improvement of clinical and imaging abnormalities. We stress the importance of MRI in the diagnosis and follow-up of patients with suspected diseases of myelination.
Vitamin B12 deficiency can cause serious developmental regression, hypotonia and cerebral atrophy in infants. We report a 6-month-old infant, with insidious developmental regression and brain atrophy showed by CT scan, secondarily to vitamin B12 deficiency. His mother was a strict vegetarian and the patient was exclusively breastfed. The clinical symptoms and the brain CT were normalized after vitamin B12 administration.
So we can conclude:
B-12 deficiency during pregnancy may produce cry babies.
B-12 deficiency during pregnancy can give your baby brain damage.
B-12 deficiency can make you crazy.
So I guess that proves the superiority of a vegan diet, especially a raw one (sarcasm).
Starting to understand why some long-term unsupplemented vegans can seem a little, well, light headed? Perhaps some of that gray matter is missing?
Might this explain why it can be so difficult to reason with vegan luminaries such as T. Colin Campbell?
"Alzheimer's disease is a devastating disease whose recent increase in incidence rates has broad implications for rising health care costs. Huge amounts of research money are currently being invested in seeking the underlying cause, with corresponding progress in understanding the disease progression. In this paper, we highlight how an excess of dietary carbohydrates, particularly fructose, alongside a relative deficiency in dietary fats and cholesterol, may lead to the development of Alzheimer's disease. A first step in the pathophysiology of the disease is represented by advanced glycation end-products in crucial plasma proteins concerned with fat, cholesterol, and oxygen transport. This leads to cholesterol deficiency in neurons, which significantly impairs their ability to function. Over time, a cascade response leads to impaired glutamate signaling, increased oxidative damage, mitochondrial and lysosomal dysfunction, increased risk to microbial infection, and, ultimately, apoptosis. Other neurodegenerative diseases share many properties with Alzheimer's disease, and may also be due in large part to this same underlying cause." [Emphasis added]
The idea certainly echos findings that type 2 diabetics (i.e. people with high blood sugar) have an increased risk of diabetes. In search of an explanation for the link between diabetes and Alzheimer's, Salk Institute researchers did some experiments discussed in this article at Science Daily:
To get at the bottom of the question why diabetes predisposes people to Alzheimer's disease as they age, the Salk researchers Schubert, Burdo and Qi Chen, in collaboration with diabetes expert Nigel Calcutt, a professor in UCSD's Department of Pathology, induced diabetes in young mice, whose genetic background predisposes them to acquire the symptoms of Alzheimer's with old age.
These [high blood sugar] mice suffered damage to blood vessels well before any overt signs of Alzheimer's disease such as nerve cell death or the acquisition of amyloid deposits, the hallmark of the disease, could be detected in their brains.Further experiments revealed that the vascular damage was due to the overproduction of free radicals, resulting in oxidative damage to the cells lining the brain's blood vessels.
"While all people have a low level of amyloid circulating in their blood, in diabetics there may be a synergistic toxicity between the amyloid and high level of blood glucose that is leading to the problems with proper blood vessel formation," says Burdo. [Emphasis added]
Now scientists at Northwestern University have discovered why brain insulin signaling -- crucial for memory formation -- would stop working in Alzheimer's disease. They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer's removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin resistant...
With other research showing that levels of brain insulin and its related receptors are lower in individuals with Alzheimer's disease, the Northwestern study sheds light on the emerging idea of Alzheimer's being a "type 3" diabetes.
Although some would love to blame the development of Alzheimer's disease on carbohydrates, I can't because we have data from Kitava contradicting it.
The Kitavans appear immune to Alzheimer's while consuming considerably more carbohydrate than the typical American. Kitavan diets supply nearly 70% of calories as carbohydrate largely from various starchy roots (sweet potatoes, cassava, yam, taro), including a fairly large dose of fructose (perhaps as much as 36 g daily) from tropical fruits (bananas, guava, watermelon, pineapple).
The Kitavan experience provides evidence that they idea that carbohydrates cause Alzheimer's disease is simple hogwash.
The fact is, diabetes is caused by high fat, high calorie diets, which cause cells to become insulin-resistant. Yes, too much sugar in the blood promotes Alzheimer's, but elevated blood sugar is a disease of affluence, found only in nations which have high fat, high calorie diets. It is rare to non-existent among people eating very high carbohydrate, very low fat diets, like the Kitavans, or the Tarahumara. Hunter-gatherers and pastoralists eating presumably high-fat diets, such as the Inuit or Masai, are only protected by their low caloric intakes.
