Nutrition and Physical Regeneration

My last trip to Las Vegas with a very lovely traveling companion

I love to travel, especially without any real agenda. Just show up somewhere and take each day as it comes. I can travel upscale and I can rough it. Domestically speaking, I don't think either way is more advantageous than the other, but each presents a different kind of experience.

I don't particularly care to fly when I travel unless it is absolutely unavoidable. It really is a shame. When I was younger I used to love to go to the airport just to watch the planes take off. The first business I ever owned had an office location that included an unobstructed view of the nearby commercial airport landing strip. It was especially memorable at night where all you could see were the lights of the strip and the lights of the plane. It was far enough away where I couldn't hear the noise and yet close enough to have a pleasurable view. I used to stand and watch the planes land from the front of my office at night while waiting for my crew to check back in for the evening.

The government's response to 911 ruined all that. Actually flying was going to the pits even before then because of all the non-security related regulations. Once upon a time flying was a special experience. People even dressed up. No longer. I wrote about my travel experiences in the aftermath of 9/11 in a piece titled Peace Quiet and a T1 line. It wasn't fun. Accordingly, I like to stick to land travel unless I need to be someplace in a hurry.

Another challenge is eating well while traveling. I realize some people look at travel as a time when they can eat whatever they want. While I certainly understand that approach, this article isn't for you. There are many who can't afford to do that for health or family reasons, and guidelines for surviving are in order.

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Medical studies are very confusing. Quite often it seems that multiple studies on the same subject contradict one another. One year carbohydrates are bad and the next they are good! People who eat saturated fats in amounts greater than recommended, live longer. Too much saturated fat will kill you, etc., etc., etc. You might hurt yourself by following these studies, but at least you'd never be bored.

Current consensus suggests obesity is a function of how many calories are used vs. how many are taken in, especially if those calories consist of saturated fats. Assuming all calories are equal, it becomes a question of math. A calorie is defined in chemistry as the amount of heat required to raise one gram of water one degree centigrade. Nutritionally speaking, however, all calories are not equal. The human body requires more than just raw calories to operate efficiently. If it were merely a matter of energy, we would be able to consume anything containing the pre-requisite calories and maintain a healthy body.

Refined sugar is a source of calories, but it affects the body like a drug. It's a "hollow" calorie. Not only is there no nutritional benefit from refined sugar, consumption of it causes a net loss in the body's essential minerals. To process sugar the body must use calcium. If there is none available in the diet, the body's cells will take it from your teeth and bones. Cavities do not appear in the teeth merely because sugar comes into contact with them. They occur because your body, in order to digest refined sugar, must borrow calcium from your teeth and bones whenever your calcium intake is lower than what is required to process the sugar. Deficiency is generally our condition. We consume so much refined sugar per person on average that it would be virtually impossible to ingest enough calcium to make up the difference. Rates of osteoporosis and dental problems in the U.S. and elsewhere tend to confirm this.

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Lets face it. Who are we kidding? Anyone who was a connoisseur or aficionado of beef before embracing what blogger Darya Pino calls upgrading your healthstyle knows where I am going. Flavor and marbling have little to do with each other when it comes to meat. Let me repeat, flavor and marbling have little to do with each other when it comes to meat. In the words of Carrie Oliver, sometimes known as the Beef Geek, marbling accounts for maybe 5% of the pedigree of a meat.

There I said it. Now let us move on.

Yes, I know. You will hear in many corners how marbling makes things all fine and dandy, but it ain't so. You will also hear that grass finished beef is often dry, chewy, and lacking flavor because it is so lean, but that also ain't so (yes I am aware of my grammar usage – it is deliberate).

No question the best tasting conventionally raised beef I ever had was prime grade, but not all prime is equally buttery and succulent, despite the price. No question that I've had some less than memorable grass finished cuts of meat, but I've had some outstanding culinary representatives of that genre as well.

However, nothing will ever quite match the genuine kobe beef steak I had once for a whopping $13 an ounce (something similar is pictured above). The meat is so marbled and tender it cuts like butter, even when raw. Buttered beef, as one food writer in the video below refers to it. So in principle there are other dynamics at play when it comes to meat flavor that has little to do with marbling.

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BOSTON — The word “Paleolithic” might evoke images from the 1980s film “Quest for Fire” — or, more recently, the scruffy cavemen in those Geico commercials. But Nate Rosenberg says going back in time to eat like a Neanderthal doesn’t make him one.

