Off the Food Grid

Emergency kimchi!

2012-01-21T11:08:00.000-08:00

I love this lady! She makes Korean food while living in Mexico, cooking with really minimal facilities (a small table, a portable stove) and shows shopping at the local outdoor markets. What is neat about this particular one is that it shows just how easy making kimchi can be. She is just using a plastic food bin, with a few local ingredients, and it takes her just a few minutes to chop and put it all together.

Another good one is "Fresh Fish Feast", which covers going from fishing boat to dinner. One interesting part is how the fish head and bones are fried separately. The video didn't show how those are consumed ... I'm assuming they are fried crisp.

She has a nice website here: http://www.maangchi.com/

I've been saying that the best way to eat healthy is to adopt a "cuisine" that works. That way you get the best ingredients in combinations and amounts that work ... and it tastes marvelous! Traditional Korean cuisine is, I think, one of the best.

It is sad that Western ingredients -- especially wheat -- are getting absorbed into Korean cooking. Mostly though you can just ignore that part, and use rice flour or Jule's. Wheat wasn't native to Korea, and "gluten" isn't something you need to make the recipes work.

Christmas a year later

2011-12-27T21:31:00.000-08:00

Last year in this blog I talked about how hard Christmas was. Nothing much to eat at potlucks that could be considered "safe", and food plus booze being the main attraction.

So I thought I'd look at what happened in THIS Christmas. Things have changed a lot in one year!

I was at another potluck this year. However, this year, there was another family that brought GFCF food. Not just GFCF, but also really GOOD food: yummy and healthy. The vegan/raw food movement has done good things for gluten free cuisine, in ways I never expected. Like a mousse made from raw cashews, cocoa, and agave. This succeeds on many levels: it's healthy, but also it's easy to prepare and it doesn't come across as "weird". I was also amazed that "fermented foods" have gone mainstream, and pretty much everyone was into the idea of "real kraut".

A bigger change was in my own family. My sister is now gluten free, but still does dairy. Grandma though, has pretty much accepted the idea that we are not going to eat her food unless it's GF, and is ok with it. Esp. since Betty Crocker is now on board! Once she saw "Gluten Free Bisquick" ... Grandma's attitude changed. She made a big batch of Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookies. Thing is, everyone disappeared those cookies quickly. I couldn't eat them, because Grandma still used butter ("They just wouldn't be cookies without butter!"), but they were happily consumed by everyone else. No one really cared that they were "gluten free" as long as they looked like "freshly baked chocolate chip cookies".

I brought some New Grist beer, and that was consumed also. Which led to an interesting discussion of "what is gluten anyway?". It seems there is a lot of confusion on that point, like, maybe "yeast" is what causes "gluten". After spending a decade of researching details about food preparation and chemistry, it seems obvious to me, but this brought home to me just how different are people's understanding of the issues.

In terms of general cuisine, there is a big shift too. The big foods now are Thai and Indian. Loads of nice spices! Mind you, they are mostly eating the prepacked stuff from Trader Joe's. They aren't bad at all, in an MRE kind of way. I object in terms of price: you get very little for your money, and don't include good vegies, or rice, which you'd need to supply. But they are quick, and feed one person a good GFCF meal. A huge improvement over the Jack in the Box meals that they used to live off of.

Another shift: alcohol. There were many bottles of various ethanol substances. But very few were consumed. In the past we'd probably have finished off 10 bottles of wine. This year, one.

No one gave me any lectures about "my weird lifestyle". A few people even appreciated tips on how to do it. What was "weird" is now close to "mainstream". Somehow I've managed to move to the center, without actually moving at all.

"Society" usually reminds me of a flock of birds, where the birds are honking or chirping to let everyone else in the flock knows where they are, and everyone flies in formation. Sometimes though, the entire flock wheels in unison, using some invisible instant choreography. That is how I felt this Christmas: that the flock has wheeled. It might not be sure still where it is going, but it's absolutely not in the old direction.

The Story of PUFA

2011-12-13T12:08:00.000-08:00

This was prompted by a long email conversation about PUFAs, based largely on Chris Masterjohn's article on Precious and Perilous.

http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/precious-yet-perilous

OK, people have been tossing lab studies back and forth using oxidative-stressed rats and rancid oils in test tubes. We all know that PUFAs go rancid ... one whiff of some rancid nuts, and you know that! And we also know that if lab rats, or people, don't get enough essential fatty acid, the skin deteriorates badly. And then there is this whole n6 to n6 ratio thing. How does a person know what to eat? The advice we are often given is: be sure to eat lots of saturated fat! Avoid the dangers of PUFAs!

Well, I'd like to take a step back from the lab studies and chemistry, and look at the world as it exists. Take a good big global look at the whole situation. First, we'll look at the Japanese mountain people. Shoot, just look at the Japanese in general. Those eating the traditional Japanese diet, have wonderful skin. Few or no age spots, hair that doesn't go grey readily, and usually lean. The Japanese diet is generally low in fat, but whatever fats they eat, are PUFAs. If a diet based on PUFAs is truly a recipe for destruction, they should all be having problems. Especially since they also eat a diet high in carbs!

So where do PUFAs come from?

By and large, PUFAs are not created by animals. They are synthesized by plants. Water plants, esp. algae, synthesize n3, while land plants mostly synthesize n6. Now, the plants, being plants, are exposed to sunlight a lot, and shouldn't this PUFA, being so fragile, just oxidize? My guess is that maybe it does oxidize in the cell, and that is part of its respiratory cycle. At any rate, photosynthesis and PUFA get along just fine, and algae and plants produce a lot of it.

Animals at the bottom of the food chain, eat algae and plants. The PUFA gets built into the skin cells in animals, and helps make the skin elastic. It is also stored by fish, so most fish fat is PUFA. The n3 produced by algae, climbs right up the water-based food chain.

So why not store saturated fat instead?

Now here you have a question. If PUFA oxidizes so quickly and is so unstable, why do fish and animals use it? Likely the answer is obvious: PUFA is liquid at cold temperatures. The skin of a warm-blooded animal still gets cold. It's the coldest part of the animal, in fact. If you were coated in saturated fat, your skin would get hard and stiff whenever you got chilled. Fish wouldn't be able to swim at all, since water is always relatively cold, even in the tropics, once you go down a few feet.

However, once you get down to the tropics, you find plants that do use saturated fats. Coconuts for one. A coconut has saturated fats rather than PUFA, and it makes the coconuts able to travel long distances in the ocean, to help colonize islands. They are really successful at that! Coconuts grow everywhere. Olives use monosaturated fats, which are more stable than PUFA. But coconuts and olives can only grow in warm climates.

How to fish and animals survive, with all that PUFA?

This got me to thinking. If PUFA is so fragile and dangerous, why aren't the animals all getting cancer from it? And the fish?

The thing is, PUFA doesn't just spontaneously oxidize. There are three things involved: 1. Oxygen, 2. Iron, and 3. Ultraviolet. "Oxidation" happens when there is oxygen around. In the case of PUFA, the oxidation is catalyzed by iron, and triggered by ultraviolet. Warm-blooded animals have blood that is loaded with iron and oxygen, and so it tends to make fats oxidize. The body handles that by keeping the fats sequestered from blood. You will notice that fat deposits don't have a lot of blood supply to them.

In the case of fish, there isn't a lot of heme blood around, and they live in a low-oxygen environment. Further, fish don't get out into the sun much.

But for animals, there is the issue of sunlight. Mammals and birds handle this simply: they are coated with feathers or fur. There is very little "skin" ever showing. In fact, feathers and fur are so universal, that it is more useful to look at the exceptions, the animals with naked skin.

In that category, you have, first of all, naked mole rats. Also mice and rats in general, have naked tails and ears. Now, I know a bit about this because I raised mice when I was a kid, and trying to be nice to them, I put their cages in the nice cheerful sun. They got melanoma, on the tips of the ears. In fact, every time I got mice, they got melanoma. I didn't put 2 and 2 together until I grew up. Mice and rats do not go out into the sun voluntarily; they spend their lives hiding in burrows and scurrying in shadows. So, they can afford to have naked ears. Naked mole rats are an even more extreme case; they don't come up ever and don't even have functional eyes, and are clearly adapted for darkness.

You also have monkeys, who often have naked faces. Why is their face hairless? Maybe to show emotion, but it's a guess. What is known is that they live in jungles, shady places, and often have pigmented skin too. There was one albino gorilla in captivity, Snowflake, and she died of melanoma.

Internal fat

Now, cows eat lots of grass, but most of the fat they store internally is saturated fat, which they produce themselves. The saturated fat is very stable, and doesn't oxidize quickly, which is why people like to use it for cooking. There can be huge reservoirs of saturated fat in a cow, or in the middle of a pig, the "leaf lard". But this fat is kept way in the middle of the animal, where it will not get cold.

And then there is subcutaneous fat

So all animals have some PUFA, and usually well-shielded from the sun. But there is another wrinkle in all this: subcutaneous fat. Like hairlessness, subcutaneous fat is rare in nature. It's found in animals that are somewhat adapted for water: whales, hippos, seals, bears, beavers, elephants, pigs. The skin fat is thought to be there for insulation in water, since water is cold. Here is the thing though: the skin fat is not saturated. It kind of has to be unsaturated, since you wouldn't want a stiff whale swimming in arctic waters.

What this means is that for an animal like a pig, there will be two kinds of fat. The internal fat (saturated) and the skin fat (not saturated). Pigs have a mix of monosaturated and unsaturated fats on the skin, but when this fat is rendered, it is liquid at room temp. Whale oil is even more liquid, and it also goes rancid quickly once separated from the whale.

Note: I won't talk about skin fat on cows here, because they are basically an artificial animal. Angus cattle have been bred to be "marbelled" ... to have fat mixed with their meat. This isn't found much in nature, and and actually these modern breeds have to be kept in warm barns during cold winters.

So whales, hippos, seals, elephants, and pigs all have this reservoir of PUFA just under their skin. How do they survive? Well, for whales, it's easy: they are mostly underwater. Seals have thick coats of fur, and so do bears and beavers. That leaves hippos, elephants and pigs. Those three all have thick skin, for starters. And they also share an interesting feature: they take mud baths. Mud probably does a number of things, but one thing it can do is chelate excess iron from the skin. And keep the sun from hitting the skin so much.

But what about humans?

And then we have human beings! A thin-skinned hairless mammal, who happens to also have subcutaneous fat. Many have argued this relates to a more aquatic past. But in any case, we are pathetic when it comes to handling sunlight, esp. pale people. If you hold up a flashlight behind your hand ... the light goes right through it. So the sun not only hits the top of our skin, but it goes deep, into that layer of subcutaneous PUFA fat.

Now here you segue into all those nice National Geographic pictures of happy naked natives. They handled sunlight fine, right? I'd like to say a couple of things about those. First, most of them had and have, very dark skin. Dark skin is better at keeping sun out. Also, they usually had and have, "fluffy" hair, which keeps the sun off a head. And they very often acted a bit like the elephants, painting themselves with clay. And many of them lived in the jungle, where it is shady.

But more to the point, the "happy naked native" thing isn't a good snapshot of history. Sometime before National Geo went to Africa, the British had colonized the continent, and in the process, decimated the local society. Before the British, there was a thriving and rather advanced culture in Africa, which included a lot of textiles. I.e.: the natives wore clothes. A similar situation happened in the Americas, where smallpox wiped out most of the natives. Previous to that, textiles were big.

In fact, in most times and places, humans wore clothes. Yards and yards of cloth or skins, even when it was so expensive that the clothing itself was the main source of wealth for the individual. Even in places like the Middle East, where it is insanely hot, both men and women wore huge loose robes that covered most of their bodies and faces. The Asian cultures raised cotton and silkworms, and created some of the finest cloth ever, on hand looms. The Mayans made soft blankets from alpaca fur, and the northern tribes wove mountain goat fur. The coastal people wove cedar bark. Many peoples wove grasses to make clothing too.

So this gets back to the Japanese mountain people. They did not, traditionally, go out gardening in shorts and a tee shirt. Mostly people wore long-sleeved shirts, long robes or pants, and huge hats. These are not people going sunbathing or using tanning beds.

Exceptions

There certainly were exceptions, such as the Aborigines in Australia. Again though, they are very dark. Also, living in a very hot climate, they don't seem to have much body fat at all, and are likely eating more saturated fats.

Another interesting exception is the Ama divers in Japan. Here you have young women who regularly dive into frigid water naked. Their skin looks wonderful too, even though you have to figure that most of their diet is fish and therefore high in PUFA. Japan is pretty far north though, and it's not clear how long they actually sit in the sun. Or perhaps the fresh fish or seaweed is also protective to the skin.

Can you avoid PUFA?

I think from the above it's pretty clear that it's hard to avoid PUFA. I mean, you can stop eating it ... avoid fish, chicken, duck, nuts, eggs, and live off leaf lard. But your skin will deteriorate. And if you actually could replace your subcutaneous fat with pure saturated fat, would that even work? Maybe if you keep warm enough. Mostly I'd think you'd be very stiff.

So then you have to look at the various cultures. Are the high-PUFA cultures riddled with skin cancer, while the cultures living mostly off saturated fats are ok? It's hard to say at this point in time, I don't know of any cultures that eat mainly saturated fat, and some of the high-PUFA diets are the ones that use mainly corn oil as a fat (i.e. the American diet, which fails on a number of levels). If you look at inland people though, which eat mainly dairy or ruminant meat, it's not clear that those people are healthier than the coastal people. In most studies, inland diets are less healthy than coastal diet (something that also came out in the China Study).

What about supplements?

I've been avoiding the whole question of supplements. Should you take cod liver oil? I tend to think that mostly, it's better to have a diet that just has all the right stuff in it. Oils are particularly hard to keep fresh, from a culinary perspective. Even whole fish and nuts, are hard to keep fresh, but at least those can be stored frozen. Processed, deodorized fish oil isn't really "fish", it's a very altered food. I'm thinking if you want to do it right, it would be better to supplement with algae, which is at least in more or less it's natural state.

For cooking oils, coconut oil and olive oil are hard to beat. Here the culinary perspective wins again. Corn oil and canola oil just don't work for making good food.

My conclusions

I think pale people should avoid ultraviolet!

Save the fat Americans!

2011-12-05T22:19:00.001-08:00

OK, I'm on record for saying that it isn't "gluttony" that makes Americans fat. But this comedy clip shows the disparity so well ...

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=399645&title=save-the-fat-americans

Cold season strikes again

2011-12-05T00:17:00.001-08:00

OK, so catching a cold isn't exactly news. We all go through it, and I've had a zillion in my life for sure. For the last 5+ years though, each cold has ended in sinusitis, and for the last 2 years, with a-fib. Not fun.

Now, the a-fib went away when I got antibiotics. But in the latest iteration, it appears that it was the prednisone, not the antibiotics, that got rid of the a-fib. Plus a big dose of Vit C, courtesy of Jamba Juice (I dunno, I just got a craving for fresh squeezed OJ and chug-a-lugged a couple of quarts of the stuff).

So, here I am again, another cold, which might go into sinusitis and a-fib. Frankly I don't want either one. It's decidedly a virus at this point ... I even know who I caught it from ... but I also know the history. So. What to do?

Here is my plan:

1. 2 cloves of fresh garlic daily. It does seem to be a potent anti-viral. And, I just love garlic.

2. Don't forget the Vit C in the morning! And I got some extra fresh-squeezed OJ for dinner.

3. Heat pad. I'm living with that puppy. Mainly on my chest, neck, and nose. Wherever it is congested. This seems to do wonders, until I stop doing it. I mean, you need to do it almost non-stop. And avoid cold air.

4. Even more than usual: avoid iron. Iron feeds all the baddies, in my theory. So I'm going for white rice, beans, greens. And tea.

Esp. green tea. Green tea seems to be big on iron chelation, even from the brain.

The good news is, so far: Yep, I feel miserable. But not as miserable as last time. No heart issues at all. I did just start to get that "sickly" feeling when I went to run errands, but it went away when I went back on my trusty heat pad.

The interesting thing about green tea is, when I was on that one particular cruise, I felt *really good*. I've tried to parse that every since. While there, I felt really good, even though I was psychologically miserable, not getting exercise, no sunshine. I lost weight too. After I got back, I got a bad cold and got a-fib. But that was after I got back. During the cruise, I had a very limited diet, due to the fact they didn't have the GF menu down really. So I lived on sushi, poke (raw fish salad), greens, Phad Thai, and loads of jasmine green tea.

I thought maybe the a-fib had to do with the green tea. But maybe not. Maybe the afib was just a random cold (from being packed with 1,000 other people in a floating iron can ...). But the feeling good part, might have had to do with all that tea. The coffee on the boat was just not up to Seattle standards, and I had my own great tea stash. So I could have great tea all day long, anywhere I could find a hot water tap.

I have also surmised that it might have something to do with the stainless cups I drank all that tea from ... both nickle and manganese can be problematic, and both are in stainless, and leach from stainless, esp. the cheap stuff probably. I don't use stainless much these days, just in case.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16470637

Tea flavonoids (catechins) have been reported to possess divalent metal chelating, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory activities, to penetrate the brain barrier and to protect neuronal death in a wide array of cellular and animal models of neurological diseases. This review aims to shed light on the multipharmacological neuroprotective activities of green tea catechins with special emphasis on their brain-permeable, nontoxic, transitional metal (iron and copper)-chelatable/radical scavenger properties.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-27T20:14:00.001-08:00

This is basically in response to

http://www.notevenacrumb.com/2011/11/gluten-free-grateful-sunday-.html

Is Thanksgiving mainly about being thankful these days, or is it more about Black Friday and Football?

I don't know what the rest of the country is doing, but we LOVE Thanksgiving in our family. It is all about food, family, and feasting. Saying goodbye to summer, bracing for the winter, and yes, being happy for what we have.

I like Thanksgiving a lot better than I used to. One: I learned to cook! Going GF kind of required that. And Two: I don't get sick after eating food. It used to be, I'd eat, enjoy the taste, then suffer. Now I don't suffer, and frankly, our food is way tastier than it used to be.

Since we have gone "Off the Food Grid" we kind of stopped the consumer madness too. I do buy some things during the cyber sales, and spend some time planning for a great Christmas. The days are getting seriously dark about now, and it's not a good time to be outside in any case, so it's a good time to play games or do online shopping or organize the house or hang lights.

This year, our daughter came home from college during break from her first semester away. My first reaction was: "What a waste! Spending 2 days in travel, for 2 days with family, when winter break is only 2 weeks away.". The reality was far different. Our little girl had grown up in surprising ways, and we had some conversations about the future of her life, her role in the family, and all kinds of other stuff, that had never come out before. One item though, that stuck with me is: she missed my food. Even though her food in college is "gluten free", it doesn't "feel as healthy" and it "tastes like cardboard". I'm not totally surprised ... I work VERY hard to get really GOOD ingredients, which is mostly what this blog is about.

What surprised me though, was how important it was to her. When I went away to college, I ate junk, and I knew it was junk, but it was expected: college kids eat junk. For her, the concept of "eating junk" is like ruining her body for no reason. The bar, for her, has been raised. "Food", for her, is important, not just an optional item on a menu of options. The fact I cooked a full spread for Thanksgiving, was key for her trip. She was craving pecan pie.

Mind you, from my point of view, I really didn't have to do as much work as I did. My extended family, as usual, isn't into details like "whether we will show up or not". I'm not sure I care, really. For me, Thanksgiving is a kid of culinary challenge, like Nanowrimo for cooks. In Nanowrimo, you try to write a novella in a month ... just for the challenge of it. One of those Nanowrimo novels was lately made into a movie: "Like Water for Elephants". Great book, great movie! Thanksgiving feast is like that, for a cook. Can you pull it off? It's a Babette's Feast, but without spending your life's savings. You do it every year, and each year, you get better. Every year, even if it isn't "perfect" ... the audience consumes it (literally) and enjoys it, and then eats free leftovers for a week, another tradition.

This year, I deboned three birds: a goose, a big turkey, and a chicken. The chicken plus the turkey made a "TurHen" (no duck: so not a "TurDuckHen"). I made a double batch of stuffing, because of the two big birds, and 5 pies. I made 5 pies because I wanted to give some away to the one relative who is also GF, but doesn't have a good source of GF pies. I sent her home with a pecan pie and a pumpkin pie. Also candied yams and brussel's sprouts.

My only regret is that, really, our family prefers goose. EVERYONE ate the goose. I had made the goose for my daughter, who doesn't like turkey much, and as a tip of the hat toward my Grandma, who was very much into goose. But I found that well, in our family, we are ALL into goose, given a choice, and no one ate the turkey. So next year: no turkey. Maybe. Seems like there should be a turkey anyway.

Now, when you debone a bird, it leaves a lot more room for stuffing, which in my mind is the main point of the exercise. It looks like a turkey or goose, but it's basically a turkey or goose shaped sausage, stuffed with awesome flavor. Learning to debone a bird is a learning curve: there are videos on YouTube, but anyone can learn it. Do it a day or three ahead of time, and then set the bird in a brine and ice until you are ready to stuff it.

http://homecooking.about.com/od/turkeyrecipes/ss/turduckensbs.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coRTpDU3QJQ&feature=related

Note: I use a big commercial "aluminum cookie sheet" from Costco for the messy stuff. They cost like 7 dollars and last forever. I sew up the bird with some cotton twine and a big needle. And a very sharp knife.

The stuffing is what confuses the newly gluten-free. Mind you, I LOVE stuffing, and my Mom mostly did it right. Growing up in the South, her stuffing was mostly cornbread, but her method was rather labor-intensive, so I wanted to make it easier. I've been working on that for 15 years or so, and it's pretty close to what I consider perfect. So here is my super-secrete-awesome stuffing!

First, make a batch of cornbread. Basically, just combine these ingredients:

4 eggs
2 2/3 cups broth or water
4 T bacon grease, coconut oil, or olive oil
2 cups corn meal (likely rice meal would work too, or any course ground grain)
2 cups corn starch (or any GF flour)
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
2 Tbls sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp xanthan gum (optional: I don't like it much, in terms of texture).
2 tsp. poultry seasoning

Bake it in a greased pan, as for cornbread.

Now, this is NOT great cornbread. It's dry and crumbly. So what? Let it cool, then crumble it or cut it into cubes. Freeze it. Now you have "instant stuffing" whenever you want it.

When it comes time to cook the stuffing, take some of the stuffing cubes, and add about the same amount of some mix of chopped:

onions
celery
broccoli
collards
mushrooms
bacon
oysters
sausage

I.e.: whatever you have around and you happen to enjoy. You need about the same "bulk" of vegies+other as you do of cornbread, but what you use exactly isn't all that important. The seasoning is already in the cornbread, so you don't need to worry about it.

Either stuff the bird, or stuff the casserole pan and add giblets or wings etc. on top. And bake.

This makes about the most awesome stuffing that I've ever had, and the recipe is easy to alter as needed.

So that tells you how we did the food. Does the food make the occasion? Maybe, with feasts, it does. Or maybe it is just the centerpiece of the table, that gets us together. I can't say that the great food made the weekend, but it helped, and if we hadn't had this "feast" to get us all together, we would never have had the talks and sharing.

Kitavians, McDougall, and "What to eat"

2011-11-24T02:23:00.001-08:00

By happenstance, I got two emails today, on two different topics. One was a reply about the Kitavian diet. The other was about Dr. McDougall.

I had not heard about Dr. McDougall. He prescribes a diet he calls "The Starch Solution".

http://www.drmcdougall.com/video/starch_solution.html

I agree, obviously, with his point that starch does not make people fat. Rice does in fact start turning into sugar the minute you eat it. And equally obvious: it is not making Asia fat. It's really nice that someone else is saying that!

His other points:

1. You eat to get energy. Energy foods are fat or carbohydrates.

2. Learn to recognize starches. We are seekers of starch, not amino acids or fats, because we are not your basic meat eater. (I disagree with that: our taste buds are darn good at recognizing good fats and proteins).

3. Plant don't grow pathogens. Not really true: yes, the plants get them from animals, but the plants NEED animals to grow, because that is where they get their nitrogen. Plants are a usual vector for parasites.

4. He is very anti any animal foods, not based on a lot of science.

5. You can live on only potatoes. There was a study on this in 1925. Ok, I agree with that, my granddad's family lived mainly on potatoes too. And oats.

6. For most of human history, human beings have gotten most of their calories from starch. I agree with this mostly. Some starchy diets didn't work well, though, esp. where "wheat" was the main starch. However, there have also been some healthy people who did NOT have a starch-based diet, which is why I think it's a bit of a red herring.

7. He doesn't think grains are bad for you, because grains caused civilization to happen. He makes a point that 3 of those are gluten-containing grains. I agree on this point: I think gluten had a LOT to do with "civilization" because gluten changes brain function, makes people more anxious, more likely to create empires. Corn may do something similar. He really doesn't get the "gluten thing".

Um. You heard of Aspergers? There is a pretty clear link between grains and bad health, at this point, and if you don't hear it, you aren't listening. Interestingly, his examples of barley eaters are folks like the Ice Man (murdered) and gladiators (professional fighters) and Alexander the Great. Genghis Khan was into wheat too. There is a fair bit of historical comment about barley and wheat and "fighting energy". Rice eaters are just way too pacifist. The Buddhist monks are into brown rice ... Sumos get wheat or barley noodles, plus meat.

BTW, the potato-eaters did get a big empire. They did fight. What is interesting though, was that most of the spread of their empire was based on religion and politics, not on fighting. The big armies of history ... none of them appear to have been rice-based. People of the time commented on this. Rice eaters are just plain not motivated.

I think this has to do with the amygdala. To fight, you need some anxiety and anger, preferably in a context when no one has, say, actually attacked you. To get an army to attack an village that is just sitting there, the fighting forces need to be nervous about some unseen enemy, or pleasing a god, or just plain angry. Gluten makes this center of the brain more active than it should be. I don't think it's a good thing though: McDougall makes it sound like this is a success of sorts.

8. His take on the Inuit: they were just a small group. Doesn't count.

9. Recent humans make more amylase. We are better at digesting starch than primates.

He makes this kind of logical jump from "historical people got most of their calories from starch" to somehow "we should be vegan". I agree many or most peoples got most of their calories from starch, unless they got most of their calories from fats (in northern countries, mainly). No one got most of their calories from protein, because humans have a very limited amount of protein they can handle. But that doesn't mean "most people were vegan". Human beings, esp. small human beings, can't be vegan. Kids used to breast feed for up to 5 years ... they were not vegans! Also they ate insects, fish, lizards, rats, whatever ... along with their starch. The coprolites show that really clearly. Along with plenty of vegies and starches.

