Margarine is a killer

Taken from the August 28th edition of The Week Magazine:

Doctors have long advised people to limit their consumption of saturated fats found in butter, cream, and meats. But new research shows that these fats, derived from animal products, actually don’t increase the risk of stroke, heart disease, or diabetes. The study found that industrially produced trans fats, found in margarine, snack foods, and packaged baked goods, do raise the risk of premature death by 34 percent. The Canadian project was the largest yet of its kind: Researchers looking at 50 studies involving more than 1 million people found that trans fats were also associated with a 28 percent increased risk of death from coronary heart disease and a 21 percent risk of cardiovascular disease. The study contradicts decades of conventional wisdom about saturated fats dating back to the 1950s. “That said, we aren’t advocating an increase of the allowance of saturated fats,” study author Russell de Souza of McMaster University tells The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Saturated fats may not cause heart disease, he says, but they can lead to weight gain.

What a relief. It always seemed so unnatural to eat a processed spread. I am all about butter and ghee nowadays.

Rethinking the burger

Taken from the September 11th edition of The Week Magazine:

People might scoff at spending more for organic groceries, but when it comes to ground beef, it might be smart to fork over a few extra dollars. Consumer Reports researchers tested 300 packages of ground beef—equal to about 1,800 quarter--pounders—from 103 stores in 26 American cities. The results showed that conventionally produced beef, made from cattle that are fed antibiotics and other drugs to boost growth and prevent disease, is twice as likely to contain drug-resistant superbugs as beef raised without drugs or in more sustainable ways, such as grass-fed and organic. The best weapon is a meat thermometer, food safety specialist Urvashi Rangan tells CBS News. The more thoroughly your burger is cooked, the safer it is. With a steak, the bacteria are on the surface; with ground beef, you’re grinding those surface pathogens right in, Rangan says. “You’re really moving all that bacteria all around.” So it’s especially important to cook ground beef to 160 degrees, “to be absolutely safe.”

Lone Star Tick bite and Red Meat

Ok, this is going to sound absolutely crazy.

A bite from a Lone Star tick can make you allergic to red meat.

A friend told me about it over some healthy green salads. Now, when she eats red meat she gets sick to her stomach. She is thinking that she may never be able to eat red meat again. She can eat fish and fowl, though - and lots and lots of veggies, of course.

I found an article here - that web page is also where I took this photo...

Apparently we need healthy gut bacteria so that our immune system can fight off the infection caused by this tick. And we have discussed gut bacteria several times already.

The tick is called Lone Star because of the white dot on the back of the female. It can be found in the southeastern United States.

Here are some other articles/blog posts on red meat.... prices, tough on the planet, meatless Mondays, and Pricey Protein.

And that concludes my public service announcement for the day.

Foodies Reach New Level of Absurdity

Haha.

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman has spent the past few months in Berkeley, home of fellow food-movement leaders Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. Bittman recently took the opportunity to let readers know that the fruits and vegetables there really are as amazing as we’d been told:

The mushrooms were one thing; there were also a dozen varieties of tangerines, ranging from kumquat-size to almost as big as grapefruits. There were an equal number of oranges (including the superior Cara Cara) and sweet limes and, yes, Meyer lemons. There were fresh chickpeas and shishito peppers, red carrots and a dozen different turnips and radishes, Little Gem lettuces along with probably 40 other edible greens.
In the comments, readers chastised Bittman for sighing over local California produce at a time when that state is experiencing drought, but I had a different concern. Reading his essay, all I could think was, the jig is up. The food movement has officially stopped pretending it has anything useful to offer to anyone with ordinary, or even better-than-ordinary, grocery options. When Bittman was still (mostly) writing from New York, it was plausible that someone could follow his example at, say, New Jersey strip mall supermarkets. Now he’s offering up fantasy recipes like “English Peas With Grilled Little Gems, Green Garlic and Mint.”
Criticism of the food movement has centered on the idea that it’s elitist, catering to those who have enough money to buy kale and enough time to find some way of making it palatable. This is a fair point, and one that, with varying degrees of success, food writers take seriously. But the elitism charge has had the unfortunate effect of allowing food-movement leaders to suggest that—with the exception of the proverbial “single mother of four living at the poverty line”—everyone could eat the way they’re advising and is just a nudge away from doing so. This, alas, is not the case.

