When Dirt Wasn’t Dirty

Posted on June 26, 2016 by dcarmack

Sometime about 20 years ago, it seems, dirt became dirty. When I was a young boy the thing about dirt that concerned my mom was that it was a different color than my clothes. It never crossed her mind that getting dirt on my hands or in my mouth was bad for me, but it bothered her that my clothes would get dirty. Back in the 60s it was no big deal if you got dirt in you mouth. Remember the mud pie? If you have never tasted a mud pie it might be because you grew up too recently.

It is true that soil, nothing more than dried mud, is completely full of bacteria. There is also yeast, fungus and other single cell creatures. The composition of soil closely resembles the biological composition of your digestive tract. The duties of the bugs in you are practically identical to the duties of the bugs in the soil. Their main goal is to survive and pass their good genes on to their offspring. To facilitate that they need access to energy from the sun. Since soil life takes place beneath the planet’s surface this energy must be delivered to them by conduits to the surface, roots.

The life within you, likewise, counts on you to deliver energy from the sun via your own conduits to the surface. The bacteria inside you got there by you eating it. Mud Pies. The bacteria in you was living on a surface that it had colonized, let’s say a head of cabbage. That bacteria can live on that surface, or it can live inside of you. If it is inside of you then it can break down parts of the cabbage that your own digestive machinery cannot. Bacteria in the soil can produce things that plants cannot, plants can’t live without soil bacteria, you cannot live without digestive bacteria.

It is possible to be too clean. It is possible to be too sanitary. Eating lifeless foods add nothing to the army of beneficial bacteria within us. The chemicals in these foods, the dead processed foods that populate our pantries, not only kill the bacteria that would ‘spoil’ our foods on the shelf, but they also do so inside of us. While they are not poisonous in the short term food preservatives would tend to damage the bacteria that might be able to help us properly digest these foods.

In the not too distant past no foods had preservatives in them. The first preservative used was salt. Salt preserves by drying foods, which keeps bacteria from consuming them. Mold can still grow on salted foods, but it is controlled by cutting it away. Mold on cheeses is a good example. I, myself, have thrown away may pounds of cheese because of mold on the surface, when the block is full of perfectly good cheese beneath this.

Back before refrigeration and chemical preservation people just ate foods that still contained the bacteria eating them too. Meats were ‘gamey’ and more flavorful after hanging a few days. The natural processes we were competing with did not make foods inedible. They still do not. The smell on your pork that has been thawed in the refrigerator does not mean that it will sicken you. It means that the bacteria that also eat meats has eaten enough to create an odor. Is that a bad thing? Cooking kills bacteria. Thoroughly cooking that pork (smoking to 190, for instance) will render that bacteria harmless. The flavor of it will remain. Whatever it produced in its digestive process will also remain. A toxin from Botulinum bacteria will poison you, but there are not many others that do so.

The World Health Organization describes it this way:

Overview

Human botulism is a serious, potentially fatal disease. However, it is relatively rare. It is an intoxication usually caused by ingestion of potent neurotoxins in contaminated foods. Person to person transmission of botulism does not occur.

Clostridium botulinum produces spores that are heat-resistant and exist widely in the environment, and in the absence of oxygen they germinate, grow and then excrete toxins. There are seven distinct forms of botulinum toxin, types A–G. Four of these (types A, B, E and rarely F) cause human botulism. Types C, D and E cause illness in other mammals, birds and fish.

Botulinum toxins are ingested through improperly processed food in which the bacteria or the spores survive and produce the toxins. Though mainly a foodborne intoxication, botulism can also be caused by intestinal infection in infants, wound infections, and by inhalation.

So botulism can only produce toxins in the absence of oxygen. Food poisoning can occur, I have been poisoned by foods that I waited too long to eat. Cooked foods have been stripped of their natural bacteria. A host of natural bacteria are in competition with harmful bacteria until we cook the food. After food is cooked it is a blank canvas for bacteria. AT that point we must be vigilant. Our vigilance need not start at the soil, however. Eating mud pies would not make your kids sick. Eating natural foods should not make you sick. Eating raw foods adds to your natural defenses.