As for fats ... there are plenty of healthy peoples eating fats too. Mostly where the main food source is fish or seals. Or coconuts. Fats and starches seem to be interchangeable, which makes sense. Starches turn into fat, easily.

10. It's not genes, because 3rd and 4th generation Japanese get fat. OK, I agree there. It's NOT genes. But his take is "They eat less starch". How do you figure that? The intake of protein vs. starch isn't that different for traditional Japanese. What is different is the intake of wheat and beef, mostly. Maybe some other things. Perhaps a lot of it starts with different bacteria based on lack of breast-feeding (formula sets up a babies gut in a very different way, than breast feeding).

How does this diet work in the promoters?

What do I notice about Dr. McDougall? First, he has grey hair, and age spots. Older Japanese don't get these so much. I'm not sure what it is about the vegan diet, but you end up with people who go grey early for some reason. I expect that the age spots might be due to his earlier diet (before he did all this research) and his love of potatoes (high in iron). Anyway, Dr. McDougall is 60? And half grey, half white, and big age spots.

It was interesting to me that the founder of Bastyr and his son, both died of heart attack within a few days.

Dr. Mitchell's youngest son, Noah, also died Tuesday just a few hours before his father, of a similar heart attack, though it seems the deaths were coincidental.
Pizzorno and Dr. Mitchell, along with two others, founded Bastyr University in 1978. At the time, it was the second natural-medicine university in the country in a field that many didn't consider to be a legitimate part of mainstream medicine, Pizzorno said.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003543647_mitchellobit27m.html

Now, the thing is: look at his picture. He was *59*. And white haired! He looks old. His son was a lot younger, and died of a heart attack. These are people eating a vegetarian, probably low-fat, "healthy" diet. And they look a whole lot older than your average Japanese person at the same age. FWIW, I am 56, and not grey at all, yet, nor his my husband, same age. I'm not sure what is going on with this, but the "vegans" I now are often grey at say, age 30. Also losing their hair. Why? I suspect high levels of iron, which causes peroxide production, which bleaches the hair follicles. Not really related to "starch" or "animal protein" directly at all.

===============

Now, what are the features of his "starch based" diet?

http://www.drmcdougall.com/free_4d.html

Forbidden foods:

- Meat, poultry, eggs, fish
- oils (any kind, including veggie oils).
- coconut (?? )
- refined foods, any kind.
- white rice
- white flour
- dairy

So what does that leave you with? Whole wheat, brown rice, roots, legumes, vegies, fruits. The basic menu of a lot of "basic healty" diets. My general take is: you lose the dairy, which causes a lot of problems for some people. You lose the trans fats. You keep barley and wheat, but most people won't eat a lot of the "whole" forms of those. You lose the neu5gc. You lose the iron (because the whole grains block that).

The Kitavians

So here I need to take a seque to my other email. This was about the Kitavian diet. The original blog post is interesting. Kitavians came into the news because of the studies that said "reading too much ruins your eyes". Thing is, Kitavian kids read a LOT, but have great eyesight. So the blog site talks about this some:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/08/kitava-wrapping-it-up.html

It's a great post: you should read it. But what came today was a bit from an actual Kitavian:

The common food that the Kitava islanders eat to stay alive for the next say are tuberous such as:
Yams (teitu, kuvi, kasiwena, kwanadu, gorina(sweet potato), bisia, taro (uni and viya), including wild and domesticated greens like unonu,gayasu, yakumalasi,beans,nuweta, yakirodi, including fruit from pawpaw, pumpkin, water melon, lemon (kamokuku), natu, yaku, mango, breadfruit, gwadira, sasana, seida (okari-nuts(, coconuts, plus with protein not always (daily basis) such as fish (main one), pork (pig -- rarely), chicken --rarely), crabs and shell fish.

Thank you

Kaigabu Kamnanaya
(Kitava Island)

Now this sounds a lot like what I find at your average Asian market. Yams, vegies, legumes, fish. In Japan, Korea, and others, there is a lot of rice too, plus eggs and poultry.

So what is different about this diet, than the SAD?

- No wheat/barley/rye products
- Low iron
- Loads of polysaccharides
- Loads of nutrients
- No neu5GC
- Few industrial chemicals/additives

These diets are very similar, in practice. The main difference between the Kitavian diet and the McDougall diet is:

- The McDougall diet contains wheat/barley (but only in the whole form: my experience is that people eat less whole wheat or barley, than they do the white versions)
- The McDougall diet does not contain fish or eggs

The diets are basically very similar. Based on starch and vegies and fruits, for sure.

I would tend to say that losing the wheat and barley, and adding fish and eggs, makes for a way better diet, and one that could be used by young people too (fish provide the EFA that kids need). McDougall has added a vegan component, which seems to be common lately (it happened too in "The China Study" ... this could be a really significant study, but really, the results are NOT about "veganism").

Takeaway: Is this about starch? I don't think so. I don't think "macronutrients" are the issue at all. It's the SOURCE of the starch, or the fat, or the protein. For starches, wheat and barley don't work well. For fats, trans fats and vegetable fats don't work well. For proteins, mammal proteins don't work well.

My experience:

As an addendum, I'd have to say that my daily diet is more like the Kitavian, and my eyesight has in fact improved. I needed new glasses a few months ago, and it looks like I'll need new ones again, but the eye doctor has no idea why I've improved in both far and near sight.. The ability of my eyes to "focus" has gotten really good, but it's hard to pinpoint what exactly makes that happen. My blood sugar and blood pressure has improved a lot too. I'm not a vegan. I'm not low-fat. I do eat a lot of starches (mainly rice and roots) and sugars (mainly fruits and some splurges like pecan pie). I avoid iron, and mostly, mammal meat, dairy, and gluten, and eat loads of vegies, eggs, fish, and fruit. But we do have beef probably once a week and I enjoy it (I think neu5gc is inflammatory, and inflammation is one of my issues). My "age spots" are fading too, which means, I think, that the "low iron" part is working. But my skin is soft, without hand-cream (despite gardening and loads of dishwashing), which means I'm getting plenty of fat.

BSFs and ultraviolet

2011-11-22T23:29:00.001-08:00

On another note about the BSFs ... I'm sitting here at 11:30, in the dark. The BSFs are buzzing around. I've gotten to think about this, because mostly during dark days, they just SIT. And SIT. They do nothing but conserve energy.

Yet here we are, in the dark, and they buzz.

So thinking about it ... there is this orangey, not-much-light, mercury vapor lamp in the yard. It is rather old ... over 20 years I think ... and it turns on sometime in the evening.

Googling it, it seems mercury vapor lamps give too much UV, and so nowadays they are supposed to have filters. I don't think this one has those filters. Might be why I need eyeshades to sleep ... maybe my eyes are tuned to UV too. The light seems very dim, but it certainly gets the BSFs going.

Soldier fly update, 11/21/2011

2011-11-21T02:21:00.001-08:00

I brought the soldier flies into the house a couple of weeks ago. These were the zombies, the pupae. I added some hoops to the net, to hold it open, and a zipper. The net is sewed into a cone, and the cone sets in a half of a carbouy. The pipe is to let the zombies crawl out, if they want.

This is November, but it is sunny outside. The sun is very direct in winter, because it comes in under the eaves. I have a space blanket slung up to keep the sun out, because it fades out the computer screen.

Anyway, the flies have hatched and they are quite active. I expect babies any time! I have some bags hung on the sides, with coffee grounds. My idea is to take the bags, once they hatch, and grow them somewhere else, not in my office. It's a good setup though. No outside flies can get in, and the BSF's can't get out. And it's nice entertainment. My husband says "It's like a fish tank: without the fish".

BTW I figured out, I think, why they didn't breed last year when they were outside. The greenhouse is made of polycarbonate. On the label it says that it screens out ultraviolet. Ha. Not only that, but the screen I was using for the new Honeymoon Hotel was made of window screen mesh ... which also screens ultraviolet. Using the white screen, like the one above, worked ok in the greenhouse during direct sun this summer; I got babies, but they never seemed very active. The grey screen though, didn't work at all. Back inside, with an old glass window and white net, they are far more active even in winter.

I put them outside because the grubs were crawling all over my house. They are escape artists, for sure. But the flies are fine indoors; even if they escape they are easy to catch. I think if I can just sequester the babies (in plastic bags) and grow them outdoors as they get bigger, we will all be happy. One thing though, when the grubs were growing in the cloth cones, they never did escape from the cones. They seemed quite happy to be in there, but also, oddly, they could not climb the walls. The landscape fabric appears to be too slippery for them, esp. since it is not wet (the cones are far more breathable than a plastic box).

The Cones Go Indoors

2011-11-21T01:58:00.001-08:00

It's getting cold out! It's been below freezing for a week or so, and there was frost on the ground today. So it was all just a matter of time before some of the plants outside die, something I always find sad.

So this year: I'm bringing some of them in! The cones are super-easy to transplant.

Grab the cone
Lift it up
Take it in the house

But the hard part is, where to put it? Outside I have these in a number of containers, mostly dishpans. They are not pretty. I'm working on "pretty". Also, the containers are too large for our little shelf. I don't have room for many plants indoors, and the collards, kale, and lettuce can stay out there. I brought in the tomatoes, aloe, and started a few more experimental plants.

First, I have a new subirrigation planter made from clay, in the back. It is very heavy, and has holes for the cones. It only holds the bottom of the cone, which is fine for most plants. The BIG aloes I have in a bigger clay pot, which gives more mass.

Some of the others I moved to other clay pots The one in the front is a new one I bought, a small aloe of a different species. The cones is sitting in "The Blue Man" (token to the Blue Man Group, which I love). Basically any clay pot will work, if you stop up the drainage hole. The one with multiple holes though, is easier to water. There is a water hole in one corner. I have a couple more in the works which are more cylindrical.

Then we have the bigger plants. Here is a dwarf orange, sitting in a bigger cone. The cone sets in a 7 gallon bucket, with the top edge turned over, and a Christmas cactus planted around it. The white pipe is to make watering easier. The bucket holds the water and keeps the plant stable. The bag makes for good root aeration and self-pruning.

Here it is at a distance. I pruned the tree, trying to make it bushier by next spring. This was basically a twig last spring, It had frozen when I left it outside, and I was pretty sure it was dead. But it's looking better now, and grew a good two feet. This window gets a lot of sun, so it should be pretty happy for the winter. All it needs is a "wrapper" around the plastic bucket to make it prettier.

For smaller plants, I'm thinking the cones could be just suspended from a rope or hung from a railing or fence. We have a lot of fencing around ... if the cones are set into a plastic container, like a half of a plastic bottle, or a coffee bag, they can be hung anywhere. I also like the idea of just a rope just hanging from the rafters. Maybe two ropes, with bamboo tied in like a rope ladder, then having lettuces hanging all over it. Or long bamboo poles, to make a lettuce or strawberry "wall".

Though it would be nice to engineer it so there is only one watering point, rather than watering each plant. Possibly if the plastic container had a hose coming out of each one, it could water the next one down the ladder.

Iron and gut cancer

2011-11-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I really was NOT about iron. We were making steaks, broiled on an iron pan, several times a week. Grass-fed beef. Good stuff!

But yeah, here I am. The more you know ... the less you "know".

Here is the latest:

Lactoferrin was examined for its effect on the growth of a human colon adenocarcinoma cell line (HT 29) in culture and its action was compared to that produced by transferrin and two different iron solutions (ferrous sulfate and ferric chloride). When transferrin was replaced by either iron solutions the cell grew in proportion to the quantity added and the maximal effect obtained was identical to that produced by transferrin alone. When transferrin was replaced by lactoferrin the cells were unable to proliferate for a long time. However, in the presence of low-concentration iron solutions, lactoferrin stimulated the cell growth, and the effect was more pronounced with the ferric chloride solution.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/4292846

Short version: the more iron your gut can get, the more cancer. The American diet is loaded with available iron, mainly because of a well-intentioned idea of getting rid of anemia. But it may have set us up, combined with our low fiber content diet, for a lot of gut cancer.

Iron was added to the American diet to avoid anemia, which was a huge problem. Adding iron to anemic kids, worked wonders. Works for pigs too: they grow faster and bigger. But get this:

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of weekly treatment with ferrous sulfate on hemoglobin level, morbidity and nutritional status in a sample of anemic infants from Zona da Mata Meridional in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil.

METHODS: A controlled, community-based intervention was carried out with 378 infants who were followed-up for 18 months. Hemoglobin level was measured at 12 months in a total of 245 children randomly selected. Participating infants were divided into three groups: two received 45 mg of elemental iron weekly, from 12 to 18 months of life (69 children with moderate/severe anemia, and 111 with mild anemia); the third group was composed of 65 non-anemic children, who received no intervention. The remaining 133 children constituted the control group, for comparisons on nutritional status and morbidity.

RESULTS: The prevalence of anemia was 73.5% at 12 months of life. After 6 months of treatment, 42.3% of anemic children reached hemoglobin levels > 11.0 g/dL. The mean increase was 1.6 g/dL, being higher (2.5 g/dL) in the group with lower levels of hemoglobin at baseline. Children without anemia at baseline received no treatment, and 40.3% of them became anemic at the end of follow-up, with a mean decrease of 0.5 g/dL in hemoglobin levels. A significantly greater weight gain was observed in the two treated groups, while no significant improvements were seen in linear growth and duration of diarrhea.

CONCLUSIONS: The fact that less than half the children receiving ferrous sulfate recovered from anemia at the end of follow-up, along with the development of anemia in many untreated, previously non-anemic infants, suggests the need for effective control strategies.

So: short version. Kids who are short on iron, get better when they get iron. Kids who are not short on iron ... get worse when they get added iron. Kids with no anemia, became anemic when they got extra iron. Both groups got weight gain.

What exactly does this mean? Maybe: more iron = more weight. Works for Sumo wrestlers, and for piglets. But also, you can be getting a lot of iron, be fat, and test as *anemic* which means you will be prescribed more iron supplements. We don't really understand iron, even though it comprises a lot of our planet.

The "big" people on our planet, based on my reading, are mainly people living off big ruminants. It's not a matter of protein, because the fish and whale eaters get plenty of that, but they stay short. People got tall when they ate ruminants, I think because of all the heme iron? Or some hormone in the meat or milk. Neu5GC even. It's a trigger of some kind, and not as simple as macronutrient ratios.

Easy Oven Fried Chicken

2011-10-25T21:07:00.000-07:00

Cooking oven-fried chicken is one of those things that is so easy it's hardly worth talking about. But sometimes it comes out better than others, so I thought I'd share this one.

Basically I mixed up some sweet rice flour, corn meal, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and turmeric. The exact mix isn't important. I also used a little konjac (1/2 tsp) to help it stick, though I don't think it needed it, as it turned out.

Then I coated the chicken thighs in mayonnaise. Mayo sticks rather nicely; that is what it is made for! Then I rolled it in the flour, and baked at 350 til nicely browned and done inside. This made a nice crispy, but not greasy, crust.

In many of these kinds of recipes, buttermilk is used to help the crust stick. I don't use milk at all, so using the mayo made it easy. Possibly coconut yogurt would work too.

I cooked this on a silicone mat, which made cleanup easy also.

Red Meat and Cancer

2011-10-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

I personally like looking at the "Paleo" take on diet, because it can give us a good idea on what kind of food works for humans. But one of the controversies about this kind of diet, is the role of "red meat". Most of the people on TV or in books talking about the "Paleo Diet" stress lots of good beef from free range ruminants. Yet the research has often stressed that "red meat" isn't good for people, and might be implicated in cancer and heart disease.

Recently, the idea that "saturated fat" is the problem has been somewhat discredited. But lately there has been another study that is interesting:

A Large Prospective Study of Meat Consumption and Colorectal Cancer Risk: An Investigation of Potential Mechanisms Underlying this Association

This study actually broke down the types of meat being consumed, and how much. Their conclusions are that yes, there is an association between colon cancer and red meat. They broke down the risks based on three mutagens: high heat cooking, nitrates/nitrates, and heme iron. White meat was not associated with increased risk of colon cancer. This is interesting, because white meat is often cooked at high heat also?

More than 2,700 diagnoses of colon cancer or rectal cancer were made among participants of this study during its 7-year duration. The conclusion was clear: diets highest in red meat and processed meat were associated with a 24% and 16% higher risk, respectively, for developing these types of cancer compared to diets lowest in these types of meat. The people with diets lowest in red meat ate an average of 9g per 1,000 calories–or, about 0.6oz of red meat per day assuming a 2,000 calorie per day diet. Conversely, the people with diets highest in red meat ate an average of 66.5g per 1,000 calories–or, about 4.7 oz red meat per day assuming a 2,000 calorie per day diet. Furthermore, as red or processed meat intake increased from the lowest levels of intake to higher levels of intake, colorectal cancer risk increased as well.
The researchers found no link between white meat consumption and an elevated cancer risk, possibly due to a difference in total iron content. In looking at dietary impact, it is important to distinguish between the heme iron found in meat, and non-heme iron, which comes primarily from fortified cereals, fruit juice, vegetables, beans and grains. The non-heme iron has not been linked with cancer.

http://www.fyiliving.com/diet/why-red-meat-may-cause-colorectal-cancer/

Anyway, if the association with cancer is mainly due to the heme iron, this explains some of the Paleo paradox. First, our ancestors rarely, if ever, relied on large ruminant meat for most meals. Taking down a big strong, horned, non-domestic 1,000 lb animal, using spears, isn't something you do every day. They DID do it, amazingly enough, though possibly the Neanderthals did it better. Most existing non-technological cultures though, eat large ruminants occasionally, but gathered a large variety of fish, insects, small mammals, reptiles, and birds for protein on a daily basis. Oddly enough, it seems that eating fish and poultry isn't associated with raising iron levels like beef is, even though they do contain a fair bit of iron.

But even if our typical caveman did manage to eat Aurochs every night, said caveman also had parasites. Hookworm was (and is) everywhere people go barefoot and don't have indoor plumbing. Hookworm removes iron from the gut rather nicely. This might explain why red meat wasn't associated with cancer in the China study either: rural Chinese are probably more likely to have parasites.

This study doesn't go into the neu5gc issue, which is an important one I think. Also, I think the issue with "processed meat" might not be the nitrates, but with other preservatives in those foods, which increase iron absorption. If that were the case, then chicken-sausage wouldn't have the same problems as beef-sausage.

So what does this say for modern people trying to follow a Paleo diet? I think the emphasis on those nice manly steaks is a bit misplaced. The healthiest cultures seem to be the ones eating more fish and eggs, not ruminant meat. However, if the issue is mainly heme iron, then people who are eating a lot of this kind of meat maybe should get hookworm, or else be sure to eat iron-blocking foods with the meat.

Appetite Hints

2011-10-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

For some time I've been using Intermittent Fasting ... in the Fast-5 format these days ... to stabilize my blood sugar and my eating habits. It works great: I went from a person who "crashed" if she didn't eat every 3 hours, to a person who can eat or not eat and just not worry about it much. This is a really good thing if you happen to be GFCF and do any travelling. I don't need to carry a bag of food everywhere! Also, it has helped my ongoing gut issues, in conjunction with konjac. My bowel habits are actually normal, for the first time in my life.

However, a number of people who do Fast-5 have issues with getting too hungry, esp. when they first start. Over the years I've compiled a list of things that have helped people, and I'm listing them here.

Poor Man's Soda

1. Get a glass of water or cooled tea/coffee, or water with chopped ginger in it.

2. You can add Torani syrup to this, if you want flavor (diet if you are fasting, sugary otherwise). Or you can add a squeeze of lemon/lime and a twist of peel (what I do: I love lemon! I also have some dried lemon slices from Nuts Online, and those work).

3. Add one jigger (one ounce) of vinegar. Cider vinegar is said by some to be the best for you.

4. Add 1/4 tsp. of baking soda.

5. Stir.

6. Let it set about a minute.

After a minute it will be sparkling and bubbly, like soda pop.

This doesn't seem to keep well, even in sealed bottles, so you have to add the vinegar and soda at the end. You can make up the rest of it before, and keep it in the fridge.

This is basically how soda pop got started in the 1800's or so. They used phosphate, not bicarbonate, but it's the same kind of acid/base reaction that produces CO2. These days they use CO2 cartridges or tanks. They are selling the CO2 cartridges these days in the grocery stores ... it's the next new thing ... but Poor Man's Soda is way cheaper.

Anyway, vinegar does good things for your appetite, blood sugar, blood pressure, and weight loss, in studies. So it's a twofer. Keeping hydrated, and having enough electrolytes, goes a long way to allowing you to feel good while not eating.

Eating Order

If you tend to gorge, start your eating period with a big salad and/or soup. Salad is full of green stuff, which your body really needs, and good polysaccharides. I use a vinegar/garlic/oil dressing too, and add chopped roasted nuts or smoked salmon sometimes. Vinegar is known to help with blood sugar, when taken with a meal. Eating something light first sets up you stomach enzymes for the main meal, and sets up your insulin levels to receive food. In studies, this seems to cause less "blood sugar spike" after a meal. I think it also makes you full longer.

After your soup/salad course, have your meat/cooked vegie course. Have something YUMMY and spiced the way you like it. Make sure there is enough protein: human beings don't need a huge amount of protein, but if there isn't enough you'll get hungrier the next day. I like to have lots of vegies. Probably half you food should be vegetable matter of some kind. My usual mix is something like a cup of steamed rice or potato (white or sweet), 2 cups vegies, 5-6 oz of fish or chicken. That's about all I can eat in one sitting, and it's very satisfying.

Later, when/if you get hungry again, you can have dessert. That's when I'd have my fruit, or fruit cobbler, pumpkin pie, roasted nuts.

Best foods for avoiding hunger

Some foods tend to stimulate appetite, esp. the next day when you are trying not to eat! Other foods keep you full longer. Here is a list of what has helped people, in email lists and in studies.

1. Fish and eggs. That's my favorite ... developed countries that have the highest fish and egg consumption, also have the skinniest people!

2. Get enough protein. This kind of goes with #1. But it seems people eat less when they eat more protein. Protein tends to be the "stop" button for meals.

3. Get enough fat. Some people swear by very high-fat low-carb diets. This doesn't work for me personally, and even if it did, I don't want to live that way. But, it is something you can try. At any rate, going really LOW fat isn't a great idea either. Fat carries flavor, helps vitamins be absorbed, and makes a person satiated.

4. Use GOOD fat. Trans fats and rancid fats are not good for your body at all, and I think inflammation might trigger appetite in at least some people. I use enough fat to do the cooking, coconut oil, olive oil, or bacon fat. And seseme oil for flavor. On salads, I use olive oil.

5. Stay hydrated. Thirst can come across as hunger, and make you hungry.

6. Get enough electrolytes. If you drink lots of water, or tea or coffee, you tend to lose electrolytes. This can make you shaky and send your heartbeat wonky. That is one reason I tend to use the Poor Man's Soda in addition to water.

7. Get vitamins. I think it's important to get enough vitamins, and some of them are difficult to get from food. This is especially true of Vit B, C, D, calcium, and magnesium. And it's even more true when you are eating "less". So in the morning I take B complex, 500 mg C, Cal/Mag/D/K mix (from Costco), and another magnesium. This has solved a couple of health issues I have had (specifically tetany in my feet and heart palpitations). I take these in the AM, along with konjac/psyllium so they set well on my stomach if needed. More and more, I can take them without the konjac mix, so I'm guessing my stomach is in better shape than it was.

8. Avoid iron. People talk about "carbs" raising insulin levels. But get this: iron raises insulin levels too. These latest studies showing people who take multivitamins don't live as long ... that is to be expected, when they take multivitamins with iron. Fortunately iron is pretty easy to avoid (it's in a section further down).

9. Get enough polysaccharide. Polysaccharides are required for a good mix of gut bacteria, which affects your appetite in a big way. Also, polys slow down digestion, so you both digest your food more thoroughly and stay full longer. Polys feed the butyrate-producing bacteria in your lower gut, which helps prevent gut cancer. I use the word "polysaccharide" instead of "soluble fiber" to avoid the confusion with the grain-bran fiber some people take. Grain-bran is rather tough on the gut, although it is an iron blocker which is a good thing. I don't like grain fiber myself (see section below on getting fiber).

10. Avoid "dry" starches. This sounds weird, but in animal studies, the form of the starch has a big effect on how the starch is digested. Think of how a cracker dissolves in water, but a strand of pasta does not. Bread was invented, it is thought, in order to make beer, because it feeds yeast so readily. But dry starches are easy to gorge on too (think: eating a whole bag of potato chips!). And most of the dry starchy foods have added iron, and too much salt and sugar.

11. Avoid wheat gluten. Wheat/spelt/barley/rye ... they all contain an undigestible peptide string that sticks to the villi in your gut, and very likely has hormonal or opiate effects on a lot of people. This is getting more press these days (see the book, "Wheat Belly").

Avoiding Iron

There are people who are actually low on iron, esp. people who have been vegan for some time, or have bleeding issues. If you are in that category, you DO need iron. Thing is, how do you know what category you are in? There isn't a good test for this: iron levels in the blood fluctuate, like blood sugar levels do. If you are low in blood cells, there are multiple reasons for that too. However, if you get a ferritin level test, and it is over 100 ... your iron levels are high for sure, and avoiding iron will likely make you live longer and feel better. There has been a lot written about this, including books like "The Iron Factor of Aging" and Ray Peat's article.

1. Take iron blockers with your meals. Iron blockers include: chili, turmeric, coffee, tea, calcium (milk, or a calcium pill).

2. Avoid cast iron pans.

3. Do not mix fruit and meat in the same meal. Don't take Vit C with a meat meal.

4. Avoid multivitamins with iron. Of course, do not take vitamins with iron added.

5. Avoid "fortified" foods. Iron is added to most starchy foods in the US, even rice! There are huge amounts of iron in most breakfast foods.

6. Donate blood. The life you save may be your own! If you can donate blood, do it. In studies, blood donors are less likely to get Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

7. Taking iron chelators. If you iron levels are high, and esp. if you can't donate blood, taking iron chelators helps. Iron chelators include turmeric, green tea, and IP6.

Getting Fiber

Lately there have been people saying fiber is not only not needed, it is downright dangerous, and wasn't eaten in our past. OK, that is simply not true. We have stool samples from thousands of years ago, and our ancestors ate a LOT of fiber, both as plant fibers and stuff like fish scales, fur, small bones.

Bran fiber isn't good stuff though, in my book. It's irritating to the gut, and about as digestible as wood chips. The outer husk of grain is designed mainly to keep animals from eating the grain, so I think it is designed to be irritating stuff to eat. The best thing I know about it is that it is an iron-blocker, so eating "whole grain" foods is good for blocking iron in the meal. Also it makes food digest slower, like any fiber. But there are better ways to do this.