Elite food writers aren’t just out of touch with the working and middle classes. They are out of touch with people who aren’t elite food writers. They’re oblivious not just to those who struggle to put food on the table, but to those whose jobs don’t send them on tours of Paris’s finest restaurants.

The true villain for the food movement isn’t someone who buys fast food when they should be eating lentils. It’s someone who, despite having the resources to do so, hasn’t researched where his or her food comes from. Grocery shoppers’ desire to purchase fruits and vegetables—a seemingly admirable, or at least innocuous, one—is recast as consumer demand for out-of-season produce—the height of decadence. In 2011, Bittman had some harsh words for these consumers:
We expect a steady supply of ‘fresh’ Peruvian asparagus, Canadian tomatoes, South African apples, Dutch peppers and Mexican broccoli. Those who believe they’re entitled to eat any food any time seem to think that predominantly local agriculture is an elitist plot to ‘force’ a more limited diet upon us.
Bittman lamented the fact that “we have ceased to rely upon staples: long-keeping foods like grains, beans, and root vegetables, foods that provide nutrition when summer greens, fruits, and vegetables aren’t readily available.”

Is Bittman relying on root vegetables in Berkeley? When he’s in Rome learning the craft of pasta sauce? Or when he was on a food tour of Spain with Gwyneth Paltrow and Mario Batali? Along similar lines, I became somewhat less impressed with David Tanis’s remarks about how he for one is going to stick with “end-of-winter vegetables” until the “local and seasonal” green ones sprout, when I noticed he’ll be giving a cooking workshop in Sicily this April. I point these things out not (just) out of culinary envy of New York Times food writers, but because it genuinely does mean something different to be a strict locavore if you travel around all the time, or live in grocery-endowed part of California, or both.

The place I live—Princeton, New Jersey—is not what you’d call a deprived area. The town center has a Lululemon, a Barbour, and an Ivy League university. For those with a car, supermarket options are plentiful—Wegmans, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s. But buying food-movement-approved groceries is all but impossible. Farmers market season starts in May; a winter market tilts more towards upscale non-essentials—honey, olives, “gourmet nut butters”—than produce. Once that season arrives, even if you make time between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Saturdays, the “big” market is far too limited to be anyone’s grocery shopping for the week, meaning that you need to add on the time—and, ahem, the carbon footprint—of then driving to a supermarket (where not much is local, and bread without added sugar is scarce) for what remains.
But the supermarket is, for the food movement, taboo. Waters avoids them; it was basically an ethnographic adventure when Michael Pollan and Moss deigned to visit one. It’s only acceptable to shop at a supermarket if you’ve been given special dispensation: Sam Sifton allows eating supermarket, out-of-season Brussels sprouts, but only if you must, while Tanis recommends purchasing California (but not South American!) asparagus, should you not find yourself somewhere where “green-tipped spears of wild asparagus had broken through the earth in an area of moist soil near a stream.” That asparagus sounds great, but until it sprouts somewhere in my part of New Jersey, the Peruvian variety will have to do.

by Phoebe Maltz Bovy at NewRepublic.com

Rethinking fat and cholesterol

OMG, The Week Magazine having changed their on-line presence I now need to jump when the new magazine comes out if I want to share anything with my readers. I have been cutting and pasting to share, but it seems that now they are not providing everything on line for an extended period of time, so if I dally, I loose.

Anyway, how incredible is this below? Now we have come full circle in our thoughts about cholesterol and fat. Mark's Daily Apple has been telling us this for a long time, and now conventional wisdom is catching up. In my humble opinion, it's those dang processed foods which are killing us.

