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!

Grass-Fed Beef: Healthy Meat, Happy Cows, Terrified Big Agra Biz

Our freezer full of the tasty, healthy side of grass-fed beef
(formerly known as Rocky) which we got from Mundt Farms.

It comes as no surprise to me that Fox "News" recently ran a piece extolling the virtues of conventionally raised beef. They have repeatedly and consistently shown their bias to be in favor of big business, and there aren't many businesses as big in this country as the production of our food, and the production of our drugs (and one system feeds the other, have no doubt about that). I will not deal directly with the segment of the John Stossel show in question, Paleo nutrition guru Robb Wolf does a fantastic job dissecting it here, and you should definitely take the time to divert away from this article and read it... fantastic stuff. In full disclosure, unlike Robb I'm pretty convinced about the issue of human carbon production, the folly of fossil fuels, and lean further to the left politically, but the man is absolutely dead-on in this article, and in the belief that we all need to take our health in our own hands and start making better choices (and, thus, votes) with our money. One of the most effective votes you can cast is choosing grass-fed beef.

One thing mentioned in the report that is usually true is that grass-fed beef is a higher per-pound cost for the end consumer (normally, I don't like using that word to describe humans, but in this case it's literally true). In my personal experience, it's not twice as expensive, but it is more costly. I think this is partly a cost of "boutique" demand; those who are aware of the value in health and environmental impact are willing to pay more for quality, and are currently enough in the minority that the prices can stay high. The far bigger issue is the fact that it's not a part of the established mainstream food system in this country, which makes it much more costly... if all those corn subsidies (which, as Robb pointed out, are basically welfare for huge industry) were redirected into growing vegetables and raising grass-fed beef it'd get much, much cheaper.  I'm OK with tax money going into reducing the cost to our citizenry of life essentials like food if it's actually supporting the health of citizens.

Luckily, there is a way to mitigate the higher cost of buying grass-fed beef somewhat; buy in bulk.

We recently bought a side of beef from our friends at Mundt Farms, and offered to split that among some friends. We ended up keeping about 1/2 of the side. Based on the cuts they chose, our friends who shared in paid an average price-per-pound ranging from $5.31 to $7.50.  Here's a more specific breakdown for the meat Darren and I kept, along with the cost of the same cuts from our local supermarket:

Cut of Beef	Our Grass-Fed Cost	Kroger's Corn-Fed Cost
Ground Beef (90% lean)	$4.75	$3.94
Chuck Roast	$5.50	$4.79
Ribeye Steak	$11.00	$10.99
Sirloin Steak	$9.00	$7.99
NY Strip Steak	$15.00	$11.99
Soup Bones	$3.00	$1.69
Liver	$3.00	$2.49
Heart	$3.00	N/A
Tongue	$3.00	N/A

And, those are the prices for the beef which is marketed with no claims to specialness... in other words, their labels say nothing about being all-natural, hormone-free, pastured, etc. Given the very lean nature of grass-fed beef, I used the 90% lean ground beef as a comparison.

Start looking at the special stuff (in the case of Kroger, "Laura's Lean Beef," raised without anti-biotics and without added hormones), and look at what happens to the prices: ground beef becomes $5.07/lb, more expensive than the grass-fed ground beef, acquired from the farmer who we know personally and know definitively isn't doing the absolute minimum by FDA/USDA requirements to qualify for a claim on a label, but is actually raising his cattle in a sustainable way and feeding them properly.

On a quick tangent, the liver is potentially packed with nutrients, but let's face it... it's also a filter. If the animal whose liver you're eating has been eating exactly the wrong stuff and said liver has had to filter loads of toxins and is full of bad fats, guess what... it's in your food too. We ate a bit of Rocky's liver the other night, and it was far and away the sweetest (in the literal sense of the sensation of taste), best tasting liver we've ever had. Why? It was a healthy liver from a healthy animal. 

So, keeping this in mind when comparing the slightly-more-expensive grass-fed liver to the cost of conventionally-raised liver, right next to it in the supermarket was calf liver, for $4.29/lb. I don't know if people really will just pay more for the word "calf," but if there's any aspect of flavor superiority (I have no personal experience of it), I would bet it might be because the animal was slaughtered sooner in it's life, and so the degradation of the liver did not go as far. That's just my guess, but it seems logical to me... I mean, it's not like it will be more tender because it's been exercised less, in the manner of skeletal muscle.