We have some evidence that vitamin D deficiency may promote Alzheimer's disease. That study suggests that people with suboptimal D due to inadequate sun exposure have twice the risk of dementia compared to people with optimal D levels. Unfortunately, this study only shows a correlation between low D levels and Alzheimer's, which could be confounded by the so-called healthy subject effect. That means that people who spend more time in the sun and get more vitamin D might also do something else--like eat less fat--that would protect them from dementia.
Stress hormones appear to rapidly exacerbate the formation of brain lesions that are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at UC Irvine. The findings suggest that managing stress and reducing certain medications prescribed for the elderly could slow down the progression of this devastating disease.
The researchers injected four-month-old transgenic mice with levels of dexamethasone similar to the level of hormones that would be seen in humans under stress. At this young age, there would be little formation of plaques and tangles in the brains of the mice. After one week, the scientists found that the level of beta-amyloid in the brains of the animals compared to what is seen in the brains of untreated eight- to nine-month-old mice, demonstrating the profound consequence of glucocorticoid exposure. When dexamethasone was given to 13-month-old mice that already had some plaque and tangle pathology, the hormone again significantly worsened the plaque lesions in the brain and led to increased accumulation of the tau protein.
Finally, to name a few explored by researchers, exposure to the following environmental neurotoxins (rare or absent in Kitava) might contribute to the development of Alzheimer's disease:
mercury, primarily from dental amalgams (so-called "silver" fillings)
About the last item, although having a large number of amalgam fillings appears to increase the risk of Alzheimer's, I do have to comment that having a large number of amalgam fillings would also be a marker for consumption of a refined food diet, so it could be that both the fillings and the dementia are caused by diet.
Some people believe that a meat-based, low-carb diet may prevent or reverse Alzheimer's. Gasior, Rogawski, and Hartman reviewed the evidence here, stating:
Moreover, there is evidence from uncontrolled clinical trials and studies in animal models that the ketogenic diet can provide symptomatic and disease-modifying activity in a broad range of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and may also be protective in traumatic brain injury and stroke. These observations are supported by studies in animal models and isolated cells that show that ketone bodies, especially β-hydroxybutyrate, confer neuroprotection against diverse types of cellular injury.
In a murine model of Alzheimer's disease, Van der Auwera et al showed that a short-term, high saturated fat, ketogenic diet reduced deposits of toxic amyloid-ß plaque by 25%. However, they also found that "Despite changes in ketone levels, body weight, and Aβ levels, the KD diet did not alter behavioral measures." In other words, it didn't modify the disease, which suggests that the ketogenic diet is not beneficial for this disease and further that the plaque may not be the cause of the disease.
Design: Men (n = 16) aged 22 ± 1 y (mean ± SE) were randomly assigned to 5 d of a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet containing 75 ± 1% of calorie intake through fat consumption or to an isocaloric standard diet providing 23 ± 1% of calorie intake as fat. In a crossover design, subjects undertook the alternate diet after a 2-wk washout period, with results compared after the diet periods. Cardiac 31P magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy and MR imaging, echocardiography, and computerized cognitive tests were used to assess cardiac phosphocreatine (PCr)/ATP, cardiac function, and cognitive function, respectively.
Results: Compared with the standard diet, subjects who consumed the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet had 44% higher plasma free fatty acids (P < 0.05), 9% lower cardiac PCr/ATP (P < 0.01), and no change in cardiac function. Cognitive tests showed impaired attention (P < 0.01), speed (P < 0.001), and mood (P < 0.01) after the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet.
Conclusion: Raising plasma free fatty acids decreased myocardial PCr/ATP and reduced cognition, which suggests that a high-fat diet is detrimental to heart and brain in healthy subjects.
Reading the first sentence of the study design reveals immediately that this "study" falls into the more bullshit bad science category. Holloway et al apparently either don't know that people accustomed to a standard carbohydrate-rich diet need more than 5 days to adapt to a high-fat diet, or they exploited this fact to create another biased study as "evidence" that a high-fat diet will do something harmful to your heart and brain. In short, they are either ignorant or malicious, neither a desirable characteristic for a scientist.
In the Results section, they report that "subjects who consume the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet had 44% higher plasma free fatty acids (FFA)." While these authors apparently believe this is a "bad" thing, this actually indicates that the low-carb diet phase increased the release of fats from storage (i.e. adipose tissue) for use as fuel. In other words, they showed that a low-carb diet increased the use of stored body fat as fuel by 44% compared to a high-carb diet. In comparison, 24 hours of fasting will increase FFA concentrations by about 50%. The low-carb diet thus produces a release of body fat approximately equivalent to fasting.
