Chicken at 204kPa

In my last post, I made mention of the pressure cooker as a brilliant tool for getting in the habit of cooking for yourself.

Meat comes out tender and juicy, root veggies are done to perfection, and nothing we've yet cooked takes longer than about an hour and twenty minutes from start to finish (not including prep time). That means, you seal it up, get it up to pressure, cook, and let it cool to the point you can open it. Some things are stupidly fast... winter squash only takes about fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes for hard squash to cook! And, most of that time is spent coming up to pressure... it only cooks at full pressure for four minutes. Then, you can stick it under the faucet and douse it in cold water to quickly de-pressurize it (NOTE: you can't use the quick-cool method with everything).

So, Darren had some experience with this cooking tool when we met, I had had none. Recently, he tried putting a whole chicken in there, something he had no experience with. Had just never occurred to us. Maybe because it seems like it might be unworkable, a whole bird, with all the bones and whatnot.

Turns out, it's bloody awesome! The bird comes out tender, juicy (even the often too-dry breast meat), and the bones are no problem; the meat falls right off them.

So, it turns out that a basic Googling of  "whole chicken pressure cooker" yields loads of tasty recipes. Guess this is old news to most folks but us. However, because we hadn't ever thought of it, I'm going to go ahead and guess that some of you haven't ever tried either. It's dead easy to do, and you can choose from the wide array of available recipes on the net, or try ours:

Pour about an inch of chicken or beef stock into the pressure cooker. Place one whole chicken into the pressure cooker with some thyme (we use fresh cut from the garden, just throw the whole sprigs in), a few cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. Seal it up, let it come to pressure (you'll know this has happened when the weighted rocker on the top of the lid starts hissing in a steady rhythm), and let it cook for about 20 minutes (this may need to be adjusted slightly if your bird is exceptionally large or small, there's a chart here). When the timer goes off, take it off the heat, and let it sit until the little lock pin valve in the handle drops.

Presto! (Hah! see what I did there?) A fabulous chicken dinner!

Making the Time to Eat Right

This tasty meal took hours... of sitting by itself, getting cooked, while I did other stuff.

There are posts on this blog about how you can shop locally and sustainably, and how it can be made more affordable. It is also no secret that I vehemently recommend that you all eat real food, avoid processed crap, and minimize (or eliminate) grains and other super-starchy stuff like legumes, and maybe dairy (depending on how much you're consuming and where it's coming from). But, I still know of many folks who seldom, or in some cases very nearly never, cook for themselves.

The two biggest reasons I hear for people not making sure they're eating well are that they don't have the time, or that they can't cook. To be blunt, you get only one body and if you want it to hold up well for a longer than average time, you must address these "issues." These two most common excuses are not insurmountable problems, they're barely even obstacles and you can and must get past them and start feeding yourself quality nutrition on a regular basis, especially if you take a moment or two to sanely order your priorities... again, just a reminder, you only get one body.

Priorities in order? Sweet... now, a few pointers on addressing those two primary stumbling blocks.

Firstly, we'll address the time issue. Honestly, the issue of having time to cook should have been eliminated in American culture with the advent of DVR and services like Hulu and Netflix...I know I'm generalizing, but certainly almost everyone I know personally fills several hours per week of their conscious-yet-non-working time consuming media. Whatever media you habitually consume, if any, it is now fully possible to store it or access it later and shift around the time you spend when not at work or sleeping to make space to feed yourself properly.  Those I know who don't consume much media tend to be socializing during that time, which is great and necessary and probably a better way to spend your time, but again... time can and should be carved out of that for properly feeding yourself.  

I don't know what's going on in your life, it's true, but I would bet anything there's room in there for time to be made for you to cook. In addition to the suggestions I made in this post about simplifying your Paleo dietary habits, here are a few more tips to help make that time efficient:

Shop for produce which is in season. This one is probably a little counter-intuitive, but hear me out. Besides getting better quality produce and taking your individual stab at the beast which is Big Agrabiz, eating in season does something else useful... by reducing the variety of the produce you're getting, the methods and recipes which you might choose for cooking it are similarly reduced. If you live in the Midwest, you'll be eating hard squash in winter, but you won't be eating tomatoes (unless they've been canned or frozen). Eating winter squash means mostly roasting in some form, or perhaps making a soup (which still means roasting it first). And, as for those canned tomatoes, there are only so many ways to use them because they're basically already a sauce.

