One Small Change at a Time

There is nothing like getting older to make time seem to fly. Of course, it is a privilege to be able to step immediately back into the world of WordPress blogging after so much time has passed. I take advantage of this electronic memory and to me it seems like yesterday that I wrote the words in all of the articles that are available here at the touch of a button.

Much has changed in the world since then.

Just a year ago the food pyramid had relegated just about all of the principles that I espouse to the tiny area of red fatty meats….but now that pyramid is put on it’s head and now it’s sweets and carbs that are in the closet. In the linked article it warms my heart to see that “Low Fat” may not be long for this world as a “Health Claim”. GRAS designations are now to be re-scrutinized and perhaps, I hope, sugar will be taken off of the GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) list. Beef tallow is about to rejoin the pantheon of delicious ingredients that are, in fact, GRAS. Food Dyes will be put on a watch list and decertified by the FDA.

I cannot complain at all about the work that Kennedy is doing for the Trump administration. I happen to believe in vaccines, having been born only a few years after the world got the polio vaccine. I actually had mumps, measles, chicken pox and one or two of the other poxes, but not the small one. I had adult neighbors that caught rubella, but I did not, because of mandated vaccines. However, I can see even in this effort that the push is to force the health establishment out of it’s current stiff group think posture.

I am just finishing a book by my old friend Gary Taubes. “Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin, and Successful Treatments” is not an easy read, as none of Taubes’ books are. It takes us through the known history of the world dealing with a new phenomenon, diabetes. It was fascinating to look back on this history with the benefit of much accumulated knowledge of modern biology. It was a lot like the jump-scare horror movies, where the audience knows that there really is a monster under the bed and we all want to shout a warning at the screen.

Another thing that will make you want to shout is the growing tendency of this nation to determine a course of action and a food pyramid based not upon science and the scientific method, but on what is easiest to sell, as though a course of action that is diametrically opposed to the actually helpful advice would do no harm.

For 100 years scientists have known that once diabetic patients could be rescued by the newly discovered hormone, insulin, from an early blood-sugar death, that they would live long enough to die very early of a heart attack. Unfortunately for the world, at about the same time that type I diabetes patients were just old enough to start having heart attacks, was when Ancel Keys was formulating his incorrect assessment of where fat deposits in heart blood veins come from.

Type II diabetes, which can afflict the rest of the population (it was originally referred to as “Adult Onset”) is a different disease, and the way to reverse it is now known. However, since science advances only when elderly scientists die, there are a lot of US institutions that still cling to known bad diet advice for all diabetic sufferers.

This, too, is now in the sights of the new thinking of the new administration on dietary advice. I hope you are hearing my message that the old way of delivering dietary advice is being rebuilt from the ground up. This is not a bad thing. Actually, this is a very good thing, no matter what your politics are.

The entire edifice that has propped up industry defenses (sugar) and muddied up the scientific waters for so long is now being torn apart. A calorie is not just a calorie, independent of where it comes from. Cholesterol is not uniformly bad, no matter where it came from. A1C hemoglobin is not an instant read thermometer for blood sugar health, but is a lagging indicator. All of these development are a good thing, because this is the actual way that the clinical evidence has tended to all along.

I haven’t actually fallen off of the horse, but I have not practiced at all what I preach, for the past three months. In mid September I started a schedule at work that included no days off, less hours at home each day than I worked, and little time to prepare or eat real food. Also, I have returned to drinking socially. The result of these changes in my lifestyle on my diet and body weight were exactly what I expected.

When we (my wife and I) began this past three months we planned ahead a little bit. We signed ourselves up for Blue Apron, which is a food service that sends you three meals per week. It includes real fresh vegetables, unfrozen meat, spices and recipe cards to show you how to assemble the dish. It is convenient. They try to keep the calories down, which I don’t care about, by sending low fat cuts of meat, asking you to use olive oil to cook with (I used lard), and by keeping portion sizes down.

By way of a review, after three months of Blue Apron, there is too much boneless-skinless chicken breast on the menu for me, and there is too much fish and egg on the menu for my wife. Every meal comes with a bread (tortilla, pita, rolls, etc) or other starch like potato or white rice. Too many carbs to keep from getting hungry after dinner–which resulted in snacking before bed. The food was very good, the spices were liberal and overall every single thing I ate from them was worth eating. Some was exceptional. each plate of food costs ten dollars, so it’s 240 dollars per month to eat this way. Cheaper and time-saving compared to eating at a sit down restaurant three times a week, which is probably what we would have done if not for Blue Apron.

Part of getting back on the horse will be cancelling the Blue Apron deliveries. We don’t eat that many carbs when we cook ourselves. We don’t eat so much low-fat meat when we cook our own menu. I don’t get hungry and snack between meals when I do it my way.