Now I want to know, do these people really believe that 24 hours of fasting will harm your heart by route of raising plasma FFAs? If so, how come humans and all other animals readily survive prolonged fasts without having cardiac arrest?
Of interest, in the results they even had to admit that the subjects who consumed the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet had "no change in cardiac function." In other words, they admit that the low-card diet DID NOT impair cardiac function.
As for the cognitive speed, attention, and mood changes, these can occur due to psychological resistance to the low-carb diet. Many people believe that low-carb diets will ruin your brain function by depriving it of sugar, so they expect to have a crummy mood and poor cognitive function. In other words, the effect could be entirely due to expectation. If not, it merely reflects the fact that they did not require the subjects to eat the high-fat diet long enough for them to adapt to it (i.e. at least 2 weeks).
In short, this study has no value except as toilet paper. As I discussed it with Tracy, she suggested that these "scientists" must have an agenda, that they might actually be working for some entity that benefits from promotion of high-carbohydrate diets. Her comments got me to wondering: Who funds the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN)?
Well, if you go to the AJCN website you learn that it is published by the American Society for Nutrition (ASN). I searched around the ASN website looking for their list of "sustaining" corporate members, which you will find here. Here is the entire text of that page, including its already embedded links:
The American Society for Nutrition is pleased to acknowledge the generous support from these organizations for educational programs of the Society.
In an effort to promote great transparency, please note that clicking on any link with an * next to it will direct you to a company portal page on the ASN website featuring more detailed information about that organization's relationship with ASN. Many of ASN's Sustaining Members have special resources and activities available for nutrition scientists.
The Sustaining Members are represented in the Society by a Sustaining Member Committee. The members of this standing committee help to provide visibility within ASN to matters of interest to industry by exchanging ideas and providing corporate financial support for the society's activities in education/training, scientific programs and professional outreach.
Just reading this list, you can already conclude that the ASN has multiple conflicts of interest, and that the majority of its "sustaining members" have an interest in promoting high-carbohydrate intakes. Out of the entire list, only three financially minor members, the the California Almond Board, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and the National Dairy Council, really have an interest in promoting high fat foods.
And if you click on the links you will find that they take you directly to the promotional pages of the corporations.
In short, the ASN (and by extension, the AJCN and the Journal of Nutrition) shares a bed with multiple partners who would like to screw you with their high-carbohydrate foods. Suddenly I don't have much respect for the ASN, AJCN, or JN, and I completely understand how junk science like the study above dominates the pages of the ASN's journals.
Don't get involved with these bedfellows, unless you like STDs (Sugar-Transmitted Diseases).
In the more bad science department, MSN online published an article today with the title "High-protein diets may raise colon cancer risk." It reports the results of a study done a team of researchers led by Dr. Harry J. Flint, of the University of Aberdeen and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Here's how the article describes the study:
"The findings are based on 17 obese men who each followed three short-term diets: a one-week menu plan designed to maintain their weight; a four-week high-protein diet with moderate amounts of carbohydrates; and a four-week high-protein diet low in carbs.
The first diet, which allowed about 360 grams of carbs per day, typically offered cereal, eggs and toast for breakfast; a sandwich and salad for lunch; and chicken, fish or soy, along with pasta, for dinner.
The low-carb diet — which allowed just 22 grams of carbs each day — generally consisted of eggs-and-bacon breakfasts, and lunches and dinners heavy in meat, poultry and fish, along with some vegetables and cheese.
The moderate-carbohydrate diet allowed 181 grams of carbs each day. Both high-protein diets contained just less than 140 grams of protein per day.
At the end of each diet period, Flint's team analyzed fecal samples from the men to look at levels of certain metabolic byproducts."
So do you notice anything funky about this description?
How about this: they fed the men the high carbohydrate diets for only one week, but the lower carbohydrate diets for four weeks, before taking fecal samples. This falls into the category of not minimizing variables. How does this kind of study get past peer review?
But of course if you want to create a "study" that favors the high carbohydrate diet, you might just fool around like that.
The really valuable paragraph in this report goes like this:
"The study looked only at short-term shifts in certain compounds that are byproducts of metabolism, and not actual disease risk. So it does not show whether high protein diets really raise the risk of any colon diseases."
Which outright contradicts the sensational title.
If you want to know whether high protein diets increase colon cancer risk, how about studying Eskimos/Inuit? Eating their native diet consisting almost exclusively of meat and fat, containing little or no fiber, they had no colon cancer. How about the Masai? Eating their native diet of meat and milk products, again, no colon cancer. These samples alone disprove the idea that meat causes and fiber prevents cancer as surely as finding one black swan disproves the statement "all swans are white."