Fermented foods are the next best thing to raw. Fermented foods have been coaxed into producing a colony of bacteria that consume foods we like. Eating fermented foods, like KimChi or sauerkraut raw means that you are filling your intestines with allies in the fight against toxic bacteria. Knowing how to make your own ferments means that you can always have a pantry full of food that is more than food, but the medicine that nature intended you to eat all of the time. Its as close to eating soil as you can get in this day and age.

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Tuesday Out Of Town

Posted on June 14, 2016 by dcarmack

Sunday night I did great. Ossobucco is a braised pork shank. The sauce tasted sweet but not too as. Yesterday morning I could have easily eaten no carbs, but I had corned beef hash that contained potatoes. I told myself I’d do better Tuesday

Dinner was provided by a vendor who took us out for seafood. I drank water and had breaded shrimp. I got a bit of a hammering heart after dinner but that may have been from eating too much. Slept pretty darn good which is another indication of having eaten properly.

This morning I broke my promise to not have corned beef hash again. My rationalization was that I needed another receipt for breakfast just like the first one (which I forgot to get) that I needed for my Expense report. Thats how my mind works. I wanted corned beef hash again. I needed a receipt I didn’t have. What to do? Have hash again, of course. 

They are taking lunch orders now, wish me luck. 

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Things americans find normal that amazed me – U.S.A.

Posted on June 12, 2016 by dcarmack

Well there is nothing like a new pair of eyes to show where you are going wrong. Read this with an eye to the bits about food. Thank you Melissa for sharing an interesting viewpoint.

The world is my museum

Skyscrapers, warehouses, ads everywhere, huge portion sizes.. The United States are like a whole other world in some aspects. Here are some things that really amazed me when I visited the United States in 2011 and in 2013 .

1Huge skyscrapers
I had seen lots of pictures of the incredibly high skyscrapers of New York, but I was still amazed when I arrived there. In the Netherlands we have maybe three skyscrapers in the centre of The Hague and a few in Rotterdam, but over here, almost every building is a skyscraper! If you’re used to Amsterdam like me, with the small canal houses, you will also be amazed by these tall constructions.

1Starbucks
Okay, we do have Starbucks now in the big cities in the Netherlands, but when I first visited the United States in 2011, Starbucks was something very rare for me. And I heard americans talk about…

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Business Trips

Posted on June 12, 2016 by dcarmack

Today I leave for a two week trip to Chicagoland for work. We will see if I can eat responsibly during the trip. I weighed myself today, 143. I will weigh in again on the day I get back in almost two weeks. In my dictionary responsible eating means not eating processed foods. It means not eating bread products, sweets, drinking candy or liquor.

It should not be that hard to accomplish, but usually when I go on a trip I try and eat decadently because eating steak every night is a possibility. If I do that but stay away from the potato, the pasta, the tortilla chip then I could conceivably do this.

I will share my experience daily, as a way to keep myself more or less honest, but I will be very frank with you, dear reader. Stand by….

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We Are All Caves

Posted on June 3, 2016 by dcarmack

I learned a great deal about life on Earth listening as David Attenborough narrated the fantastic documentary series “Planet Earth”. A consistent theme, across the entire nine episodes, is that there are places where the life flourishing in an environment counts on the sun’s energy, which every living thing needs to survive, being carried to where it lives by forces that it does not control….the highest places on earth, mountain tops, treetops, the north pole, and the lowest places on earth, the bottoms of oceans, the lowest levels of caves…

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A case in point is the cockroaches that live on bat droppings (and fallen bats) deep inside of the pitch black cave. There is no sunlight at all in these caves. There is no plant life, but the bats go out into the world, collect the nutrients needed for the cockroaches that thrive beneath them, as they sleep every day.

We, too, are a cave. Within us there are ‘cockroaches’ that count on us to deliver to them the energy of the sun. We begin our lives completely covered in these bugs, our first taste of breast milk delivers a health-giving dose of them to our newborn children. We put everything in our mouths, and the bugs within us defend us against the bad ones, and contribute to the wellbeing of the good ones. This system is perfect for man as host and for bacteria, yeast, and molds that act as, in alternating times, parasite, defender, and food factory. I say food factory because there are ten bacteria on and in your body for every cell that your body contains, and the ones in your GI tract work for themselves eating your food and converting it into vitamins.