I have gained 14 pounds eating like I have in the past three months.

Of course I don’t blame the food delivery service for my weight gain. I ate plenty of restaurant meals, industrial foods, and drank plenty of pop and beer in the last three months. I blame the pop and beer as much as I do anything solid that I ate. All together it has re-formed some bad eating and drinking habits. Going forward I will be drinking coffee and water, limiting my dining drinks to water. I will be eating the heritage pork that I purchased from a local farmer. I will be eating red meat with the fat on it. I tastes good and it’s good for me. I will go back to making sourdough bread, kombucha and sauerkraut. I have time once again for this kind of life, and I don’t see the Christmas holiday coming up as any kind of impediment to eating and drinking this way. In a few short weeks I should be back down to the 136 pound low I enjoyed a few months back.

In the meantime, if Blue Apron sounds like something you are interested in I have coupons for a free week that I can give out (a 60 dollar value for dinners of 2). I get nothing from it but the satisfaction of helping you eat better. Even thought there are more carbs and less fat than I like Blue Apron is probably a better way to eat than 50% of busy Americans eat right now. I recommend it and I will do it again when my schedule gets nuts next time.

Roast Turkey with Cranberry Sauce–Blue Apron

The first product besides grilled steak that I ever made for myself was beer. In the early 90s home made beer was a craze. I purchased a seven gallon plastic fermenting vessel and all of the other equipment for beer making and produced five gallons about once a month. I think I probably did that about seven times, maybe eight from then until now.

It never occurred to me then that what I was making was fundamentally different than what you can buy at the store. Now that I am 100% into not buying processed foods, it occurs to me that beer is one of the most secretive of those foods. They do not have to list the ingredients. So they don’t.

I am certain that if they did we would find all of the scientifically derived chemicals whose purpose is to keep processed foods fresh forever. There are liable to be artificial colors, flavors, and ‘bubble enhancers’. All of these ingredients are possible problems for me and you, but what choice do we have?

Today both the household brewer and local brewery have been supplanted, for the most part, by mega-breweries. What have we lost by this shift from home brews to mega-breweries? Certainly three things, but possibly more. We’ve lost 1) the flavor diversity that herbs give to traditional brews; 2) the nutritional and medicinal benefits that come from using herbs, grasses, and roots; and 3) the nutrition of consuming wild yeasts (suspended in the alcoholic liquid) and their B vitamin by-products, which are destroyed or removed through modern beer pasteurization and filtering.

Harmon, Wardeh (2012-10-01). The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Fermenting Foods (Idiot’s Guides) (p. 159). DK Publishing. Kindle Edition.

When I make my own beer it is fermented. It will contain the probiotics that produce beer. It will contain zero artificial ingredients and will contain all of the new things created by bacteria and yeast from the raw ingredients that I choose to use. As the brewmaster I will be creating a natural source of vitamins just like my kombucha, kefir and sauerkraut.

Years ago I would use malt syrup concentrates from the brew supply store. NO MORE. Now I am going to make my own wort out of sprouted grains. That way I will be sure that there are no extra ingredients, and my main ingredient will not come from a can. My goal is to produce 100% natural beer.

My first ferment:

Ginger Ale

A peppery, sweet concoction that aids digestion and leaves you feeling satisfied, yet wanting a little more.

4 cups Aromatica grain

2 cups Crystal 120L grain

2 cups Special Roast grain

5 gal. water

Juice of 2 lbs. fresh peeled gingerroot

Juice of 2 lemons

31⁄4 cups light malt syrup extract

1 pkg. American Ale yeast

Harmon, Wardeh (2012-10-01). The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Fermenting Foods (Idiot’s Guides) (p. 174). DK Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Safety is a word that has many interpretations, it conveys a spectrum of the value of risk involved in an activity. For instance a mountaineer dangling in a sleeping bag from the face of a cliff and a child walking in a crosswalk are both safe, but one is relatively safer than the other. Safety is a relative thing. On a scale of one to ten, home fermented foods are a 9 on the scale of safety, where foods are concerned.

I was reading this morning a report of a home-fermenter that was used to selling wholesome and ‘safe’ sauerkraut at the local farmer’s market. She was forced to quit by local and state government because she could not afford to prove that her product was ‘safe’. The legal definition of safe as far as prepare foods that are sold to the public requires proof, not just words.

Here is the article.

I don’t want to discuss the merits of keeping cottage-industry foods out of the reach of a hungry public. I want to discuss whether or not these foods are safe.

We all, over the years, have gotten the impression that we are swimming in a world of dangerous pathogens. We are. Fear has created a booming business in sanitary hand cleaners, they are even at the door of the grocery store so you can wipe off the handle of that nasty shopping cart, that was just touched by the disgusting human right before you. But how safe are you in this dangerous world of germs?