Meanwhile, Dr. Oz, poster boy for the "healthy whole grain diet" rich in fiber that supposedly protects against cancer, turns up with colon polyps, possible precursors to colon cancer.
As the MSN article says, "obesity is thought to be a risk factor for a number of diseases, including colon cancer."
As explained by Loren Cordain and Michael Eades in this article, both obesity and colon cancer arise from excess insulin production, which is driven by carbohydrate ingestion, not meat or protein intake. Colon cancer falls in the category of epithelial cell malignancies. Cordain and Eades explain how diets high in refined carbohydrates promote hyperinsulinemia, which raises levels of insulin-like growth factors (IGF), reduces IGF binding proteins, and disables the body's natural antitumor system based on vitamin A activation.
Like other cancers, the prevalence of colon cancer has increased in tandem with increases in consumption of carbohydrates, including fiber, not increases in protein or meat consumption.
Moreover, as I discussed in my article Fiber Fallacies, these researchers could do a little research and find that high fiber diets have been repeatedly shown to produce changes in colon tissue that precede cancer, or in some cases, actually increased the number of cancers relative to a fiber-free diet:
Many people think eating a high fiber diet will prevent colon cancer; but we not only have no proof or even weak evidence that ingestion of fiber prevents colon cancer, on the contrary we have experimental evidence indicating that diets high in fermentable fibers actually increase colonic cell proliferation of the type that leads to cancer.
Lupton et al reported that a diet high in fermentable fiber increased cecum size and large intestine length, and reduced pH and stimulated cell proliferation, in rat colons. [J. Nutr. 118: 840-845, 1988.]
Jacobs and Lupton found that when they fed rats a high fiber diet based on either oat bran, pectin, or guar, the yield of proximal colonic adenocarcinomas increased by 4.5 to 5 times over the fiber free level. [Cancer Research 46, 1727-1734, April 1986]
Mandir, Englyst, and Goodlad found that when they fed mice fiber in the form of bran or apple pomace, both fibers significantly increased cell proliferation, number of polyps, and tumor burden born by the mice. Both fibers increased polyp diameter, bran by 243% and apple fiber by 150%. [British Journal of Nutrition (2008), 100, 711–721].
Generally, diets high in fiber make the feces softer and looser. A study by Inoue et al found “Soft or loose feces increased the risk for all subsites of colorectal cancer, particularly in female rectum cancer (odds ratio [OR] = 4.5)” [Cancer Causes Control 1995 Jan;6(1):14-22.]. Although epidemiological studies generally don’t carry much weight, when the odds ratio goes above 2.0, the association carries more weight. This finding of a greater than 4 fold increased risk of colorectal cancer in people with soft or loose stools suggests that high intake of fermentable fiber may promote cancer in humans as well as rats.
Kok-Yang Tan and Francis Seow-Choen dispensed with all the myths of high fiber consumption in their article Fiber and colorectal diseases: Separating fact from fictionpublished online in the World Journal of Gastroenterology. I suggest that these physicians take some time to read it instead of wasting their time beating a dead horse. High protein diets don't cause colon cancer, and high fiber diets don't prevent it. On the contrary, we have some pretty good reasons to believe that high fiber diets promote colon cancer. Conventional 'wisdom' dies hard, but it will die.
If you want help implementing a paleoish diet, look no further than your own imagination. For decades I have used creative visualization to help me master martial arts skills and accomplish athletic goals, with awesome results. Now psychologists have shown that creative visualization can help people change their eating habits. As reported on Health Day News:
"Telling people to just change the way they eat doesn't work; we've known that for a long time," study author Barbel Knauper, an associate professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal, said in a university news release.
"But research has shown that if people make a concrete plan about what they are going to do, they are better at acting on their intentions. What we've done that's new is to add visualization techniques to the action plan," she explained.
Knauper and colleagues gathered 177 students and asked them to set a goal of eating more fruit over a week's time. As they reported in Psychology and Health researchers split the students into 4 groups: control (active rehearsal), implementation intentions, goal intention mental imagery or mental imagery targeted to the implementation intentions. The results reported at Health Day News:
"All of the students ate more fruit during that time. However, those who made a concrete plan, wrote it down and also visualized how they were going to carry out their plan (i.e. when, where and how they would buy, prepare and eat fruit) increased their fruit consumption twice as much as those who didn't plan or visualize."