A bad rap
For decades, health experts have issued stark warnings that foods high in fat and cholesterol cause heart disease and other illnesses. But new research has determined that these guidelines, which prompted millions to shun red meat and eggs, were not supported by good evidence and were, in fact, in error. In the late 1970s, Americans were encouraged to reduce their fat intake to about 30 percent of their total daily calories. But after reviewing the research available at that time, a team of British scientists has concluded there was never any evidence that eating less fat would help reduce the risk of heart disease. When Americans were told to avoid meat, dairy, and fat, they increased their consumption of simple carbohydrates such as sugar, white bread, pasta, and processed foods—the real drivers of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. “The obesity epidemic basically began with the first dietary guidelines,” points out Nina Teicholz, who’s written a book on that topic. Meanwhile, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is no longer classifying cholesterol as a “nutrient of concern.” The decision, which reverses four decades of government advice, reflects recent research suggesting that eating foods high in cholesterol does not significantly raise cholesterol levels in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease. Genetics, it turns out, has a much greater effect on cholesterol levels than diet. “We got the dietary guidelines wrong,” Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic tells USA Today. “They’ve been wrong for decades.”

We all need to return to eating just meat and veggies with some nuts and fruit thrown in for fun - in my humble opinion. (I just wish the pasta, bread, cookies, etc. didn't taste so good!)

Those pesky insects in our food....

We've spoken about this before, here and here. And I can't say that I am ready for it... though I did screw up my courage to ask at a GNC store about beef blood protein.... I don't know whether I would have voted with my wallet on that one, but I did ask the question if they make or sell dried beef blood protein. It was a while ago at this point, but they did not have any on the shelf.

Protein, in all forms, is officially trending. The original superfood, protein builds muscle and aids weight loss, and this year it was pumped into practically everything in the grocery aisles, whether snack chips or Cheerios. But the quest for amino acids may be headed to even stranger heights. Food entrepreneurs are now betting that protein-rich insects—think mealworm bars and milled-cricket flour—will be the next foodie frontier.

I blogged a little bit about the cost of raising protein on the planet here. I believe that raising goats for meat is a much more economical way to get the animal protein - and the goat milk is much easier to digest for many people.

I took the quote from my favorite magazine, The Week, 12/31/2014.

Charcoal's Gourmet Burgers in New Orleans

Charcoal's is a fun little burger joint on Magazine Street. Upstairs there is a balcony overlooking the street, which on warm nights (and Mardi Gras), I should imagine is quite pleasant.

I particularly liked it because one can get burgers made of animals such as bison, antelope, deer (venison) and elk - not to mention the 'normal' burgers such as shrimp, salmon, beef, turkey, etc.

They didn't blink when I asked for my burger to come without a bun and even suggested making it a lettuce wrap - which I thought was quite decent of them. (Obviously chefs and waitstaff are running in to people who are trying be eat gluten-free.) They also have alcohol-free beer for those of us who are not yet gluten-free, but are also trying to cut out alcohol. What a cluster F, eh?

Anyway, they can be found at 2200 Magazine Street. Good for a casual, but different burger.

Shedding pounds with a high-fat diet

From the September 19th issue of The Week Magazine...

Can you lose weight with a diet that places no restrictions on your fat intake? Those who swear by the Atkins plan and other low-carbohydrate regimes have long insisted you can—and new research backs them up, reports The New York Times. In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, a racially diverse group of 148 obese men and women were given diets to follow. Half were put on low-fat regimes, which limited their total fat intake to less than 30 percent of their daily calories, while the other half followed low-carb diets that involved eating mostly protein and fat. Neither group was given calorie limits. Over the course of a year, those on the low-carb diet lost around 8 pounds more than the low-fat group, shed more body fat, and showed greater improvements in cholesterol levels and other measures of cardiovascular health. Those on the low-fat diet did lose weight, but most of it was muscle, not fat. “This is one of the first long-term trials that’s given these diets without calorie restrictions,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist at Tufts University who was not involved in the study. “It shows that in a free-living setting, cutting your carbs helps you lose weight without focusing on calories.”

This is also the Primal Blueprint thought, too. Cut out the legumes and processed carbs. We should be eating all the veggies we want. I now eat coconut oil, butter, and bacon fat. I do my best to have all grass fed beef and butter. My cholesterol isn't low by any means, but the good cholesterol is really high and the bad cholesterol is pretty low. So, I am pleased.