Yes, if you want, it's entirely possible to find creative and unusual recipes, but by and large your eating will be simplified by eating in season. Once you've roasted a couple squash, you'll know about how long it takes, and can plan accordingly. While I am all about variety in the diet, having seasonal staples reduces the necessary decision making process of planning your meals, and will save you some time.

Also, as a side note, this habit will ensure variety in your diet. Again, a bit counter-intuitive... but, if you have at your disposal the whole mega-grocery of produce shipped in from around the world, you could easily develop the habit of buying and eating the same stuff all year and never getting around to things that are only available in certain seasons. Sticking to what's in season ensures variety.

Buy and use a slow cooker. I've got a whole other post about the wonder of slow cookers, commonly known as Crock Pots in exactly the same way that all facial tissue is commonly known as Kleenex, but it bears repeating; they are fabulous. And, seriously, you cannot complain about having time to cook for yourself when you can dump all the ingredients into a pot and leave it by itself for hours. Yes, there are recipes which potentially have a significant prep time, but there are dozens, if not hundreds, out there where all you have to do is spend 15 minutes chopping veggies, and then dump them into the crock pot with some meat, stock, and spices, and then go do anything else you want while you wait for it to become a meal. It's awesome, and I love that there is a form of cooking so laborless because, while cooking is very often fun, I could be happy in a world where tasty healthy food just happened with instantaneous magicality and until Science gets around to building us a Star Trek-esque replicator, this is as close to a no-work cooked meal as you're likely to get in your own home.

Buy and use a pressure cooker. This is kind of the opposite of the above; foods cook fast in here, and meats that you might otherwise have to prep elaborately come out tender and tasty. Root veggies cook much faster than they do if you just roast them. And, again, it's brilliant because it's mostly self-regulated (though not to the degree a crock pot is)... you seal it up, apply the heat, and when you hear it start to hiss set a timer for the specified time. When the timer goes off, take the cooker off the heat and wait for the little valve to drop. Simple.

Buy foods you can eat raw (there are more of them than you might think). When we think of grabbing a piece of produce and snacking (I'm assuming here that you do think of produce and not of Doritos, and if this is not true then the first priority is making it true) we usually think of fruit, and in fact I make the recommendation of fruit as a snack in that above referenced post, along with cautioning that too much fruit is not a great idea because of all the sugar. But, you're in luck; the number of veggies which can be eaten raw, and which are thusly tasty, is pretty large. There are the usual suspects, the ones you find on the obligatory veggie trays at parties; carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower (though those last two, and their cruciferous fellows, get you a little more nutritional mileage if they're cooked at least a little). You'll often find green peppers and olives lurking there, too. But, what about zucchini and yellow squash? Various varieties of onion? Also avocados, jicama, tomatilloes, celery, sweet peas... the list goes on. You can grate root veggies like beets or turnips into a salad (speaking of salad, greens are a whole other category of raw food). And, nothing saves time on eating food like not having to cook it.

Put a TV in the kitchen. Or, bring your laptop in, set it out of the way on the counter or the kitchen table, and open up your Netflix account, whatever works for you. The point here is that you can catch up on your shows or news while you're prepping your meals (just do not, I repeat, do not ever try to look at anything but what you're doing when you're at the cutting board, busy with a knife.)

Cook and prep food ahead. In that post about simplifying eating Paleo, I mentioned loving the leftovers and cooking in bulk. Allow me to now expand upon that; after you've prepared a large amount of something in the crock pot, or done a whole roast, or whatever it is, you can break that up into meal-sized portions and containerize them separately. Presto! Lunches at work for the whole week. You can also freeze these so they last longer than a week and bust them out when you're feeling hungry for whatever that particular food is.

Prepping ahead is a similar concept, just with ingredients instead of finished product. If you've made the time to chop carrots to make dinner, go ahead and chop all the carrots you bought (you've already got the knife and cutting board out, so it'll only add a couple minutes... stop watching the TV...) then stick the unused portion in a container to use in a couple of days in another meal. This approach does depend upon you intending to use the pre-prepped ingredients a similar way in a future meal as you're using them presently, so it may come up as a time-saver less frequently than cooking ahead, but since people tend to have a staple set of recipes for cooking certain things certain ways, it will probably save you some time if you start to develop the habit of applying it where you can.