The best fiber seems to be konjac, or glucomannan. This is sold as a powder, and can be used to thicken soups, make tempura batter stick, mix with water to help the gut, made into puddings, or eaten as noodles. You can buy the noodles premade and use them instead of other noodles. I think the goo in aloe vera is a kind of glucomannan also.

The next best fibers include: psyllium, pectin, and all the gooey stuff that is in vegetables and fruits and beans. When you eat these foods, you get fiber! Basically aim for half your plate being full of these.

Handy foods to keep around

These are the things I keep around to snack on during my eating period, if I need to snack. The trick is to stay away from the potato chips and other "dry" starches, which are nutritionally poor and, I think, tend to stimulate the appetite. Also, having these around will make your meals tastier and more interesting.

1. Chopped, fresh roasted nuts. Basically buy some raw nuts, and roast them slowly to perfection. Then chop them up, put them in a bag, and keep them in the freezer. Roasted nuts go rancid very quickly, but they keep well in the freezer. Then you can add them to green beans, salads, fruit salads, whatever.

2. Pickled foods. Pickles, kimchi, fermented green beans ... anything sour! They add flavor. Also they have next to no calories, so you can snack on them while fasting.

3. Pickled eggs. These are rather yummy, and easy to make in bulk (search the net for recipes: I just add some hard-boiled eggs to leftover pickle juice. This only works once for one batch of old pickle juice, but we eat a lot of pickles so it's not an issue).

4. Canned or dried fish: I don't do canned foods much, but canned sardines and oysters are my quick snack and travel food. Dried shrimp can be eaten as a snack, and whole dried baby fish (they are better pan-roasted or fried though). Dried ground shrimp is a great flavoring for many dishes too.

5. Frozen smoked salmon: Smoked salmon doesn't keep well, but you can freeze it in small chunks to add to salads or have with rice and kimchi for a quick meal.

6. Chopped frozen bacon: Using bacon in sauteed anything is really nice. I buy "bacon pieces" (which are cheap) or just chop up some packaged bacon into little pieces, and keep it loosely frozen so I can grab some when I'm ready to cook.

7. Steamed rice and baked potatoes: I think those are the best "basics" for a meal, and can be turned into many quick dinners. But, they take time to make. So I make a big batch of both, and use it as needed.

8. Broth: Same as for rice. Make a batch of broth at the beginning of the week, and use as needed. I don't do super-long-cooked broth. Usually just some chicken wings in a clay pot on low heat, for a couple of hours. It's the stuff in skin and cartilage that makes the thick gel, not the bones themselves.

9. Really good spices. Learning to use spices is one of the big things in cooking. Penzy's Ozark Seasoning makes just about any sauteed food taste professional. Raw garlic is one of my staples too, and raw ginger. Garlic I buy peeled, at Costco. Ginger I buy anywhere, slice it, and store in sushi vinegar so it's handy.

Chinese Green Beans

2011-10-24T01:21:00.000-07:00

One of the differences in the "Standard American Diet" and the diet of most of the rest of the world, is how they treat vegetables. When I grew up, "vegetables" were this sort of soggy grey-green mass at one corner of the plate, usually reheated canned green beans or peas or corn. The only seasoning was salt ... and then we'd add some butter. They were the thing you ate because Mom said: "Eat your vegetables!".

Fast forward a decade or two, and here is my brother and cousin, the hedonists, ordering seconds and thirds, of green beans. I mean, they are scarfing down those green beans like they were pizza. A regular green bean orgy.

So what happened? My brother changed? I think not. He still does not like "vegies". But Chinese Green Beans ... that is different. Chinese Green Beans are not "vegies". They are not grey-green and insipid. They are totally awesome.

Now, I don't know exactly how they make these in that particular restaurant, but I make a pretty good version of them, regularly. And I scarf them down too, because they are awesome. The recipe is such that you can use it for a number of different vegetables, whatever you happen to have handy.

Here is the version I made today.

1. Get some green beans. Today all I had was frozen, so I tossed them into some water to thaw them.
2. Chopped bacon. I usually keep chopped raw bacon in the freezer. I got a handful of this and set it aside in a bowl.
3. Chopped roasted almonds. Again, I usually make these in bulk and freeze them, because I just love adding them to recipes. So I got a handful of these, set them aside in a bowl.
4. Chop some fresh garlic. Because, it isn't food without garlic.

So I put the fish in the oven (teriyaki salmon, but it didn't come out like I wanted, so I'll give the recipe for it when it comes out right). Then heated the pan, tossed in the bacon. While that started cooking, I cleaned up the kitchen, and drained the green beans.

When the bacon was crisp, I tossed in the garlic, let it cook for a bit. Then added the green beans. The green beans were wet, since they were frozen, so everything was watery. I added some soy sauce, which made it even more watery! But that's ok ... one of the things I learned from watching cooks make Phad Thai. While it was bubbling, I added some Penzey's Ozark Seasoning, which is probably the one seasoning you really need in life. If I was making it just for me, I'd add some Sriracha sauce at this point too. So I keep cleaning up the kitchen while this cooks, til all the liquid is gone, and the green beans are cooking in bacon grease. They start to shrivel a little ... and this is when you add the almonds, and it's done.

Now, I probably added too many almonds and bacon for this many green beans, but the result was great. That plus a bowl of rice and a little salmon and kimchi ... life doesn't get much better than that. It's hard for me to put in words just how satisfying that kind of meal is for me.

This is so different from my previous life, where I'd eat and eat and eat and never quite feel full. My quest, back when I started this food quest, was to find a meal that kept me satisfied for at least 4 hours, til the next meal. Now I eat one meal a day ... and it keeps me satisfied for 24 hours. There are probably many factors that make this work for me, but one big part is: the food is really GOOD FOOD. Not just "eating healthy" but "sheesh, that was a good meal" good food. Foods like Chinese Green Beans.

======
On another note: Pans! In the picture you see one of my main ones, which I admit, is .... nonstick! It is a Swiss Diamond pan, and the thing is amazing. I am saying this as a former nonstick-hater. Whatever Swiss Diamond is doing, it's not what you think of as "Teflon".

My other favorite pans are a kind of new ceramic nonstick (Safepan), which is quite a bit cheaper, and it works nicely too. The Swiss Diamond is a very heavy pan, and the big one has lots of surface for stir fry, and it doesn't move much when you do the stirring. The ceramic pans are very lightweight, which is also useful. I like both.

For long-cooked foods, I use clay. Clay cookers make absolutely the best food, from a culinary perspective. But also, oddly, they don't stick. The idea of using clay on a stovetop seems odd and I keep expecting the cooker to explode, but so far it has not and the food is great. Everyone I've met who has tried this has one comment "The food tastes so much better!". I don't know why that is, but I expect that part of it is that the iron in steel pots, contributes to oxidation. Any cookery that avoids oxidation (sous vide, planking, smoking, confit) tastes better.

I'm mostly avoiding stainless in my life, basically to avoid iron and nickle. I have no idea how necessary that is, really, but when I started not using stainless, food started tasting better to me, so it seemed like a good experiment.

Grow Cones Up the Wall

2011-10-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

My Grow Cones are working really well, with big happy plants in little bags. However, they are invading every horizontal space I have, and I'd like to put them into a smaller space. I tried using shelving, but the problem is that when the plants get taller, they hit the "roof" and that is a problem. Also it is hard to get to the plants in back of the shelf.

There is a really nice idea here:

http://www.herbsfromwales.co.uk/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9&Itemid=37

This is a hydroponic system, but my idea is to do the same thing, except using Grow Cones in the holes instead of bare roots sitting in water. Each "rack" will be 3.3 feet long (1/3 of a 10 foot pipe), and the overflow from the top pipe goes to the next and so on. So there is only one water hole per rack. The pipes will hold 2" of water or so.

I'd like to have the pipes be portable, so you could detach one from the rack and put it on a table or use it in the house.

The idea is to be vertical. You can grow a lot of plants on a wall! I'm thinking one 3.3 foot rack of lettuce is about all the lettuce we could use, and if I could have a rack of strawberries too that would be great.

Now there is another gorgeous idea here:

http://www.plantsonwalls.com/?gclid=CLPes7C39qsCFbQDQAodrX4euw

Note what they are doing here, wrapping the roots in a bag. Basically this creates a growing medium very similar to Grow Cones, and enables the plants to be portable. Aerated roots are happy roots! And note how very little root space a strawberry plant actually uses. Their system is way prettier, but probably overkill for growing a few plants outside.

I'm really liking the pipe idea. How about for taller plants? My experience this year is that even big plants don't need much root space, but they do need a way to hold themselves up. What about a long pipe, with raspberries or tomatoes in a row? Instead of being on a rack, there would be just one pipe, with a trellis attached for the canes or vines. Probably bigger cones, bigger pipe.

Yay Tempura!

2011-10-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite foods is tempura. Basically deep fried anything. There problem is, I can't just get it at a restaurant. Pretty much everything is fried with wheat-based batter, or fried with wheat-based batter. Plus, the restaurants pretty much all use canola or corn oil, and it's often rather rancid.

So I've been experimenting with making my own. We use good coconut oil or grape seed oil, and it never tastes rancid. I've been using Choice Batter or sweet rice flour to make the batter, and that makes a nice crispy crust.

The one problem though, is that often the batter doesn't stick. Even if it stays on while the piece is being fried, it falls off while you are eating it. Now, eggs can help some, but I don't like to use eggs because the batter doesn't stay crispy as well when it has eggs in it. Drying the fish, flouring, and dipping twice helps too, but not foolproof. Battering, rolling in breadcrumbs, and letting the fish set for a bit, that also helps, but it is a lot of work.

The other day though, I was mixing up some konjac powder, and for the umpteenth time I noticed just how sticky the stuff is. If it isn't fully mixed, it gloms onto the side of the glass, the inside of your mouth, anything. I mean, how awesomely sticky does something have to be, to stick to the inside of your cheek?

So a light went on. What if you mixed konjac with tempura batter? I had a recipe for shrimp that used corn starch ... dip the shrimp in corn starch/water, then roll in bread crumbs. I did this, but it didn't stick very well. Quite possibly because my bread crumbs lack the sticky gluten. So then I added some konjac to the mix. Voila!

Yesterday I tried it again. I use a cup of Choice Batter, a cup of water, just like on the box. Then I took 1/4 cup of sweet rice flour and mixed it with 1/4 tsp. konjac flour. It's important to mix the konjac with some other flour first, or it will clump! Added that to the Choice Batter mix, and a little more water.

Yep, it stuck. Stuck to wet fish, dry slices of sweet potato, anything. And made a gorgeous crispy crust.

In the first picture you can see the batter (cornstarch/water/egg) with no konjac. The cornstarch settles out to the bottom, but even when it doesn't it doesn't stick well.

The bottom picture has the same batter, with konjac mixed in. Sticks great!

I think the "keeper" recipe is as follows:

1 cup sweet rice flour
1/4 tsp konjac flour
1 tsp. garlic/onion salt (I mix garlic powder, onion powder, free-flowing salt, equal amounts, keep in a tight jar).
1/2 tsp. baking powder

Mix dry ingredients. Add 1 cup beer (or fizz water, or water) to make batter.
Let this sit for 15 minutes.

Add more water or rice flour as needed. If you are using fish, and it is wet, it will make the batter too thin as you go, so then add more rice flour. Or you can make sure your ingredients are nice and dry before you start.

An escape proof home!

2011-09-28T19:40:00.000-07:00

So, this is my new escape-proof BSF home. It needs a bigger "spacer" at the top, but you get the idea. The top part is netting, which has a zipper for access. It is sewed onto a cone at the bottom. The cone is made from slippery landscape cloth, and sits in a carbouy. A collar around the top secures it to the carbouy.

I have a couple of these cones already, but without the net. They drain really nicely. What is odd though, is that the babies don't escape. They tried climbing the sides a couple of times, but could only get an inch or two up the side before sliding down.

The zombies didn't try to escape at all. They burrowed down. I'm thinking if this is always true, the way to harvest the zombies will be at the BOTTOM of the cone. The thing is, if the "garbage" isn't smelly or wet, they seem content enough to stay put.

Here is what it looks like on the carbouy. My old Honeymoon Hotel is on the left, and I'll probably use some mesh like that for the new one too (to make it wider).

The interesting thing about the cones is that even though the BSFs could easily burrow through the cloth, they don't. I suspect it is similar to what happens with plants in cloth bags. The roots of plants sense the air, and stop growing that way. They don't circle, they just stop. I'm thinking that for a BSF, the "container" would normally be a carcass, and they don't want to escape from the safety of being inside. That seems to be the behavior of flies on carcasses according to YouTube anyway.

Also, the BSFs absolutely seem to need the netting where I live. Otherwise other kinds of flies and insects (like those Sexton beetles!) move on in.

Last year in this season, I made a new set of netting, and had zero babies. I'm thinking now that the problem was the kind of netting. It was screening for an old tent. It seems that these new screens are made to screen out ultraviolet light, and quite possibly this was that kind of screen. Anyway, this was the most transparent screen I could find.

I also got some mylar bubble-wrap used to ship frozen foods, so I can wrap the carbouy during the winter.

Limon, papaya y sabila

2011-09-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

If you could plant only three plants in your yard, what would they be?

OK, it's a trick question, in a way, because really, it depends where you live. But I came across this wonderful story:

Limon, papaya y sabila

Which is basically about the three "must have" plants in a Mexican garden, back when.

Now, I know Mexico has changed a lot since then. More and more of the "real" Mexico has disappeared, along with many other cultures over the world, displaced by a Northern European version of how the world should be. This displacement isn't new. It started in Mexico with the Conquistadors, who brought their pigs and their diseases to a world genetically unprepared. The Spanish methodically purged every trace of the old culture they could find, in the name of religion and probably political control. Ever since then it's been centuries of replacing the old cultures with the new, and the new is winning. But everywhere I read, there are traces of the old cultures, and what stands out is that the old cultures had an unsurpassed knowledge of plant lore. Some of it has been transmitted from mother to child, and it should be preserved.

As an aside, I have a real problem calling these old cultures "Latin America", or the people "Hispanics". The Spaniards are the people who decimated the peoples of these two continents, mostly accidentally but certainly in hubris. The Spaniards themselves speak a "Latin" language because they had been conquered by people of even more hubris, the Romans. One tiny city-state, conquered Europe, and brought their ways and foods to the rest of the continent.

Among their foods were wheat and barley, which are foods that basically change society. It's not just about "food storage" ... they are foods that change brain functioning, esp. for some portion of the population. And they bring about poorer health, in pretty much every society that has adopted them. So the Romans got the Spaniards hooked on wheat. Then the Spaniards conquered Mexico, and did pretty much the same thing. I am not native American at all, but if I was, I would really hate being called a "Latina"!

I got into this thinking because of someone I know, who is Mexican, of native American rather than Spaniard descent. She has the diseases that are unfortunately common in native Americans eating European food. European food has never been very good to Europe, but it's horrible for folks native to the Americas. Wheat never grew here before, so there is absolutely no genetic protection. Someone living on a reservation told me that in her tribe, half the members have diabetes. She was proposing a "wheat stomping ceremony".

Anyway, we were talking about diabetes, cancer, etc., and we got to talking about aloe, which her Mexican relatives were saying she should be taking. Aloe is for sale in Mexican groceries, so I wondered what its role was, traditionally. And I came across the link above.

What is interesting about this is the choices. "Limon" is basically "Limes". I do love limes, though I don't know much about cooking with them. But I've been working with d-limonene, from Green Turpenes, for various things. The stuff is amazing. It does clean, for sure. It also got rid of plant fleas on my plants, and mites. It gets rid of GERD. Well, for the sailors it got rid of scurvy too. The orange juice I took got rid of my a-fib, it seems.

Now in the story, they talk about red ribbons making the limes go into flower. That sounds like mythology, until you recall that the color red seems to make tomatoes go into bloom. With tomatoes the theory is that it looks like another tomato, and it is competing, but who knows? Maybe red causes other plants to bloom too.

As for papaya ... again, I don't know much about them. But they do have one of those amazing enzymes built in, great for tenderizing meat. And digesting foods. What other great stuff is in papaya?

And aloe. Aloe is one of the plants that just doesn't make sense. I had a very bad burn on one arm, that wouldn't heal. I put aloe on it ... it healed, no scar.

I can't grow these three plants. I can, and do, grow aloe, mainly inside, and I try to treat it with the respect it deserves. Papaya I haven't worked with much, but after reading this, I will! Limes ... yumm. I have some salted and preserved, now to work on recipes!

How much land does it take to grow food?

2011-09-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

When I lived in the city, I had this idea, like most city folks, that it took many acres of prime farmland to grow food. We were all taught in school about "the breadbaskets" of the world, feeding all those hungry hoards.

The fact is though, that the reason a "breadbasket" was needed was primarily based on bad farming methods, and the reliance on a few very hungry grains. Wheat has always been problematic to grow. It was and is prized, for sure, mainly I think because it's a drug! Corn is very prolific, but it's been mainly grown to make booze, feed cows and chickens, create HFCS, making plastics, making cars run, and junk food. Potatoes actually give a bigger harvest per acre though, and sweet potatoes give a huge harvest in a small area, and are way more nutritious to boot.

So when you start talking about "feeding the hungry", you have to stop thinking about amber waves of grain. You need to start thinking about what you can grow locally, in any old soil, and without needing young strong guys to do plowing.

It turns out, once you drop the grain-based dirt-based thinking, you can grow a whole lot of food without either much labor or much land. Here are some amazing examples!

The bag gardens can be set up anywhere, and with minimal supplies.

The keyhole gardens are interesting in that one of these gardens is expected to provide vegies for a family of 4, with spare to sell. The produce is bigger and healthier, and it also provides an instant compost pile and worm bin right in the middle! The unit doesn't expect "good soil" ... the addition of rusty cans and ash provides nutrients, and adding garbage/manure to the middle will keep it fed. But it shows how small a garden can be!

I like these systems because they don't require young strong men to make it work. Gardens are often maintained by grandmothers and kids, esp. in countries decimated by war, or when the guys are off at work. They also don't require much water or commercial fertilizer, or a pump or irrigation system.

This reminds me very much of one old guy I knew, who had an old stock tank off his deck, about 4 feet by 6. In the tank he had 2-3 feet of dirt, and a bunch of lovely plants. He gave me two big bags of produce, since he was just overloaded. He'd been handing out vegies to all his friends and neighbors too. He himself had bad arthritis, and couldn't do "real" farming. But he had plenty of vegetables!

I already talked about global buckets and other subirrigation systems, and of course my own Grow Cones. There are other systems out there too, people growing vegies in hay bales and plastic bags. Then there are the aquaponic systems and just plain aquaculture, in rural communities where they are raising tilapia, feeding them earthworms raised on animal manure. There are also people, helped by Send a Cow and Heifer, learning better ways to raise goats, chickens, sheep, and cows, using local forage rather than grain feed. And then there is permaculture and hedgerow farming.

Also in terms of grains, the people of Asia are very good at growing rice in very small paddies, in ways that don't harm the environment and are very sustainable. They've been doing that for centuries. There are probably ways to make bigger crops, but rice is one grain that is able to grow without huge fields, tilling, and combines.

In each of these cases, the main thing that is added is knowhow. Some of the old ways of farming just don't work, and I'd put the "mega farming" experiment of the last century in that category. "Tilling-based" farming is just a bad idea; ditto for many of the ways of raising animals. But that doesn't mean we are doomed. It means we have a whole lot of people experimenting with new methods, and a huge paradigm shift is happening.

Cone Garden and BSF update

2011-08-31T22:02:00.000-07:00

Here is an update on my Cone garden. Mostly everything is a lot bigger on the top shelf. I'm going to need to move some of the plants. On the middle shelf are some seedlings. Some of these I started right in the cones. This strikes me as a lot easier, since I didn't get around to transplanting all those ones I had in egg cartons, and they struggled along for a long time. They sprout quickly in the cones. At the bottom are some strawberries, in an old tote.

The big vine to the right is a hops vine. This is one that was dying, so some of the leaves are yellowy and spotted. It seems they need a few gallons of water PER DAY. Hops are very thirsty!

People have asked me "what holds the cones up". Basically, the shape of the cone itself. Here is an older plant, which is a collard left over form last year. I had only a stub of it ... it was destined for the compost bin ... but on a lark I stuck it in a cone. It re-sprouted. The container holding it is the old bleach bottle to the left, with some holes so it can't be over-watered. The cone is to the right, sort of just set there. It would fall sideways eventually, hence the bleach bottle.

The plant is doing fine, albeit it has some cabbage fly damage. I'm not good with finding cabbage fly worms, it seems. However, when I do find them, they make fine fish food!

I've also been told, that "of course" my plants are doing well, since they are in a greenhouse! Actually, some of the plants outside are doing better than the ones inside, for reasons that aren't clear to me. But I moved some of the cones outside, so we'll see how they compare.

The ceramic pot to the left is one I made just for Grow Cones. It holds the bottom of the cone, but has a pour spout to make it easy to refill. This one isn't glazed ... it cracked in the kiln, so I glued it to use as a test. The glazed ones should be here in a week or two. This style of pot works really well, for holding the cones securely. It's pretty much the shape of the Thai rice steamer, but with a fill spout. For a Cone bed, you'd need a large sheet with multiple "holders" ... the kind of thing you could make from extruded plastic, or from a bit of hog fencing.

The baby kales are in an old orange juice container. The handle of the juice container acts as the pour spout. I have kales sprouting all over the place, I'm assuming because of the kale that reseeded last season and got into the soil.

As for the green onions ... when I do buy green onions ... as I did all last winter ... I save the last inch or two, by the root. Then stick that in some dirt. They grow back into green onions. I'm not sure how long you can continue to do this, but at this point I have a LOT of green onions!

Here is my new BSF home. I gave up on these, but a few flies hatched here and there in the Honeymoon Hotel, and after I added some food, the babies grew up. There are quite a few of them now, REALLY FAT. I think they are the fattest BSFs I've seen. That happened mainly after I added some cooked salmon. Salmon isn't the sort of thing I normally feed BSFs because it's not left over, but this was. The BSFs loved it. It also seems to have attracted the Sexton beetles. I tried the experiment again with red meat, and the Sexton beetles didn't come, just a huge swarm of regular pestiferous flies.

What I did was to modify a carbouy, so an old peanut butter jar is the "feeding tube" and another attached container is the "exit tube". The feeding tube has a screw-top lid, which maybe I'll replace with mesh. Right now there is a lot of condensation, and the babies are crawling all over the lid.

At the exit is a bag filled with peat. Probably this should be a container, since the zombies can just burrow out, but this was an easy stopgap. I want to see if they actually EXIT since that has been an issue in the past.

The top of the carbouy is where the Honeymoon Hotel will be attached. Right now there are no hatching flies, so I just put a bag over it.

The carbouy doesn't actually have "corners" from a maggot's perspective. They are all curves. There is a ramp to make exit fairly easy, I think. Easier than squeezing through the lid of a terrarium anyway. The setup seems to keep out flies though, and for sure Sexton beetles. The grubs are quite big still, but also very active and white.

BTW I looked up what Sexton beetle grubs look like, and these are NOT Sexton beetles. They look just like BSF grubs. But big.

At the top of the carbouy, you can see fly eggs! The BSF smell hasn't deterred them, so far. Another good reason to keep the container closed.

Rare species? Not, but cool.

2011-08-29T00:58:00.000-07:00

Bug

We have a very odd insect in the greenhouse which looks pretty much like this. Orange antennae! It, or they, are trying to get into the BSF colony. One got in, and it keeps trying to hide, burrowing deep. Well, if it is trying to be inconspicuous, it should not be orange!

The really odd thing is that this picture is of Nicrophorus americanus, which is considered endangered?

Is this the Northwest version of the BSF? Clearly it is native? Anyway, I'm going to try to find some of it's favorite foods. Might be salmon, which is what seems to have attracted it. I expect around now, a million spawning salmon were all dying at the same time, these guys might expect that.

As for the BSF's ... this batch is the FATTEST I've ever seen. They are huge. Maybe they are not BSF's. But I think they are, since some are doing the zombie thing. I have a new container, which will be done soon so I can post it. They are now in a little terrarium, which is easy but allows other critters (like this one!) in.

Update:

OK, this one isn't all that rare. It's called a Sexton beetle:

http://www.whatsthatbug.com/2008/05/28/burying-beetle-with-phoretic-mites/

This one is, I guess, smaller, and it doesn't have the red thorax. And there are a number of comments about it, in this area.

Still, I've never seen one before! The ones that were trying to get into the BSF bin, now have their own home, with a mouse-sized chunk of carrion. I'm looking for an actual mouse, but don't have one yet.

I think this is another good reason though, to keep the BSF unit sealed. The BSFs might repel flies, but these beetles seem to get along with them just fine. However, the beetles carry mites that are said to infect maggots ... will the mites hurt the BSFs?

I moved the BSFs into my new "carbouy" home. It is basically a 5-gallon jug, with one added section for adding food, and another for the zombies to exit. Last year none of the zombies actually exited the unit, except the ones in the house who escaped through the lid. I'm not sure why they stayed in: it might be it was just too cold outside. It's not cold yet though, here, so maybe we can see if this works. There are no real corners on a carbouy, so they shouldn't get "stuck".

It doesn't help though, with the temperature problem. If the bin is warm, but outside is cold, they'll probably stay in?

Clay Rice Cooker, take 2

2011-08-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

So I finally got my courage up an tried the clay pot on top of the stove again. My first try, I burned the rice. I don't think it was the pot's fault though, so, here is the second try.

I rinsed some rice, added water up to the first joint, as in the directions. Then I added some raw chicken wings, chopped greens, ginger, soy sauce. Brought the whole thing to a boil, stirred it, then turned it to the lowest setting and ignored it for half an hour or so. At the end I stirred it and added some more salt/soy sauce.

The rice on the bottom was brown and chewy, like the "hot pot" I got at the restaurant. I had maybe a bit much water, so it was more like a congee. Outstanding flavor! It does seem to taste better cooked in clay. Of course, one of my motivations is to avoid cooking in metal.

It did not crack or explode. It kept hot for a long time, and nothing stuck seriously to the bowl.

Here is what the crock looks like. They come in various sizes, and the big one is BIG. The price is very reasonable. I bought 3, in different sizes, to experiment.

These are supposed to be good over a fire too ... that is how they are used in China. So good for disasters or camping or whatever. You can use them like you would a dutch oven, only without the cast iron.

I got this one from the Wok Shop. It's a little hard to find the right link to find the clay pots. They were well packed though, and came with a nice little recipe booklet. I think I'm going to go through the recipes and try a lot of them out! It's a great way to cook on hot days, way more efficient than the stove (though maybe not as efficient as the pressure cooker?).

http://www.wokshop.com/HTML/products/crockery/crockery_dishes_claypots.html

The Wok Shop has some really interesting kitchenware!