Basically, if you want to eat more paleoish, but find it difficult to carry out, you can help yourself by taking some time to use your imagination to visualize shopping for, preparing, and eating meals consisting primarily of meat and fat, possibly supplemented by other paleo foods.
By the way, these psychologists are just confirming what shamans have practiced for millenia: imagination guides materiality. If you doubt this, look no further than the computer in front of you. At one time, it was nothing but an idea. Someone focused on that idea and kept refining and working with it until it became an item in materiality. Ditto for the building you inhabit, the clothes you wear, indeed for anything man-made.
Which raises the question, which, if either, is more real, the imagination that has the power to change the materiality, or the materiality that appears at the effect of the imagination?
Creative visualization can contribute what Taoists refer to as wu wei, often translated as "non-doing" or better, "effortlessness." Basically, if you want to do things more elegantly, with less effort, you can save yourself a lot of struggle by "doing" them in imagination first. From the Tao Te Ching, chapter 63, Wu translation:
Difficult things of the world Can only be tackled when they are easy. Big things of the world Can only be achieved by attending to their small beginnings. Thus, the Sage never has to grapple with big things, Yet he alone is capable of achieving them!
Its much easier to achieve anything in imagination compared to materiality. Amazingly, by first accomplishing it in imagination, you can more easily achieve it in materiality. So apply some shamanic magic to your eating and activity habits. Just imagine yourself shopping for, preparing, eating meat-based meals with only paleo ingredients, and training for strength, watch it materialize with less effort and more grace!
7/13/11 update: Operation Hope is based on the important realization that livestock and grasslands form an integrated ecosystem. Putting cattle on desert and managing them as if they were wild game animals does help restore the desert to grassland. Now that we know that, why not go a step further. The best approach might be to return the wild game to their native lands and forget about managing the cattle as if they were something they are not. Also allow the natural predators to return (wild cats, wolves). Then leave those wild animals alone. DM
In 2006 the FAO published Livestock's Long Shadow in which they claimed, essentially, that herds of livestock degrade land, destroy ecosystems, pollute water, release greenhouse gases, and reduce biodiversity. Livestock are essential to the health of the grasslands that overgrazing has gradually converted into deserts.
But this fact remains hidden from 'experts' who make their living by crunching numbers and creating theories in U.N. cubicles without ever having actually thought about how nature works. Fortunately we have people who learn by studying nature, not just numbers, like Allan Savory.
"Desertification is occurring on 25% of the land area of Earth, degrading 73% of the world's rangelands and causing widespread poverty. By reversing desertification, we could create innumerable positive consequences: mitigating climate change, droughts and floods, and reducing poverty, social breakdown, violence and genocide. Yet most attempts to date have not only been ineffective, but have been band-aid solutions that do not address its real "root" causes. Enter Semi-Finalist Allan Savory and his surprising trimtab approach to reversing desertification that he calls "holistic rangeland management." Nearly the exact opposite of prevailing theories that blame desertification on overgrazing, Savory's solution centers on dramatically increased livestock numbers to reverse desertification. The tremendous success of Savory's counter-intuitive solution is evidenced through his work with Operation Hope at the Africa Center for Holistic Management (ACHM) in Zimbabwe. For hundreds of years the 6,500 acres of the ACHM were barren, dry fields until 1992 when Savory increased the livestock by 400% and managed them through holistic, planned grazing. Over time, the barren fields were transformed into green grass and open water, full of water lilies and fish.
Did you get that? By increasing livestock by 400% and managing their grazing to mimic patterns of wild grazing animals this project turned deserts into grasslands and wetlands. Look at this transformation; on the left, before the grazing, on the right, after the grazing:
This was accomplished by skillfully using lots of cattle, the very same species that the FAO claims is destroying the planet.
I don't know if Savory has ever read the Tao Te Ching, but his whole project is based on a Taoist sensibility:
In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.
Less and less is done Until non-action is achieved. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.
Tao Te Ching Chapter 48
Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done.
The universe is sacred. You cannot improve it. If you try to change it, you will ruin it. If you try to hold it, you will lose it.
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 29
Instead of doing something based on conventional 'wisdom' that putting animals on a desert will make it worse, Savory just noticed that grasslands need livestock as much as livestock need grasslands and rather than trying to change or interfere with nature, he decided to emulate it:
Operation Hope has successfully reversed desertification on their learning site called the Dimbangombe Ranch in Zimbabwe. The concept is formed around the idea that large herds of animals — which have reduced in numbers over the years — were an essential part of the grasslands ecosystems. The herds have diminished in size and thus ecosystems are faltering. Savory has developed an approach that uses livestock to replace the once ubiquitous herds of grazing animals in order to reboot the ecosystem. Farmers create a plan for livestock grazing in order to make the most of their presence. The livestock’s hooves break up the ground so water can seep through and plants have room in the soil to grow. Their manure fertilizes the ground and increases vegetation. The livestock then graze on the vegetation and keep the grasses at a healthy length and density.