“It’s obviously not a reenactment of Paleolithic life,” Rosenberg says.

The 27-year-old foraged through his contemporary kitchen in the cute Somerville apartment he shares with his Paleo partner Michal Naisteter.

“We eat modern foods,” he says. “In the Paleolithic era they did not have ground beef or, you know, dried oregano from Whole Foods and stuff life that, which we benefit from. But we try keep in mind our evolutionary history.”

Added Naisteter: “I eat fish, I eat eggs, I eat vegetables and I eat berries and nuts.”

Naisteter and Rosenberg are part of an international fitness and nutrition movement known as “ancestral health.” The theory is that while the food humans eat has evolved and gone “high-tech” through the ages, our bodies have not. Primal eating is pre-agricultural. “Going Paleo” means no processed foods, no sugar, no whole grains, legumes or dairy. But they eat lots of meat. Naisteter gave me a tour of their fridge.

“I would say we have about six pounds of ground beef right now,” she says.

There was some buffalo, and even a vacuum-sealed boneless free-range turtle.

“What is this big thing?” she continues. “A fresh pork ham. Don’t tell my mother, we’re Jewish.” Naisteter says her mother thinks her lifestyle is really weird, but she’s also trying to convince her mother to try it. “He’s already convinced his parents to do it,” Naisteter says.

Because, they say, eating Paleo has drastically improved their health. No more eczema, allergies, acne or stomach issues. Even so, dietitian and Boston University Professor Joan Salge-Blake is a Paleo skeptic — saying that was then, this is now.

“We should all be going back,” he says. “I don’t think we have to go all the way back. Let’s go back to grandma, and how grandma cooked, and she made dinner and she had fruits and vegetables and she had more grains and there was less sweets and treats.”

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Another gem from twitter that some of you who don't follow me there may have missed.

Known as the "Salmon River Caveman," Richard Zimmerman lived an essentially 19th century lifestyle, a digital age anachronism who never owned a telephone or a television and lived almost entirely off the land.

"He was in his home at the caves at the end, and it was his wish to die there," said Connie Fitte, who lived across the river. "He was the epitome of the free spirit."

Richard Zimmerman had been in declining health when he died Wednesday.

Few knew him by his given name. To friends and visitors to his jumble of cave-like homes scrabbled from a rocky shoulder of the Salmon River, he was Dugout Dick.

He was the last of Idaho's river-canyon loners that date back to Territorial days. They are a unique group that until the 1980s included canyon contemporaries with names like Beaver Dick, Cougar Dave and Wheelbarrow Annie, "Buckskin Bill" (real name Sylvan Hart) and "Free Press Frances" Wisner. Fiercely independent loners, they lived eccentric lives on their own terms and made the state more interesting just by being here.

Most, like Zimmerman, came from someplace else. Drawn by Idaho's remoteness and wild places removed from social pressures, they came and spent their lives here, leaving only in death.

Some became reluctant celebrities, interviewed about their unusual lifestyles and courted by media heavyweights. Zimmerman was featured in National Geographic magazine and spurned repeated invitations to appear on the "Tonight Show."

"I ride Greyhounds, not airplanes," he said in a 1993 Statesman interview. "Besides, the show isn't in California. The show is here."

Cort Conley, who included Zimmerman in his 1994 book "Idaho Loners", said that "like Thoreau, he often must have smiled at how much he didn't need. É What gave him uncommon grace and dignity for me were his spiritual life, his musical artistry, his unperturbed acceptance of life as it is, and being a WWII veteran who had served his country and harbored no expectations in return."

His metamorphisis to Dugout Dick began when he crossed a wooden bridge over the Salmon River in 1947 and built a makeshift home on the side of a hill. He spent the rest of his life there, fashioning one cavelike dwelling after another, furnishing them with castoff doors, car windows, old tires and other leavings.

"I have everything here," he said. "I got lots of rocks and rubber tires. I have plenty of straw and fruit and vegetables, my dog and my cats and my guitars. I make wine to cook with. There's nothing I really need."

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Three Philly bars were raided last week for the non-crime of selling beers that were not properly registered with the state. There was nothing unsafe about the beers. No patrons were harmed. The state either didn’t receive it’s mandatory bribe (aka, the registration fee), or had filed the bribe under a variation of the beer’s name, and so couldn’t be bothered to honor the bribe.