World's oldest person

2011-08-27T01:20:00.000-07:00

Yep, oldest woman.
Now, I was just talking about Grandma, who made it to 96. What is similar here is the skin. Pale.

For folk like me (pale) this means: she was never outdoors much. If she had been, as a young woman, she would have deep wrinkles, and she does not.

Nor skin cancer. Nor age spots. Whatever else is going on, this lady doesn't have the iron deposits or skin damage, that most old folks would have.

My Mom was also from Tennessee, but she spent a lot of time in the sun. Multiple skin cancers are the result, I think.Her skin is mottled, lots of "age spots" and grey spots. I'm not sure of which is iron and which is sun, but the two interact. This lady has neither.

Also ... her face is wide. She has a wide nose, which means enough Vit D or K at some point. Wide jaw too. Probably her teeth came in well. Probably had kids easily too.

Where did Grandma get Vitamin D?

2011-08-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

The more I think about it, the sun might well be one factor in longevity. Namely, staying out of the sun might make you live longer. We know the sun increases oxidation byproducts in the body, which is why being out in the sun makes you wrinkly. I think that might be one factor in why the sailors got scurvy too. The sailors drank a lot of booze, food was cooked in iron pots, they mostly ate beef and pork, all of which would make them need more Vit C. But the sailors were climbing rigging and sitting around on deck most of the time. Inside the hold it was cramped and smelly! Sailors wore minimal clothing too, even going barefoot. Probably long loose clothing wasn't good for climbing ropes. So their need for Vitamin C must have been very high.

However, my Grandma that lived to 96, avoided the sun. She had thick curtains on all the windows, and mostly she was covered from head to toe in clothes. You see that in most of the older clothes styles in most countries, summer and winter. Hats, trousers, coats or shirts with long arms, scarves. Before she moved to the US, she worked in castles, which were big and dark and cold, and again, she worked indoors. Wearing loads of clothes and staying indoors a lot wasn't unusual for women of her time and class.

But Grandpa was a gardener later in life, and he worked outside a lot. He died at age 72, after having many years of heart problems ... clearly exercise did not help! Grandma lived to 96. She never went to the doctor if she could help it, but she broke a hip at age 90 and so was hospitalized. She did have fairly brittle bones probably, but it never became an issue til she was 90 (no other broken bones). Her blood pressure was normal, she never got any kind of cancer, her blood glucose was normal. Had all her teeth, and they were straight. Actually she never had any other health issues at all. You can't say it was because of exercise ... she did very little, and in fact a couple of times spent *years* in bed, being waited on. She had wrinkles, but her skin was basically in good shape, plaint and young-looking.

Now, if Vit D is required for good health, how does a sun-phobic woman like her out-survive her husband and sister like that? (her sister died of cancer in her 70's). My guess is that she was in *better* shape because of being sun-phobic, in that she had fewer oxidation issues to deal with. But she should have been very low in Vit D, in theory.

Price's work pretty much showed what happens when you don't get enough Vit D. You get bad teeth, for starters. Cod liver oil helps a lot, and he had good results with that. Britain was pretty much known for bad teeth at the time.

Grandma, her sister and Grandpa though, did not have bad teeth. They had good eyesight, and until Grandma got very old, they didn't have an issue with bone breakage either. So what did Germans eat back then?

Some of the foods with the highest level of Vit D per 200 calories are:

1. Cod liver oil: 2217 IU
2. Herring 2061 IU
3. Mollusks 941 IU
... a whole lot of kinds of fish go here ...
... milk ...
... eggs: 49 IU per egg
... mushrooms

Well, herring and eels were about her favorite foods. Back then in Germany, fish was a very popular food, and I expect there were salmon in the streams too. They had a lot of cheese and eggs too.

At age 70, it is said you need 600 IU per day. One serving of oysters would do it, or 12 eggs. Or 50 calories worth of herring. (Interestingly enough, the foods that make me "full" the longest, are all the ones with high levels of Vit D.). 12 eggs seems like a lot, but in that era, eggs were used more often in cooking than they are now. One serving of salmon provides all you need, one serving of tuna or sardines provides about half. Mushrooms vary a lot in the amount they have, but they were a favorite of Grandma (they gathered them wild).

Maybe that is a big difference between England and Germany. The English pretty much gave up fish once they started farming, apparently very suddenly and thousands of years ago. Germany is pretty landlocked, yet they had fish farms, and salmon and eels swimming inland. So while the Germans and English were both similarly swaddled, the Germans probably got more Vit D.

Iron and Vitamin C

2011-08-22T00:51:00.000-07:00

Just an update on my afib issues. I haven't had another episode. But I've had episode where I was definitely not in rhythm, and now that I notice it, it bothers me a lot more than I have in the past. Like the celiac symptoms, I HAD them all along, but I basically ignored them. Now I notice them.

So I look for patterns. The big one is sunlight. I was out in the greenhouse one day and almost passed out, had to lean over to get the blood back to my brain. This kind of scared me about going outdoors during the day. This is the [very short] time of the year where Seattle actually gets SUN, and when it's more direct. In the winter, the sun is low on the horizon, even at noon. (and hard to raise soldier flies!).

But here is the deal. When I go out in the sun, my heart "skips beats" (I am told that more accurately: it "throws an extra beat". It feels like skipping). And also: my nose drips and I start coughing. And my cheeks get flushed, and my knees hurt. So wow, now I know why I don't like the sun, and never did!

The sunscreen works though. I went out to a lunch in the sun for two hours: wore my hat, slathered on the sunscreen, and did just fine. Working in the greenhouse too. And when I do get symptoms, vitamin C and/or Advil work nicely to get rid of the symptoms. Prednisone stops the afib it seems, vitamin C might.

OK, so here is what I think I know so far:

1. Prolonged sunlight brings on heart arrhythmia, for me at least.
2. Sunlight "uses up" vitamin C in the body.
3. Sunlight also causes histamine production, and ROS production.
4. Vitamin C prevents afib in heart patients.
5. Vitamin C prevents damage from excess iron in guinea pigs.
6. Iron is the catalyst for producing the ROS in the body.
7. Some people overdose on Vitamin D, which causes an increase in calcium and phosphate in the blood, and a lack of magnesium (another symptom I have: lack of magnesium causing tetany).

Now, I had been avoiding Vit C for some time, because I had been taking it with meals where it increases the iron absorption. So I've been using a new strategy: I take Vit C, B, Magnesium, and Advil in the morning, along with some spirulina, aloe, konjac.

For dinner I have dinner, plus magnesium and calcium (with vit D, K, and more magnesium).

This appears to be working. I still need the sunscreen. But I spent most of the day today, a sunny day, in a car or outside, and did fine.

This sort of makes sense. People who live in the tropics, tend to eat a lot of fruit! It's easy to get, sweet and juicy. And maybe it's too hot to go running around after antelopes. In Northern Europe, maybe you are more like a cave fish ... kind of pale, you make a cache of jerky or a good fishing spot, and live off protein and fat. So the "high iron" diet is mainly in the places where there is "low sun".

Anyway, I found this:

The iron-loaded animals
fed the low ascorbate dose had decreased plasma a-tocopherol levels and increased plasma levels of triglycerides and
F2
-isoprostanes, speciﬁc and sensitive markers of in vivo
lipid peroxidation. In contrast, the two groups of animals fed
the high ascorbate dose had signiﬁcantly lower hepatic F2
-
isoprostane levels than the groups fed the low ascorbate dose,
irrespective of iron load. These data indicate that 1) ascorbate acts as an antioxidant toward lipids in vivo, even in the
presence of iron overload; 2) iron loading per se does not
cause oxidative lipid damage but is associated with growth
retardation and tissue damage, both of which are not affected
by vitamin C; and 3) the combination of iron loading with a
low ascorbate status causes additional pathophysiological
changes, in particular, increased plasma triglycerides.

http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/279/6/E1406.full.pdf

OK, so if you want to avoid high triglycerides: 1) Take Vitamin C and 2) Avoid iron.

However, since sunlight is also involved in these reactions, all of this gets ramped up when you add ultraviolet light. The reaction that causes tissue damage is called the Fenton Reaction, and it is basically the reaction of hydrogen peroxide via an iron catalyst.

What is interesting to me in this is partially just about guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are high in neu5ac, like humans. They live longer than most mammals, and get most of our diseases and like us, don't produce Vit C. They have been bred by humans to adapt to us, basically.

When I had a guinea pig, it got Type 2 diabetes, rather quickly. In retrospect, I think it was our well water, which was very high in iron. It poisoned her, and our two hamsters, who got the same problem. What I did not realize was that I was having the same issue! The Peruvian highlanders that bred the guinea pigs, probably did not have deep wells, and had streams for water, and lots of greens to feed the guinea pigs. Everything worked fine.

The idea of deep wells ... when did that happen? A lot of it was in the US, in the Midwest. People moved to those grasslands that grow the amazing corn and wheat crops, and they used a lot of deep well water to do it. Those windmills that run the pumps to get the water for the crops. The plants don't seem to care about too much iron ... but what about the people? They are now living on a diet of corn and wheat, with water that is full of iron. Oh, and molasses was big for a sugar source, and beef was the main source of wheat.

Probably the only reason people survived was milk ... the milk counteracted both the wheat and the iron. Raw milk appears to be an antagonist for gliadin. Whey is an antagonist for iron.

Oh ... and those midwest farmers worked out in the sun, often bareheaded. The "bareheaded" part is what I'm thinking about. I've been going back through the old pictures of people outdoors. They were really BIG on "covering up". True, they put this in terms of "propriety" or "religion" or "culture". But figure: people do what WORKS, then it becomes "tradition".

The big deal in the past was HATS. HATS were really important: when you wore them, which hat you wore. Or a turban, or veil. Mainly: people covered up their heads. In Niger, there was this interesting thing where the men covered their heads and faces all day, but when the sun went down, they uncovered their faces. Both men and women though, wore long robes and really, nothing much was not covered, ever.

So animals have fur. Humans don't. But long flowing clothing, protects the skin. Hats protect the head. Every single culture I look at, they wear big hats, turbans, veils, if they can afford them or create them. Except for some very dark people who don't have many resources for clothing, or who live in the jungle (= shade). On planet Earth, there are not many "light" people, which might be a clue too. The sun is toxic. As much as it feeds us, it kills us. We survive because we have this filtering atmosphere, habits that keep us safe.

I keep thinking of the stories my Mom told. She grew up in the South. A good Southern woman simply did NOT got out without her hat and gloves. Sometimes two pairs of gloves, in case they got soiled. Anyway, I have a pair: kid skin, up to the elbow. Big hats, esp. in the past, with parasols even. It was all about avoiding the sun. Much of the racism issue was that "darkies could work in the fields" better. Which from a harsh scientific view, is likely true (albeit: the "darkies" should have gotten top wages, since they were the best workers, and they should have been the "geeks" of that age). Anyway, the white folks were basically saying "we can't handle sun". I think that is true. Racism is bad ... but the fact is, white folk aren't good with sunlight. We are like cave fish, esp. some of us.

This also makes me wonder about some of our fascination with vampires. How many "white folks" have a love/hate relationship with the sun? Me being one? Women using tanning beds, and sitting out in the sun ... and also getting high levels of ROS while they have high iron levels and low levels of Vitamin C. The whole vampire book fascination is interesting. Blood-letting lowers iron levels. Being in the sun, with high iron levels, is rather uncomfortable. The two major factors are combined in one meme.

The acid/base theory, again

2011-08-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

I just found this, from the Framingham Heart Study:

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

There continues to be considerable debate about the role of acid vs. basic components of the diet on the long-term status of bone mineral density.

AIM:

In a set of two analyses, we examined the effect of components in the diet thought to have basic effects (magnesium, potassium, fruit, vegetables) and acid effects (protein) on bone mineral density in an elderly cohort.

METHODS:

Bone mineral density of participants in the Framingham Osteoporosis Study was measured at three hip sites and one forearm site at two points in time, four years apart. At the time of baseline measurement, participants ranged in age from 69-97 years. Dietary intake was assessed at baseline by food frequency questionnaire.

RESULTS:

As hypothesized, magnesium, potassium, fruit and vegetable intakes were significantly associated with bone mineral density at baseline and among men, with lower bone loss over four years. In contrast to the hypothesis, higher rather than lower protein intakes were associated with lower bone loss.

CONCLUSION:

Together these results support the role of base forming foods and nutrients in bone maintenance. The role of protein appears to be complex and is probably dependent on the presence of other nutrients available in a mixed diet. A balanced diet with ample fruit and vegetables and adequate protein appears to be important to bone mineral density.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11842948

What is nice about this is that it supports the idea that vegetables really do help. I don't think it's as simple as magnesium and potassium ... the polysaccharides in vegetables, vitamin A, and probably plenty of other factors come in. But it might account for why some people feel so good going "vegetarian" ... it makes them eat vegies!

Eating more protein though, didn't make bones weak. Rather the opposite. It does seem that eating meat when you aren't getting enough calcium can leech calcium from the bones. Yet protein is needed to build bones. The ideal is a diet that has both.

2011-08-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

There is an awesome post on butyrate and appetite here:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/12/butyric-acid-ancient-controller-of.html

This brings up a lot of good points, including that a high-fiber diet actually contributes a fair bit of FAT to the diet, because the microbes in the gut produce short-chain fatty acids (along with good stuff like K2). Butyrate is a key component to gut health, and people mostly get it by eating semi-digestible fibers.

Konjac, of course, is one of the best fibers for this! Good ol' glucomannan.

Here are the links to the original studies:

http://www.ajcn.org/content/39/2/338.abstract

Grow cones!

2011-08-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, long time no post. It's been busy. But mainly I got a little depressed when a lot of my plants in grow bags drooped and died. I basically sort of gave up. My dear husband though, went out there and watered the daylights out of everything, and the plants lived. I think basically the love and caring from him gave me another boost, to try it again.

So WHY did the bags fail? It turned out to be really simple. The thread rotted. Yep, I used cotton thread. And cotton wicks. The microbes grew rather nicely and so did the fungi and everything worked just like it should! And so the cotton decomposed. Then ... no water.

As I took apart the failed bags, I could see that the roots were actually extremely healthy. Nothing was rootbound. In fact, one tomato plant is like 4 feet tall, in a bag that is less than 4 inches tall. The only problem they had was lack of water. The plants that were in plastic containers were, as expected, rootbound and stunted. Moral of the story: plants don't like plastic pots!

And then the solution hit me. *Grow cones* ! I made a series of bags in the shape of a cone, a bit like the cones they sell flowers in. Basically two isosceles triangles, sewn together. It's your basic #4 coffee filter, only about a foot high. I set these into a container, so the very bottom tip hits the bottom of the container, sitting in water. The tip becomes the "wick". But the sides cannot touch any other cone or the sides of the pot, except at the very top.

What happens is that the roots do the self-pruning, and the tip does the wicking. There is only one seam to sew, and you don't need any special material or soil.

If there is one plant per container, it just sets in there, in a few inches of water. For bigger containers, you can just set them down into the water. The top parts touch, and it looks more or less like a solid bed of dirt ... but at the bottom, there is all this air space between the cones. I also have holes drilled in the sides, so air can come in from the sides too. I call this a "Cone bed".

In another container, I used another inset container ... like, two Rubbermaid storage containers, one set inside the other. In the top one, I drilled big holes, so the cone just sets in the circle. I have a few "loners" too, where one cone sets in one pot. We'll see which ones work the best long term.

This is SOOO easy, and so far, the plants are happy. I did use polyester string (duh!) with the 25-year landscaping cloth. The soil is awesome. The peat/coir/potting soil aged with bisque pottery, charcoal, worms, kelp, and a ton of chicken manure has aged nicely and just gets better and better. When I dump an old pot, it gets dumped into a huge worm bin, and by the time I use it it's great again.

Here is a picture of the cloth before it's sewn. It's basically two isosceles triangles, connected on one edge. Easy to cut out. The landscaping cloth I used is rather stiff, and wants to curl, so I held it down with a couple of shovels to take the picture.

Then you fold it in half and sew on one side. The thread you want is something like "Signature UV Poly Core" thread, which they have in the "interior decorating" section of our fabric store, along with awning and stuff for outdoor pillows. One of theirs is very heavy thread and not affected by UV or moisture.

And then you can cheat, and just "plant" some store-bought green onions! I planted some lettuce seeds too, and set the cone in a nice pot. Great gift for those who want their own salad garden but aren't into planting. You just cut the green onions and lettuce as needed; both continue to regrow for a long time.

TMI

2011-07-11T00:48:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I posted something about "What is wrong with Grandma?". Grandma was a very classic Aspie type, no doubt about it. She still outlived everyone, and was seemingly pretty content for the time I knew her. She lived in a dark house, with all the shades drawn. She wore green accountant shades, and spent most of her days writing in journals. She never learned to drive, or went much further than the corner grocery. Yet somehow, she was a pivotal feature in everyone's lives.

OK, much like a blogger!

One of the big stories about her though, was how she kicked grandpa out of the bedroom, after the second son was born. This was a stillbirth, and by all standards, a hard one. The second son was huge, and she was small, and the head was crushed when the child was "birthed". By the doctors. It was hard, but the person who most talked about it was the husband, who wanted his wife. He loved her madly. But after that, she wanted no part of him. Granted, there was no birth control, and I figured that made sense.

OK, want to read on? That is just the part I knew. Now, my Mom is now 86 or so, and maybe not so careful what she says to who. She told me the rest. I kind of wish she had not. So here you can scroll down, or not ...

After the 2nd child (who would have been my uncle) they did a hysterectomy. Mainly because they had botched the job so badly. But after that ... for the next 60 YEARS, Grandma has an orange-size growth from her uterus, which was basically her colon. She never went in to get it fixed (she didn't trust doctors, at that point). She did not want to be touched. Gads. Can you blame her? She never talked about it, either. She did her accounts, she kept the house, she did what she did.

Probably, I wouldn't have responded to this so much except I was just reading Cutting for Stone, which relates to the same issue. It is a wonderful and also sad book. All that "messy stuff" about female anatomy, we don't talk about much.

I think a lot about my Mom too. Why, as a nurse, she never suggested "Hey, in California in the 60's, we know how to fix this!". Or maybe understood, why this woman couldn't deal with it. Mom never was big on empathy, which I understand too. But why she is still angry at Grandma, I probably can't figure out. None of us had to deal with what she did. I had two kids, and while I may have my complaints about the care, they are great kids and the doctors did all the right things. Giving birth in 1925 or so, was WAY different, esp. if you were a new German immigrant.

I'm not trying to change the past, just understand it. Grandma died at 96, and as long as I knew her, she was content with her life. Mom is 86 now, and maybe not so content, but has a better life overall, in terms of actual comfort. I'm not sure that "happiness" has any real connection to "good environment" but it's worth a try.

For Grandpa? A whole different set of questions. Why he didn't question her choices, or talk about them? Why he didn't ask about fixes? I expect since he had been brought to court at least twice, and almost shot once, questioning the status quo wasn't on his high list. Esp. with a strong woman who states "I WILL NOT go into a hospital!". Still. I wonder.

Human beings mostly didn't have great lives, when you look at them. Yet, they mostly had happiness and connection. We can't tell, from here, how much pure satisfaction another person had, then.

Orange juice and hearts

2011-06-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

I just came off from yet my 3rd episode of afib. This is really depressing. Part of what makes it so depressing is the lack of any kind of hopeful lookout. You don't see people posting "Hey, I had afib, but now I solved it!". No, it's more like "well, I've been trying this and that and this ... and well, I've learned to live with it and I'm not dead yet". My FIL is on a pacemaker now, and happy with that. My BIL is in permanent afib, looks like. My grandmother, according to my Mom, was in and out with afib, but was able to get out of it by taking some digoxin whenever he went into an episode.

And when you talk to the doctors: it's like, "Well, come in when you are in afib and we'll shock you". But the subtext is: eventually the shock won't work, and you'll just have to live working on half a heart, or go on a pacemaker. Or they can ablate part of your heart, which is experimental still but it works for some percentage of people.

Very depressing.

The thing is, thing, it's not like the first time "everyone" has told me how there is no solution for a problem. I guess if I believed what people told me, I'd be trying to learn to live with IBS and migraines and arthritis and I'd have a big bunch of pills to treat those. Hey, those are just problems I don't have! So if those are solveable, why do I need to believe that afib is hopeless?

So back to the blackboard!

Here is what I know. I have had 3 episodes so far. Here is what happened each time:

1. I was out on a trip lasting more than a week.
2. When I came back from the trip, I came down with an infection (probably starting with a virus, moving into sinusitis/bronchitis).
3. When the infection started getting bad, it went into afib

Now, the first two times, my heart reverted back to normally rhythm right about when the antibiotics started working. I was also taking digoxin, warfarin, prednisone, which probably affected things too, plus the doctor did intravenous stuff to bring down my heart rate. They checked my heart and blood ... my sodium and potassium levels were fine. No problems with my heart.

This last time, I figured well, I'm a little smarter and I'll handle it a bit better. Just explain careful to the doctor, treat the bronchitis so I can revert. No such luck. Once again, the doctor took one look at my fever, the rate of 150, and I'm on the way to the ER. Ok, so that will cost a couple of thousand bucks too, since I have to pay for it unless I'm admitted into the hospital. But that's not the worst part. After 5 hours on a cold gurney with little in the way of treatment, the doc decided that well, probably afib was just normal for me and I just didn't notice it because I was used to that, so I might as well go home. Um, right, I probably wouldn't notice something like that! He did actually give me some antibiotics though, so I figured ok, that was what I needed, so I'll just be happy I got out in one piece.

However, after a week, I was still in afib. And while the fever went down, I was till coughing and not really well. So we went back to the doc. This time, I was really clear: JUST treat the bronchitis! And I need prednisone, because that is what seems to work to make the antibiotics work. And I got a doc who sort of patiently went along with it ... you could just read his mind "OK, you have no idea what you are talking about, and you are going to be back in a week for conversion, but meanwhile I just give you the drugs and I'll avoid an argument with one of those crazy food ladies".

So I took the prescription and ran before he started lecturing me.

But that's not how it worked out. We picked up the drugs, but then I was just feeling really, really thirsty. I generally don't eat during the day, because I do IF, which has worked well for my gut health. But afib makes a person feel very mortal ... like, this ol' heart isn't really working much, and shoot, I can't even walk much. So darn it, I felt like doing whatever I felt like. So I got a whole quart of Jamba juice ... fresh orange juice. And then I bought a couple of quarts of coconut water, and some carrot juice. And then I decided, darn it, I'm going on one of those Hollywood "detoxes" and I'm just going to drink a whole mess of juices!

So I must have been pretty thirsty, because before we got home I had chug-a-lugged a quart of OJ and another quart of coconut water. Then some of another quart of carrot juice. And some apricots and a grapefruit. And here was the weird part: by the time the OJ juice was gone, my lungs were clear. No rattler, no bubbles, no nothing. By evening, my heart was back in a nice steady rhythm.

Like I said, back to the blackboard. My working theory has been that the afib has to do with too much iron in my system. And that seems to have been working: I've gotten fewer palpitations etc. after going on a lower iron diet, and not eating Vit C combined with meat etc. However, that also means I don't get as much vitamin in general, since it's hard to fit in fruit during the day.

However, I also started thinking again: why do I ONLY get sick when I go on trips? I mean, sure, I'm exposed to more viruses. But it's not like I live in a bubble at home. I go out a lot, I do trips. And this particular trip ... taking care of my son at the hospital ... I was pretty much in a quarantine room, not really full of viruses.

On the Vegas trip, I was living off maybe beef and potatoes, and drinking more booze than I usually would, and drinking LOTS of coffee. So that means lots of iron, plus booze and caffeine. This trip though, I was careful not to do any of that: very little coffee (one cup in the morning), no alcohol, and for dinner I ate mainly Japanese rice/fish. Here is what is common though: I was eating way more snack foods. Snack foods are the one thing that's easy to schlep around and stay GF. So in Vegas, I ate lots of salted almonds and bananas. On this trip, it was salted potato chips, salsa and salads. So yeah, I got fresh produce, but also way more salt than I usually ate. Maybe eating a whole lot of juice just kind of got rid of all that extra sodium.

The problem with that theory is that on the blood tests, I wasn't high in sodium. My sodium levels test as low (they always do). So does sodium hide somewhere? I haven't heard of that.

But there is another theory. Vitamin C? It turns out, that using intravenous Vitamin C prevents afib when people are getting heart surgery. It's extremely effective, like 85% it prevents afib. Now, I had taking some Vitamin C pills, during this last week, and it didn't seem to do anything. But chug-a-lugging a fresh quart of orange juice might well be a different thing. The theory is that the Vit C helps prevent the inflammation in the heart, which then prevents the afib. It certainly has the advantage of "do no harm".

In this issue, Eslami and colleagues report the use of vitamin C to reduce the occurrence of postoperative atrial fibrillation. In a relatively small study, 100 patients who had received preoperative β-blocker therapy were randomized to receive vitamin C or placebo. Vitamin C was given in a dose of 2,000 mg the night before the procedure and 1,000 mg twice daily for 5 more days. Patients were monitored continuously for 4 days after surgery. During that period of observation, the authors report an amazing 85% reduction in postoperative atrial fibrillation.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1995055/

Who knows? Maybe some day when they rush you to the ER, they'll sit you down and give you a big mug of fresh OJ.

I'm still not sure where this fits with iron. Vitamin C releases iron from ferritin, so you get more loose iron in your blood. In theory that should cause irritation and feed bacteria. Yet clearly people who had vitamin C don't get more infections or inflammation. I still think it's a bad idea to combine Vit C with meat, since I don't want to absorb more iron.

Anyway, my new experiment, is I'm going back to the Warrior Diet style ... eating raw fruits and vegies during the day. See what that does. Splurge on more of coconut water and fresh citrix.

Bragging Rights

2011-06-03T00:51:00.000-07:00

In the Room with Dan Barber from On Being on Vimeo.

I do love this video, and the rest of the website at http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/driven-by-flavor/video-intheroom_barber.shtml

However, it got me thinking. One of the things Dan is trying to address is how to get good food, at a more large-scale level. To address the issues of "distribution".

Now I agree this is important, because, probably, most people just won't grow food locally at this point. But I think it brings up a key point about our culture. Early in the talk, Dan talks about how "Food culture", generally means, "what Mom cooks".

Moms cook day in, and day out, and they work hard at it. But why? It's not because they are working on a profit margin, or even trying to be efficient. It might be because they love their kids, but I'm not sure even that is the main motivation (kids are happy with all kinds of junk!). A lot of what motivates Moms is what I'm calling here, "Bragging rights". Bragging rights are when your friend's kid comes over and likes your cooking better! Or when you bring something to the potluck and everyone raves over it. Or when you entertain your husband's surprise guests and they are awestruck at dinner.