Make cooking a social time. Darren and I often chat about our day while cooking is happening. Sometimes just one of us is cooking, sometimes we're both involved, but we're together and involved in quality time.  This is, of course, harder to do if you don't live with another human (unless your dog or cat talks back, in which case you may need more help than I can provide). But, you could bust out your bluetooth earpiece or put your phone on speaker and catch up with a friend or make that long-overdue (in her mind, at least) call to your mom while you're making dinner. Have a family? Find ways to get the kids involved, and start building their habit of being responsible for their own health and well-being early. And, a meal and it's preparation can always be turned into a social event... dinner parties don't have to be about just the eating.

Now, how about that second excuse for not eating well, "I can't cook," and it's cousin, "I don't like to cook."

First of all, you can cook. Unless you're dealing with some kind of disability that would physically prevent or inhibit your ability to perform the necessary actions in the kitchen, if you're an adult human being with access to fire and water, you can cook. Everyone can cook. Baking is more complex (though everyone could learn basic baking, too, if they wanted); you must carefully measure and get things right because chemistry is happening. But most cooking is putting stuff together in a pan or pot (or putting things in separate pans or pots) and applying enough heat to get the job done but not so much you turn it into charcoal. This is, seriously, not that hard to do. Everyone can cook.

Definitely, some are better at it than others, especially when it comes to putting flavors together... I don't mean to diminish the skills and talents of those who are brilliant at this stuff. My husband is far better at improvising and being creative in the kitchen than I am, and generally much more capable when it comes to feeding us. When it's my turn to cook I often come to him with questions. But, when I'm on my own I can still cook. Maybe it doesn't turn out quite as tasty, but it's still tasty enough (or at least not bad), and it's nutritious, and there's a certain visceral satisfaction to eating food you've prepared yourself.

If you've never cooked for yourself, yes, there will be some learning to happen... but, the beauty of the Information Age is that there are millions, literally millions, of pages of recipes you can choose from. If you narrow that down to include only Paleo-friendly recipes written in the English language there will still be several thousand, I'll wager. All you have to do is apply heat in the specified fashion for the specified length of time and food will happen. Have faith.

Yes, especially if you're just starting to learn, you will screw it up occasionally. You will burn something. You will experiment with a flavor combination and it will not go well. Just yesterday I told our Loretta (who, like my husband, is brilliant in the kitchen) about a failed experiment involving apples and cabbages that made her say, "Oh, Frank..." halfway through the story and look at me with sad and pitying eyes. But, that's OK, because I learned, and I won't make the error again. You will learn. You can, and must, learn to cook for yourself because that's the only way to ensure you're getting the kind of nutrition that will keep you happy and healthy and long-lived. And, I promise, it isn't that hard to do. Honest.

Now, let's say you don't like to cook. My first instinct is that it's really more of a case of the above, you've never really learned to cook. Or, possibly, you've tried to figure it all out for yourself and it's not gone well. Maybe your parents didn't set any example, or they did and cooking for you means dumping the can of chicken noodle soup into a bowl and nuking it. Or possibly you grew up with dinner always being an elaborate three course affair, but you're not a stay-at-home mom and you just don't have the time to cook the way your mom did, so you just have to go out to eat all the time.

Whatever the case, the truth is that you can learn to cook meals which are simple, and tasty, and when you discover that you can cook in a reasonable amount of time and enjoy the results, you'll start to like cooking. It's as simple as that, you'll learn to like it, or at least be neutral to it, and you will definitely learn to love food in a way you hadn't before because you're making it yourself. You will also learn to love cooking because you will see the difference eating a quality diet will make in your health and fitness. I know of no one, not one person, either in my "real life" or anyone I communicate with only through the internet, who has experienced positive changes in their health and fitness by following the Paleo diet who have not started cooking for themselves regularly (assuming they weren't already) and become more excited about the time they spend in the kitchen, trying new recipes, etc.

Also, as mentioned above, if the real issue is that you don't know how to cook, or don't know how to cook in a way which fits into your life without being a stressful time crunch, there are vast resources of recipes and tutorials and techniques all over the internet to help you get started. Google "quick paleo recipes," "no prep prep paleo recipes," and "easy paleo recipes." That'll get you started, you can keep Googling from there.