And, of course, Kroger doesn't carry beef heart or tongue at all, and by all that is good and right in the world, if you haven't tried beef tongue you must do so. It is so tender and flavorful... I just had some of the best I've ever had last week and I am now salivating just writing about it and remembering the meal. Seriously, holy crap... try beef tongue! (I like it in tacos)

If I were to go out to the farmer's markets around town, the grass-fed prices are usually higher still... so, we definitely saved some buying the side. Beyond these immediately apparent comparisons in price, though, consider the following...

• Grass-fed beef is much more nutritionally dense, and better for you (if you're still doubting this thanks to the debatably wise words of Dr. Capper, spend some more time reading Robb Wolf, or indeed, just Google for a bit).
• Grass-fed beef is, when the whole system is considered, more environmentally friendly and sustainable.
• It is inherent in choosing grass-fed beef over conventional beef that big corn production (tied to many other problems in our food supply) is not supported.
• The cattle are healthier and enjoy a superior quality of life, insofar as can be told from behavior, and enjoy a much stronger similarity to what would be their natural environment were they wild animals (minus the predators, which has to make for added happiness, right?).

That last may have no meaning to some, but I for one feel better about eating an animal which has been bred for the sole purpose of being my food source if I know that the time it spent maturing into dinner wasn't a nightmarish experience.

I'm partial to Mundt Farms, partly because they're friends, partly because their prices are good, and partly because Rocky has been so tasty thus far. However, there are a lot of choices in Indiana for getting your hands on a side of grass-fed beef:

Royer Farm Fresh Beef

Seven Sons Farms

Apple Family Farm

Brothers Beef

This is not an exhaustive list, by any means, but it will get you started!

Also, if you don't have a deep-freeze to store it, just hop on Craigslist... we got ours for $130, and I saw some (which had already sold) for as low as $40 which the sellers claimed were in good working order. Caveat emptor, of course, but I'm sure a freezer in good condition could easily be had for less than we paid.

So, buy a few less coffees per month (or, depending on your habit, week) at Starbucks, drop part of your cable TV package (you need to get out and be active more anyway), take other small steps to make it financially viable, and invest in some high-quality protein. Your body, the cattle, and Mother Earth will thank you.

Cavepersons at the Drive-Up Window

Let me be clear; given the opportunity to eat good food (organically grown, fresh, ripe, etc.), any kind of fast food is a crappy choice. With few exceptions, and certainly none I can think of at any of the huge chain fast-food places, the food is sourced from our industrial agriculture system, where the beef is grain fed and chock-full-o'-antibiotics, the produce is grown halfway around the globe and forced into ripeness chemically, and the omega-3 / omega-6 fatty acid ratio is off-the-scale and in the wrong direction.

However, it is conceivable that we may sometimes be stuck for options. I remember vividly (during my previous life as an event production guy, or "roadie") doing a tiny crap event in Texas for a gaming client. I had to drive hours from Houston to get there, as that was the nearest airport, and not even the Interstate highways went anywhere near it. To this day I have no idea why we set up at the event (the event in question was some kind of local festival, and it involved killing lots of snakes. Don't ask, I don't know).

The only restaurants in town were McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Dairy Queen. That's it.  There was a grocery store, but I had no facility for preparing food at my motel. Now, at this point in my life I wasn't as concerned about nutrition as I am now, but I still tried to eat what I thought of at the time as "well," and these choices were definitely not on the list.  Now that I'm concerned with what I eat, I'm actually less depressed when they are, for whatever reason, the best or only options (though, thankfully, those kinds of situations almost never arise now).

If I were to be dropped into Freer, TX again I would order the side salads from McDonald's, get a Double Quarter Pounder (without cheese) and hold the bun, thanks. I would get water to drink (the little cup of free water, from the fountain machine, which you can refill as much as you want). I would get the buffet at Pizza Hut, get a few slices of "with everything," and just eat the toppings, along with a salad.