Human beings are motivated, I stipulate, mostly by bragging rights. The hunter who came in with that big aurochs (which he shared with everyone) ... he didn't put his life at risk for "the good of the tribe". He did it because hey, HE got the biggest aurochs! The huge potlatches where the chief gave away half his goods ... he did it for bragging rights. He gave away "stuff", but he bought social collateral.

The people growing food, until recently, were very much motivated by bragging rights. This took physical form in the local "county fair" ... the biggest tomato, the tastiest pie. Locally, it took place at every church potluck, funeral wake, dinner with guests.

I see people like this still. I was visiting one old guy, and before I left, he loaded me up with produce from his one little garden ... two horse troughs ... which was amazing. From those two little raised beds, he could fill up 3 grocery bags, and not make much of a dent. I was happy for the produce (which was wonderful), but it was also his kind of bragging rights.

My great-granddad, from my Mom's stories, was one such gardener. He was retired, but he kept two plots of land under cultivation. Every summer he and his friends would haul "swamp muck" up to the fields, and plant them with tomatoes, lettuce, onions. He got a lot of extra produce, which he fed to his chickens (which were, apparently, pretty amazingly fat chickens too). He and his cronies ate well, and this was during wartime when rations were scarce. The rest he gave away. Some of it he gave to a local grocery, who managed to give him some well-meated "dog bones" in return. He never sold it though. Selling it would have ruined something, I think, for him. He wasn't after money, he was after bragging rights.

These days I'm in something of the same situation. My main surplus is chicken eggs, and I give them to some people I care about. But when I'm honest with myself, I have to say that the main reason I give them away is bragging rights. Because I have awesome chicken eggs, and I like that I can do that!

But here is where the "food distribution" system breaks down. If you have to grow lettuce or tomatoes for profit, sooner or later you are competing against others doing the same thing. There is a very narrow window of profit; grocery profit is the narrowest profit margin of all. You can't afford to grow an apricot that doesn't ship well, or a tomato plant that doesn't grow many tomatoes. You've gone out of the "Mom cooks food because it is great food" model, to the "I'm selling this at a market because it will support my family" model. You've gone from the small-batch homemade cookie to the commercial cookie. You've gone from "this recipe takes all day, but it's amazing" to "this recipe makes the most profit".

I do hope that we can provide a great food distribution system with great food in it. It would probably look more like the small grocery stores in Switzerland, with a bit of this and that, rather than like Walmart. I kind of doubt you can do really great food like that though. Really great food ... you pick it that evening and then cook it. You need one guy on the block like my great-granddad, who putters around making kraut and cider and growing onions, and you can drop by his house and pick some up. Or the local egg-lady. Someone who really isn't trying to squeeze a lot of profit out of the deal ... they are just happy to talk to you and get some social capital for those amazing eggs or onions.

I've been seeing how "bragging rights" are being utilized, more and more, in this digital age. People who post "how tos" on You Tube, or show off their dance moves, or answer questions online ... they are not generally motivated by profit margin. Their motivation is more simple and primal, getting recognition among peers. Maybe Cory Doctorow had it right in "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom". Maybe social recognition really is, or should be, the basic currency of a society, not this hard-to-understand thing called "money" (controlled by the government based on some policies most of us can't even figure out). Maybe the ability to make the very best chicken dumplings should make you as rich as the person who can run a corn farm, or an oil refinery.

Wild Fruits

2011-05-30T20:20:00.000-07:00

I do so love this!

http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/

Someone finally took the time to actually compare that "small bitter" paleo fruit with our modern overgrown oversweet variety. And as anyone who knows me knows, that is said tongue in cheek.

I do actually like the concept of "paleo" food ... learning what foods we are adapted for. The problem I have with the "paleo community" is that most of that group are very sure exactly what life was like in Paleo times ... without actually taking the time to study how real Paleo people lived (and live). Most of the assumptions commonly made are the worst of the savannah theory ... big strong males running down large ruminants, living off fat and marrow. Fiber is a menace, and fruit-eating was rare and seasonal.

The problem with this version of Paleo times is that it mainly meshes with some idealized male dreamtime ... not what is actually known from campsites, coprolites, bone remains, or how existing "wild" peoples live (or the records of wild peoples 100 years ago: most of the wild tribes aren't, at this point). I get tired of arguing the point, esp. as the arguments tend to boil down to "I don't like eating fish or vegetables". I don't get what it is about fish and vegetables, but for some people it's a point of pride, almost, not eating them. I've known two gentlemen personally who made a big point about how they just did not like vegies, and did not eat them! They were into meat, man, meat!

Both of those two go colon cancer at an early age. Cooincidence? Maybe. But statistically, eating vegies protects your colon. Your colon needs polysaccharides to be healthy, and those come from vegies and fruits. Eating vegies cuts your colon cancer rate by a huge amount. Doesn't sound like eating vegies is a new-fangled invention.

The case with fish is even more interesting. Your brain NEEDS DHA. It is found mainly in seafood. Your body needs iodine. Again, mainly from seafood. Yet your average American will proclaim how much they just don't like fish. Yuk. Fish. Now, in Britain, when farming started, people stopped eating fish within two generations (As determined by isotope studies). Yet, in Japan, farming didn't stop them from eating fish at all. They remained a mainly fish-eating country. Why?

Back to fruit ... in Europe, it's not uncommon to be served, say, an orange for dessert. A whole orange. You peel it and eat it. Or an apple, and you eat it with slices of cheese. Most people I know here though, just don't deal with a whole fruit. They want it cut up and deseeded ... or better yet, juiced.

Maybe the common thread is the homogeneity of food. Food should be deboned, deseeded, depulped, and you should be able to eat it while watching TV ... just kind of bite and swallow. Pizza would be the ideal! Eat with one hand, quaff beer with the other.

Hot pots!

2011-05-23T17:58:00.000-07:00

Ever since I've been reading about iron and nickel and how much of it we get, I've been leery of all the stainless steel I cook in. Not to mention stainless coffee mugs! But for most appliances, the only other option is usually nonstick, and most of that is junk. There IS good nonstick, and I have some, but none of it is suitable for doing the thing I do the most: cooking rice.

I did buy a ceramic rice cooker at one point. It lasted about a week, then it exploded. I was very, very sad. The rice it made was amazing, when it wasn't burnt. I suspect something was wrong with the electronics.

Last week though, I was at this amazing Japanese restaurant, called Village Sushi near the University of Washington. They had a dish called "yaki bibimbop" which was out of this world (and gluten free! Yay!). It was served in something they called a "hot pot".

Looking up hot pot cooking, it appears that there are a number of recipes where the rice, vegies, and meat are all cooked together in a ceramic pot. Right on top of the stove! Apparently this crockery is just very heat proof. You can see it being used in China. Right on the flame. Looks really tasty!

Turns out they aren't very expensive either. So I ordered a couple to try out. We'll see how they work!

If these make yaki bibimbap half as good as I had at Village Sushi, life will be good! One other nice thing: these are designed to work over open flame. So they would be great for outdoor cooking.

Plants as of May 20

2011-05-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

I kind of like to keep a record of this garden vs. last years. Looking at last year's blog, some of my lettuces etc. were about where I am now, on June 9. So I'm about 20 days ahead of last year. I probably could have gotten started earlier too, at least on lettuce. The thing is, the weather has been so amazingly wet and cold, that the garden stores have not even been selling their starts. I started some seeds, but without ground heaters, the seeds don't really do much.

Nevertheless, things are going pretty good now.

First, tomatoes! They are about 2 feet high now, and flowering. I have the tied to ropes going up to the roof again, which seems to be absolutely the easiest way to grow tomatoes. I have three baby tomatoes started. I shake the rope occasionally to pollinate the tomatoes, but since I get a fair amount of insects in the greenhouse, it probably isn't needed.

I took off most of the "side shoots" and they are sitting in water waiting for new bags in which to plant them.

Some of the leaves are a little twisty, because they got overwatered when I first planted them in the bags. Tomatoes don't like having the bags sitting in water (lettuce doesn't mind though). This year I intend to give them fish fertilizer every week, since last year they got a little pale. Also I moved them to the middle of the greenhouse. The sides tend to get hot, and the curve interfered with how tall they could grow.

The tomato bags are sitting on an overturned plastic bucket, inside a larger black bucket. So each tomato has a couple of gallons of water to wick up. The plastic pipe is just to hold the bags upright. I'm sure there is a more elegant solution, but that's what I came up with at the time.

Here you can see the strawberries. They have lots of little green berries on them now. I put the bags inside a long skinny planter box, which has plastic in it so it holds water.

The strawberries that are in last year's buckets are actually more lush ... they have more leaves, and more berries. These ones were pretty scrawny when I replanted them, but they are coming to life nicely.

Underneath the table, you can see the pottery shards. Pottery shards are amazing. I hoard them! I expect that hydroton is similar though, and you can buy that by the bag.

Here is one of my lettuces. It isn't the biggest one. The romaine is doing great. Most of these were started from seed, but they only started to really GROW once I put them in the wicking bags. I expect a lot of it is the soil (worm compost, pottery shards, charcoal, and potting soil). And a lot of it is having a steady water supply. Anyway, it is awesome lettuce. I made a big salad yesterday and my 16-year-old daughter loved it (amazing!).

This one is just sitting in water. I haven't had time to "elevate" all the grow bags so just the "tail" sits in the water. But, this does not appear to matter for the lettuce.

Oddly, however, the arugula did very poorly. It just went to seed very quickly, with few leaves.

And here is my dill. Dill is pretty easy to grow, but last year, mine failed and all I got was a few spindly stalks and then it went to seed.

This year, in wicking bags, it is lush! I think the difference is that before, I planted it with the tomatoes, and the water level was too far down: the tomatoes got all the water. With wicking bags, you can tailor the amount of water for each plant.

I also have bags with raspberry plants and even apple trees. We'll see how those do.

Besides the wicking bags, I've been experimenting with wicking cups. Mainly because, they are super-easy to make, and stand up on their own.

Here you see a lot of yogurt cups, which are, unfortunately, not recyclable (who decided THAT?). Anyway, I punched a whole lot of holes in each of them, on the bottom and on the sides.

What I'm hoping is, the side ventilation will prevent them being root bound, and the sub-irrigation will prevent under-watering. So far, so good. These little Daikon radishes are doing fine.

However, I don't think there is near enough room to let them grow to full size. I think it's better to just plant the seeds in a full-size bag, and let them grow.

Worm Compost

A lot of this kind of gardening depends on great soil, and I've been doing that with worm compost.

My worm bin is exploding with worms. I stopped adding kitchen waste to it: the worms just don't like too much of what I gave them (orange peels, onion peels, garlic!). But the chickens like most everything, so I just toss it all in their pen. Then, I take the goop from the bottom of the chook pen, and give it to the worms. This works really well.

So well, in fact, that I started this HUGE worm box, 3x5 feet. I've been dumping all my "old" soil in it, as well as chicken goop and a lot of worms. I think this is a good way to rejuvenate the old potting soil.

Grow bags!

2011-05-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

The more I hear about the food distribution system and the vagaries of the weather, the more I believe in a distributed food system. I.e., food should be like the Internet: lots and lots of nodes, so when one fails, others can take up the slack. I particularly like this article about fish farming:

http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.6676475/?msource=NM1E110001&tr=y&auid=8335038

So here you have people who went from starving to being farmers, raising fish off worms grown in local manure, selling the extras or giving away the fingerlings to start new farms. All it really took was a few supplies and the knowledge of how to do it.

This is the way I think gardening SHOULD be. It isn't ... here in the Northwest, "gardening" means:

1. Working for a few days to clear a patch of land. This is hard, because native plants are everywhere and they grow fast.

2. Going to the garden store and buying hoes, shovels, gloves, a wheelbarrow, manure, slug poison. Putting up a fence to keep critters out.

3. Planting the plants.

4. Lots of weeding and watering.

5. If you are very lucky, some harvest before the rains come.

These last couple of years we've had snow into April, off and on. So it's hard to even get to the planting stage.

Now, last year, I planted in subirrigation buckets, or "Global Buckets". It worked very well, and for the first time I actually got a nice harvest. No weeding, very few slugs. However, there were a few issues.

1. I had to get the buckets. That wasn't too hard, but getting 100 of them was a fair bit of work, and mostly I was just lucky I knew someone who had lots of them.

2. Drilling the buckets. This was work, involving sharp tools. Took me awhile to find the right size hole saw, figure out how to cut PVC. It wasn't all THAT hard, but it's more than a lot of people can handle.

3. The buckets are heavy, for a woman.

4. Some of the buckets failed, probably because of lack of air circulation, or because of root overgrowth.

5. There is room in the bucket for more than one plant, but I could not change out the plants once they got started, if they proved incompatible. The dirt at the top of the bucket gets very hard, which it is supposed to, to prevent water loss. But that means you can't plant something shallow next to the "big" plant easily.

Now, the Global Buckets guys have moved on to planting in bags, and that strikes me as a good idea. So I combined all that I learned last year and came up with: Wick Bags!

OK, I didn't invent the "bag" idea. Growing in bags is big this year in the garden magazines. However, the bags that are for sale are fairly expensive, and only one involves subirrigation. Bags are used commercially in greenhouses quite a bit, but they are used with drip irrigation systems, something that is too much work for the average home gardener. And, they freeze, which is why I can't use them in my system.

What I DID do is come up with a way that the average person with a sewing machine ... or even a sewing needle ... can create all the bags they want for minimal cost. So here it is, Easy Growing 1.2.

Step 1: Get some bag material

To make the bags, you need some cloth. I experimented with many kinds of cloth, including old socks, blue jeans, jute, and polyester shopping bags. Most of them work for awhile. However, any natural cloth will break down. The cloth will last for some time where it is exposed to the air, but it may grow mold and fungus. However, where it is next to any other surface, it can decompose quickly, leaving you with a lump of dirt. Polyester and nylon, however, will last awhile.

The material needs to breathe, in order for air-pruning to work. Now, some plants don't really need air-pruning much, like lettuce. For those plants, I think something like old coffee bags will work. Coffee is being sold in these indestructible plastic bags, and I'm experimenting with those for lettuce. I punch a whole lot of holes in the sides, so the plastic does breath, but it probably won't prune the roots like cloth does.

Also, the bags are a lot easier to handle if the material is stiff. Floppy material stiffens up when filled with dirt, but you have to hold it open as you fill it.

Take all these together, and the best choice seemed to me to be landscape cloth. There was a mess of it in a closeout bin at our local hardware store, for $5 a 50 foot roll, so I bought four rolls. This cloth is supposed to last 10 years or so, buried in the ground, so the bags should hold up for at least a couple of seasons.

Next, you need to choose some thread. Again, it needs to be something that doesn't decompose, so use nylon or polyester. Not cotton! You can use a sewing machine or just sew these by hand: there isn't really a lot of sewing to do, and with the landscape cloth, there is no ravelling to worry about.

2. Find some wicking

The wicking material needs to be something that will wick water. I used some old dishtowels ... which were cotton, and are in fact breaking down now. Oh well. I think the best would be the cloth used in those "Sham wow" kinds of cleaning cloths, which are polyester but wick water well. I did have a few pieces of that, and they work well.

To test the wickability of cloth, drape a strip of it over the edge of a glass of water. If it wicks, the water will shortly start dripping through the cloth onto the table.

3. Cut the cloth into rectangles

Now, cut your cloth into rectangles. You'll probably want to experiment with sizes, to see what works for which plants. The resulting bag is quite a bit smaller than you would think, as part of the height goes to make the bottom. The bags that seem to work the best for me are about twice as high as they are wide, after they are put together.

You don't need to be very exact at this stage. The edges won't show, and it doesn't really matter how straight the bags are.

4. Sew down one edge

Now, fold the cloth in half and sew down one edge.

Note that I didn't bother pinning it or anything. This is where having stiff cloth helps!

5. Sew the bottom
This is the only fairly tricky step. What you are doing is pressing in the sides into a sort of "W" shape, then sewing along the bottom.

However, before you sew the bottom, slip the wicking strip into the seam. This extends into the bag for some distance. One end will be in the soil, making the soil moist. The other will dangle into the water reservoir, sucking up water.

6. Turn the bag inside out

Here it is, turned inside out. Note that it makes a nice square bottom. The bags usually won't stand up on their own, but they are stable enough once placed in a container.

7. Plant it

Next, you add soil to the bag, and your plant. I use a mix of potting soil, charcoal, bisque pottery shards, worm compost, kelp, and greensand. My potting soil this year was recycled from last year, with some added worm compost.

Then, add your plant, or just add a seed and have it grow right in the bag. I kind of like the latter approach these days: it saves a step of transplanting.

8. Pot it

The bags won't stand up on their own unless you make them far wider, which is not what I wanted. What I did was to get some pots that have no drain holes (or line a pot that has holes with plastic sheeting). Then I added pottery shards and water. The bags sit on top of the shards, and the "tail" hangs down into the water. Alternatively, the shards could be draped with a cloth that does the wicking, and the bags just set on the cloth. Bisque shards actually wick quite a bit of water on their own, so I'm not even sure the cloth is needed if you are using only bisque. However, most people will probably use rocks, or plastic bottles, or whatever is handy, as spacers.

The big plants, like tomatoes, I put in big pots ... my plastic buckets from last year!

The little plants, I put several together into bigger containers. The strawberries are in long, thin planting containers in a single row, to give the berries room to hang down. I'll get some pics of those later.

Green onions can go in anything. These were the "leftovers" from some green onions I bought at the store, just stuck in some wick bags. Basically I just save the last 1 inch or so from the green onion bunch, and stick them in the dirt.

Here is a cutaway view of what is going on, since it really isn't obvious from looking at the picture.

Summary

Besides being easy, this system makes for very happy plants! I can't believe how fast the plants are growing. It's still very early in the season, but I have some tiny tomatoes (half an inch) and strawberries, and the first little broccolis.

Better than KFC!

2011-05-04T01:13:00.000-07:00

In my head, I miss the concept of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I say "the concept of", because back when I actually ate wheat, I rarely ate at KFC. I would drive by the place, and buy a box or bucket, but after I ate it, I felt like I'd eaten lead weights. Could be the rancid fats, or just too much salt and fat, or all that gluten. Anyway, I always like the concept better than the actuality. I think it reminded me of the OLD Knott's Berry Farm, with the chickens running loose and that awesome fried chicken dinner.

Anyway, part of me still wants that fried chicken dinner. I'm just not so willing to do the work to make it happen. So when Choice Batter posted a recipe for "crispy chicken" I sort of had to try it.

Now, I did not happen to have corn chips available, so I used some potato chips I had. I don't often buy chips of any kind, but for some reason we had these, so I used them. Otherwise, I just followed the recipe, adding a little more salt.

The result? It's a lot like Kentucky Fried. Only, it's not as greasy, or salty, and I felt fine after having a couple of pieces. No deep fryer needed, just a cookie sheet. You can roll out the chips in the bag they come in, these days, since the bags are pretty indestructible (more on that later).

Now, to go with that ... I made some mashed potatoes. My kids are no longer fond of "instant", so I made them from scratch But here is the deal: it is not hard to make mashed potatoes, if you know the secret! The secret is: a potato ricer. Basically you peel the potatoes, and steam or boil them til they are soft. Then squeeze them through the ricer, add oil and salt. That's it. They are fluffy and wonderful. If you stir or mash potatoes too much, then they turn into glue, so be gentle.

Also, I made gravy. Now, gravy is problematic. If you have some nice drippings, it is easy. But

my oven-baked chicken didn't make much. Maybe the coating soaked it up. In any case, it was a long day and I didn't feel like experimenting, so I used a mix, something that is rare for me. I used one from "Maxwell's Kitchen" ... which tasted about like you'd expect gravy to taste like from most places (i.e., not one made from real drippings, which make great gravy if you happen to have drippings handy).

Anyway, it was a great meal. Not at all my usual "Shoreline diet" of rice and fish, more like, going back to my childhood Knotsberry Farm days.

Addendum:

Choice batter. It is rather nice stuff. Like Chebe Mix, there is more to it than shows on the ingredients label. It is good and useful, albeit pricey in the small containers. It's the only batter I've seen in my life (both pre- and post- gluten) that actually stays crispy even for leftovers.

Indestructible bags: It's coming to my attention that more and more stuff is being packaged in indestructible bags. For instance, potato chips, come in mylar bags! Now this is even worse than plastic shopping bags in my book because these bags are seriously tough. Coffee comes in them too, and probably a lot of other stuff I don't buy. Anyway, what do you do with them? I don't like the concept of them floating out to sea somewhere.

Starbuck's coffee bags come with a note that says you can get freebies if you return the bag. Kudos for them! But as for the rest: these bags make great planters. If you poke a hole in the bottom to add a wick, and a mess of holes to prune root growth and add aeration, you have an instant grow bag that will probably last a decade or more. Most of my grow bags so far are made out of landscape cloth, but mylar should work fine, with holes in it. I'll plant a couple to make sure, and post the results.

As for the landscape cloth grow bags: the plants are big, tall, and healthy. None have failed as of yet. The strawberries have their first little fruits, and the others are just budding leaves. I repotted a few tomatoes, and they are doing fine. Pretty much everything in "bags" is fine, but things in "pots" have issues.

The China Study

2011-04-25T13:42:00.000-07:00

Ever since The China Study got published, there has been a lot of discussion over what it means. Some people have been going over the data themselves, and coming up with more interesting data than "you shouldn't eat meat". There is an interesting correlation, for instance, between wheat and heart disease:

http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/09/02/the-china-study-wheat-and-heart-disease-oh-my/

As the post above points out, the problem is that "eating wheat" is correlated with a number of other things, such as eating less fish. Basically, you have a couple of different cuisines involved: the fish/rice cuisine and the wheat/beef cuisine. The fish/rice people are healthier!

Here is a totally different study:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/March96/rice.wheat.ssl.html

Though other foods such as fish and green vegetables were associated with changes in blood parameters studied, the strong effects of rice and wheat on SHBG were remarkable and unexpected," Gates said. "Women in the northern, wheat- eating counties consistently had low HDL levels, high triglycerides, and low SHBG, all suggestive of insulin resistance. Evidently, rice and wheat can have significantly different effects on the important biochemical parameters we measured." Interestingly, both the rice and wheat consumed in these Chinese regions are semi-refined. Gates stressed, however, that while rice and wheat appear to make the biggest impact on SHBG and insulin, certain other foods in the Chinese meal also have an important effect on SHBG and insulin changes in the blood, and thus ultimately, on those diseases associated with insulin resistance.

They come to the conclusion that there must be some difference in the kind of sugars between wheat and rice ... something that of course I disagree with, since the proteins in wheat are so reactive.

Finally, we have another study that relates wheat to weight gain in China. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Right now the "experts" are saying that a gluten-free diet won't help with weight loss, yet a wheat-based diet does seem to help with weight *gain*:

http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/12/15/new-china-study-links-wheat-with-weight-gai/

Anyway, I'm not a raw foodist, but I do love what she's published here. I think studying Asian foods is a good way to get beyond the "Eurocentric" view we have on nutrition, where we have this history of bread, wine, and cheese as the basics of cuisine.

Iron and ultraviolet

2011-04-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit interested in the relationship between the sun and iron levels. It seems whenever I am out in the sun a lot, my joints end up hurting. Now, that could mean I have lupus, or that the sun triggers some other autoimmune disorder. But even if that is so, why would the sun be a trigger anyway? What exactly does the ultraviolet do?

Since so much seems to revolve around iron metabolism, I'm wondering if the ultraviolet somehow triggers changes in iron levels. And guess what? It does!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1780358

In the skin of albino hairless mice (Skh:HR-1) there is a basal level of non-heme iron. Chronic exposure of mice to sub-erythemal doses of ultraviolet (UV) B radiation results in an increased skin level of non-heme iron. The iron increase may be the result of a UVB radiation-induced increase in vascular permeability, which we measured in vivo with the dye marker Evans Blue. We also observed greater non-heme iron in sun-exposed vs non-exposed body sites of human skin, suggesting that similar events occur in man. Iron may have a role in skin photodamage by participating in formation of reactive oxygen species. These species have been implicated in skin photodamage. It is known that iron can contribute to oxygen radical production by acting catalytically in the formation of species such as hydroxyl radical. While the basal level of skin iron may be available for catalysis, the elevated iron content of UV-exposed skin increases the potential for iron-catalyzed radical production. Topical application of certain iron chelators to Skh albino hairless mice dramatically delayed the onset of UVB radiation-induced skin photodamage. Non-chelating analogs provided no significant protection.

I had read that Coppertone was adding some iron-chelator to their products, to reduce ultraviolet damage. And it seems some people just spray their skin with vinegar, to keep it healthier.

Now, it's pretty clear that people (and mice) with high iron levels have more iron in their skin, which is why people with a very high iron level get "bronze" skin. Happens with mice too:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16354190

In human hemochromatosis, tissue toxicity is a function of tissue iron levels. Despite reports of skin toxicity in hemochromatosis, little is known about iron levels in skin of individuals with systemic iron overload. We measured skin iron and studied skin histology in three mouse models of systemic iron overload: mice with a deletion of the hemochromatosis (Hfe) gene, mice fed a high iron diet, and mice given parenteral injections of iron. In Hfe(-/-) mice, iron content in the epidermis and dermis was unexpectedly the same as in Hfe(+/+) mice, and there were no histological abnormalities detected after 30 wk. A high iron diet produced increased iron in the epidermis of both normal and Hfe(-/-) animals; a high diet increased iron in the dermis only in Hfe(-/-) mice. Increased skin iron was not associated with other histological changes, even after 19 wk. Parenteral administration of iron produced increased iron in the epidermis and dermis, and gave the skin a bronze hue. These results show that the amount and distribution of iron in the skin depends on the etiology of iron overload. It appears that neither Hfe deletion nor elevated skin iron alone can account for cutaneous manifestations reportedly seen in humans with hereditary hemochromatosis.

And using a topical iron chelator affords good UV protection!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8089282

And that iron in the skin might be a big factor in rosacea too:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150214269870258

It was found that the more severe cases of rosacea had higher levels of ferritin and iron in their skin compared to the control groups. This could possibly also explain why the more advanced cases of rosacea are more sensitive to UV(A) exposure. Additionally, rosacea patients overall were found to have higher peroxide levels in their serum and a lower anti-oxidant potential.

The authors of this study suggested that the higher frequency of rosacea seen in women can be attributed to women having a thinner skin than men and the fact that iron supplementation is more common in women.

Limiting UV exposure and reducing stress in combination with a diet that is high in antioxidants may be helpful in reducing the severity of rosacea sysmptoms.