Don't get me wrong... there are times you don't feel like cooking. You've had a long, crappy day... you forgot to go to the market and there's nothing in refrigerator. I get it. Shit happens, and there are days when Darren and I don't feel like cooking. It is totally fine to go out sometimes. Humans are happier and psychologically healthier when we indulge sometimes. And, if you're feeding yourself quality nutrition the majority of the time, going out to eat now and then, letting someone else do the work, and even indulging in that double fudge chocolate volcano cake ala mode (with whipped cream on top) isn't nearly as big a deal as it would be if you were eating lunch at Burger King four days a week.

If you want to live long, and be healthy, and keep yourself fit you must take your nutrition in hand. You've got to make the time to eat right. We are, quite literally, what we eat. In some parts of our bodies cells die and are replaced very frequently, in other parts less frequently... but all of the new material for replacing and repairing tissue, and the energy to transform that material into new cells and structures, comes exclusively from the food we eat and the air we breathe. That's all there is to it. So, it is vitally important that you do a good job of fueling your body.

Mmmm... Bacteria.

So, we all know (or if you didn't, you do now) that we have a sizable population of bacteria nestled in our guts with which we have a symbiotic relationship. In fact, only about 10% of the total number of cells in and on our bodies are natively human; the rest are microbes we pick up along the way. (We're talking number here, not mass; our cells are quite a bit bigger, generally speaking). Just how many different species are in there and precisely what each does is just beginning to be explored.

Your digestive tract, the stomach especially, is a pretty harsh place; of any bacteria you happen to consume the vast majority will be destroyed before they reach your intestines. However, bacteria reproduce pretty fast... once every 20 minutes or so, which means that a single surviving cell could produce a population of 1 million in about 7 hours.

You may also have heard of probiotic foods and supplements (and if you haven't, you're about to). These are usually fermented foods (such as kefir and kombucha), or pill-form supplements which carry a population of "good" bacteria... the kind of stuff we want along for the ride. These guys may be aiding us in more ways than we think... check out the wiki on probiotics. Yes, I know, it's wikipedia... but, there are many good references and links at the bottom of the article.

I'm pretty convinced of the value of probiotics, as far as having them in your gut. The trick is, keeping them there.

Since the vast majority of whatever you're taking in is going to die in your stomach, you want the environment that the survivors are going to try to set up shop in to be as conducive to their proliferation as is possible. It does no good to take loads of probiotic supplements, and then eat in such a way as to feed the less desirable bacteria populations which are living in there... the bacteria you're trying so hard to introduce will never out-compete the established population.

Conversely, if you're eating to support the types of bacteria you want, you won't have to take probiotic supplements as often, because the good guys will flourish in your gut, and out-compete the stuff you're trying to get rid of. A fresh introduction of desirable bacteria on a regular basis certainly isn't harmful, but you don't need to take the pills and drink kefir every single day to keep your gut in balance if you're otherwise eating to sustain the population you've already introduced.

The question now is... what constitutes proper nutrition for the bacteria you want hanging out in your intestine? Well, you can probably guess where this is headed... those species of bacteria considered to be health-promoting little symbionts have much in common; they thrive when presented with plenty of soluble fiber, and when their environment is a little on the alkaline side. I know what you're going to say; your intestines are always alkaline, they strive to maintain that state. But, food moves through in a big mass, so if you're eating a lot of stuff with an acid pH (read, lots of sugars and carbohydrates, which are also sugar) not only will your intestines have to work a lot harder, but there will be regions of that digesting food mass which will still carry an acidic pH for a good portion of the trip through your digestive tract, and all that time it'll be feeding the bacteria you don't want, rather than the bacteria you do want.

In other words, eating a diet of moderate protein intake, getting most of your energy calories from healthy fats, and restricting your "carbohydrate" intake to fresh veggies and a moderate amount of fresh fruit ( quotation marks in deference to the fact that you'll be getting almost no energy calories from those veggies... they're mostly fiber, micronutrients, and water), will keep your gut flora happy and healthy.  So, The Paleo Diet, or the Primal Diet, or the Zone Diet... any of these will do a good job of this. For my part, I think Paleo or Primal is just way easier to manage, but you can take whatever route to that you want.

Maintain those kinds of dietary habits, and all those probiotics you're taking will be of much greater benefit.

Really, U.S. News? Really?