Imagine that. Nature didn't make a mistake in pairing graziers with grass; the graziers actually help the grass, and the grass holds water in the soil. So, Savory took a look at land like this:
And realized that to make it more productive he had to put animals on it, not take animals off of it. He taught a team of people to put animals back on the land, move them around the way native species would migrate, and let nature take its course.
The herds of cattle did what cattle do--express their "boviness," as Joel Salatin would say--and all the people had to do is help the cattle do it while moving about in a pattern like wild graziers. Pretty soon the land and cattle both started looking pretty lush:
The return of cattle, water, and grass made the people pretty happy:
All of this gives farmers more productive land, allowing a better harvest of crops. Previously, as desertification took hold, communities were moved off their land and violence broke out because of displacement. Savory’s approach to range land management keeps people on their land, sustains communities, improves livelihoods, creates food security and returns ecosystems to their natural state.
I find it so perfect that this project got the Buckminster Fuller prize because Bucky himself ate an animal-based diet. Ray Audette tells the story in Neanderthin:
"R. Buckminster Fuller is famous for inventing the geodesic dome, but most who know of his work are unaware that he advocated a diet of meat, vegetables, and fruit. In the 1960's, Bucky found himself very overweight-- at five feet, five inches he weighed 200 pounds. Concerned about his increasing size he applied his scientific and philosophic genius to the problem. His solution was, and remains, unique among low-carbohydrate advocates.
One of the basic tenets of Bucky Fuller's philosophy is that nature is always most efficient in using energy. The sun is the Earth's main source of energy, and solar energy is directly concentrated in the form of plants throught the process of photosynthesis. Theorizing that humans should seek the most energy-concentrated (i.e. the most natural) source of protein and calories Bucky concluded that he should eat that meat of animals that eat plants..
By applying the unique idea of "energy accounting" to his weight problem, Bucky lost sixty pounds and greatly increased his energy. He continued to eat a low-carbohydrate diet for the rest of his life (he died at age 88). "
So, don't believe those ivory tower eggheads who tell you that "livestock's long shadow" is destroying the Earth. Practice always trumps theory, and practice shows that meat is medicine even for the environment. It looks like livestock provide the best way to turn deserts back into grasslands. Let's have a steak to celebrate!
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One of the most common "arguments" for veganism goes like this: People don't have well-developed canine teeth like those of dogs or cats, therefore our teeth prove that we aren't adapted to a meat-based diet.
Although they are fond of using chimpanzees as models for human behavior, apparently vegans missed or ignore a prominent feature of chimpanzee dentition:
The chimp eats a 95% vegan, 70% fruit diet, so if you think large canines are evidence for carnivory, how do you explain the fact that chimps have canines several times the size of any human canine?
Simple. Canines have functions other than tearing into meat. Chimps display canines as a part of self-defense and social ranking. You might even say that he who has the largest canines wins. Canines are weapons useful even to a frugivore.
By the erroneous vegan reasoning, since chimps are frugivores and chimps have huge canines, huge canines must be a sign of frugivory. Since humans don't have huge canines like frugivorous chimps, we must not be frugivores!
In contrast to chimps, we use our minds as our primary weapons. Large canines are unnecessary when you can make knives, arrows, and spears.
In most animals, bearing the teeth serves primarily as a threat; in humans, it serves as an invitation we call a smile. Canines like that certainly spoil a smile.
Finally, focusing on canines distracts us from the other teeth. Unlike more vegetarian primates, human teeth have sharp ridges that form shearing surfaces, so they cut like scissors:
Whenever someone tells me we don't have teeth designed for eating meat, I simply ask, "Have you ever sliced open your tongue or cheek with your own teeth?" If so, you have proven to yourself that human teeth can easily slice raw meat.
We don't need canines to eat meat, we only need shearing teeth. All of human teeth have a more carnivore form than other primates, and this change in human teeth first appears about 2.5 million years ago. From the New Scientist article entitled "Meat Eating Is an Old Human Habit:"
In 1999, researchers found cut marks on animal bones dated at around 2.5 million years old. But no one could be sure that they were made by meat-eating hominids, because none appeared to have suitable teeth.