OK, so this might be a big factor in the increase in skin cancer. We have way more iron in our diets than we did in the past. But it also might have some implications for my joints when I get out in the sun: the sun releases the iron from ferritin, and then it goes into the bloodstream? Or the H2O2 does?

In terms of rosacea, mine went away when I dropped wheat, but I get it a little when I have dairy. So how does that relate? People with celiac are typically LOW in iron, and dairy tends to block it. One would think then, that wheat and dairy would help prevent rosacea, not cause it. I'm wondering if it isn't something like what happens with calcium: the iron gets stored in the wrong place, when the immune system is triggered. Like, if the lactoferrin in whey ushers iron out through the pores, then the iron would be in the pore to feed the bacteria. If celiac causes issues with iron storage, then similarly the iron could be being actively excreted, which again would cause more iron in the pores.

Right now the assumption is that it is gut bleeding that causes the low iron levels, but I don't think anyone has actually shown what is going on. With calcium, people with celiac typically have weak bones. But they also often have calcium deposits in their brain, and bone spurs. So the issue with calcium isn't absorption: it's calcium depositing in the wrong places. Maybe iron does the same thing, in people who are having gluten issues? That would fit with what is going on with my Mom. She believes she is low in iron, but she has what look to be iron deposits on her skin, and major issues with skin cancer.

How to make kimchi!

2011-04-22T00:05:00.000-07:00

I've been working in my greenhouse and making bags, but have not got my camera back online. I do want to say though, that growing plants in bags is amazing. Convenient, portable, and healthy plants to boot.

However, in the meantime: kimchi-making has gone decidedly mainstream. Which is wonderful, because some good videos are being made. I esp. like this one from "How to heroes". Basically because it is 1) Really easy and 2) Does not require special equipment. ANYONE can do this!

OK, he uses a food processor. I don't, usually, but I do use a blender when I need to.

http://how2heroes.com/videos/soups-sauces/kimchi

I haven't found an "embed" link, but you should just watch it, if you like kimchi. This is super-easy.

The Green Revolution

2011-04-10T16:56:00.000-07:00

Every so often, in the groups I'm in, people get discouraged by the state of the food supply, and are pretty convinced that all the fertile land is gone and there are way too many people to feed. While I tend to agree we have "too many people", I'm not so discouraged about the state of the land. Why? Probably because I live in an area where the land has always been lousy -- glaciers and too much rain see to that -- and yet we grow great food.

Now, I've been working on ways to make this a whole lot *easier*, esp. to those of us who aren't so good with table saws or tractors or working down on our knees, and soon I'll post that next. But in the meantime, I wanted to talk about what some other people are doing, and why I think "growing good food" just isn't all that impossible.

First, let's take a look at Southern California. Small suburban lot. What is great here is that you see the before and after pictures ... the after pictures are not just hugely productive farms, they are also beautiful! We are talking about thousands of pounds of production ... from 1/10 of an acre. Now that's way more than one family needs, so one of these "farms" could supply lots of folks. Take a look:

And then there is "Growing your Greens". Again, a small Southern California lot:

But what about up North, where it's cold and there isn't a great growing season? Well, actually Alaskans have been doing very well during their short summer. But then there are some amazing greenhouses these days:

For our house, what I'd like to see is a sunroom just off our kitchen, which would be fine for most of our winter vegetables. What I like about these dome greenhouses though, is that they incorporate a fish pond. The water can act as a heat sink, but also, the fish can supply fertilizer. Note that their fish are not fed anything particularly ... they eat the greens that grow in the pond. Some species of fish will eat pretty much anything, and can act as garbage disposals in the same way chickens do.

OK, you say, that's fine for one house, but how about a large scale? Well that's the thing: the big growers are beginning to use this sort of methodology too. Instead of growing in big fields where you are at the mercy of the weather, growing is moving indoors, and into containers. Take a look at this farm:

Or these commercial strawberries:

But the all-time winner, in my book are still the Amazonians. Living in an area with chronically depleted soil, they created an intricate farming methodology and recreated the landscape to support probably millions of people. But they did it in a way that didn't deplete the land, and it was probably a wonderful environment, a long way from the sterile, toxic environment of today's farms. They combined fish, pottery, charcoal, plant breeding, and the ability to work with their environment rather than against it.

And some people are beginning to do something similar now.

So are we on the verge of chronic famine? Probably not. Probably we are on the verge of a paradigm shift ... and those always feel like disasters, because "the world as we know it" is certainly coming to an end. But take a look at these gardens, and think: this CAN be done. Large amounts of food can be grown in small spaces, and close to the people that need them. What one person can do, another can do. You can too.

Next: growing great vegies, without raised beds, hoes, hydroponic systems, hole saws, or space. All you really need is sun!

Why we absorb too much iron?

2011-03-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

One of the questions I've had about iron absorption is: if it's so tightly regulated, then why do people get overloaded on it? Until now, I have not had a good answer to this.
Now I found it. It's on Medscape: you need an account to access it, but the account is free, and Medscape has good stuff. So here is the part in question:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/439591_5
Intestinal absorption of nonheme iron is tightly regulated in keeping with the body requirements, and absorption of iron is minimal when body iron stores are normal. Absorption of heme iron (largely provided by red meat in western countries) does not appear to be dependent on body iron content.

So ... eating red meat in the absence of an iron-blocker, gives you more iron, regardless of how much iron is already in your system. Ha!

That could be the confounding factor in these meat studies. "Eating meat" wouldn't give you heart disease or diabetes in any kind of linear manner, because iron overload is so sporadic. Anyone who loses blood (young women, blood donors, people with celiac, people with parasites) or who eats iron-blocking foods (tea, turmeric, brown rice, chili) with meals, would likely not get iron overloaded regardless. But the American diet, with it's lack of iron-blocking foods, lack of parasites, high levels of iron-absorbing foods with meals (soft drinks, orange juice, saturated fat), PLUS reliance on red meat in large quantities, would seem to be a perfect storm to set people up for high iron load in the body.

The paper goes on to make some other interesting points.

A. Insulin influences iron metabolism: "Insulin is known to cause a rapid and marked stimulation of iron uptake by fat cells" .... so iron is stored a fair bit in fat? That would make sense. Fat would protect the body from the iron. Maybe that would be a reason for the body to "want" to be fat when getting too much iron: the fat is a place to store the iron.

B. Iron influences glucose metabolism: "Iron interferes with insulin inhibition of glucose production by the liver". So the more iron, the higher your blood glucose.

C. Oxidative stress influences both glucose and iron metabolism: "Oxidative stress induces both insulin resistance and increased ferritin syntheses." And "Iron participates, through the Fenton reaction, in the formation of highly toxic free radicals ...".

It's a really interesting paper, esp. if you happen to be prone to high blood glucose!

Why we are so confused about fiber

2011-02-20T01:13:00.000-08:00

When I start talking about how good konjac glucomannan is, someone invariably answers: "But hey, the fiber menace guy says fiber is bad!".

The thing about fiber is: there is so much mis-information about it. Today I got an email from SparkPeople. They have some good ideas, in terms of tracking diet. And they encourage people to think about their food, which is also good.

http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/quizzes_questions.asp?quizid=44

But here is one of their factoids about IBS:

Make soluble fiber foods the largest component of every meal and snack. Foods rich in soluble fiber include: oatmeal, pasta, rice, potatoes, French bread, sourdough bread, soy products, barley, and oat bran. Never eat insoluble fiber on an empty stomach, in large quantities at one sitting, or without soluble fiber. Foods rich in insoluble fiber include: wheat bran, whole grain products, and whole wheat products.

Um. So what is wrong with this picture? First: every single food item listed here is a starchy food. They didn't even bother mentioning foods like, say, beans, apples, sweet potatoes or blueberries ... common foods high in soluble fiber and higher in nutrients. And of course no konjac! There is this kind of blindness to the world of "vegetables" ... like they are a sort of addendum to add color to the side of your plate, but are certainly not "real food", like oatmeal or French bread! I kind of expect the kind of advertisers Sparkpeople gets ... like Cheerios ... has something to do with this. Collard green growers don't advertise ... probably bean growers don't either, or apple growers. Real food doesn't advertise.

Second, gluten is WAY overrepresented here. In soluble fiber, we have 9 products listed. 3 of those are wheat. Two are oatmeal, which is usually contaminated with wheat. One is barley. Rice, potatoes, and soy are the only three that are ok in general for gluten-sensitive people. Given that gluten is probably one of the major reasons for IBS, this is a kind of hopeless prescription. You have IBS? Eat barley, sourdough, French bread, on an empty stomach. Yeah. Sure, that will work. It reminds me of when I was pregnant, with nonstop "morning sickness". So I ate what was recommended: Soda crackers! Didn't work, but I felt I was doing "all I could".

Third, who says pasta and rice contain soluble fiber anyway? It's the first I've heard of it. Granted "pasta" includes a lot of products these days, some of which actually include vegetables. Some kinds of rice could contain polysaccharides (Sweet rice, maybe? It's gooey enough). Mostly though, these aren't foods noted for soluble fiber.

Fourth: while it's commendable that Sparkpeople even is talking about 2 types of fiber, there are way more than 2 types. If you want a healthy gut, you need fiber that feeds the butyrate-producing bacteria for one, and fiber to produce bulk for another. If you want to block iron absorption (a key factor for heart health and glucose handling) then you need foods that block iron ... but I'm not clear on what fibers do that.

Last ... I was diagnosed with IBS way back when. Mostly it was said to be about psychology ... you need less stress! Granted I was an anxious mess back then. So something like:

Research has shown meditation, psychotherapy, exercise, acupuncture, hypnotherapy and nutritional supplements to be effective.

would have sounded great. At the time, I described the area from the bottom of my ribcage to my pelvis
as feeling "on fire" ... it was like someone injected cayenne into my gut cavity. I needed to be near a restroom always, and feared jet flights. I usually felt a little nauseated, and was in constant fear of food poisoning.

I tried the recommendations Sparkpeople lists. They helped some. But the IBS that ruled my life basically ended when I removed all traces of wheat/barley/rye/milk from my diet, and added stuff like konjac, Fast-5, fermented vegies. The anxiety left too. It's been an ongoing evolution, and probably not done yet. I never would have gotten started though, if I'd stuck with believing misinformation like the above.

WHY do Mice Age?

2011-02-10T23:20:00.000-08:00

I've been raising animals most of my life. I started with caterpillars, which morphed into butterflies, and flew away. Then I raised pollywogs, and those morphed into frogs, and hopped away. Then I started into rodents ... which grew up, and shortly (it seemed to me) died.

The thing is, the lifespan of a mouse ... no matter how well you take care of it ... is short. They get "old age" ... dottering old age ... in less than two years. Their lifespan is as set as that of the caterpillar, which WILL turn into a butterfly, soon as it eats enough food.

Now there are some who are saying ... with good reason ... that the thing to do is feed the animal less food. This makes sense, based on the butterfly model.

But in these last 15 years or so, I've not been raising rodents, but birds. And the thing is: birds don't age. Oh, they get older, maybe a little slower. But they don't bent, decrepit, or basically changed. I have hens that are 1 year old, and some that are 8, and you can't tell the difference. When they die, there is a reason ... it might be toxic buildup, or it might be they were not as fast escaping a predator, but it is not old age.

So here is the question that I'm not hearing being addressed: WHY do mice age? And chickens don't? Why do "old age" studies use worms, flies, mice, or apes, but not birds? Probably because because birds, as I've said, don't age. But it's the elephant in the room. There is some trigger that makes some animals have a "stop point" ... like caterpillars have a "stop point" for being caterpillars. But not all animals have it. Birds do not. Most fish do not. Yet it's rarely talked about. Probably, I think, because we don't want to think about our own mortality?

Phytates and bone health

2011-02-10T12:08:00.003-08:00

There is a great blog post here about how they are beginning to rethink the whole phytate issue. The original thinking was started in 1948:

The long held view that phytate (aka Phytic acid or IP6) can reduce mineral absorption and potentially adversely affect general health and possibly bone development be traced back a long way. In fact a paper published in 1942 in the Journal of Physiology clearly set the mineral-phytate ball rolling with it’s comments that “ In children the demand for calcium is particularly great and since their diet may contain considerable amounts of phytate, which is known to impair calcium absorption in adults…“

Now people are questioning this. Was this ever actually tested? Recently it was, in kids, and a high-phytate diet didn't cause mineral absorption:

Researchers from the Department of Pediatrics, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, USA have just published some fascinating results in the Journal of Paediatric Gastroenterology that could turn the whole mineral-phytate argument on its head. In their study, 10 Malawian children ages 3 to 5 years and at risk of zinc and receiving a habitual maize based (high-phytate) diet, received maize after phytate reduction for 40 days and had their faecal zinc measured using before and after phytate reduction. The results clearly showed that the zinc levels were similar before and after dietary phytate reduction; zinc was not affected by dietary phytate in this population!

Further, it now seems that a low phytate diet increases the chances of osteoporosis.

Phytate consumption had a protective effect against osteoporosis, suggesting that low phytate consumption should be considered an osteoporosis risk factor. PubMed

There is another thing I wonder about. Biphosphonates are what is being used to treat osteoporosis. Now, biphosphonates consist of two phosphates linked together via a carbon atom. They look a lot like a pyrophosphate:

Bisphosphonates' mechanisms of action all stem from their structures' similarity to pyrophosphate (see figure above). A bisphosphonate group mimics pyrophosphate's structure, thereby inhibiting activation of enzymes that utilize pyrophosphate. Bisphosphonate-based drugs' specificity comes from the two phosphonate groups (and possibly a hydroxyl at R₁) that work together to coordinate calcium ions.

Biphosphonates are iron-chelators. So whatever else they are doing with protecting bones, they are also lowering ferritin levels.

This study demonstrates that BPs have antioxidant properties as iron chelators, thereby inhibiting the chondrocyte lipid peroxidation. These findings add evidence to the therapeutic potential of bisphosphonates and statins in rheumatoid arthritis.

Seems that statins are also iron chelators. Long-term statin use lowers ferritin levels, and decreases heart disease.

So if you want a healthy heart and healthy bones ... phytate is probably the easiest, safest, and cheapest. But this ties together even more of the disparate "health claims" for these drugs.

Why scavenge bones anyway?

2011-02-03T00:10:00.000-08:00

Thinking more about Cordain's paper, it becomes less clear to me why our hypothetical young men would trek out to lion country to scavenge bones. Face it: lion country is hot and dry, and those lions run fast! Your average hominid can't fight lions very well.

However, our hypothetical hominid camp is close to crocodile country. Those crocs are good at catching meat. One of the things they do with meat is to anchor it under a log and come back for it later. If the prey is small, they will eat it whole, but if it is larger, it gets dragged under and drowned, and then stored.

Now, if you wanted meat ... you could dive down and just take the carcass. The alligator or croc doesn't sit around to defend it (as a lion would). And in any case, they are easily distracted. Alligators are awesome killing machines, when they have the element of surprise, but not so much otherwise. For instance, here are a few videos of interactions with crocs.

Here is a young monkey interacting with a croc, mainly by getting her head stuck in the crocs mouth. Note: the monkey gets away. Which is to say, the crocs aren't really all that fatal, unless they can drag you under and drown you.

I love this one because the hippo moves so slowly, and takes the prey from the croc! Not that the hippo can exactly eat the prey, but he chews on it.

There is also a whole series of "Crocodile Hunter" videos. The thing is, crocs, unlike lions, can be dealt with. If I was a hominid, looking for meat, it would be way easier to "scavenge" from crocs, than to deal with lions. And if I was a hominid, eating a drowned, whole, ruminant would be way better than just scavenging the bones from a lion kill.

Also: crocs have a large layer of stored fat. So do hippos. Is that Omega 3 fat? Either one appears to have WAY more fat than your average ruminant does.

Now, a rather smart group of hominids would do something even more clever. Like: scare some antelope toward a place where it is known that some crocs lie in wait. Let the crocs kill the antelopes ... then distract the crocs and take a couple of carcasses. Very easy meat!

Easy Fish Snacks

2011-02-01T11:15:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I mentioned "fish bacon", a non-nitrate version of crispy saltiness that has become my new addiction. I have to say, it is better than bacon, something I thought I would never say!

Here it is. Basically all I did was toss some salmon bellies with some spices, and cook them on my NuWave cooker. This makes them crispy. The NuWave cooks food as if it were on a grill, except you can do it in your house and the cleanup is much easier. It takes about 15 minutes to make fish bacon.

I made one batch using some teriyaki marinade, which was also wonderful. Either way, it is great over rice with some vegies, inside rice balls, or just by itself.

The Asian store I go to sells salmon bellies only on occasion. When they have them, they cost $1 a pound, and are clearly the leftovers from making salmon fillets. Anyway, I buy a lot of them whenever they have them, and freeze them in smaller amounts for making fish bacon later.

An even easier fish snack comes from the Mexican store. I found these on the snack rack, next to the chips and candies. They are basically dried shrimp, probably about like what you would have if you put some shrimp out in a hot sun. I asked the lady behind the counter if you just eat them? She said yes, just pop them in your mouth, maybe with some hot sauce or lime.

Hm. In theory, I've always believed it was better to eat the whole shrimp, but they look rather spiky! Anyway, I took them home and took a bite. They are massively good. Way, way better than my previous favorite, "Shrimp chips". Why have chips flavored with shrimp, when you can just eat the whole shrimp? These are just slightly salty and quite crispy, though they could probably be crisped further in a hot pan. They are better than whole dried anchovies: the anchovies are slightly bitter, but these are not.

What is exciting to me is that these can be a great substitute for my previous "travelling food" ... jerky. I did like my homemade kefir-jerky, but it hasn't been the same since I stopped using dairy. Also, I'm trying to eat more seafood, and good salmon jerky is hard to find or to make. Asian fish snacks are good also, but most have MSG and sugar added. These shrimp, are just shrimp. Also rather cheap, especially considering how outrageous the prices are for fresh shrimp! Interestingly, these seem to be repackaged from some bulk package ... I wonder if it would be possible to buy, like, 25 lbs and freeze them ...

Ancient diet and brain development: brains vs. fish

2011-02-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

I confess I have not read as much of Cordain's research papers as I should have. I did read his book some time ago, and I've been talking here on this blog about some of the "Paleo diet" as it's been popularized. But on "ThePaleolithicDiet" website are the full texts of a lot of thoroughly researched articles, which give more of the scientific rationale for what he's saying. They are also very long papers, and so far I've only read one, but it's quite interesting:

http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles/Encephalization%20Final%20PDF.pdf

This one talks about brain development on an early hominid diet. Most of the paper goes into depth about the need for AA and DHA to grow brains. It goes into great depth about the amount of AA and DHA that can be obtained in the African environment a couple of million years ago. And it arrives at the unsurprising conclusion that there are only two foods that could provide the level of AA and DHA needed: ruminant brains and fish. All of this I found fascinating.

But then we come to the very end of the article:

Hominids, like all other organisms must obtain more energy from the food they capture and consume than the energy required to obtain the food. The concept of maximizing the (energy capture/energy cost) is referred to as ‘optimal foraging theory’, and has generally been shown to be true for foraging humans [56]. Studies examining the energy return rate from fishing show it to be low, even for modern day hunter-gatherers employing nets, weirs, and other sophisticated fishing tackle [57]. Consequently, it is likely that the energy return rate for early hominids, using nothing more than bare hands to capture freshwater fish would have been lower still. Because scavenged marrow represents a more highly concentrated energy source (488 kcal/100 g) than freshwater fish (119 kcal/100 g), the energy return versus the energy expenditure for scavenged marrowbones would have far exceeded that available from the manual capture of freshwater fish. Further, because the (energy/protein) ratio in African fish (6.3) is about one tenth that in African ruminant marrow (69.7), fish consumption would have been constrained by the physiologic protein ceiling whereas, marrow consumption would not have been. Thus, when the option was available, scavenged ruminant marrow and the brain that was concurrently present in skull of the defleshed skeleton would have almost always been chosen over active capture of either fish or aquatic invertebrates. Taken together the data indicate that scavenged marrow from ruminant longbones would have represented the concentrated energy source required for hominid encephalization, and the brains of scavenged skulls would have represented the predominant source of DHA and AA.

In other words: It is more work to catch fish, than it is to scavenge cow skulls. Amazingly, this is the best argument he can come up with for brains being the main source of DHA in the hominid diet, leading to a major period of brain expansion. His other argument, that the protein ceiling would be met too easily with fish, because fish have less fat, is even weaker: people who eat fish eat other stuff with them (the same would be true of cow brains). But fruit or other starches are easy calories, so let's talk about how much work it is to catch fish.

I don't know the studies he is talking about for the amount of work it takes to catch a fish. But the "even with modern contraptions" argument just doesn't make sense. Adding fishing nets and boats doesn't make it less work to catch a fish: even if you discount the amount of work it takes to make the net or the boat, you have to haul or steer them out to where the fish are, and most fishermen spend all day working at fishing. So let's take a step back and imagine how much work it would be for a 4-foot hominid, to gather a cow skull vs. gathering an equivalent amount of fish.

So you wake up one fine morning and think "I'm hungry!". You are camped next to some good drinking water, probably sleeping in some trees. A group of young men decides they are going to go out looking for some cow meat, since they heard the lions out last night and there might be some fresh leftover bones lying around. They grab their clubs and head out to where they heard the lions.

Now, your average pride of lions has a huge territory. It takes a lot of land to support a carnivore. So, your group hikes maybe a mile, searching over the grassland for traces of carnivore. It's a hot, thirsty hike; you haven't invented water-bottles yet, or shoes. It's also a dangerous hike. Even today, warriors go out in groups, armed with sharp spears or better yet, rifles, when going into lion country. But all you have are clubs and rocks, and the lions regard you as good prey. Still, if they just ate, they might not be so hungry. Finally, you find the kill. It's a whole oxen, a nice big one! The lions are in the shade, gnawing on a couple of the bones, but clearly they are too full to care. The hyenas are having their fill now, getting what the lions left.

You and your troupe rush the hyenas, and they back off. You start hacking at the bones with your sharp rocks. One of you manages to get the head, some others take the long bones. The head weighs maybe 30 lbs, which is about a third of your weight. Some of the long bones have enough meat on them to make it worth taking them too. You are hungry, but eating while the lions are looking at you doesn't seem prudent, so you all run as fast as you can with your prize, back to camp.

Back at camp, you set to work with stones to break into the cow skull and longbones. It takes awhile: cow bones are very hard, esp. a full-grown adult. Finally though, you get to the DHA-laden brain. It's about the size of a softball, and highly prized. The high-ranking male gets most of it, probably. Or maybe you all share, and each get a tablespoon or so of nice brain. And some good fresh red meat. It's been a good day.

Meanwhile, the women and children stayed home at camp. It's been a hot day, and the kids have been playing in the water, as kids do, and the women are standing or swimming in the nice cool water. There are crocodiles sometimes, but they are fairly easily captured (as modern humans have seen on "The Crocodile Hunter") and the small ones are great eating. In the reeds there are little shrimp and fish, and the kids are having fun catching them and chewing them up. The women are diving down and getting some bigger fish and molluscs. Women onshore are drying some of them in the sun, for later, while others are finding some fresh fruit and nuts.

This is the part that people have a hard time believing. In group discussions, what I hear is "How do you expect hominids could catch fish with their bare hands???" You even get people like Cordain saying "it's too much work to catch fish". So here are some videos of modern people, who are likely less quick and less strong than hominids were, catching fish with their bare hands! Notice how they are panting and out of breath, and clearly exerting themselves massively, compared to those hunters trekking back with their cow skull:

By the time the guys come back with their red meat, they are hungry and thirsty. They share some of their prize, but by that time the women and children have pretty much filled their bellies, and the women share some of their food with the guys in exchange for some of their meat.

OK, the sharing part I'm making up. It's hard to say how much "sharing" hominids did ... chimps don't share much at all, they just grab what they can and the males tend to grab the most, but in a bonobo clan, the ranking female divides up the food. The point of this is ... to say it was less work to get cow brains is just silly, esp. cow brains from scavenged hunts. Especially when or if there was a large body of water handy, full of fish. It takes next to no work to catch fish, when you are swimming with the fish. You can grab them with your hands, and just pop them in your mouth directly if you want. This is even more true of shrimp or snails. And it is something that can be done by a little kid or a pregnant woman, and it's not especially dangerous. In fact, it's a pleasant way to spend a hot day, out of reach of flies or mosquitoes. You can eat your fill in an hour or two, and have some left over.

In contrast, trekking out over the savannah to look for fresh ruminant kills would be hot, dangerous work. It's even more work to get the bones open. And the amount of brain you get from one ruminant is quite tiny. Your average predator only hunts once every 2-3 days too ... so either you have to move between two different predator territories, or you have to eat something else in-between.

Cordain also only talks about a few species of fish. He does not mention, say, croc eggs or snails. I love this video showing the huge amount of work it takes to find and eat croc eggs!

Now, compare this to extracting one pig brain (with modern tools). Remember, we are talking about amount of work vs. calories. How many calories do you get from this pig brain, vs. amount of work? How many carcasses would it take to feed your group?

Other people talking about iron

2011-01-28T12:49:00.000-08:00

Interestingly enough, it seems other people are reading this Blog and finding useful stuff in it. Which is wonderful, because they in turn are giving me interesting stuff! In particular this thread. There is a long and interesting discussion there, pointing back to this blog, so now we are in a full circle! One of the interesting notes though is that the original post mentions feeling better on Vitamin C, and how having high iron robs the body of Vitamin C.

Now this is really interesting to me because I've been avoiding Vitamin C, since my original issues started when I was taking it with meals. Lately though I've been having problems that might relate to low Vitamin C, and so I've been wondering how to handle it. In the blog I found this:

http://www.health-science-spirit.com/haemochromatosis1.html

Vitamin C therapy is generally regarded as potentially harmful in cases of iron overload. Ascorbic acid may increase the absorption of iron and it is perceived that toxic products may form from the combination of ascorbate with iron salts liberated from ferritin tissue stores (1). In this way, cardiac damage, often transient, has been detected in thalassemia patients taking 500 mg/day of ascorbic acid (2). Such tissue damage may result from the peroxidation of membrane lipids and is really not surprising in tissues severely deficient in antioxidants. To avoid or limit toxic effects from iron liberated by ascorbic acid it has been proposed to use vitamin C supplementation only in combination with desferrioxamine in the treatment of iron overload (2).

However, it would appear much more effective to protect cell membranes from iron-induced peroxidation damage during therapy with a high level of antioxidant supplementation. Also sufficient vitamin B6 is required to prevent iron overload.