Meatless Mondays in Texas

I found this little tidbit in September 19th edition of The Week Magazine.

A Texas elementary school’s decision to offer “meatless Mondays” in the cafeteria has outraged the state’s agricultural commissioner. Todd Staples blamed the meatless menu on an “activist movement that seeks to eliminate meat from Americans’ diets seven days a week.’’ School officials said kids who wanted meat on Mondays could bring their own lunch.

It reminds me of a story I was told by a friend who works at the USDA. She indicated that there was a movement afoot to make the USDA meatless on Mondays too, but the Cattle Ranches put the kibosh on that saying it was against them. BUT, we forget that the USDA is also supposed to represent vegetable farmers, too... so what was the problem? Evidence of the strength of certain groups on our government....

It seems the cattle ranchers are eager for us to eat meat in spite of the fact that if we were to cut some out it would be cheaper - as I indicated here. Again, planting a garden is like printing money. I love that idea!

I have also already posted on the subject of the effects of raising beef on our planet here.

ChoLon Asian Bistro in Denver

Superlative!

I thought the food was terrific. And I would even return just for the two desserts I tasted.

The surfaces in the restaurant are hard, so it is noisy. The atmosphere is brick, stainless steel and stone.

The menu is very limited, but as was suggested by one of my fellow diners, that usually means everything will be fabulous - which was an accurate call.

Scallops - delicious.
Rib eye skewers - tender.
Prawns with garlic buns - wasn't my favorite, but should have been.
Brussell Sprouts with pork and mint - to die for.
Kaya toast - I have never had anything so yummy.
Potstickers - typical, but also a pleasure.
Pork chop - it was fine, though other's thought it was out of this world.

Hong Kong Ice Cream Cake & Doughnuts - THE BEST.

Looking at the menu, it appears that they tweak things periodically - as we had pumpkin in our doughnut dessert which does not appear on the 'typical' menu.

Interesting story about the chef which can be found here.

Beef is Tough on the Planet

From the August 8th edition of The Week magazine:

If you’re looking to reduce your carbon footprint, you may want to change your diet. New research has concluded that raising cattle for beef is nearly 10 times more damaging to the environment than producing pork, chicken, or eggs. The study is the first to quantify the overall environmental impact of various livestock and draws on data collected by the U.S. departments of Agriculture, Energy, and the Interior from 2000 to 2010. Scientists analyzed land use, water consumption, and nitrogen pollution from fertilizers, as well as the greenhouse gases, such as methane, emitted by the animals. Researchers then calculated the amount of resources required to produce one calorie of each product. Pork, chicken, eggs, and other dairy products all have roughly equivalent environmental impacts, but raising beef requires 28 times more land and 11 times more water while generating five times more greenhouse gas emissions compared with other agricultural products. The message for the consumer is clear, Mark Sutton of the U.K.’s Center for Ecology and Hydrology tells The Guardian (U.K.): “Avoiding excessive meat consumption is good for the environment.”

I had heard this before.... so just cutting out meat on one day of the week is a worthwhile endeavor - but not easily done.

Pricey Protein

On my quest to eat good quality protein I am faced with information such as this from The Week Magazine and Bloomberg:

Protein is getting pricey. The cost of beef, beans, bacon, and nine other protein sources jumped 28 percent in the last five years. In 2014 alone, protein prices have risen roughly 5 percent—twice the pace of increase for any other food group.

I suppose this can assist in the general population also eating more vegetables which will help everyone with their overall health. I just read somewhere that planting a garden is like printing money - for what might be very little effort, you can feed yourself and thereby save the outlay of cash. "A penny saved is a penny earned", after all.

How fighting changed our faces

I'm afraid that I need to get back on transcribing Herb's letters, because as of now, the next letter I have is from November 1917. I am optimistic that I will find some letters between August and November - and maybe some will have answers, like what is Karolyn's last name.

In the meantime, I thought I would share some tidbits from my favorite magazine, The Week.