There once was a time when soap did not exist. Not that many years ago people did not even realize bacteria existed. Food borne illness was mysterious, yet people could eat foods prepared like they were trained to fix it and most people did not fall ill. Food was safe, even though we didn’t know exactly how we were keeping it safe.

New efforts to sterilize and sanitize everything are extra expense, but they don’t make any of us any safer. The periodic meat and vegetable recalls and panics are necessary, since modern farming methods are more dangerous from a pathogen standpoint. Dangerous bacteria are flourishing in the unnatural environment of California dairy farms, which are just across the fence from California vegetable farms. It is known to be safer to eat local foods. However, Safety is a relative thing.

People are covered and infected with ten times more bacteria than there are human cells in them. Hand sanitizer cannot do anything to protect you from them and they don’t need to, either. Only a very small percentage of bacteria are unsafe varieties. Even if you encounter a bad one if you contain enough good bacteria they will help to defend you from the bad, as they all compete for food and space in and on you.

If you make sauerkraut or any other ferment at home you are safe doing so. It is very difficult to make a dangerous ferment. Botulism, for instance, can only become toxic in a closed, oxygen free environment, like in an improperly cooked canned food. Your home ferments are going to contain plenty of acid, which is what keeps the foods from spoiling, it is why people ever bothered to ferment foods. Fermenting is how people kept foods from harvest to harvest, even before they knew they could store foods in salt. Fermenting is as old as drying to preserve foods. You should not fear your own foods. It is very difficult to produce a dangerous vegetable.

So, the answer to my question above is you are very safe in this dangerous world of germs. Most of them are good. If you prepare your fermented foods the way it has been done for ten thousand years of human history, if you use fresh vegetables that are in decent shape, if you use clean dry tools and wash your hands and vegetables, if you are just reasonably careful…you will be perfectly safe. Don’t let the chemical industry scare you out of eating real food. Don’t let the food industry fool you into thinking only factory foods are ‘safe’. Nothing could be further from the truth.

…. cavities in baby teeth have become more common over the past 20 years. Today, a whopping 60 percent of 5-year-olds have had at least one cavity; many have had five or even 10.

I am reading today in Slate Magazine that there is a growing problem of children that are suffering from poor dental health and the kids aren’t even old enough for preschool yet. Pediatric dentists are recommending that you not give your children a bottle of juice to eat while in bed. However….

In Europe, concern over childhood obesity led to a ban on sucrose in baby formula. Dozens of countries do not allow the kind of sugar we found in the two Similac brands.

We shared our results with Chicago pediatric dentist Kevin Boyd, who also has a Masters in nutrition and dietetics. Boyd said he has long been concerned about the sweetness of formula and the effect it has on babies.

Source: Why Doesn’t Baby Formula List Sugar Content? | NBC Chicagohttp://www.nbcchicago.com/news/health/target-5-sugar-baby-formula-139339308.html#ixzz4G5m405Xj
Follow us: @nbcchicago on Twitter | nbcchicago on Facebook

Baby formula contains about four teaspoons of sugar per serving. Some contain more, some contain less. Sugar on teeth is eaten by bacteria in the mouth, which creates an acidic environment for the teeth, dissolving the enamel. We all know this, we have all heard that eating candy causes cavities. This is true. The thing that young mothers don’t know is that baby formula is as sweet as candy. Most processed baby foods are going to have sugar in them, just like most processed food has added sugars.

There has been lots of great food and nutrition news to report on since I last wrote, but I have been blocked. Blocked by just not feeling the muse. It has been tough getting together the creative juices that are required to write something interesting for some reason.

In the meantime I have also had a tough time keeping myself away from the processed carbohydrate that I love to hate. I have eaten out a bunch even since I got back from my two weeks living in a hotel. I have had pizza (crust), Coke, ice cream, tortillas, and plenty of worthless calories like those found in Girl Scout cookies and Krispy Kreme donuts.

To say I have been off the reservation is an understatement. Maybe that is why I can’t write about it, because I haven’t been living it. Preaching things I don’t live is pretty easy to do. Perhaps its because I am having a fun summer and haven’t found tons of time to write, but I love to write and when I am on it hasn’t mattered in the past what season it is and stream of consciousness doesn’t take long, and feels like it’s instantaneous.

At any rate, Ill be making the attempt this weekend and next week. Here is the plan. After tonight, zero processed food. If I eat ice cream I will have made it myself. Write every day about something, might not be about nutrition, the world is full of things about which I have an opinion. Make some sourdough bread–thats fun and its been a while since I have.

My plate is full of things I am behind on, and I don’t want to fall any further behind in the things I love doing.