It is well known that high concentrations of ferric ions oxidise the protective antioxidants, notably the vitamins C and E. This means that on an unsupplemented diet we can expect pronounced tissue deficiencies of these antioxidants in iron overload diseases.

It has recently been reported that vitamin A supplementation improved the iron status (serum iron, haemoglobin as well as transferrin saturation) without at the same time increasing ferritin levels, while iron supplements without additional vitamin A increased ferritin levels. Also vitamin A deficient subjects developed anaemia despite sufficient dietary iron (3,4). This may be interpreted as a normalising function of vitamin A in the transport and usage of iron, while iron alone may mainly increase iron stores in case of vitamin A deficiency.

I have read elsewhere that combining chelators with Vit C is an effective way to liberate the iron so it can be flushed out of the body. So I'm going to try taking Vit C again, but not with meals, and in combination IP6 or EDTA, and see what happens. Might toss in some Vit E and A too.

The article above goes on to talk about scurvy. Cooking salt beef in iron pots, as they did on ships, would almost certainly lead to iron overload, which would (according to this article) lead for a higher need for Vit. C. When Stefansson did his "all meat diet", his meat was, notably, raw. Which means, in those days, that it was not cooked in an iron pot or skillet. The core issue might not have to do even with enzymes or Vitamin C in the meat, but rather with the fact that any iron that happened to be in the meat would react with the iron pan or pot, and the person would get too much iron in their diet.

It should also be noted that in most places in the world, iron pots didn't exist until very recently. People did cook their food, and they did make stews. But their cooking was done in a hollowed-out log, or a skin hung over the fire or set in a depression in the soil. Hot rocks were added to the liquid to make it hot and cook the stew. So when Stefansson says the Inuit ate boiled fish ... they cooked the fish in what he describes as a "trough", not the iron pot the Europeans would have used. They ate raw fish too, and fermented fish. Apparently they didn't get scurvy, but the question is, was it really the raw fish that supplied the Vit C? Or was it just the iron pots combined with years of heme meat that caused problems for Europeans?

This also makes me think about humans and Vitamin C. We are one of the few mammals that doesn't produce our own Vitamin C. We are also one of the few meat-eaters that over-hoards iron. Are the two related? I don't think we are really adapted for eating a lot of high-heme meat, and the peoples who lived off large ruminants seem to have eaten either high-fat ruminants or drank mainly their milk. But if we had been living in a period where we were eating mainly seafood, such a diet would be low in absorbable iron, and possibly high in iron chelators (like seaweed). Also in that time period, most people would have parasites, so iron deficiency would be a common thing. Having high Vitamin C levels would possibly rob our body stores of the required iron, so not producing Vitamin C would be adaptive for a low-iron diet? It might be a situation like the Orkney sheep, who over-hoard copper if they don't get enough seaweed in their diets.

Another interesting article quoted in the blog:

http://consumerhealth.org/articles/display.cfm?ID=19990303140150

IRON OVERLOAD - THE MISSED DIAGNOSIS

Physicians were more interested in anaemias and low iron deficiency and did not really perform the necessary tests of iron metabolism to diagnose the opposite end of the spectrum - iron overload. He described conditions directly related to excess iron in the body such as arthritis, diabetes, psychiatric illness, and liver disease.

These conditions were very common in my medical practice, and I decided to find out how many of my patients had excess iron, and it turned out to be a significant number, as many as 30% of my patients. When I began to lower the iron levels, my patients improved, and I published some research articles on the subject in some rather prestigious medical journals.

Well worth reading the entire article!

The sincerest form of flattery

2011-01-28T12:05:00.000-08:00

It is said that "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", so I probably should be flattered. Turns out, someone else is in fact marketing "Dunkers", except they call them "Dunk'rs":

http://www.pickl-it.com/faq/161/pickl-it-dunk-r/

(My Dunkers are here)

Now, I've often had people tell me "You should patent that idea!". There is no way I would patent Dunkers. For one thing, I didn't invent the idea. Spacers and weights have been used in the fermenting world since forever. For another thing, I've never really made "Dunkers" into a business: I have provided them as a service of sorts, because there was simply nothing else like them available years ago when I started. I make them by hand, and they are time-consuming and expensive to make, because they are high-fired and most ceramics studies use low-fire (it's cheaper). To make them affordably would require, probably, making them in China, en masse. Third, I just don't have time to do a lot of packing and shipping and customer care (I actually do like my day job!). At times I've said publicly that I'd just as soon someone take the idea and run with it as a commercial venture, because I think fermenting is a good thing and it needs to be made easy and routine.

The Pickl-it people may be using some other premade part that happens to be the right shape, which is, I think, a good approach. The weight they are using is flat, which means there is no "handle" to push it down into the brine, but it would be easy enough for people to add a spacer if they need to. Glass is quite inert, and it doesn't stain, and it's easy to wash.

It does bother me though that they use the "TM" symbol, since the name "Dunker" has been in use for years. Hopefully if they decide to register the trademark, the trademark people will notice that. It may well be the case that "great minds think alike" and they came up with the name totally on their own. My own take is that "Dunker" should just be a generic name for that kind of item, like "Custard cup", or "Condiment cup". There should be a name for "a thing that dunks vegies under the brine". Maybe we need a new symbol, something like the gnu registration process, to say "I came up with this idea, and I want it to remain public domain".

However, I've also said many times that you don't need to buy anything to do fermenting. There are several sizes of condiment cups and custard cups that work fine as dunkers: just bring the lid of a jar to the store and experiment, or look online. You can also fold over a salted cabbage leaf, and tuck it under the shoulder of the jar, to hold the vegies down. In fact, the whole idea of "shoulders" on jars is that you can tuck vegies down and they stay down, if they are bigger pieces (like green beans or brussel sprouts). I like the folded cabbage leaf idea because the folded leaf makes great cabbage rolls. Or you can use grape leaves and make dolmathes. This idea came up again recently on the MicrobialNutrition yahoo group, from Moozy21. MicrobialNutrition is, by the way, a great place to get fermenting ideas and to talk with other fermenters.

Water-based food vs. Land-based food

2011-01-26T20:39:00.002-08:00

Much of our vocabulary when talking about protein food has to do with the animal type. So "fish" goes in one category, while "poultry" and "meat" go in others. This doesn't really account for what goes on in the food chain.

The "water" food-chain is based on algae, which is high in Omega-3. Baby fish and plankton eat algae, and they are eaten by bigger fish, etc. The fish and algae are also eaten by ducks, and polar bears, and probably pigs (esp. in the ancient past). And hippos, turtles, etc. These animals also tend to be lower in neu5gc ... WHY I have no idea.

The "land" food chain though, is based mainly on grass and plants, which are mostly low in Omega-3 and often high in iron. Here you have insects that eat the plants, mice and birds that eat the insects, ruminants that eat the grass and have it digested by bacteria in their rumens.

What you see in the ancient diets of humans is that they are eating the "water" food chain. It did include mammals ... like hippos. And other meat, like "crocodiles" and "turtles". And sometimes, ruminants like antelopes.

More modern Paleo peoples often go to a "land based" food chain and include more mice, birds, ruminants. But in every example I've seen, there are also fish and water-based food, like ducks or geese, which eat a lot of water-weed and water-animals. Pork is often included too, and pork is interesting, because pigs like to root and hang out in swampy areas, rolling in the mud. Pigs are thought to be somewhat water-adapted, and they are higher in neu5ac than other mammals. I do love this!

However, if we are in fact adapted to a more water-based diet, then this whole idea of feeding farm-fish land-based food is bogus. You can't feed Talipia on corn, and expect the meat to be water-based. You have to base the food chain on algae and the sun, not on corn in a field.

Are humans adapted for savannah animals?

2011-01-26T20:39:00.000-08:00

Oddly enough, my response to the "Nutrients you can ONLY get from meat" blog post apparently hit some nerves. Most often these seem to be from people who are WAPFers, and most often they quote Price or Stefannson, to prove to me that we really don't need fish in our diet. They also talk about how the Paleo peoples couldn't possibly have caught fish anyway, since they didn't have nets or fishhooks.

Now this is odd on a couple of counts. First, I never said we NEED fish in our diet. What I said is that it is a better source of nutrients than beef. Second, both Price and Stefannson were great believers in fish as a source of nutrients. Third, Paleo people did in fact eat fish, and many other water creatures besides. Personally, I think water-based food has provided more calories for humanity than any other source, overall.

1. Are fish a more complete food?

So let's take the first count. Obviously people can in fact live without fish: a lot of people never eat fish and they are still alive. Many of those people used to get goiter in the past, which was epidemic ... and still is in areas where salt is not iodized. The native peoples who lived inland traded for fish or seaweed though, to avoid these problems, something that Price noted. The "salt roads" attest to traffic in salt, fish, and seaweed, all of which were highly prized inland. Even those "healthy Swiss" who raised their own food imported one food: salt. That salt, in Price's time, was iodized, because before that they had high rates of goiter.

Now, is seafood a better source of nutrients than beef? You can check that on any nutrition table. The nutrients vary by type of seafood, but overall, fish and in particular shellfish, are high in the minerals Eades said were only available in "meat". But also, many fish, esp. in the past, were eaten whole. So you not only got the protein and fat, you also got the internal organs and all that calcium from the bones. You don't get that with ruminant meat automatically: you have to work at it, grinding up the bones, opening up the skull (which is HARD to do for a miniscule little brain), gathering and processing the organs. Much easier to pop a few oysters. Fish liver also contains Vitamin D and A, which is why Price prized it. The problem with nutrition tables, in fact, is that they assume you are only eating fish "meat", but in other cultures, the whole fish is eaten, including the livers and bones.

There is also this. When Stefansson went on his much-quoted "all meat" diet, that diet included fish. When he tried to go on an all-lean-meat diet, it didn't work for him. He had to add plenty of fat, something that has been noted by other researchers: humans just can't eat all that much protein. Yet the Inuit he describes ate pretty much JUST fish all winter. The fish contained enough fat to sustain people, without working at it.

For I had published in 1913, on pages 140-142 of My Life with the Eskimo, an account of how some natives and I became ill when we had to go two or three weeks on lean meat, caribou so skinny that there was no appreciable fat behind the eyes or in the marrow. So when Dr. DuBois suggest that I start the meat period by eating as large quantities as I possibly could of chopped fatless muscle, I predicted trouble. But he countered by citing my own experience where illness had not come until after two or three weeks, and he now proposed lean for only two or three days. So I gave in. Link

So there it is: the Inuit did fine on fish (described earlier in the document). But they only did fine on caribou if they harvested nice fat ones. They ate both, to be sure, and maybe they even preferred caribou. Yet this goes back to my original thesis: fish is a more complete food.

2. Did Price and Stefansson approve of fish?

This is the objection that really surprises me. In Price's "healthy natives", many of them were eating seafood. Price himself was a great believer in cod liver oil and seaweed. Stefansson's observations were mainly of Inuit, who mainly ate seafood ... either fish, or seal, or polar bear, all of which are basically sea-based creatures.

Stefansson himself did not like fish much, and he describes his feelings rather well:

The issue of fish and water against fish and tea was, in any case, to me six against a half dozen. For I had had a prejudice against fish all my life. I had nibbled at it perhaps once or twice a year at course dinners, always deciding that it was as bad as I thought. This was pure psychology of course, but I did not realize it.

I was in a measure adopted into an Eskimo family the head of which knew English. He had grown up as a cabin boy on a whaling ship and was called Roxy, though his name was Memoranna. It was early September, we were living in tents, the days were hot but it had begun to freeze during the nights, which were now dark for six to eight hours.

The community of three or four families, fifteen or twenty individuals, was engaged in fishing. With long poles, three or four nets were shoved out from the beach about one hundred yards apart. When the last net was out the first would be pulled in, with anything from dozens to hundreds of fish, mostly ranging in weight from one to three pounds, and including some beautiful salmon trout. From knowledge of other white men the Eskimos consider these to be most suitable for me and would cook them specially, roasting them against the fire. They themselves ate boiled fish.

Trying to develop an appetite, my habit was to get up soon after daylight, say four o'clock, shoulder my rifle, and go off after breakfasts on a hunt south across the rolling prairie, though I scarcely expected to find any game. About the middle of the afternoon I would return to camp. Children at play usually saw me coming and reported to Roxy's wife, who would then put a fresh salmon trout to roast. When I got home I would nibble at it and write in my diary what a terrible time I was having.

Against my expectation, and almost against my will, I was beginning to like the baked salmon trout when one day of perhaps the second week I arrived home without the children having seen me coming. There was no baked fish ready but the camp was sitting round troughs of boiled fish. I joined them and, to my surprise, liked it better than the baked. There after the special cooking ceased, and I ate boiled fish with the Eskimos. Link

3. Is fish a "native" food?

More to the point, it is looking less and less like our pre-farming forbears were living off ruminants. Sure, they ate them. But one recent study (quoted in an earlier post) showed by isotope analysis that Britons lived off a marine-based diet up to the point they began farming. This trend appears to go back much further though, and one of the very earliest hominid camps shows intensive use of fish. Also turtles and other water creatures, circa 700k bc. Another, even older find, 2 million years old, shows use of hippos, turtles, fish. Both finds also include land animals, but they are hardly the bulk of the foodstuffs. We might not know how they caught fish 2 million years ago, but somehow they did. It's rally not all that hard: monkeys and bonobos catch them with their hands, so do little kids. And in Mississippi, wrestling catfish by hand is a sport.

There is also this: a large portion of the existing population does not seem adapted for eating a diet of mainly ruminant meat. Human beings:

Cannot live on large amounts of lean meat (as, say, a wild cat can).
Are predisposed to over-hoard iron (esp. Northern Europeans)
Require larger amounts of iodine and DHA, compared to other animals and carnivores.
Are disposed to getting gout when large amounts of ruminant meat are eaten
Get inflammation when they absorb too much neu5gc (which is not found in fish or poultry).

If in fact our ancestors lived mainly off aurochs, they would be adapted for eating aurochs, lean or fat, the way wolves can live off caribou. Instead what we have is a species that craves aurochs (or it's modern equivalent, beef) but can't actually live off it. We can survive on beef ... if we get fat beef, if we get some iodine in our diet from somewhere else, if pregnant women find a good source of DHA from flax or fish oil, if we eat the brains and marrow, if we grind the bones and eat them. But the form of "meat" that most people mean when they say "meat" ... what Dr. Eades meant when he said "Nutrients you can ONLY get from meat" ... you can't survive off that kind of meat, generation after generation. Yet there are peoples who survive only on fish. Actually the Japanese did fine on fish and eggs and rice, plus some vegies too, with little or no "meat". In a contest of ruminant meat vs. fish: fish wins.

The Dual Nature of Nitrates

2011-01-26T13:21:00.000-08:00

Nitrates have always confused me. When I was growing up, it was coming out that nitrates are very bad things, and one should avoid them at all cost. But now, it turns out that eating nitrates can be good for your heart, and you should eat more of them. So which is true?

It's an interesting question. Eating preserved meat seems to be pretty clearly bad. There are loads of nitrates in commercial sausage and jerky, and of course my favorite, bacon. Everyone seems to agree that eating cured meat is associated with gut cancer.

However, most of the nitrates you eat are not from cured meat. 80% of the nitrates you eat are from vegetables, notably the ones that are associated with good health, like celery, cabbage. So why isn't eating lots of cabbage associated with getting more gut cancer? In fact, cabbage actually fights cancer.

This is causing some people to make "nitrate free" cured meat, by curing the meat with, say, celery juice. Those in favor of the idea, say the vegetable nitrate is "natural" and therefore harmless. The more scientifically inclined though, say "a nitrate is a nitrate" and the source shouldn't make any difference.

I think I have one possible answer to this conundrum. The reason "nitrates are bad" has to do with the fact they create nitrosamines in the gut. Actually the nitrosamines can start forming even while the food is in storage. Vitamin C can inhibit this, and manufacturers have started adding vitamin C to cured meats, to lower the nitrosamine levels. Under these conditions, the nitrites react with heme iron to create nitrosyl-heme:

In cured meat: Meat processed by curing contains nitrite and has a pH of 5 approximately, where almost all nitrite is present as NO₂⁻ (99%). Cured meat is also added with sodium ascorbate (or erythorbate or Vitamin C). As demonstrated by S. Mirvish, ascorbate inhibits nitrosation of amines to nitrosamine, because ascorbate reacts with NO₂⁻ to form NO.^[2]^[3] Ascorbate and pH 5 thus favor nitrosylation of heme iron, forming nitrosyl-heme, a red pigment when included inside myoglobin, and a pink pigment when it has been released by cooking. It participates to the "bacon flavor" of cured meat: nitrosyl-heme is thus considered a benefit for the meat industry and for consumers.^[4]

However, in order to create the nitrosamines, there have to be amino acids present. There are not many amino acids in cabbage or celery. Also, the reaction is catalyzed by iron ... and not just any iron, it has to be heme iron, the kind you get in blood or meat. This has been tested:

Many N-nitroso compounds (NOC) are carcinogens. In this controlled study of 21 healthy male volunteers, levels of NOC on a high (420 grams) red meat diet were significantly greater (P = 0.001) than on a low (60 grams) meat diet but not significantly greater when an equivalent amount of vegetable protein was fed. An 8-mg supplement of haem iron also increased fecal NOC (P = 0.006) compared with the low meat diet, but 35-mg ferrous iron had no effect. Endogenous N-nitrosation, arising from ingestion of haem but not inorganic iron or protein, may account for the increased risk associated with red meat consumption in colorectal cancer. Link

Now your average Korean or Japanese person eats a lot of cabbage, but they usually eat it with fish, which has a lot less heme iron in it than red meat. They also have a healthier gut, because they don't eat so much wheat. Many Americans though, have undiagnosed celiac, gluten intolerance, or ulcers, all of which cause internal bleeding and add heme iron to the food being digested. Plus, of course, plain cabbage contains a fair bit of Vitamin C, which would help prevent the nitrosamine reaction, so eating wurst and kraut is way better than just eating the wurst.

But would cabbage juice make "nitrosamine proof" cured meat? Probably not, I think, though it might depend on how much Vitamin C survives the juicing process. But the whole point of curing meats with nitrates is to produce nitrosyl-heme: it doesn't matter where the nitrates comes from. Adding vitamin C to cured meats might be a simpler solution than using cabbage. That, however, is problematic for those of us to tend to over-absorb iron. It means the iron in the cured meat is absorbed at an even faster rate.

So what is a bacon-lover to do? My thoughts are: we should buy pork belly. They are cheap. Get a nice slab of pork belly and brine it. Fact is, it's the salt in the bacon that adds most of the flavor. If you want that nice smoky flavor you could add liquid smoke, which is how most bacon is made anyway. The bacon will turn brown when you cook it, but so what?

If you like the nice red color, then smoke the pork belly. Carbon monoxide does a great job of preserving the red color, which is why the red color is associated with smoked meat. Nitrates are just a cheaty way of making red meat without actually using a smokehouse.

Then, get a good meat slicer ... they don't cost all that much ... and voila! Artisinal bacon.

Another thought: salmon belly bacon. I made some the other day. The Vietnamese store had salmon bellies for a dollar a pound (the going rate) and I bought 10 lbs of them. I mixed a handful of them with Penzy's Galena seasoning, then roast them on High on my Nuwave quickie oven. They got toasty and crispy and salty ... just like good bacon. Actually they were like a cross between bacon and chichirones, because the fins and scales and part of the meat got super-crispy. My daughter and I devoured them over the next day. They were, I think, the most delectable "bacon" I've ever had, but, unlike bacon or chichirones, they fill me up.

Are beans a Paleo food?

2011-01-19T15:43:00.000-08:00

Recently someone asked the question: are beans ok on a Paleo diet? It's an interesting question, because as I posted the other day ... we don't really have a definition of what the "Paleo" diet is. What we *do* know is that farmers in Northern Europe took a huge health hit when they started farming. We don't really know why that happened, but it's a good bet that the "farm foods" just weren't as healthy as what they were eating before. Which makes you wonder why they started farming in the first place.

Anyway, they are beginning to get more exact information about what these nonfarmers ate. In Britain at least, they ate mainly a marine-based diet, and then abruptly abandoned marine foods when they started farming. Why did they do that? I'd guess that for one thing, it's hard to farm right next to the coast, and walking miles to the beach to get fish wasn't very convenient.

Why Did Ancient Britons Stop Eating Fish?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0924_030924_neolithicdiet.html

The research by Richards and colleagues Rick Schulting at Queen's University Belfast and Robert Hedges at the University of Oxford tracks the shift in diet by examining the dietary signature stored in the bones.

They find that the shift was rapid and complete at the onset of the Neolithic. "Marine foods, for whatever reason, seem to have been comprehensively abandoned," the researchers conclude in the September 25 issue of the journal Nature.

At the same time, there is now evidence that the Neandertals did in fact eat grains and beans, cooked even. They ate fish too.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/12/17/1016868108.abstract

The nature and causes of the disappearance of Neanderthals and their apparent replacement by modern humans are subjects of considerable debate. Many researchers have proposed biologically or technologically mediated dietary differences between the two groups as one of the fundamental causes of Neanderthal disappearance. Some scenarios have focused on the apparent lack of plant foods in Neanderthal diets. Here we report direct evidence for Neanderthal consumption of a variety of plant foods, in the form of phytoliths and starch grains recovered from dental calculus of Neanderthal skeletons from Shanidar Cave, Iraq, and Spy Cave, Belgium. Some of the plants are typical of recent modern human diets, including date palms (Phoenix spp.), legumes, and grass seeds (Triticeae), whereas others are known to be edible but are not heavily used today. Many of the grass seed starches showed damage that is a distinctive marker of cooking. Our results indicate that in both warm eastern Mediterranean and cold northwestern European climates, and across their latitudinal range, Neanderthals made use of the diverse plant foods available in their local environment and transformed them into more easily digestible foodstuffs in part through cooking them, suggesting an overall sophistication in Neanderthal dietary regimes.

So where do we set the line for a "paleo" diet? Certainly it was not the all-red-meat low-carb non-cooked diet that is currently being popularized. I think maybe one clue is: some peoples started farming but did not take such a huge health hit. Most of these appear to be coastal people, while a few are herders that drink a fair bit of milk. We know that most people were not raw milk drinkers, because most humans lack lactase ... they may have eaten fermented milk products though. But we also know that human beings require iodine and salt in larger amounts than most mammals, and DHA, which argues for a seafood adaptation.

What is "Paleo"?

2011-01-13T23:54:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been thinking about the whole "Paleo diet" concept. It's a concept that, for the most part, I support. But as people talk about it, I wonder: what, exactly, do we mean by "Paleo"?

"The Paleo Diet" was popularized by a book by that name. The concept was simple: eat only what you could hunt, or gather. Since then, people have been thinking about it and expanding on it. Some people say: "Don't eat foods from The New World". Others say: "Don't eat legumes".

So ... let's take a step back. What, exactly, is "Paleo"????

The word "Paleo" means: "old". In the original definition, the idea was that human beings lived in a state of oneness with nature until some point where they started farming, which was somewhere between 12,000 and 1,000 years ago for most of Europe, and still hasn't come about for some of the planet. I kind of like the word "Paleo" ... I expect that, if you asked the average Aborigine about some practice, they would say "That is part of the Old Ways" ... aka, Paleo.

The problem with the original definition of "Paleolithic" is that it appears to be very Northern European. What happened in Northern Europe is: for a long period of time, people lived "wild" .... they lived off herds of wild ruminants and seafood. They lived, often, in caves, esp. since there happened to be a lot of ice around at the time. Also, caves are a great place to find remnants of people: whoever was living on, say, a boat, or on the shoreline, we don't know anything about. We also don't have a lot of remnants of small animals or plants they ate, though this is changing with better technology.

But at some point, these people started farming. Farming in Northern Europe was one of the most spectacular FAILS of all time. Human stature shrunk, bones got brittle, and new diseases, like schizophrenia, appeared. Worse, the farmland deteriorated. By 1900 or so, it was clear the land could no longer support the population. It was also clear that the humans who lived "wild" still, were a lot healthier ... something Weston Price documented rather nicely.

In recent years, it's become clear that the deterioration in Northern European (NE) health started with the advent of farming. Hence, the interest in "Paleo" (pre-farming) culture.

My question in all this is: how do we define "Paleo"? This entire discussion is very NE based. What was happening in the rest of the world?

For one thing: the people who were "not farming" were not exactly "hunter/gathering" either. "Hunter/gathering" implies a kind of low-footprint taking of "extra stuff" from the biosphere. This is NOT what humans did! Human beings had a huge impact, and in fact engaged in a kind of complex dance with their environment, which included things like:

Burning large swatches of forest, to encourage ruminants
Killing off predators that kill ruminants
Building fish traps
Diverting streams to make the fish easier to catch
Pulling up plants they didn't like
Planting plants they did like

All in all, this isn't much different from what, say, a farmer ant colony would do. Or even a bacteria colony. Humans changed their environment to it suited them. They had a huge impact.

The other thing is, humans developed something I call a "cuisine" ... a set of food rules. The food rules changed depending on the circumstances, but they were likely rather complex. The numbers of foods involved were way huger than what we have. Just figuring out what mushrooms one can eat ... is complicated. And deadly if you make a mistake. Pre-farming humans needed way more knowledge of foods than we have, just to not get poisoned.

When a tribe of people travels, they have to change their food rules constantly based on where they live. There is one set of food rules for the coast, another for the river, another for inland. Eventually people settled into one niche, and developed a cuisine for that niche. Most of these cuisines worked. People stayed alive, and had healthy babies, and so we see them in the fossil record.

Now, in the Middle East, at some point, people started farming. Either there was no choice, or they liked making beer, we aren't sure. Anyway, they settled down to a different lifestyle, which led to "civilization" as we know it. "Civilization" meant armies, writing, heirarchy. The "Civilized" peoples took over Europe, in the form of the Roman Empire. We call this period the "Neolithic".

From a dominance perspective, the Neolithic worked. They took over. From a health perspective: it was a disaster. Families got bigger, people got smaller and sicker and more and more crazy. (adding "sugar of lead" to wine didn't help much). Farmland got less and less productive.

However, eventually the "barbarians" ... not "not civilized", "not farming" peoples, took over. Probably they were just more healthy. We got another 1,000 years of a kind of mashup of hunting and farming, until 1400 or so when people started getting organized again. Then, those Europeans decided to take over the world, an did, exporting their way of life rather effectively, with the aid of some interesting germs like Smallpox.

So how does this lead back to the "Paleo diet"? First, while the Europeans were decimating their health and farmland, what was the rest of the world doing? The Asians (China) had been "civilized" for some thousands of years before, and had reached a kind of equilibrium that was working, mostly based in rice farming and fishing, plus a rather intricate social system. Most of the rest of the world was in what we now call "hunter/gatherer" mode.