As it is, I thought this blurb from the Jun 27th edition was of interest:

Men may have evolved to take a punch in the face. That’s the conclusion of a radical new theory suggesting that our male ancestors developed more robust brows, jaws, cheeks, and molars for protection during fights over mates, food, and other resources. The conclusions are based on an examination of the facial structures of Australopithecus—the immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo—compared with those of apes and modern humans. “It turns out that the parts of the face that became stronger were the parts of the face that most frequently break when modern humans fight,” evolutionary biologist David Carrier tells LiveScience.com. The theory builds on earlier work suggesting that the modern hand—with its flexible thumb, squared palm, and shorter digits—was adapted for aggression. Researchers note that the ability to form a fist entered the fossil record about 4 million years ago, around the same time that males developed their thicker facial features.

The evolution of man incorporated the adaption for getting hit in the face. What a horrible commentary about the animal which is taking over the planet....

Beef Prices

USA Today reports that the price of beef has hit a 27-year high.

The average U.S. price for fresh beef rose in February to its highest level since 1987 — $5.28 a pound — as cattle ranchers reduced their herds amid dry conditions and demand for beef increased in China and Japan, among other export destinations, The Associated Press reports. Prices are expected to stay high for a few years, at least.

Some shoppers are sucking up the price hike — 25 cents a pound in a month — or switching to cheaper cuts, while others are simply looking elsewhere for their protein. Some ranchers are nervous that people will permanently change their eating habits if prices stay high, even as all cattle ranchers are thrilled about getting more money for their wares.

As for restaurants, they're either passing on the higher costs to customers or, as some higher-end restaurants are, serving smaller steaks. So, bad time to go on the paleo diet, and good time to own a hamburger stand. - - Peter Weber

Reading this makes me think about the process of raising cattle. I have always wondered how much of what we/I eat comes from feed lots versus how much comes from the rancher/farmer whose animals I see as a drive along the smaller roads in the US. This blurb talks about droughts which doesn't effect the feed lots, does it? I mean it's not as though the animals are grazing and enjoying a pristine stream as it passes through the meadow. Or do I just not understand the process? Do the animals start in that field I see from the road only to be shipped to a feed lot just before slaughter? I guess I have addressed this issue for myself by purchasing my meat from a rancher at the farmer's market. Now, have I visited his farm to confirm my assumptions? Not yet.... Perhaps I need to add that to my ever-growing to-do list.

Gut Bacteria

I confess to any readers, I believe in the Primal perspective on eating. I am not necessarily very good at following the tenets, but the theory resonates with me. I particularly like the Friday posts when folks write in about their success stories. I believe them. I mean, not everyone can make up such wonderful stories, can they? It amazes me about people who get to get off their medicines after eating Primaly. (A friend just confessed last night that she has been diagnosed as diabetic and now she is taking medicine for that. It breaks my heart.)

The reason I mention Primal Eating is because Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple recently published a blog post about Gut Bacteria. Gut bacteria fascinates me. I heard a podcast several years ago (on RadioLab, maybe) about the effects of gut bacteria on our health. It’s amazing. I suppose everyone has heard about it now, it’s been in the press so much. (I also heard about an experiment with sinus infections in children where they did a transfusion of healthy sinus bacteria into those children who suffered multiple sinus infections and how it worked relative wonders for the children.) I am ensnared by the idea of ‘TransPOOsions’ – a Freudian slip made by a patient of the interviewed doctor who was going to give her a fecal transfusion. Can you imagine? Insert the gut bacteria from a healthy individual into that of an ailing individual and have their lives turn around? At the time of the podcast they were speculating that it might help MS, Parkinsons, and other diseases. I will be keeping my focus on the subject.

Anyway, I wanted to share Mark Sisson’s blog post 7 Things You Had No Idea Gut Bacteria Could Do. In summary, they are:
They learn from each other.
They improve our bone mineral density.
They nullify anti-nutrients.
They manufacture vitamins.
They form a large physical barrier against pathogens.
They represent a “second brain.”
They can make us depressed, anxious, obsessive-compulsive, and even autistic.

Obviously, dear reader, you need to read his very detailed post so that you may learn. But, do take a look. It’s good stuff.