Recently, U.S. News & World Report ranked the top 20 of the diets currently circulating in the public consciousness, "with input from a panel of health experts." All of these diets are superior to the typical western diet, but they put the Paleo Diet down in the basement, at #20. I thought this odd, when I read of it (and so did the author of The Paleo Diet, Dr. Loren Cordain... you can read his response to the diet ranking here), so I hopped over to the U.S. News website and took a look, and found this blurb next to the Paleo Diet on their list:

Experts took issue with the Paleo diet on every measure. Regardless of what a dieter's goal is—weight loss, heart health, or finding a diet that's easy to follow—most experts concluded he or she is better off looking elsewhere.


Really, U.S. News? Really?

The weight loss (or, if we look at it from a more positive, accurate, health-oriented, and social-stigma-free perspective, body-composition change) of any diet is, for most people, dependent upon being coupled with an adequate level of physical activity. If you're intensely physically challenged by your vocation or everyday life, that's fine, but for most of us this need translates to our fitness program. Accepting this requirement, Paleo Diet success is plastered far and wide across the internet, and often ends with the most dramatic increase in fitness. Besides our Rhonda at QuantumFit, I'm not going to bother with links. Just Google "paleo diet success stories."

We all know that fat causes heart disease, right? Oh, wait... if you've been paying attention to anything I've written, linked to, or talked about for the past year, you know the science about this is not as sound as we've been led to believe. There are good fats and bad fats, and it comes as a total lack of surprise to me that those which have evidence to support their goodness are abundant in foods associated with the Paleo Diet (stearic acid, DHA, and EPA to name a few), and that fats known for their badness are limited or, in the case of the very bad trans-fat, absent entirely. Other than a higher intake of fats relative to low-fat diets, I'm not sure where the concern about heart health comes from here... no one I know of interprets the Paleo Diet as "eating buckets of lard."

Easy to follow? OK... I'll give them this one, from one perspective; changing habits is hard. If you've not been eating paleo, or close to it, if you love your Coke or Pepsi, this will be a real challenge. However, it's also one you need to take up (or some similar diet) because the crap you are eating is killing you. And, no one said you have to dive in all at once. Some people (like myself) do better with diving in, committing 100% to a dietary change. Others may do better adopting Paleo in stages... first lose the soda, then lose pre-processed foods, then start cutting back the grains... it's do-able.

From the perspective of what the diet requires, what constitutes it, I would argue it's the easiest to follow on their list. Diet #1, the DASH diet, lists two different sources to explain the premise of the diet in the "how does it work" section, and opens with the phrase "first, decide how much you want to read." By contrast, the Paleo Diet in this section neatly outlines the entire dietary model in one sentence, and opens with "Paleo diets are based on a simple premise." Could you read more about it? Sure... I read bucketsful of info on the Paleo Diet regularly. It all depends on how specific you want to get. However, the basic diet is a simple philosophy, and the beauty of it is, despite efforts to the contrary, it's hard to posit a valid argument that it's unhealthy. We may find, someday, that it's not actually optimal... but eating lean meats, veggies, nuts and seeds, avoiding processed foods? I've read rants about the dangers of the Paleo Diet which make it sound like we're suggesting people eat Snickers bars and drink gin all day. What is so dangerous about eating lean meat and veggies?

In fact, the U.S. News "Are There Health Risks" section on the Paleo Diet cautions that by shunning grains and dairy, we could be missing out on a lot of nutrients. As I've said before, there are no nutrients in grains and dairy which you cannot get in abundance in foods which are on the Paleo Diet. Technically, yes... if you cut all the non-Paleo foods from your diet and don't replace them with the quantity and variety of veggies, nuts, and fruits that you should be eating, you could end up malnutritioned. But, that's true of any diet.

I'm not qualified to say that the Paleo Diet is unequivocally, objectively the best diet for optimal human health. I advocate it because it is structurally simple, proven effective, and manifestly poses no inherent health dangers if you're following it properly. However, reading the U.S. News diet rankings, I think that the issues brought up in their review don't hold up well... sometimes in the light of statements made in other sections of their own article.

Most telling however is that the Paleo Diet has, in response to the question "Did this diet work for you?" which is posted below the blurb for each diet on the list, the most "Yes" votes and least "No" votes. Overwhelmingly.

Why There Are Better Choices Than Soybean Oil

Between various forms of usage, the people of the US consume over 12 billion pounds of soybean oil per year. That is an average of  33lbs per person, if you go with an estimated population of 375 million.

