Should We Buy Only Locally Grown Produce?

April 12th, 2010

 

 

While preparing to lead a discussion of the merits of trade with first-year students last fall, I came across a depressing headline in the Wall Street Journal. At the time, the Republicans were expressing skepticism about free trade. As a signatory to a petition to protest Hoover-era trade policies (like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff), I was dismayed. The implications of a shift away from free trade are several, first for wealth creation and second for environmental conservation.

One of the "key elements" of economics is that trade creates wealth. Wealth is whatever people value, but trade allows us to produce either more material goods with the same resources or the same material goods with fewer resources. While it does not profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul, trade increases our ability to produce goods and services and therefore increases our range of opportunities.

Read more…

Good Food Doesn't Stop The Alarm Clock Of Life From Ticking

April 7th, 2010

 

 

It happened last month. A couple of notable events, at least for me. March 2010 was the one year anniversary of this blog. Sort of. It marked one year since I put up my first post. I wasn't really trying to garner a readership at that point and the initial post was a trial balloon that I shared on a couple of yahoo groups of which I am a member. Hmmm…if memory serves me correctly I had over 400 visitors that first time around. Okay, so maybe with a little effort people might be interested in reading what I had to say.

One thing I was sure of is that I was tired of battling it out in yahoo groups or other blogger's comboxes. If I was going to take the time and effort (sometimes much effort and study) to engage a fellow nutritional traveler, I wanted to do it in a environment in which I could develop a loyal readership and perhaps even receive some remuneration for my efforts.

I thought if I could actually add some value to people's lives via my writings that I might eventually attract enough traffic that donations, ad sales, and affiliate relationships would naturally take care of themselves. Indeed that is exactly (thus far) how it is playing out.

I have since reworked some of those original posts and reposted them and now my official anniversary is in August, just a few months away.

The other event, and far more notable on a personal level, was my birthday. It got me to thinking, "why do I do all this – I mean not this blog, although that is a good question – but rather why do I eat the way I do?" For many people the answer to that query is rather amorphous. They want to look better. They want to feel better. They want to lose weight.

Read more…

Does Butter Make You Fat?

April 6th, 2010

 

 

On July 25, 2002, in an article that appeared on Lew Rockwell titled, The War On Good Food, I wrote this regarding Dr. Weston Price, perhaps the greatest nutritional field clinician of the last century:

 

He [Dr. Price] also noted that the distinguishing characteristic of all these groups, regardless of the actual specifics of the diet (which varied greatly depending on geography which affected the availability of food), was the daily use of raw animal foods of some sort, without exception. And in a further politically incorrect observation, Dr. Price commented that the premier health food around the world was…butter! One author notes:

 

…many people around the globe…have valued butter for its life-sustaining properties for millennia. When Dr. Weston Price studied native diets in the 1930's he found that butter was a staple in the diets of many supremely healthy peoples.1 Isolated Swiss villagers placed a bowl of butter on their church altars, set a wick in it, and let it burn throughout the year as a sign of divinity in the butter. Arab groups also put a high value on butter, especially deep yellow-orange butter from livestock feeding on green grass in the spring and fall. American folk wisdom recognized that children raised on butter were robust and sturdy; but that children given skim milk during their growing years were pale and thin, with "pinched" faces.2

 

Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, Ph.D.
Why Butter is Better Health Freedom News, 1999

 

On March 19, 2010, in a blog post, a cardiologist had this to say about butter (emphasis mine):

 

From Lopez et al 2008. Mean (± SD) plasma glucose, insulin, triglyceride, and free fatty acid (FFA) concentrations during glucose and triglyceride tolerance test meal (GTTTM) with no fat (control), enriched in monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) from refined olive oil (ROO meal), with added butter, with a mixture of vegetable and fish oils (VEFO) or with high-palmitic sunflower oil (HPSO). N = 14.

The postprandial (after-eating) area-under-the-curve is substantially greater when butter is included in the mixed composition meal. This effect is not unique to butter, but is shared by most other dairy products.

Fat, in general, does not make you fat. But butter makes you fat.

 

There is much that can be said as a critique of said study but others have done so elsewhere (and others are planning to do so), thus for the moment I will leave it at that.

Instead, I will let you choose. Dr. Weston Price or Dr. William Davis? Traditional nutrition with all the various groups that were well nourished with butter (without becoming fat) for over a millennia, or the findings of a recent scientific study?

Not sure where you dear reader might land, but I know my choice.

 

Nutrition and Physical Regeneration - The Blog

 

The 4800 calorie burger!

March 29th, 2010

With real sourdough bread, real cheese, and real sour cream this could be very tempting. :-)

Enjoy!