The microbiome is the genetic material of all the microbes – bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses – that live on and inside the human body. The number of genes in all the microbes in one person’s microbiome is 200 times the number of genes in the human genome. The microbiome may weigh as much as five pounds.

In the new book I am reading, the doctor that authors says this about the teeming life in our GI tracts:

Microbiota are integral to the digestive process and the constant internal dialogue between the immune, metabolic, and nervous systems. They play a crucial role in human development and health, and are routinely affected by everything we put in our mouths. They are a fulcrum of metabolism, releasing nutrients from foods that would be otherwise indigestible, and making B vitamins and vitamin K. They create a constant state of inflammation and immune regulation so that we do not identify all proteins as foreign and can also tolerate food products. In fact, the microbiome trains our immune system very early in life. They are part of the “tasting” system that samples foreign proteins and pathogens entering the gut, determining if they are safe or harmful, and then instructing the immune system. [BOLD added for emphasis by me]

Green M.D., Peter H.R.; Rory Jones (2016-05-24). Gluten Exposed: The Science Behind the Hype and How to Navigate to a Healthy, Symptom-Free Life (Kindle Locations 1657-1663). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Anything you eat, whether nutritional to you, whether it contains calories or not, if it is susceptible to decomposition in any way, will be worked upon by your microbes. It will be transformed. Things your body is used to being exposed to will be transformed by them into the useful things that your living cells expect. Unnatural things will have unexpected results. Artificial oils, like Transfat oils, do not act at all inside of us like the natural fats they were invented to supplant. Lard is harmless, compared to shortening. Lard is health food compared to margarine.

Plants have their micro biome on the outside of their roots. The plants take up the products of their soil bacteria, raise them up to the sun, which transforms them into sugars, and the sugars are trucked back down into the ground, where they are delivered in thanks to the waiting mouths of the bacteria in the soil, trapped outside the loving rays of the sun. The soil is but a different kind of cave.

There are bad bacteria in the world, but there is no chemical way to discriminate when we turn modern industrial herbicides on them. Your antibiotic kills the armies of the good right along with the targets of our antibiotics. Your herbicides and fungicides you spray on your yard are likewise indiscriminate. The anti bacterial soaps you use in your kitchen and on your hands at the grocery destroy all, not just bad. When you read about how ‘dirty’ your bathroom is, laugh silently to yourself at the silliness of fighting it. Your body is a thousand times ‘dirtier’ than any non living surface in your home. I guess it matters what you consider dirt. Aren’t you, after all, nothing more than living dirt? You get the life from Earth to continue your life from dirt, and that life comes from the sun, the rain, and dirt. The animals you eat are getting their sunlight energy from the plants they eat. You deliver into your own personal cave that sunlight energy, to be transformed by your own soil germs into actual things your body can use, into things your body cannot make for itself.

Nobody knows what microbes live in the average wild human. The cave that you are cannot be explored like the one our roaches were filmed in. Going in and harvesting microbes and bringing them to the surface to be studied only yields dead microbes. They cannot live in our outside world. The mere fact of trying to see them kills them. When a pill seller these days says he has the probiotic or prebiotic that you need to restore your guts to perfect harmony, I am here to tell you he has no idea if that is true, because the smartest labs in the world do not know if that is true. A health claim on a yogurt label that says contains probiotic is just that, a health claim. Any food with a label has a healthier and more wholesome counterpart in real food made by you or nature, that does not contain a label. Every fresh, living food contains probiotics and prebiotics. Nature intends it. Peel the skin off, and you are taking away both friend and foe. Boil the vegetable and you are sanitizing and defending against enemy and ally.