Clearly, we're growing and using quite a lot of soybeans.

Soy was once the golden child of health food marketing, but since then we've found out various ways in which it's not a particularly healthy choice. But, what about just the oil?

Well, my opinion is that it's best avoided, and here's why.

Firstly, soybean oil is usually hydrogenated. This is done to make it more palatable, and also more stable (giving it a longer shelf life). To simplify the process, hydrogen gas bubbles are passed through the oil and the hydrogen latches on to the fat molecules. The problem with hydrogenation is that it creates trans-fats. While you'll hear me extol the virtues fats almost anytime you get me talking about food, trans-fats are to be avoided because they stack against each other easily (making them the only fat likely to cause arterial blockage), and also because they're shaped like fats which perform vital bodily functions (so your body will try to use them as such), but are chemically unable to to do the job. Thus, essential nutritional needs go unmet, and your body keeps signaling that you need to take in more nutrients, leaving you hungry.

The demand for soybean oil has become great enough, and the awareness of trans-fats pervasive enough in the public consciousness, that in typical Big Agra fashion a type of soybean oil which does not "need" hydrogenation has been developed. Whether more genetically modified organisms introduced into our food supply is a good idea is probably a subject of debate for many who will read this (my opinion is, no, please stop frakking with our food), but for the purposes of this article we'll take it at face value: increasingly, hydrogenation of soybean oil won't be required (though the new GMO product hasn't come remotely close to fulfilling supply... presently, most soybean oil is still hydrogenated).

Is there anything else wrong with soybean oil? Again, the answer is "yes."

100g of soybean oil contains 7g of omega-3 fatty acids to 51g of omega-6: a ratio of 1:7. Flaxseed oil, in comparison, has an omega-3:omega-6 ratio of 3:1. Also, soybean oil is almost over 50% linoleic acid, a fatty acid which, in high doses, can potentially cause some problems

If you're going to eat out, or especially if you're eating anything processed or packaged, soybean oil is so prevalent that it's hard to avoid. However, if you're minding your diet, it's probably best to avoid it. There are plenty of alternative; olive oil, coconut oil, grapeseed oil, to name just a few.

Breast Cancer and the Paleo Diet

You can tell by this scientifically accurate representation of a typically happy
and sunny Paleolithic day, replete with smiling veggies and bone-in mammoth
roast, that even though she supported cure research Jane Ugg probably didn't
get breast cancer herself.  OK... but that last part is true.

This is National Womens' Health Week, and so I thought it would be a good time to address a few topics that are of particular concern to women. We'll start with breast cancer.

While it's true that men can develop breast cancer, it is overwhelmingly predominant in women: over 250,000 new cases were projected to be diagnosed last year in women, and fewer than 2000 cases in men.

I believe it it generally true that proper diet and good exercise promotes health, and that a Paleo diet model and functional fitness such as we do at QuantumFit are sound definitions of "proper" and "good," but there is a specific aspect to address here regarding breast cancer and, indeed, many cancers in general.

Cancer cells need sugar to grow. Part and parcel of the mutations which cause cells to become cancerous in the first place is the loss of their ability to make use of aerobic energy production... rather than prioritizing energy production via the mitochondria, priority is given to processes of cell division. In this state, the cell becomes totally dependent on glucose.

With this knowledge, some of the research being done and the conclusions drawn from it seems strange to me... for example, this article discusses the discovery part of the why and how by which cancer cells utilize glucose (the name of the molecule under discussion, "pyruvate kinase," essentially means "mover of pyruvate," which is the molecule glucose is broken down into during glycolysis), and goes on to suggest development of drugs to inhibit the production of this protein. What is not mentioned once in the article is what might happen if the patient stopped feeding the cancer glucose.

Similarly, this post at Mark's Daily Apple nicely addresses as study involving mice which was presented as evidence that dietary fat and cholesterol may raise the risk of breast cancer development, yet the western diet mice were eating (a) not real food and (b) a diet which was overwhelmingly sugar, not fat. And, sugar feeds cancer.

There is even research into a process called Insulin Potentiation Therapy, which exploits the hunger of cancer cells for sugar to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs while also reducing the impact of those drugs on healthy cells. It should not be surprising that cancer cells have vastly more insulin receptors (they're screaming for glucose, and insulin brings it to them). But how much more effective would this therapy be if the patient already had, or was promoting, a higher degree of insulin sensitivity by maintaining a low-sugar/low-carb diet?