I would eat similarly at Dairy Queen as I would at McDonald's... though, I would probably still get a small ice cream cone, dipped in butterscotch. It's attached to some great childhood memories. Sue me. :-)

The point here is, you can still eat pretty well within the strictures of the Paleo diet, even at fast-food joints. The quality of the food might not be great, and certainly not as high as you'll have preparing your own meals, but avoiding grains and other starchy carbs, dairy, and legumes is pretty do-able.

At Taco Bell, you can get a couple of chicken soft tacos, and just eat the guts out of them, leaving the tortilla. At Subway, you can get all the stuff you'd get on a sandwich done as a spinach salad, dressed with salt, pepper, and olive oil. At any burger joint or sandwich shop, you can always have them hold the bun... and if they give you the confused, blank response I got at a McDonald's one day, you can toss the bun out somewhere for birds to snack on after you get your meal. And, these places almost all have a side-salad option of some kind, now.

Faced with the prospect of eating out, especially at a fast-food restaurant, we see nothing but what look like poor options, nothing healthy, and the temptation is strong to just go ahead and order a burger and fries because there're no better choices. But, that just isn't the case... it's always possible to make some adjustments to bring your meal more in line with your paleo plans.  Doing so at a traditional restaurant is even easier; get the veggies as a side dish, order an entrée that isn't covered in a sugary sauce, ignore the basket of rolls they bring to the table before you order. No sweat.

So, remember this post the next time you're shouting into that crappy little intercom...

Gluten Sucks

I was sent this article by our athlete Sara O. (who also happens to be a biologist) which is a pretty good introductory article on why gluten should be avoided.

Dr. Ansel started to lose me around page 2, and really at the beginning of page 3, with the the successive claims that cutting gluten from your diet wouldn't necessarily lead to weight loss, and then citing a cautionary example of a replacement food which had more calories and more fat.

You can immediately see my issues... firstly, consuming fat is not bad, providing you're getting the right kinds. Secondly, the food cited (gluten free pretzels) is problematic because it's not a food I'd recommend anyone eating on the basis that it's going to be all carbohydrate. This, really, is why gluten-free eating will probably lead to weight loss (presuming you're overweight to begin with)... avoiding gluten (and eating whole foods) leads one away from grains and grain products, and processed foods. Even if you're not making any specific effort to do so, you will very likely reduce your carbohydrate intake just by trying to cut gluten.

Then, she makes the important point that the key to this, and this is really the point of everything I'll ever tell you about nutrition, is that you have to eat real food. 

Yes, if you just go and grab packaged and processed crap off the shelves at the market which bears the label "gluten-free" it is as much of a dietary Lotto play as grabbing the crap without that label in terms of your overall health (and has about the same odds as winning the lottery of bringing you to your best ever health, probably).

But, if in the process of cutting gluten out of your diet, you plan your meals and eat lean meats, a variety of veggies, fruits, nuts and seeds... well, then you're well on your way to health and wellness.

OK, so after my $0.02 worth, here's the article (originally published in Woman's Day magazine):
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/is-gluten-bad-for-you.html

This Week in Eating Paleo (1/20/11)

The meat cake Loretta made for our wedding... Paleo goodness!

So, this past weekend was a weekend of dietary cheats, as Darren and I got married on Sunday. Hooray for us! :) It did mean lots of desserts, though... cookies, muffins, and cakes (Loretta made the most amazing wedding cake... seriously, sinfully delicious).

She also made the meat "cake" pictured above... a tasty meatloaf, iced with roasted garlic and covered in bacon sprinkles. Also delicious, and not at all sinful. Definitely going to be making this again (if Loretta doesn't make it first!).

Here's a video which explains how to roast garlic... the process is pretty straightforward. Of course, I couldn't find a video or set of instructions which didn't suggest spreading it on bread or mixing it into mashed potatoes, both Paleo no-nos. However, you could easily mix it into masked cauliflower, use it with the jicama hash browns, ice a meat cake with it, or just eat it straight out of the oven with a spoon, because it's that tasty!