I am not saying stop cooking, stop paring. I am saying that there is nothing to fear from the dirty outside of a plant. It’s dirt. It’s germs. Most of them are natural and good. I was told that a potato will not spoil as quickly if stored in a cool place with the dirt from the ground it emerged from left on it. Wash it before you eat it and it will keep all winter. Knowing what I know now this makes perfect sense. Cut up a cabbage and submerge it in salt water and it will turn, magically, into sauerkraut. This happens naturally when the cabbage rots in the field, as the cut plant cannot defend itself from this process once cut. It does not rot in salt water because we are promoting the good germs, and retarding the bad. Exactly like our microbes do inside of us! Do something, like take antibiotics, and the process is thrown into a state of uncertain flux. Which germs will dominate once the antibiotic is done killing them all? Eat dirt and make sure! You don’t need a probiotic, you need fermented foods. You don’t need a prebiotic you need natural foods.

Appreciate that your most vital duty to your parasites and companions is to hunt and gather for them the vital sun’s energy that they will never see. You carry it into their cave where they will transform it into your own healthy life. The soil you produce will then feed more bacteria further down the food chain. It’s nature’s plan, and it is good.

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It’s Not a Religion

Posted on June 2, 2016 by dcarmack

 

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A long time ago, around 1940 or so, our forebears ate foods that grew within driving distance of where they lived. All food was local food. Back then you ate lots and lots of real food. You could get canned goods, of course. They were cooked, brined and canned pretty close to where you lived, too. Most people just ate what they grew, and what they had stored away for winter from their gardens or the gardens of neighbors nearby. We were an agrarian society.

Now we are a convenience society. Fast food is SO convenient. There are one hundred choices in town for pizza alone. The average American no longer cooks every day, even though cooking has never been easier. If you go to a restaurant on a weekend you will wait an hour just to get a seat, in just about every eating place in town. It takes way more time to eat out than it does to cook and eat at home, but its SO convenient. When we do eat in we opt again for convenience. Pouring dry food out of a box and adding water and meat are SO convenient. Taking it out of the freezer and heating it in the microwave (the oven is just too inconvenient) is quick and easy.

If all that mattered was easy then why not keep on living like this? However, all of those convenient foods are loaded up with sugar. The sugar is in there because processed food doesn’t taste very good without it. Eating all of that sugar is causing a lot of things to go wrong with us. Here is a partial list:

Obesity, overweight, high blood pressure, heart disease, high blood sugar, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, autism, ADHD, MS, cancer, liver cirrhosis, etc, etc, etc…

Every one of those diseases and maladies is now being looked at with its connection to sugar and fructose as the item of concern.

So, if you are like me and you are trying to give up sugar, how on earth do you do so in a society whose food supply is built with sugar as a primary ingredient? Well, It’s Not A Religion.

Let’s start there. If you are going to quit the sugar habit, first you have to admit you have one. For a few weeks you should be religious about it, but after that, people have been eating sugar for centuries and not getting so sick and fat. Only lately has the amount in our food supply gotten to the level that it is hazardous. Keep that in mind. You can have sugar, and you will feel it when you have too much, but a little bit is not poisonous. Sugar is a chronic poison, like lead in your water. It’s use chronically will build up over time and after a few years of uncontrolled consumption you will have problems. I say a couple of years because currently there are a huge number of grade school children waiting for new livers all over the country. It is probably from eating breakfast cereal and having fruit juice, or fruit made with real juice, or a sweet drink with fruit in the name for breakfast. Then at lunch they are having chocolate milk because it has milk in the name. Then at dinner they are getting a happy meal with a coke. Too much sugar, by far. Even kids’ yogurts have as much sugar in them as a can of soda pop…

When you are getting off the sugar habit you just have to try every meal to not have any. If you are eating dinner out you just have to know that any breads will have sugar. Any sauces will have sugar. If you don’t eat much sugar normally you will taste the sugar, and you will get a physical reaction to the sugar, so you will know that it is in there. If you are just starting to kick, then you should go for a week without eating dinner out.

More on religion…if you are new to quitting, give yourself a lot of slack. You have to accept that you are making a huge change in the way you live. You wont be able to eat processed foods any more. You will quickly find that you save time cooking at home, compared to trying to eat out. You also save money. There is a side benefit that in addition to saving time and money you think better, feel better, lose weight without being hungry, lose weight without spending hours per week at a gym or jogging or swimming or any other time consuming activities.