This is a senseless blow to an industry that took half a century to recover from Prohibition. The reputation of American beer, embodied by Budweiser, Coors, and their kin, is a consequence of that "experiment." That reputation finally started to grow, no doubt slowed by the myriad post-Prohibition regulations that were put on the books, such as registration of each and every beer sold in Pennsylvania. And it grew because entrepreneurs have relentlessly tried to deliver better-tasting beer as brewers, bar owners, and retailers.

Brewing and beer bars around the country

Philadelphia has become a Mecca of sorts for lovers of beer, especially the Flemish variety. As much of my family lives in Philly, I have firsthand experience with the delightful selection of bars and beers. In fact, our wedding rehearsal dinner was held at a popular Belgian beer bar and restaurant in Old City, while after a cousin’s downtown wedding, we all gathered at another spot only blocks away. Although I’ve never frequented the bars that were raided, judging by what was confiscated, it sounds like they specialize in Belgians. Monk's Cafe Sour Flemish Red Ale refers to one of the original Belgian beer bars in Philly – Monk’s Café. Not my favorite spot, but their food and beer is impeccable, and they were around at the beginning of the current craft brew phenomenon. Duvel Belgian Golden Ale needs no introduction to anyone who is even passively aware of Belgian beer.

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Those of you who don't follow me on twitter (shame on you!) missed my tweet regarding this amazing 73 year old woman.

Hat Tip: Wilt Alston

Five days a week, she trains women of all ages — three days at Energy gym and two days at her church, where she has a class of 25…

With 10 percent body fat, Shepherd is 5-foot-5 and about 130 pounds of inspiration to her clients, many of whom she includes in her routine of walking or running, which begins at 4 a.m.

Some days, even her trainer, Raymond Day, can't keep up with her…

It wasn't until she turned 56 that she began to exercise with the aid of her sister. They were both spurred on to join a gym after shopping for bathing suits and thinking they didn't like what they saw in the mirror.

If a 73-Year-Old Can Get in Shape, So Can You

What's holding you back from getting into the shape of your life or even just getting started?

As of the afternoon of the composition of this post (as opposed to the actual publishing date) my neighbor had a brand new refrigerator installed. Since my schedule is somewhat more flexible than hers, she asked if I could be available to let the installers in during the 4 hour alloted time period in which they were scheduled to arrive. I agreed and just a few hours ago my neighbor received a brand spanking new GE Profile refrigerator after many months of problems with her original refrigerator which is less than 4 years old.

I didn't realize I was going to have to do a little "housekeeping" as a part of the process. First, I had to round up her cats to keep the them from racing out the front door when the GE guys arrived. I'm sure they were wondering who is this tall dark stranger dressed completely in black with the big Magic Johnson type smile invading their territory. "What" the cat(s) were probably thinking, "he wants to pick us up and take us to parts unknown? Hmmph! He has got another think coming!"

So instead of gently picking them up and placing them in the bedroom for the duration of the installation, I ended up chasing one in the bedroom and the other into the bathroom and then shutting the door behind them. I'm sure I am not at the top of their list of favorite human beings.

Second, my neighbor had made no provision for the food that was in her soon to be replaced refrigerator. Given that it takes a few hours for the temperatures to reach a proper setting in a new refrigerator, I had to empty out her old one and take all the perishables (fresh and frozen) and put them in my refrigerator until she gets home tonight.

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Double-Sous-Down-Vide Sammich

Did you know that Colonel Sanders wasn’t a real Colonel? He served in the military, that’s true, signed up when he was 16, served all his time in Cuba. But the Colonel handle was an honorary one, bestowed on him by the Governor of Kentucky, I think.

He also wasn’t fond of the direction his Kentucky Fried Chicken went after he sold out. They even sued him when he described their gravy as “sludge” haha. He was probably being too kind…

KFC has been in the news a lot lately, because of their new sandwich, the notorious double down. You know, two pieces of chicken, some bacon, some sort of sauce, cheese, and GASP! NO BUN!!!…

After stumbling over my 999th blog or news article about this ridiculous sandwhich, it occurred to me, why not make my own? Why not, indeed? But I’ll make it the healthy and fun way-I’ll sous-vide the chicken, using some cajun spice and grass-fed butter, I’ll use some Italian hot sausage, some home-made mayo, along with some brie cheese. Dean Ornish would love this!

beef and whiskey: beef for your health. whiskey for your soul.