Otherwise, our week has been pretty standard; eggs, beef, veggies, nuts, seeds, a few clementines and apples here and there. Our food co-op has been out of beef for a bit, so we got some ground turkey instead, and that's been pretty tasty.

Also, we're investing in a deep freeze and going in with some other folks on 1/2 of a cow from Mundt Farms, a local grass-fed and finished farm run by some good friends of ours. This will bring the cost of the beef down to around $4lbs, which is about the average cost per pound of the crap beef you buy retail at mainstream grocers... the grain-fed stuff raised by industrial farming methods. And, again... that brings it to match the average price. But, all our beef will work out to that cost per pound, but a lot of what we'll have are steaks and roasts.  The retail prices for those cuts are a lot higher. I plan on doing the math once we get everything to see if investing in a cow actually makes buying properly raised beef cheaper than buying all the same lower-quality cuts at the store. I'm confident the answer is "yes," but look forward to that report.

This Week in Eating Paleo

So, I'm going to be doing these little updates on a weekly basis... I don't think anyone's really interested in the minute details (if you are, let me know and I'll send you copies of my diet log), but I'll keep posting any brilliant recipes we come up with here.

Speaking of... grated jicama, fried in some olive oil with onions and a little bell pepper. Doesn't quite taste like hash browns, but it totally satisfied my desire for them, and I'm a lad of Irish descent for whom the fried potato was a breakfast (and lunch, and dinner) staple for... well, ever.  Yes, jicama is a tuberous root... however, it's largely water, and what carbs are there are about 50% fiber (as opposed to a potato, which is mostly readily accessible starch).  If you like hash browns, give this a try. Again, it's not quite the same... but it's darn tasty.

Otherwise, pretty standard week: we roasted two chickens and munched on those for protein throughout the week, also had plenty of eggs. Veggies were mostly green... collard greens and broccoli, also some carrots and cabbage. Fats were plenty of nuts and nut butter, and coconut and olive oils.

Speaking of oils...  I've told my clients, get at least 3g of a combined total of the important omega-3s (EPA and DHA) per day. Depending on which fish oil you buy, this can mean taking 12-16 capsules a day (sometimes more). But, there's hope! We found this brand at Costco, and it's also available on Amazon for $22.99 a bottle.

Notice, you'd only have to take 4 capsules a day to get your 3 grams in (plus a little extra).

So, no excuses... make sure you're getting your fish oil in!

Eating Paleo for 1/5 and 1/6/11

Sorry, got behind on my blogging!

The past two days have been pretty simple; snacking on the eggs we boiled Sunday, almonds, walnuts, and cashews, and some clementines.

Meals have been mainly those chickens we cooked on Sunday for protein, and various greens (mostly kale). The last of our pre-cooked parsnips, onions, and spaghetti squash went into a big, tasty fry-up which we had for dinner yesterday and finished off for lunch today.  That meatzza was seriously tasty!

Total calories: 2,301 for the 5th, 1,936 for the 6th.

Eating Paleo and Post-Workout Nutrition

Conventional training wisdom can make eating Paleo and having effective post-workout (PWO) nutrition seem incompatible. Everyone knows that you need a big carb load along with your protein; the insulin spike will take advantage of the optimum protein synthesis window and simultaneously replenish glycogen stores.  The fastest and easiest way to do this is with protein powders, or dairy (which are Paleo no-nos). What is an athlete to do?

This is the approach that I've taken until very recently myself; it definitely works, there's no arguing that. My solution was to eat pretty much Paleo but keep dairy in and drink milk PWO. However, I've now gotten most of the QuantumFit athletes involved in a big contest with a Paleo component, and I need to provide them with alternatives... so, is there a better way to tackle PWO nutrition?

Well, to start with... what approach you should take to your PWO nutrition depends upon your goals. This is an excellent post by Robb Wolf on the subject. He is way more educated than I am on the subject, so be sure to give that a read! However, to boil it down; for the primary goals of health and longevity, and if your short term goal is leanness, PWO carbs are NOT the way to go. In fact, only in the really big metcons (or if you're competing in a multiple-workout-per-day event) would you need to take in the carbs and replenish your glycogen stores.