That sugar feeds cancer is not news... so why isn't it plastered everywhere? Why aren't there big billboards which say, "Cancer eats sugar, so you shouldn't?"

Let's be clear on this, again; your body does not require excess dietary sugar or carbs. There are only a few areas of the body which require glucose to operate, and your body can make the amounts that you actually need, all on its own. You'll get some sugars from eating ripe veggies and fruits, but you don't need to take in more than that.

If cancer has developed, will adopting a Paleo-type diet beat it? No, not on its own. But inhibiting the ability of the cancer to grow will certainly help. And, as a preventative measure, the Paleo diet makes your body an environment which is hostile to the development of most cancers in the first place, by depriving them of an opportunity to take hold.

Everyone's body produces cancerous cells on a regular basis, but the body has mechanisms in place to regulate and repair, so cancer as a disease never develops for most healthy individuals. But, if you've cultivated the perfect cancer-growth environment (eating lots of sugar), you increase the likelihood of the cancerous cells out-pacing the corrective actions. Yes, it's more complex than that, but it's a sound rule of thumb; avoid sugar, inhibit cancer. A fire can't burn if you take oxygen away, and cancer has a hard time growing if you take glucose away.

So, in this way, a Paleo diet will act as a preventative measure against breast cancer, and help inhibit its growth if developed, because it inherently is a low-sugar diet.

Once again, it comes back to this; eat real food. Avoid (or at least avoid an excess of) grains, dairy, legumes, and starchy items like white potatoes. Eat lean protein, healthy fats, plenty of vegetables, and some fruit. It is both amazing and (in hindsight) totally obvious that this will positively impact and help prevent the development of almost every disease linked to diet, from diabetes to cancer. But, I think given the prevalence of breast cancer, this scenic route to the blanket usefulness of adopting a Paleo-type diet was worth it.

Grill, Baby, Grill! (and a bit about Vitamin D)

So, so tasty! My mouth is watering just looking at this...

It's been rainy as hell (which would actually be pretty useful in hell, now I think about it...) Um... it's been rainy as Scotland the past couple of weeks, but it's warming up and the best days of spring and summer are just ahead! During the long months of winter it's vital that we take vitamin D, but now we're reaching the time of year when we Midwesterners can get it from the best natural source; the Sun. Or, speaking more accurately, we can use the Sun to make our body produce it's own vitamin D.

I'm certainly not saying “go spend all day in the sun.” However, if you ramp up your exposure periods over time, starting off with just 10 minutes or so in direct sunlight, and work up, your body will adapt and you'll be able to spend more and more time in the sun without burning. Obviously, if you're of a very fair complexion, adjust accordingly. You've lived in your body a long time and you know best how you respond to sun exposure. However, it's definitely true that it's far more effective for your body to produce vitamin D naturally than it is to ingest it, so make sure you get your butt outside and play when the weather is nice!


As a quick aside, there is some evidence to suggest that you should forgo using sunscreens, but if you have to spend a long period in the sun and haven't had an opportunity to build up your tan, as it were, it's probably preferable to occasionally wear sunscreen rather than get a nasty burn.

Speaking of getting outside to play... everyone owns a grill, right? No? Go buy a freakin' grill (I am vehemently on the side of charcoal, but if gas is your thing I won't judge you... to your face. :) ). Meat + Fire = Dinner is about as Paleo as it gets, so here's a simple, amazingly tasty method for grilling up some awesome chicken:

Ingredients

1 whole Chicken, w/ skin

Olive Oil

Salt & Pepper

(seriously, that's it)

Chicken Prep: is easy; cut out the backbone, and flatten it out. Coat it thoroughly with olive oil, then liberally sprinkle the salt and pepper.

Grill Prep: once your coals are ready, put them all on one side of the grill. If you have a gas grill, turn the burner on on one side only.

Place the chicken breast-up on the side of the grill away from the heat, and cover. Optionally, you can toss a piece of smokewood on the coals (or however you Philistines with gas grills do smoke) for some extra flavor.

Come back in 30-40 minutes to temp it, but it will usually take about an hour. It is super tasty, and the skin is one of the top ten flavors I've ever had in my mouth.


Enjoy!