You will eat dinner out. You will eat processed food. You will crave sugar if you do and if you eat sugar, remember this…its not a religion. You did not commit a sin for which you must make atonement. You ate sugar, but you don’t want to. The solution is to not eat sugar the next time you eat. Try to eat sugar from now on ON PURPOSE. Eat sugar when you mean to. We will get a dessert after dinner when we eat out, because we want to and we don’t eat sugar all the time. It’s not a religion. Back when there were a lot less fat people in the US people used to eat dessert. If you go back to not eating processed food, if you go back to cooking your own meals, guess what? You will be able to eat real dessert again, and enjoy it, and not feel guilty about it! Full sugar and fat in your cake and icing! Enjoy it when you eat it. Savor it because for the first time in a long time you will be eating the real thing, it will be sweet, and since you don’t eat sugar at every meal and drink you will be able to really taste the sugar. Side benefit–you wont have to feel guilty at all because — its not a religion!

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An Open Letter To My Children

Posted on May 31, 2016 by dcarmack

I have got to confess to you, my children, I am an addict. I have spent the bulk of my life in thrall to a dangerous chemical that I took every day. It has made me miserable, even though I did not know what was causing my misery. In my innocence, kids, I passed my addiction on to you, too.

Every day since I reached the age of majority I took a huge dose, starting at breakfast, and extending straight through my day. Sometimes I would only imbibe at meals, but usually I would hit it again even between meals. Sometimes I would hit it until only a few minutes before I went to bed.

Every night I suffered night sweats and restless sleep. I used to blame smoking cigarettes, and when the withdrawal symptoms continued, even after I quit smoking, I started to blame drinking beer and liquor. The sweats and tossing and turning continued, even after I quit drinking.

Now I know what I am addicted to, and I am so ashamed and embarrassed that I hooked all of you as well. I am a sugar junky.

I quit sugar cold turkey back in 2002, for three months. I couldn’t stay away, and I started using again after I went on a Caribbean cruise, the desserts were too good. I thought I could just use on vacation and stop again when I got back home. That plan failed and I used straight up until 2015, 13 more years. In fairness to myself I thought I was hooked to carbohydrates, and I blamed an entire class of foods, and its really hard in America to quit eating carbs–they are everywhere. It turns out they are not my Huckleberry.

Sugar has fattened me, kept me from sleeping, made me cranky when I didn’t get enough during the day. It makes me jittery, with trembling hands and muscles. It makes my heart pound. It makes me sweat. I never knew what sugar did to me until I was able to quit eating sugar long enough to feel it’s effects when I next ate too much of it. Kids, you must get your kids off of sugar. Do it before you pass our affliction on to them. As kids they will not miss it. For your good I will pass on to you what I know about sugar, having learned the hard way.

Sugar is far, far worse than the starch in potato, rice or flour. I have never gotten a ‘sugar rush’ from eating any fruit or vegetable–ever. I get a sugar rush every time I eat candy, cake, ice cream. If I eat these things after a big healthy meal I will not get the rush quickly, but I will get unrestful sleep and night sweats. It wont be a rush, but it will be a reaction, and it makes me crave the evil stuff all the more the next day. The only sweets I can eat without a huge reaction is fruit. Still I cannot recommend fruit juice. It is as bad as candy. If you feed your children fruit juice you might as well be feeding them Fruit Loops.

I am sorry, kids. I did not know. Now I do. Now you do, or should. If you can’t quit using sugar for your own good, do it for your babies. Get them off the Merry Go Round, and you can’t wait for the ride to stop, because it wont. You just gotta find a way to jump off on your own, like I did. I love you all too much to just let you keep harming yourselves like I did. It’s not too late, stop now.

Yours in Love…Dad

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Is This A Processed Food?