Now an analysis by Peter Ungar of the University of Arkansas has revealed that the first members of Homo had much sharper teeth than their most likely immediate ancestor, Australopithecus afarensis, the species that produced the famous fossil Lucy.
Eating meat requires teeth adapted more to cutting than to grinding. The ability to cut is determined by the slope of the cusps, or crests. "Steeper crests mean the ability to consume tougher foods," Ungar says. He has found that the crests of teeth from early Homo skeletons are steeper than those of gorillas, which consume foods as tough as leaves and stems, but not meat.
"Ungar shows that early Homo had teeth adapted to tougher food than A. afarensis or [chimpanzees]. The obvious candidate is meat," says anthropologist [and vegetarian] Richard Wrangham of Harvard University.
A recent study of the evolution of horses determined that evolutionary changes in tooth form such as this would require about one million years of dietary evolution. This means that in order for early humans to have sharper teeth by 2.5 million years ago, their ancestors must have been eating meat for at least one million years prior. No surprise then, that our earliest evidence for meat-eating, stone-tool wielding hominins dates to about 3.5 million years ago.
Meat--its been what's for dinner for at least 3.5 million years, and we have the teeth to prove it.
From the National Geographic, this map shows the Journey of Man out of Africa, an exodus of modern humans that started about 50, 000 years ago:
Now I ask, what do raw vegan advocates think our ancestors were after by leaving Africa 50,000 years ago?
Our ancestors left Africa and went north, into Europe and the Arctic. Do raw vegans think this was done by an animal adapted to an exclusively raw vegan diet? Do they think Europe was full of bananas during the ice ages?
If you think man is by nature adapted to a raw vegan diet, how the hell do you explain his exodus from tropical paradise into ecosystems where meat was the only reliable food for at least half of the year?
How can an animal adapted to a diet consisting exclusively of tropical fruits and vegetables spread out from Africa all over the entire planet, even into ecosystems (e.g. the arctic) where meat is the only food available almost all year round?
A commenter on my last post in this series said eating 10 bananas every day is no problem. Since then I tried five in a day. It gave me the runs. Enjoy your bananas, but living on them is not, let's say, a-peel-ing to me.
I have practiced meditation for more than 25 years. Primarily I have practiced mindfulness or insight meditation (vipassana), a Buddhist method which consists of sitting quietly and paying attention to inspiration and expiration. In this method, when you find your mind wanders from the focus on the in- and out- breaths, you gently note the distraction (“thinking,” “pain in foot,” or whatever) and return your attention to the breath.
Many people tell me that they “can’t” meditate because they find that the mind wanders. They have gotten the idea that “doing meditation” means having unwavering attention. Meditation is a practice, like any other practice, in that you never succeed 100%. If you practice archery, you won’t hit the bullseye 100% of the time, especially not in the novice stage. You practice to increase the number of times you hit the mark. The same with meditation. The more you practice, the more often you hit the mark of peaceful attention to your breathing.
What’s in it for you? For me, it all boils down to freedom. Moshe Feldenkrais once said something like “You can’t change what you do until you know what you are doing.” Meditation increases your self-awareness, particularly awareness of the thoughts and emotional reactions that precede your actions.
When you start practicing meditation, you quickly learn that much of what you do is mechanical. You find your mind filled with automatic responses to various stimuli, which produce automatic actions by domino effect. You find that certain stimuli put you into a trance, and when in trances like this, you say and do things that you later regret. Meditation practice enables you to loosen the links between stimulus and response, and even rewire the brain, so that you can change your reactions and behavior.
Does meditation have an evolutionary basis? I have often been struck by the quiet alertness of various non-human species sitting in wait for something, like the frog that sits patiently alert, just waiting for the moment to reel in a bug with its rapid release tongue. The photo of the gorilla to the right looks similar to the depiction of the Buddha above left. Perhaps meditation does have evolutionary precedents, but more important to me, it works as a tool for personal evolution, helping me to realize my full human potential.
Here are some reasons to consider incorporating mindfulness meditation into your primal lifestyle.
1. Mindfulness meditation can help you eat better and lose weight. A pilot study titled Mindful Eating and Living (MEAL) provided ten obese patients with “Six weekly two-hour group classes (with two monthly follow-up classes). Content included training in mindfulness meditation, mindful eating, and group discussion, with emphasis on awareness of body sensations, emotions, and triggers to overeat.”
Notice that this trial did not include any nutrition education, only mindfulness training. The results?
“Compared to baseline data, participants showed statistically significant increases in measures of mindfulness and cognitive restraint around eating, and statistically significant decreases in weight, eating disinhibition, binge eating, depression, perceived stress, physical symptoms, negative affect, and C-reactive protein.”