 

 

Nutrition and Physical Regeneration - The Blog

 

Why The Milk Diet Cures

March 26th, 2010

 

 

Within the next few weeks I will be unveiling a new website on the Milk Cure and Immune Milk Therapy. As I noted in my Curing The Incurables series one of the goals of Nutrition and Physical Regeneration is to introduce approaches to healing that are typically unknown and outside the current mainstream and yet are extremely effective, though they don't have the imprimatur of the medical and conventional wisdom establishment.

Read more…

RSS Feed And Coconut Milk

March 20th, 2010

 

 

For some reason my current post on How To Make Coconut Milk did not appear in my RSS feed. So for those of you who subscribe via the RSS feed you can click on the link above or here to view my latest post.

 

Nutrition and Physical Regeneration - The Blog

 

How To Make Coconut Milk

March 18th, 2010

Anyone even remotely familiar with me or this blog knows that I am a big fan of all things coconut, especially the milk. I consider it one of those versatile super-foods that belongs in any foodies repertoire, real food or otherwise, both for nutritional and culinary purposes.

In the Pacific Islands the coconut is known as the "tree of life" because of its various medicinal and nutritional qualities and you do yourself a grave disservice by not including in your diet on a regular basis this powerful and tasty food in all its forms (water, milk, oil, and meat).

My favorite incarnation is the milk because of its versatility (though I must admit the coconut butter from Artisana is mighty tasty).

Coconut lentil soup, coconut tapioca pudding (tapioca is the cassava root – I use honey for the sweetener and add it at the end), coconut sweet potato soup (this is just baked/boiled sweet potato with various spices blended with coconut milk and coconut flakes) and other delightful coconut enhanced dishes are a central part of the menu during those parts of the year where animal products are not a feature of my diet.

Then of course nothing beats a good coconut curry on a chilly winter's night when beef is what's for dinner.

Read more…

Vegetarianism: From The Other Side

March 15th, 2010

 

Hilarious!

 

 

Nutrition and Physical Regeneration - The Blog

 

Mo' Buttah Mo' Bettah – Musings Around The Web

March 12th, 2010

 

 

 

Haggis, Single Malt Scotch, and a Cigar
(What Can I Say? It's the weekend :-) )

Most people don’t really know what’s in a haggis; they only know that they don’t trust it. If pressed, most people would correctly identify it as offal. Specifically, it’s lamb heart, lungs, livers and kidneys, ground and mixed with oats and spices, and served in a stomach.

That sounds like a sinister combination – few enough people eat kidneys. Even those people who might eat kidney may hesitate to eat lungs, and hearts are right up there with brains and testicles in the list of animal parts we feel we understand a little too well to want to put in our mouths. Haggis is essentially a sack of organ meat. Try putting that on a menu and see who orders it.

Yet, as you can see above, the offal is usually so finely ground that there is no visual horror to a haggis. It’s really just a large sausage, and there can’t be anything in it that’s as bad as the mystery meats in a cheap stadium hot dog. Haggis is nowhere near as scary as its reputation suggests.

Very Good Taste: A Blog About Eating And Drinking

 

 

The Purest Foods On The Planet

The island, just south of the Arctic Circle, is so remote, and its growing season so short, that people would take whatever they could from the land and the sea, surviving on puffin jerky and (ammonia-reeking) fermented shark. Today, Iceland's geographic isolation—plus strict government environmental regulations—helps it produce some of the purest foods on the planet.

Grass-fed cows with a lineage that goes back to the Norwegian herds brought by the Vikings in 874 AD make milk that's high in beta carotene, creating exceptional butter and cheese as well as the yogurt-like skyr. Family farms sell tender meat from lambs that have grazed in the mountains all summer on moss, scrub and wildflowers. Fish farmers raise arctic char without chemicals or antibiotics in eco-friendly saltwater tanks.

Food and Wine – Should You Eat Like an Icelander?

 

 

Maybe Those Urban Legends About Malt Liquor Are True After All

Sadly, I once believed that the US was founded and originally run on sound moral principles, and ran amuck of those principles only relatively recently. The internet is an absolutely wonderful instrument for disabusing oneself of such a quaint and naive notion. I was aware of many of the evils of Prohibition, but not this particular example.

Apparently, one method for bootleggers to produce consumable alcohol was to remove the methyl alcohol that had been added to ethanol in order to "denature" it (and render it unpalatable). After the initial efforts to curtail consumption had failed, miserably, the Feds ordered the producers of denatured alcohol to actually poison it, in the full knowledge that the drinking public would consume it, and that many of them would die. The practice was documented and condemned by no less an authority than the medical examiner of New York City of that era, Charles Norris, so I doubt that this account is fabricated in any important way.