Posted on May 27, 2016 by dcarmack

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Dr. Josh Axe is promoting this ‘natural’ food. His exact words are that it is the “first ever REAL FOOD” protein powder made from bone broth. His use of those words are telling, because to use the words “all natural” might run afoul of the USDA or FDA who are policing the use of that phrase tightly lately.  To claim that this is a “real” food is a safe move. I would say that more accurately it would be called a “real supplement” because in my own personal dictionary a food is something you can eat without having to put it into something else to make it edible. Cant see myself eating this stuff by the spoonful, so there is that problem with the labelling already.

At any rate, if this were a medicine it would probably be just now getting to the human trial stage of proving it’s safety. If it were a food ingredient it would have already been on the market, but the FDA would have been informed that it is a GRAS ingredient, since protein is know to be generally regarded as safe. As a supplement it enjoys the wild-west absence of any kind of federal oversight. It may or may not contain what it says on the label.

So is it a “real food?” Lets put it through my simple checklist. Is it a single ingredient food? Might be, but let’s see if it has an ingredient label, because real foods usually don’t need ingredient labels…

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It has an ingredient label and despite the claim that it is ‘real food’ this label is for a supplement. Like I said, that means no oversight on quality or honesty for this product. I am not saying that it isn’t bone broth but I am saying that nobody is checking to see if it actually does the things it claims to do.

It comes in a plastic bottle. Real foods (except water, and dairy products) do not need to be in bottles. I classify foods in boxes, bags and bottles as processed foods. I would have to say that if you look at this ‘food’ you are not going to recognize it, and as a general rule, foods you do not recognize are not food, but parts of food. This one is a part of food, just the protein part.

Non-foods always make health claims on the label and this one does that, too…there are health claims all over it, and all over it’s supporting website…

They could go on, and they do on the website. They go on and on. There are a million reasons you should buy and eat this supplement. There is a video, there is a celebrity “Dr” supporting and promoting it. It is 50 dollars a bottle. You are advised that it is really hard to make your own bone broth from scratch, so all this convenience and healthy promoting in one bottle are probably worth many times what it costs to you. Really. Is any one of those claims above any different from what all other forms of natural protein, found in natural food does…I think probably not.

The focus of the press and social media on “healthy eating” as the source of, or cure for, disease has taken hold to the point of creating a new condition termed orthorexia nervosa. Individuals eliminate one healthy food after another (gluten, corn, soy, meat, dairy, all fats, carbohydrates, etc.) in the belief that these foods are “unhealthy”— until they are barely receiving adequate nourishment. It can reach the point of anemia, bone loss, vitamin depletion, and malnutrition.

Green M.D., Peter H.R.; Rory Jones (2016-05-24). Gluten Exposed: The Science Behind the Hype and How to Navigate to a Healthy, Symptom-Free Life (Kindle Locations 589-598). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Have you noticed that I always abbreviate Dr. when I am referring to Dr. Josh Axe? That is because he is a doctor of chiropractice. I am not saying that he is not entitled to his opinion or his use of the prefix, but he is not a doctor of medicine or  a professor of science. He is as much a scientist as I am, an amateur that has no professional credentials that prove his study is accredited. I should get me one of those titles, it would make the information that I scrounge up all that much more palatable to the teeming masses.
Now normally I would not utilize an ad hominem argument against arguments leveled by the other side of the debate. However, the sale of this product IS using the abbreviation Dr. to do it. That makes the Dr. abbreviation an argument for you to buy it. The fact that I do not have that abbreviation may be an opposing argument to the position that I am taking.
That being the case, then, let me bring some actual doctor into the debate. By ACTUAL doctor I mean one with a science degree. I am reading the book “Gluten Exposed” by Doctor Peter Green, director of Columbia University’s Celiac Disease Center, and medical writer Rory Jones. This book is about gluten as the title suggests, but it is more about the current preoccupation with food by the civilized world. Specifically the tides of special diets, and the proliferation of things like ‘gluten-free’ and ‘paleo’ that make all sorts of contradictory claims for their books and products. This product falls squarely into that classification, thus my concentration on it today.