Mark Sission (who is also more versed and experienced than I am in these matters) also has some excellent posts on the subject here and here. You'll notice the link in that first post to the results of a study which indicates that a big carb intake PWO does not, in fact, impact protein synthesis at all... the window of optimum synthesis is there, but it will be just as effective to take that protein in along with some fats (to aid in recovery; omega-3s are good here!) and keep your body in ketosis.

So, there can be a no-carb approach to PWO nutrition, and more than that... if you're really trying to lean out and your overall nutrition is on target, fasting for a couple of hours PWO can be very effective, too! This is the approach I'd recommend to just about everyone in our contest; remember, there's that body composition component!

But, if you're going to eat Paleo PWO, what should you actually eat? I'm going to simplify a little here; as Robb points out, there's a spectrum here, and exactly what you do (and how precise you want to be about it) will take you closer to truly optimum performance. For most folks in most cases, these guidelines will be effective...

Low/No-Carb PWO Nutrition


This is the approach to take for any instance where you haven't done a big burner of a metcon... if your body hasn't been working at high intensity for more than 40 minutes or so, you don't really need to worry about rapidly replenishing depleted glycogen (unless, as mentioned in the posts linked above, you're going to go do ANOTHER workout in a couple of hours).

This one is easy to do Paleo-style. Any protein source you find tasty and easy to pack/prepare/consume can go in here; eggs, fish, beef, doesn't matter. Make sure you're getting a decent amount, at least as much as you'd eat with a typical meal.

Along with this, take in some fats; again, whatever you find tasty and easy to pack/prepare/consume. This is a great time to take your daily fish oil!

I've been eating a few eggs along with a couple handfuls of nuts for my PWO nutrition the last few days, and that's been a success so far. Many people also use coconut milk here (which is something I'll be trying soon... love coconut milk!).

High-Carb PWO Nutrition


This is harder to do Paleo style, simply because Paleo inherently eliminates most starchy foods. One compromise many athletes make are using sweet potatoes or yams; these aren't considered truly Paleo by most as they're a starchy tuber, but they're well above white potatoes nutritionally yet still pack a little carby punch.

You could also use fruits such as bananas, stone fruits (peaches, etc.), berries, or cooked carrots.

Eating Paleo for 1/4/11

Breakfast was a tasty stir-fry of 5 oz. of chicken, a cup of broccoli,  a cup of bok choy, and about 1/2 cup of onions. Again, I used the stems from the bok choy as nut butter delivery system.

Lunch was more of a quick snack; 3 eggs (we had a busy day).

Dinner was this tasty meat "pizza" from what is fast becoming one of our favorite blogs for Paleo recipes. For dessert, about 4 oz. of raw cashews and a clementine.

Total calories: 2,111

Eating Paleo for 1/3/11

Breakfast was 4 of the eggs we boiled yesterday.

For lunch, 6 oz. of that chicken we pre-cooked, along with a cup of the spaghetti squash sautéed with some bok choy and 3 tablespoons of coconut oil. I spread about 5 tablespoons of cashew butter on the bok choy stalks.

Dinner was another 6 oz. of chicken, with 1/2 cup of broccoli, some of those parsnips and onions, more spaghetti squash, some olive oil, and hemp seeds. Oh, and a spoonful of nut butter and a tangerine for dessert.

Total calories for the day: 2146.

Eating Paleo for 1/2/11

This will be a pretty brief one. :)

Coming off the cheat-filled holidays we prepared to resume strict Paleo eating tomorrow with a little prep work today; we roasted two locally raised, free-range chickens from Simpson's Family Farm along with two large spaghetti squash and a pie pumpkin from the Indy Winter Farmer's Market, and a bunch of parsnips and onions from the newly opened Pogue's Run Grocer co-op.

The eggs will be part of snacks and breakfast for several days, and the veggies and chicken will provide for lunches. We'll still have time to cook, but having some pre-made stuff which can just be tossed in the microwave is very handy. We also have plenty of nuts and nut butter on hand.

Another important step we took was clear the house of all the holiday cookies and candies... now, if carb cravings strike (which sometimes happens in the first few days of strict Paleo eating), there's nothing lurking in the cupboard to offer temptation.