The Chemist's War

 

 

The Stone Age and Barley?

During the latter part of the Stone Age, early man was sprinkling grains of barley over various foods, adding a chewy, nutty quality to his meals. Humans had not yet discovered how to grind grain into flour.

Ancient cultures were forming loaves of barley bread long before domesticating wheat. Since barley contains only miniscule quantities of gluten, the protein that makes wheat breads rise easily, the breads made from this grain were heavy and quite dense but nutritious nonetheless.

Our cultivated barley of today was once a wild grass that originated in the Near East, though some food historians believe China was the place of origin, while others say it was Ethiopia. Archeologists discovered remnants of wild barley, H. spontaneum, at many sites across a belt that stretches from North Africa on the west to Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan in the east.

High Flying Barley Crashes in Modern Times

 

 

See, I Told You So

It shows men who indulge in regular lovemaking are up to 45 per cent less likely to develop life-threatening heart conditions than men who have sex once a month or less. The study, of over 1,000 men, shows sex appears to have a protective effect on the male heart but did not examine whether women benefit too. Now the American researchers who carried out the investigation are calling for doctors to screen men for sexual activity when assessing their risk of heart disease.

Every year, around 270,000 people in Britain suffer a heart attack, and coronary disease remains Britains biggest killer. Although sex has long been regarded as good for physical and mental health, there has been little scientific evidence to show the full benefits that frequent intercourse can have on major illnesses such as heart disease.

London Telegraph – Having sex twice a week 'reduces chance of heart attack by half'

 

 

A Somalian Refugee and Dr. Weston Price

Recently I crossed paths with a Somalian refugee living in political exile here in Maui. Her name is Layla Sheikh. But don’t think that she’s some poor peasant girl fresh outta the Somalian desert sand, begging for food. She sports a stylin’ fro and highly fashionable clothes. She cruises in an SUV, and has her own two-bedroom apartment 200 yards from the Pacific ocean. She works as a professional model, getting gigs like holding the round cards at the UFC fights over in Lahaina, as well as doing plenty of photo shoots and fashion shows. Basically, she’s pimpin’ y’all. The African Queen. Speaks five languages, including Swahili and Arabic. She still runs (not jogs) over 20 miles a day and can climb a tree like a 100-pound squirrel though (why this isn’t on youtube yet baffles me. What I’d give…).

The story of Layla and her perfect teeth — some cultural learnings from Africa

 

 

Marijuana Growers Get It – Most of Us Don't. Figures. We Are Still Chasing The Fairy Tale Of Organic Food

Test the juice of fruits, vegetables, or grasses and compare them to the enclosed chart of Refractive Indexes (Brix readings). Within a given species of plant, the crop with the higher refractive index will have a higher sugar content, higher mineral content, higher protein content and a greater specific gravity or density. This adds up to a sweeter tasting, more minerally nutritious food (maximum nutritional value) with lower nitrate and water content and better storage attributes.

Crops with higher Brix will produce more alcohol from fermented sugars and be more resistant to insects, thus resulting in decreased insecticide usage. For insect resistance, maintain a Brix of 12 or higher in the juice of the leaves of most plants. Crops with a higher solids content will have a lower freezing point & therefore be less prone to frost damage.

Plant Sap Analysis

 

 

The Fraudulent Science of Climate Change/Global Warming

The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics. Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures. In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'.

Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: 'Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method. 'The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.'

Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data. But yesterday Professor Jones – in his first public appearance since the scandal broke – denied manipulating the figures. Looking pale and clasping his shaking hands in front of him, he told MPs: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails.'

Daily Mail: Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits sending 'pretty awful emails' to hide data

 

 

The Redemption of Ancel Keyes – He may have been the lifestyle nanny who failed, spectacularly so, with The Seven Countries Study and the resultant demonization of cholesterol and saturated fat, but it looks like he may have done yeoman's work elsewhere.

 

Recipe Of The Week: Blackened Tenderloin – Gives great flavor to the tenderest steak cut of them all.

 

Nutrition and Physical Regeneration - The Blog

 

Why Does Anybody Get Federal Farm Aid?

March 11th, 2010

 

 

 

"Everything the state says is a lie and everything it has, it has stolen."
~ Nietzsche, from Thus Spake Zarathustra

 

 

A Washington, DC not-for-profit named The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is hosting a website that lists all the people receiving federal farm aid. …More than a couple of people on this list of farm aid recipients are not exactly "needy." In fact the purpose of the group’s efforts is to shine a bright light on the number of "rich" people getting federal farm aid.

Read more…

Blog Widget by LinkWithin