The focus of the press and social media on “healthy eating” as the source of, or cure for, disease has taken hold to the point of creating a new condition termed orthorexia nervosa. Individuals eliminate one healthy food after another (gluten, corn, soy, meat, dairy, all fats, carbohydrates, etc.) in the belief that these foods are “unhealthy”— until they are barely receiving adequate nourishment. It can reach the point of anemia, bone loss, vitamin depletion, and malnutrition.

Green M.D., Peter H.R.; Rory Jones (2016-05-24). Gluten Exposed: The Science Behind the Hype and How to Navigate to a Healthy, Symptom-Free Life (Kindle Locations 589-598). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

And then, a few paragraphs later, here are some symptoms of “orthorexia nervosa”
•     Have you eliminated entire food groups from your diet? (Gluten, dairy, corn, and soy are the usual suspects as well as red meat, carbohydrates, etc.)
•     Three or more food groups?
•     Do you constantly worry about which foods may be unhealthy?
•     Do you feel guilty when you eat food you consider unsafe?
•     Do you have problems finding healthy foods?
•     Do you have ritualized eating patterns?
•     Are you anxious when eating out or traveling?
•     Have you started avoiding lunches, dinner dates, and catered parties?
•     Do you lecture your friends and family about unhealthy eating?
•     Do you read medical journal articles about digestion, carbohydrates, protein, etc.?              •     Do you challenge others who disagree with your food choices?

•     Do you wish that you could just eat and not worry about the quality of foods?              •     Do you have symptoms that do not fit any medical diagnostic category for which you blame gluten, dairy, or a specific food?

Green M.D., Peter H.R.; Rory Jones (2016-05-24). Gluten Exposed: The Science Behind the Hype and How to Navigate to a Healthy, Symptom-Free Life (Kindle Locations 605-621). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I must confess that I have had many of these bullet points in my life. I now have narrowed my dietary villains down to one food group, artificial foods. By artificial I mean those which are derived from breaking foods down into their shelf-stable components and reassembling them at a food factory, then putting them into a box, bag or bottle and slapping a label on them that touts the betterness of this food than it’s unadulterated forebear.
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This is real food. Notice no label. The food is contained inside of it’s own natural packaging. The packaging is generally edible, too, and contains a great deal of what makes the food inside safe to eat.
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This, on the other hand, is not real food. The potatoes it came from were peeled, cooked down to their component parts, and then this creation was assembled in a secret food factory where special things were added to the potato components to keep it tasting like food, and to make it extra-addictive. They truly are addictive, I love them and confess to still getting them any time I allow myself to go into the places where they are sold.
So, my screed has come to a great stopping point. My parting admonition is to eat the potatoes, not the processed foods from potatoes. You need not fear real, single ingredient foods, like the potato. Bread made by you, using the basic ingredients you find at the market, flour, salt, and water, is not dangerous, but the bread made for you at the science kitchen, which contains all of the things that it needs to keep bread fresh for a week on the shelf  is just not the same thing at all.
Bone broth powder is not bone broth. It is a dietary supplement, and if the Dr. I single out were not making vast sums of money hawking it he would probably agree with me.
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The Word Is Leaking Out

Posted on May 23, 2016 by dcarmack

In England today there is an eruption of confusion. There are scientists and studies suggesting that the population should quit eating low fat foods. They are recommending that more and more fats should be eaten, to replace carbohydrates in a healthy diet.

I don’t think anyone should wait for the science to settle on this issue. I think you should immediately begin buying genuine natural foods–single ingredient foods like whole vegetables, naturally raised meats and dairy products, drinks like water, coffee, tea.

Here is an article about the dustup across the Atlantic…

Report criticising low-fat diets challenged

The National Obesity Forum and the Public Health Collaboration called in the report for a “major overhaul” of current dietary guidelines, saying encouraging people to stick to low-fat diets is harming their health.

But the report was condemned by health minister Alistair Burt who agreed with Public Health England’s assessment that it was “irresponsible”.

The report suggests that a focus on low-fat diets is failing to address Britain’s obesity crisis.

It advocates a return to eating “whole foods” like meat, fish and dairy as well as high fat healthy foods like avocados.

It also argues that saturated fat does not cause heart disease while full fat dairy – including milk, yoghurt and cheese – can actually protect the heart.