Are We Really Supposed to Look Jacked?

It seems like people have a very easy time putting on fat, and a very hard time getting it off…doesn’t that mean that our physiology makes that the “normal” condition? – It doesn’t if our surviving hunter-gatherer brethren of the modern world are in any way a reasonable analogue to what Paleo man looked like, and I have a strong suspicion that they are. These people are invariably low on body fat, even as they’re well nourished. I know from personal experience that once you’re body is lean, it’s almost impossible to become fat on a natural, Paleolithic style human diet with a modicum of physical activity. How much more so that would have been for Paleo people who had truly physically demanding lifestyles?

Fire And Stone
The Paleo Spirit of a Modern Consumer-Gatherer

The Unwanted Horse in the United States – International Implications

…post-World War II European and Asian populations were being encouraged to eat horse meat that was considered lean and a good source of iron.

The result was the development of a US horse meat export market to European and Asian countries for human consumption. The US horse slaughter industry steadily grew to meet that demand and in the late 1980s was processing over 300,000 horses per year on average.

Overtime, the number of horses processed gradually declined and reached a low of only 42,303 head in 2002 before stabilizing at about 100,000 head per year over the last few years.

Today, over one billion people, or 16% of the world's populations, eat horse meat. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) total production of horse meat for human consumption world-wide in 2007 was 1,040,450 tons, roughly five million horses.

This is an increase of 27.6% in consumption since 1990. The top five leading horse meat producing countries in 2007 were China, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Argentina.

HorseTalk

We're so good at medical studies that most of them are wrong

In the end, Young noted, by the time you reach 61 tests, there's a 95 percent chance that you'll get a significant result at random. And, let's face it–researchers want to see a significant result, so there's a strong, unintentional bias towards trying different tests until something pops out.

Young went on to describe a study, published in JAMA, that was a multiple testing train wreck: exposures to 275 chemicals were considered, 32 health outcomes were tracked, and 10 demographic variables were used as controls. That was about 8,800 different tests, and as many as 9 million ways of looking at the data once the demographics were considered…

…In a survey of the recent literature, he found that 95 percent of the results of observational studies on human health had failed replication when tested using a rigorous, double blind trial.

Ars Technica – hat tip: Brad at WendyMcElroy.com

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge

The rules are simple: Your friend, or a friend of a friend, or a friend of a friend of a friend heard about this thing, and all you have to do is bring $50 and a bottle of wine to this apartment, the exact location of which will be revealed to you sometime after your RSVP.

Wink is a roving supper with no physical address. There is no website, only its creator, whom we’ll call “chef X,’’ an anonymous e-mail, and an ever-shifting array of cobbled-together place settings in an ever-shifting array of homes around Boston. X has clandestinely descended upon these kitchens some 60 times over the past three years.

“Restaurants are great – it’s loud, they give you a menu, and then they bring you whatever you want. And dinner parties are great, but then you have one person paying this huge sum of money. I guess this is my way of creating something sort of in between,’’ says X. “My favorite conversation is hearing everyone sit around and say, ‘So how do you know about this place?’ ’’

The Boston Globe

Do you really know how to select fruit? – Boost your game, get up to speed and get a brix meter, until you can do it by sight.

146 Reasons Refined Sugar Is Ruining Your Health – And if you still don't believe it check out this classic by William Dufty or Nancy Appleton's books covering sugar suicide.

Locavores, blame the law – it is government, not the free choice of individuals, that has rigged the system.

One great thing about making your own butter is that if you have access to a good source of local cream (raw or pasteurized) but not butter you can make your own great locally sourced butter.

For those who don't want to use the jar and shake method, this is a good video on making cultured and uncultured butter. You also don't need to use yogurt for the cultured butter (if you have access to raw cream). Depending on your tastes you can just let unpasteurized cream sour at room temperature for about 12 hours.

If you have a problem with milk proteins, or even if you don't, check out my post on making your own delicious ghee.

If making your own butter or ghee is not in the equation, then two excellent sources are Kerrygold Butter and Pure Indian Foods Ghee, both of which can be ordered online if not available locally.

Enjoy!