2. Mindfulness training can help you stop binge eating. Jean Kristeller, Ph.D., has done pioneering research using mindfulness training to treat binge eating disorder. Her research has demonstrated that Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training can decrease binge episodes by more than 50% in just 8 weeks of intervention.
3. Mindfulness training can improve your awareness of the physical effects of stress. Researchers at UC Berkeley compared the emotional body awareness of well-trained dancers, practitioners of insight meditation, and a control group not trained in dance or meditation. They found that the meditators had more awareness of the effects that emotions have on the physical body than either dancers or the control group. Despite having a very high degree of motor control, dancers did not differ from the control group in awareness of the physical effects of emotions.
4. Mindfulness training changes neuronal connections in regions of the brain. Kilpatrick et al
reported that eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training improved attentional focus, sensory processing, and reflective awareness of sensory experience, and “Significant MBSR-related differences in functional connectivity were found mainly in auditory/salience and medial visual networks.”
5. Mindfulness training changes grey matter density in regions of the brain. Holzel et al found that 8 weeks of MBSR actually increased the grey matter density of the brain in regions involved in learning, memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.
Together the studies by Kilpatrick et al and Holzel et al demonstrate empirically that that how you use your intention to direct your attention and awareness can change the physical properties of the brain.
6. Mindfulness practice improves mood. Segal et al compared the antidepressant effects of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy to maintenance antidepressant pharmacotherapy, and found that “For depressed patients achieving stable or unstable clinical remission, MBCT offers protection against relapse/recurrence on a par with that of maintenance antidepressant pharmacotherapy. “
7. Mindfulness training can also make you smarter. Zeidan et al found that just 4 days of mindfulness meditation training “significantly improved visuo-spatial processing, working memory, and executive functioning.”
8. Mindfulness training can help you manage pain. Zeidan et al also compared mindfulness training to relaxation therapy or math distraction as methods of dealing with pain induced by electrical stimulation. The team found that mindfulness reduces severity of perceived pain by reducing anxiety and enhancing awareness of the present moment.
9. Mindfulness practice can reduce useless or harmful repetitive mental activity. Jain et al found that mindfulness practice works better than relaxation training for reducing distractive and ruminative thoughts and behaviors that cause distress.
10. Finally, mindfulness practice might help you live longer. We have reason to believe that long term mindfulness practice may reduce the rate of cellular aging and preserve telomere length. Epel et al has reviewed data linking telomere length to cognitive stress and stress arousal and presented new data linking cognitive appraisal to telomere length. They “propose that some forms of meditation may have salutary effects on telomere length by reducing cognitive stress and stress arousal and increasing positive states of mind and hormonal factors that may promote telomere maintenance.”
Jacobs and Epel et al compared the telomerase activity of participants in a mindfulness meditation retreat to those of a wait-list control group matched for age, sex, body mass index, and prior meditation experience. The 30 retreat participants meditated for about 6 hours daily for 3 months. They found that at the end of the retreat, the intensive meditation practitioners displayed decreased neuroticism, and increased perceived control (freedom), mindfulness, sense of purpose in life, and telomerase activity, which might increase cell longevity.
Of interest, it appeared that the participants increased sense of purpose in life mediated the increase in telomerase activity. In other words, those who had the greatest sense of life purpose had the greatest telomerase activity. This may give us evidence that having a sense of purpose in life can extend your life, whereas having no sense of purpose can shorten it. I believe this is true. Many of us know of someone who was in very poor health, near death, but had a purpose for remaining alive, and lived to see that purpose realized.
As I suggested in my post on Shamanism as Evolutionary Medicine, the accumulating research on the health effects of meditation show us what shamans knew for millenia: how we use our minds and awareness (not one and the same) can have profound effects on our health and happiness. While primal dieting is beneficial, it is not the end-all of health care. Sometimes what we do with our minds may trump what we do with our bodies.
What do you think? Do you have experiences with mindfulness or other meditation methods? Do you notice an effect on your health?
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), I sauteed the first 4 ingredients in the olive oil, then added 1/2 of the coconut milk with the spices. I added the tilapia fillets and kale, covered the pan, brought it to a boil, and simmered the mix slowly until it just cooked through, probably 5 to 10 minutes. I then removed the whole tilapia filets, then dissolved the arrowroot in the remaining coconut milk and added it to the pan, stirring constantly as it thickened up (if you like it thicker you can use more arrowroot).
, chapter 63, Wu translation:
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