The report suggests that foods labelled as “low fat” and “low cholesterol” should be avoided and it has prompted a backlash within the scientific community.

What is Alistair Burt’s objection to advocating eating real food, and not avoiding natural fats?

Mr Burt said that international health organisations agree that “too much saturated fat raises cholesterol” and increases the risk of heart disease and obesity.

So the objection is that new evidence (an explosion of obesity and obesity related diseases) should not lead to changing conclusions about the causes. Agreement with the failed strategies of the past is worth all of the damage it is causing because it ‘avoids confusion’. Nonsense. The facts, as they are now known, are that saturated fat does not cause cholesterol to raise, or an increase in heard disease, and it definitely does not make one fat. Want proof? Search my blog for “saturated fat”. I have posted scores of articles that document the new proofs against fat warnings. Read Nina Teicholz’ book on the subject “The Big Fat Surprise.” Read Gary Taubes’ book “Good Calories, Bad Calories.”

Confusion is hardly the greatest risk we take daily when we eat foods. Advising people to eat natural foods will save the nation huge sums of money, but will cost processed food makers some market share. We will live longer, healthier lives, and some of us will be confused that the advice has changed. Avoiding confusion is not a persuasive argument against truthful education, I am sorry, Mr. Burt.

Fructose causes fat and illness. If eaten as nature intended, in the autumn when the fruits are ripe on the vine, before the lean and hungry months of winter, fructose won’t hurt anyone. As an addition to eight out of ten processed foods, eaten and drunk at each and every meal we take, it is a huge problem–it is a poison that should be regulated as such. Eating fats is healthy if it completely replaces the sugars that we eat. If we eat fat and sugar we are going to stay sick.

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Yesterday

Posted on May 9, 2016 by dcarmack

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Mother’s Day is a day when I do for the mother living in my house. We had cream and coffee for breakfast and worked on our landscaping. Its what she wanted to do, so we did it until the rain made us quit. I drank and eight ounce can of Coke when I came in the house. That is a very small dose of fructose, even though it is ‘high fructose’, but its a small enough dose that I didn’t feel the sweetness in my blood.

Our first solid food was onion rings at the best barbecue restaurant in Kansas City, Jack Stack at the Crossroads, near downtown. I ate two rings, which are sweet onions in a thick, crunchy bread shell. Washed it down with more Coke. You see where this is going, right? Dinner was pork ribs surrounded by cole slaw (sweet), baked beans (sweet), potatoes au gratin (carbs), cheesy corn (carbs), and french fries (carbs). We ordered a creme brule of which I ate a half spoonful, but the damage was done. My system was loaded up with carbs, gushing insulin to compensate.

Top that off with fresh home made popcorn and real butter while watching Game of Thrones.

When I eat this many carbs in less than eight hours I have a reaction. My heart hammers. I sweat. Laying in bed I must be out of the sheets as I sweat. I awaken halfway thru the night a bit hungry and cold, and get under the sheets.

There was a time when I blamed these symptoms on other things. I thought it was hot in the room or humid in the house. It wasn’t, and I only feel like it is when I have eaten carbs. The reactions that I have, like my heart hammering I would blame on other things, but now I know why it happens. My whole life it has been the food I ate and now I finally know it. Eating carbs makes me feel a bit sick, but it always did. Eating them your whole life really does make you sick–it causes real go-to-the doctor kinds of problems.

If you go on a diet and it includes carbs then you are not going to have a good time of it. If you are hooked on carbs and cut back a little, you are hungry all the time. If, on the other hand you cut back on carbs only, you will not get hungry. You can eat any time you want as long as you don’t exceed your carb allotment. Any fat you eat that your body does not need you will get rid of in your waste. It is a wonderful way of eating.

Yet, I keep going back to eating carbs. They make me feel bad but I eat them when I want to. Even knowing that I will pay later doesn’t keep me from doing it. Doesn’t this sound familiar? Ever do something you know you shouldn’t but you do it anyway? Ever do it and try to hide that fact from your loved ones? Sounds a helluva lot like addiction doesn’t it? It is.

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