But were they really just hunting and gathering? The South Seas islanders grew taro, and had extensive knowledge of fish, and pigs. In America, there was a vast network of a kind of permaculture that included digging waterworks and making roads, and enhancing soils to the extent that after 1,000 years, they are STILL productive. In Africa, the villages were spread far apart, but they did intensive trade and had high-quality weaving and crafts (something the British later suppressed). Even in Australia, yams were cultivated by the Aborigines.

The point is: most of these systems, these "cuisines" ... *worked*. Each was different and highly interwoven, but the people survived and prospered. The one that did NOT work was the European, at least in terms of individual health. As individuals, the Europeans were tiny and weak. As a nation, they took over. Kinda like ants.

So what, exactly, is "paleo"? It is something that is mainly defined against "neo" ... it is NOT(European farming). European farming destroyed Europeans, as individuals. It also destroyed the farmland, as Price noticed.

Farming per se did not destroy other cultures though, and really, it's hard to show what is, and is not, "farming". Those "hunter/gatherers" did a lot more than hunt or gather. In general, they could adapt quickly to a new food source and decide what was, and was not, edible. And tell the others. In this, they were much like my chickens. You can toss any food at them: they will decide if they eat it, or not.

So when someone says: "Are green beans Paleo?" .... Sheesh. Toss one at the chickens. Will they eat it? Toss one at my kids. Will they eat it? How do the chooks know? Probably gut sensors. Ditto for my kids. Myself I don't trust so much, because, well, I grew up eating green beans, and can't trust my gut.

"Meat is the ONLY source for these 5 nutrients"

2010-12-31T18:52:00.000-08:00

This comes from a letter by Dr. Sears:
http://www.mnwelldir.org/docs/nutrition/meat.htm

When I ask my university students if they’re vegetarians or meat eaters at least two-thirds of the class claims to be vegetarians. But most of them admit to eating fish, poultry and dairy products.

This wishful thinking is common to vegetarians. Even nutrition students are misinformed. Avoiding red meat doesn’t make you a vegetarian… and it doesn’t make you any healthier.

Here’s the bottom line: If you follow a true “vegetarian” no-meat diet, you may be robbing yourself of three critical nutrients you need to stay healthy.

...

Your body is telling you what you need. But you need to get real meat, not the poor excuse for meat that big corporations are shrink-wrapping for your local grocers.

Grass-fed beef is a much better option… It has a potent nutritional value, and is packed with CoQ10, zinc and vitamin B12 – and it has the proper ratio of omega fatty-acids. Commercial grain-fed cattle is poisonous by comparison.

The three critical nutrients, turns out, are zinc, B12, and CoQ10. Now, I'm not against eating "meat", but more and more, I'm thinking the nice beef he's talking about isn't the ideal protein source for human beings. Articles like this one, complete with a "how to get good beef" section, give people the idea that to be healthy, you really do need beef.

Here is the thing though. None of the "healthy people" quoted in this article eat a beef-centric diet. The Inuit eat sea mammals and fish; the Maasai drink mainly milk (to the point they are borderline anemic), the Hunza drink mainly fermented milk. Thing is, I've been looking for an example of a culture that is actually beef-centric and is also healthy. I can't find one. I can find *milk* centric cultures that are healthy. But the healthiest cultures are seafood-centric. The ones that eat the most hoofed animals ... US, Mexico, Canada, Australia, UK ... are the least healthy. The fact these cultures also eat the most wheat ... makes the results confusing and hard to parse. Not only that, but among the human beings I know ... especially the older ones ... I don't have an example of anyone who has aged well that eats a primarily beef diet. The farmer who raises the beef I get eats mainly grass-fed beef, and has major arthritis problems. So do my sibs, who were raised on lots of beef. The healthiest people I know eat an Asian diet, which is primarily seafood, eggs, poultry and pork, in about that order.

There is no particular reason to believe our ancestors, or paleo peoples in general, lived mainly off hooved animals. Fact is, a 4-foot-high hominid would have had a hard time bringing down large beasts on a regular basis. Oysters and mussels though ... they don't run very fast, and they're easy to chew. Small fish are easy to catch too. Most paleo peoples that have been studied don't live on a diet of mainly large ruminants; they eat fish, eggs, insects, lizards, rodents. Nomadic herders live mainly on milk. Eating large ruminants on a regular basis came about when people started to live in cities. About the same time we started eating large amounts of grain, and about the same time as health started declining. There were a couple of exceptions, notably the paleo people who followed large herds of Aurochs. However, there is more and more evidence that these people also ate a fair bit of fish, and they were not particularly long-lived people.

So here is the thing. In terms of those three nutrients Dr. Sears mentions: oysters have 10 times more zinc than beef. Clams have 40 times more B12 than beef. Sardines have more CoQ10 than beef liver. Basically, if you want to come close to the nutrients in fish, you have to eat just the heart and brain of a beef. Which is a big waste of 1,000 lbs of animal.

When you get to other nutrients: beef has very little DHA compared to fish. Beef has little or no iodine. Beef has a form of iron that appears to lead to overly-high iron levels in a fair percent of the population. The neu5gc in beef has been shown to cause inflammation in some people.

I'm not anti-beef ... I have a freezer full of good grass-fed beef. But I feed my family lots and lots of eggs and fish and poultry these days; we all feel better eating those foods. Folks like Dr. Sears should know better though, and not jump from "vegetarianism is bad" to "beef is what your body needs the most".

Iron and wrinkles?

2010-12-31T17:45:00.000-08:00

There is this article about diabetes and ferritin levels:

http://fight4yourhealth.com/answers/high-iron-levels-diabetes

Normal ferritin levels in women range from 12 to 150 nanograms per milliliter. Average levels were 109 in the women who developed diabetes, compared with 71.5 for the others. Women in the group with the highest levels – at least 102.2 – were nearly three times more likely to develop diabetes than women in the group with the lowest levels, or less than 21.1.

Which I've talked about before. But an even more interesting reply in the comments section:

We might see these life extending benefits by never going without ORAL EDTA containing products as in Essential Daily Defense, with MALIC acid to handle the IRON and Garlic to provide the Thiol (SH) groups that we know are needed to deal with mercury, arsenic and some of the body’s stores of lead. However, the topical treatment that Proctor and Gamble envisioned by adding their IRON chelator to their COPPERTONE, which did not happen in the market place but in their research areas, gave the SAME benefits as oral ingestion of their iron chelator.

Both routes of administration gave the same average increase in lifespan for the animals and the same protection against SUNBURN DAMAGE and stopped most wrinkles and skin cancers until very late in life. I believe that since they never went ahead to get FDA approval for their Desferoxamine related new oral compound, that we can all get some of the benefits from vigorous use of our EDTA. Use both as in Beyond Clean (EDTA powder affordably added to every bath) and taken internally with Essential Daily Defense (each capsule has 133 mg of EDTA) or taking EDTA powder (1 tsp daily contains 3000 mg).

OK, so Coppertone put an iron chelator in their product to help prevent sunburn? That is really interesting. I'm thinking: if you can have a chelator in a cream, that would help a lot with things like staph. Of course, maybe good ol' vinegar would do something similar.

On another note, it looks like statins lower ferritin levels!

http://www.jvascsurg.org/article/S0741-5214(10)00033-9/abstract

Statin administration reduced ferritin levels independently of phlebotomy, indicating an effect of these agents on iron metabolism. Our findings support a biologic rationale for measurement of serial ferritin levels in patients with atherosclerosis.

So the reason statins might reduce heart disease might have nothing directly to do with cholesterol ... might have to do with ferritin again. Interestingly enough, on my iron-blocking diet + giving blood, my cholesterol levels and blood pressure have both gone down.

Why "It's a Wonderful Life" isn't Science Fiction

2010-12-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

"It's a Wonderful Life" has always ranked among my all-time NOT-favorite movies, but it's taken me a long time to figure out why. I have relatives that love it. Really love it. But it makes me cringe. And now I know why.

It's not science fiction.

Let me explain. Most of the movies and books I love are scifi. I didn't plan it that way, and I read and watch a large variety of stuff. Some I like, some I don't. The stuff I like, tends to be scifi.

Now, the people who write and publish scifi have a hard time defining it, since much of what is "mainstream" nowadays has elements that were traditionally in the scifi category: space travel, aliens, fantastic creatures. But the hard-core scifi lovers ignore most of the mainstream stuff, and read stories that, even minus the "science", are obviously "science fiction" type stories. When you read Asimov's, you notice this: the stories are in all categories, but they have that "scifi" aura.

So what is this aura? It's exactly what "It's a Wonderful Life" does not have. Compare IAWL to, way, the original Star Trek. (ST). In IAWL, George Bailey does all the right things. He has dreams and tries to meet them, but always, some social obligation gets in the way, and he puts aside his dreams to help others. Potter, of course, does the opposite. Potter is mean, and smart, and takes over. What Bailey learns is that his minimal effort at "doing the right thing" has prevented Potter from entirely taking over. He has created a rampart of sorts, that good things still happen. He ends up being bailed out at the end, by his wonderful friends who all appreciate him.

In other words, Bailey is entirely the perfect social guy. He does what is expected of him, follows the rules. The only "rich" person in the entire movie is the bad evil guy, who also happens to be the only really smart person. The lesson: to be rich is to be evil. To be smart is to be evil. What you should do is what is expected. If you fail ... and you will, because the smart evil persons break the rules ... then your friends will bail you out, Bailey!

OK, now let's take Star Trek. Um, first, Kirk and Spock don't obey the rules, at least, not when it matters. When put in an unsolvable dilemma in the Kobayashi Maru... Kirk hacks the computer. Even Spock encourages the crew to Sabot-age in one episode. But more to the point: they are smart. They win. They win by being smarter than than their opponents, and even more willing to break the rules. It's not that they are evil or want bad things: to the contrary, it's always clear there is a higher good at stake. But can you imagine Kirk ever being in the position of George Bailey? Being so desperate he's going to jump off a bridge for insurance money unless his friends or a convenient angel saves him? Heck no. He'd be planning a way to bring Potter down, hard.

Second, there is how to handle a group. Bailey has friends who conveniently come to his rescue. He gives one inspiring speech. But he doesn't command the group. The crew of the Enterprise act as a unit, based on a command structure, even though they have a lot of individual freedom. If the Enterprise is in trouble: the alarm sounds, all hands are on deck. They aren't there to bail out one crew member (that is the job of the doctor or psychologist). If Potter tried to take over the Enterprise, he'd have the whole crew to fight, led by Kirk.

Third, there is the group itself. The whole town falls apart if Bailey never existed. His friends, and the entire down, descend into "Pottersville" ... full of drinking establishments and loose women. Ok, kinda like Las Vegas. Without Bailey, the bad guy wins, the good guys all go bad. Now, if the Captain dies or goes insane or gets taken captive (as happens in some episodes) what happens? Then second-in-command takes command, or the 3rd in command. The crew is all smart, and they aren't wimpy. You get the idea that if the whole ship crash-landed in Las Vegas, they'd be taking over the place in a few years and probably have a new Academy and star-port, the hookers would all be working in Quark's, and Synthehol (which gets you loopy without the hangover) would be the drink of choice.

Now, IAWL is just one of many movies on the same theme. The hero guy is "everyman" ... not too smart, not too rich. He wins because he is good, because he follows the rules, because he has friends. Sometimes the hero is a little kid, but always, it is someone you can feel sorry for. The bad guys are bad because they break rules, usually to get money or power. It's an easy formula. It's easy to figure out what is good and bad.

Star Trek is more like typical scifi: the winner is the one who is smartest, most efficient, most able to rally the troops. The bad guys are bad because, well, they are stupid. Sometimes when shown why they are stupid, they learn and then they do better. Sometimes they are culturally aggressive (like the Klingons) and it takes years to figure out how to ally with them. Sometimes their whole point is to take over the universe (the Borg) and then you have to beat them. But the formula is never direct, and you never know if, in fact, the people you think are good really are. You never know, even, if the cool technology is actually hurting the universe or not, or if the good intentions are going to kill a whole race. It's not easy stuff, and the "good" and "bad" are not so clear.

So who do I want for my kids to have as a role models? I would be seriously disappointed if my kids grow up to be George Bailey, being a pushover for anyone that appears to need his help, and unable to find a way to help anyone without giving up his own goals. Or Potter, for that matter. Potter is sneaky, but stealing money is just a stupid way to take control, not a smart one. And he doesn't take control in a way that makes the community more vibrant and makes more money. He acts more like a dysfunctional, sadistic parent. I wouldn't want them to be anyone in the community either, who change personalities based on who is in charge.

They could be most people on the Enterprise though, in any of its incarnations, and I'd be proud. Or on Galaxy Quest. Or in a Heinlein novel, or Earth Abides. The scifi novels have characters that try, fail, and try again: kind of like scientists do in real life. They shake up the current paradigm, don't adhere correctly to social conventions, make people angry in the process, but always work toward making things better in the long run. Which I maintain, is what makes good SciFi. And makes a good human being.

The Church of Reality

2010-12-23T23:56:00.000-08:00

I have to say, in this season of over-buying and over-indulging, I do appreciate this website. I think for people who know me, I'm a kind of weird cross between a person who believes intensely in reality, and one who has an overly optimistic view of it at the same time.

My daughter recently noted that I have "imaginary parents" who actually loved and cared for me. In reality, I'm not sure they existed ... my parents were good enough, but in reality I was pretty peripheral to their view of the world, and I can't actually imagine being hugged by either of them (or that they looked seriously at, say, a report card). They still matter to me, and are a big part of my life ... my Mom lives on our property, and is part of our life, and my Dad is here in spirit. But my daughter is probably right: the parents I imagine, and the ones they were, are not the same. The people who raised me were mostly my imaginary parents.

My daughter, who has this generation's over-doting parents, has a different set of "imaginary parents". She says, her "imaginary parents" are always critical, and never happy. This is not her "real" parents (me, for one!). We actually are overly accepting, in her view, and not critical enough. Hence, she has to invent the overly critical version of us.

And then there is the Church of Reality. Does anyone care about what is real? It's basically the quest of at least some artists, Buddhists, scientists. Humans don't deal with reality well. We try to deal with our current version of it, and don't do well even with that. Still, I love this:

In celebrating shared knowledge, everyone is encouraged to come up with a new idea that no one has ever thought of before and post it on the internet. The idea can be simple or complex. It can be grand and glorious or just some little time-saving trick. The idea can also be about future innovations or requests for people to invent something. People can also improve something that already exists by creating documentation for something confusing. The tradition is to be an act of intellectual tithing when everyone gives something to the tree, and, as a reward, they get to open the gifts under the tree.

http://www.churchofreality.org/wisdom/holidays/holidays/newtons_birthday_-_crispness.html

So everyone: come up with one new idea! It's the best gift you can give to us all. The idea can be a bit of humor, or enlightenment, or how to peel a carrot. It's what we can share. It's what lasts.

Neu5GC: Live fast, die young?

2010-12-20T10:48:00.000-08:00

I've been fascinated by this little molecule, neu5gc. It seems like one of those very odd mysteries that crop up sometimes, which might be key to a whole lot of stuff.

What is interesting about it is that it is found in a whole lot of animals, from microbes to chimpanzees. But in varying amounts. The amount of it in one animal varies from organ to organ too. So take a look at the distribution of this stuff: Here are the number if micrograms per recommended daily serving:

Beef: 11,610
Goat cheese: 5,544
Pork: 5,130
Lamb: 4,860
Salmon: 810
Cow milk: 711
Cow cheese: 600
Duck, turkey, chicken, tuna, cod: 45-27

Furthermore, the distribution is different within one animal. Pork brains have mainly AC, while GC is found abundantly in the gut and saliva. GC is associated with high-turnover cells: the ones that are sloughed off quickly.

So it would make sense that there is mainly AC in the brain. Brain cells don't turn over quickly. Human brains seem to need a lot of AC to create a brain, and human milk is high in AC sialic acid.

Now what is interesting about the above list, is that the animals with the most GC are the ones with the shortest lives. Beef cows in particular are bred to grow big quickly. They don't live very long though, and they get decrepit in their old age. Getting decrepit in old age is pretty much universal for mammals, and we take it for granted that our dogs and cats and grandmas will start getting skinny and unable to walk well, at some point.

Here is the thing though: birds and most fish do not get decrepit as they age. They do age, but they can live a very long time. They appear to live until some predator eats them, or (it is said of eagles) their bills grow too long. Fish just keep getting bigger and bigger, so old fish are just very big fish.

There is one exception to this rule: salmon. Salmon have a unique life cycle that involves swimming upstream, spawning, and dying. The salmon though, age as they go upstream. In the male, their backs get bowed, their mouth starts growing lopsided, and they basically start falling apart. They mate, they spawn, and then they die.

So here you have this one odd fish among fish ... which is also the one with a high GC level.

And then there is this: there are human cultures that have notably spry old folks. Most of these are in Asia, with examples like in the village of Yuzurihara where centurians are still tending their fields. Japanese outlive Americans routinely, but more than that, they don't get as decrepit. In each of these cases, it appears the people do not eat much, if any, "red meat", or dairy. There are cases where people are noted for living long and they do eat dairy: but those people appear to eat mainly yogurt. My guess is that the bacteria break down the GC in the milk (since it is a sugar, and bacteria like sugar!).

I'm thinking there might be two sides to this. One, it is known that neu5gc is absorbed into human cells, and that it can promote inflammation in at least some people. So people who eat a lot of meat, would have high levels of inflammation. Since meat also has high levels of absorbable iron, this would only make the problem worse. And in a culture that eats a lot of wheat and has the resulting leaky gut ... there might be even more G5 absorption and inflammation.

But what if there is more to it? Maybe the GC has a role in making animals age faster. In a cow or a rabbit, this would be a good thing, because the animal could reach maturity faster and breed. But cows and rabbits tend to overpopulate if there aren't enough predators, so living a long life might not be a good thing. So the GC helps regulate their lifespan.

Birds and fish do not tend to overpopulate. Probably because they are so migratory ... if one area does not have enough food, they go somewhere else, or they eat each other in some cases. Fish have huge numbers of eggs, and they survive based on how much food there is among other factors. Large, old fish can lay thousands of eggs, no problem. They have no need for old age! Birds, when they nest, tend to be limited by nesting sites ... they will all crowd onto one island or look for a certain type of ledge, and if they can't fit, they can't raise their babies. So they have no need for old age either. And they do not produce much GC.

Now what happened with humans is that at some point in our history, we started living longer. At that point we also started maturing later, which gave young humans more time to spend learning to be humans. That point might have been around the same time we stopped producing GC.

But some cultures also ate a lot of GC, at least the adults did. People in those cultures tend to be taller, and they also mature faster. Cultures that eat mainly fish and poultry tend to have shorter people who mature later. So what if the GC is the trigger for the tall stature and early maturity? The Maasai drink mainly milk and live off cattle products, and are very tall, as were the Paleo people. The Japanese eat mainly fish and poultry, and are shorter (although they are getting taller eating a Western diet). The Maasai have a short life expectancy, around 45 years, and aren't noted for a vibrant old age, while the Japanese are the reverse.

Curiouser and curiouser!

Simple Sous Vide Chicken

2010-12-19T12:47:00.000-08:00

I have to admit this is the best chicken I've ever eaten. I like chicken well enough in any case, but this one just blew me away. It's actually a Cornish Game Hen (aka, very small meat chicken). What made them so amazing was not that they were just juicy and flavorful, but that it took almost no work on my part. I am loving this way of cooking!

Basically what I did was to buy 4 game hens on sale one evening. I took off the wrap. They were frozen solid, but they didn't have any giblets, so I just put all four in a kind of stock pot cooker I have. I added a mix of water, salt, poultry seasoning, dried chopped vegetables, garlic. Took, oh, 15 minutes.

Then I set the whole thing in the sous vide cooker with water up to the level of the water inside the pot. Set it to 140, and just left it here for the next day. It didn't steam up the kitchen, make any smells, do anything much really. Just sits there being warm.

Next day around dinner time, I carefully lifted out the hens. Mind you, the water isn't all that hot, so there isn't a lot of danger of burning yourself, but the skin is very tender at this point and easily damaged.

I was in a mood not to work very hard, so I just set them on a broiler pan, and put them in the oven at 350 til they got brown and lovely (like the first photo).

The meat was actually still a bit red by the bone, but that is the nature of chicken meat at 140. Cooking for 24 hours at that temp, it would be sterile, but still a little red. I could have used 160 to avoid that, but the family liked it fine. It was really good!

There were leftovers though. I took the leftover breast meat and made enchiladas the next day, which were some of the best enchiladas I've made yet. My "enchilada sauce" recipe is working wonderfully, and will be packaged for gifts as soon as I get more chili powder.

I still had some legs left over though, for the 3rd day. I brushed them with some BBQ sauce I had ... it was a brand people don't like all that much, so I just used it on the chicken and baked it again at 350, til the sauce was a bit caramelized. And that was the best yet. It rivaled the best BBQ I've had anywhere. Not only was the sauce just perfect, but the meat was still juicier than any BBQ I've eaten.

And of course I had a pot full of excellent chicken broth for soup! I added the drippings from the broiler pan, and it is great broth (lots of gel).

I think one of the advantages of sous vide is that the fat doesn't get a chance to oxidize. "Oxidation" requires oxygen, and the chicken is submerged in liquid. There is so little heat that not too many chemical reactions take place. The actual oven time is minimal: and I could have used the infra-red oven instead to be even quicker (I didn't in this case because I sort of had too many chickens!).

You will note I'm not using any bags. A covered pot works just fine. I think for restaurants, bags work because they are cooking many different meals, and want minimal "broth". But for one soupy meal, who cares? The bags sometimes leak, which is messy, and buying them is an extra . Disposing of the bags is a pain too; they are full of chicken goop and will stink in the garbage, especially in a house like ours where we only do a dump run once every 6 months or so.

The pot though, has enough heat in the airspace over the water than the chicken leg ends sticking up cooked just like the rest of the chicken. I'd prefer to use a ceramic pot, but I don't have one that deep (yet!). The stainless stock pot works great though. This particular one is from a "thermal cooker", which means it can be put in a container that keeps it hot for many hours without electricity, which is a good thing if there is a power outage. However, all that water in the sous vide doesn't cool down very quickly, and I think if I make a "cozy" for the thing it will stay warm a long time.

Did I mention cleanup? The food never sticks to the pot. There is no baked on grunge anywhere. I decanted the broth and just rinsed out the pot. The sous vide cooker itself was perfectly clean and I just dumped the water out and let it dry. The broiler pan did require soaking ... it always does, so maybe that part could use some improvement.

Christmas 2010

2010-12-19T02:05:00.000-08:00

This time of year is hard on all of us, I think.

My sister-in-law has just been diagnosed with diabetes. She is one of the ones that jokingly says "I never cook!" and happily feeds everyone packaged foods. Her husband (my brother) once told me that he'd rather die than stop eating what he eats. I answered "That might be your choice" and he said "That's rather harsh!".

It is harsh. We live in a society that is demonstrably way off when it comes to food, and we can see that daily in terms of lifespan, diabetes rates, arthritis, dementia, cancer. And this is a holiday season that celebrates over-indulgence in wheat, milk, sugar, ethanol, and tosses it in your face.

So in the season where we are all supposed to be happy, see our loved ones eating stuff that will probably kill them eventually, and we are trying to balance our need to be part of their culture (food etc.) with our love for them (we want them to survive). So for instance, it's not that I don't like the concept of, say, gingerbread houses or an outing based on seeing or making them: I think they are fun. But I cannot be in the room with that much gluten without eventually getting ill, because it gets in the air. Ditto for platters of Christmas cookies. Or turkeys baked with wheat stuffing. And eggnog made with milk.

This is HARD. I don't have an answer. I wish and hope and work towards a day that we can live in a culture that has a wonderful cuisine that tastes great and doesn't kill us or our children, so we can sit down to a holiday table that we all can celebrate together. But that doesn't exist yet. I don't think anyone even knows what that cuisine will be.

But I do know that I'm closer to it than I used to be, and my family is healthier. I value this. It does mean we can't eat the Christmas cookies at parties, or in fact share food much at all with most people we know. They resent us for that. On the other hand, I feel sad and powerless, for their illnesses. It's a huge rift, one I can't heal.

We have achieved liftoff ... :-)

2010-12-13T23:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I can say that as of today, my flies in the Honeymoon Hotel have achieved at least one "honeymoon". It's pretty hard to see ... the picture is at an angle. In the middle is a jar with sawdust in it, and in front, just to the left of the center, is the happy couple. It's hard to get a good shot through the net though.

This is pretty significant. It is 9 days prior to the Winter Solstice here in Seattle, and no artificial lights were used. This morning happened to be sunny (it got rainy later, as usually happens). The weather has been mainly cold and rainy or snowy, since this is pretty much the goopiest part of the year. The light starts going away around 3:30 and it's pretty dark by 4:30. But the flies were buzzing around and at least one couple made contact.

The flies here were from the zombies that crawled out of their container and around our house ... keeping full grown larvae in the house is NOT a good idea, they can get out of anything, I think. We've been having flies hatch and fly around for the last few weeks. Fortunately they are very easy to catch ... I just grab them with my hand and put them in the HH. Interestingly, they fly in from the various rooms to where the rest of the flies are, trying to join the rest of them. So they aren't really hard to catch.

I have more larvae outside, but the BioPod they are in tends to hatch new flies ... I'm not sure if this is from flies that our "wild" inside the greenhouse, or eggs that didn't hatch earlier. So for this experiment, I did not want to use any of those larvae, in case there were eggs attached to them. These larvae had no attached eggs ... they were crawling around on carpet, or they were caught as adult flies. I have a jar at the bottom of the HH that has moist sawdust in it, plus an overripe tomato (from the store, so it doesn't have baby fly eggs on it either, AFAIK).

My idea is, when the babies hatch and are visible, I'll dump the jar out where the bigger grubs are (or seed a new pod), and then start with a clean jar. That way there are no big grubs in the house. This whole setup might not be necessary at all if the flies survive in the greenhouse. I don't know if they are or not: I have not seen any out there at all, and they are so slow I can't believe they'd survive the birds.
The HH is basically just some old curtains from the thrift store. The top grid is the vegie "basket" that was at the bottom of our refrigerator. The bottom part has a drawstring around it, which is around the top of a half gallon jar. The jar is on top of an inverted bucket to give it height (for optimum sun).

BTW the white "splat" on the window is what happens when birds or bats hit the window. That has been happening a lot more lately ... I think they are after the flies. Spiders have been building webs more outside the window too, which is interesting.

Bismarck dip and soup

2010-12-10T16:34:00.000-08:00

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
Otto von Bismarck

Read more:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/o/ottovonbis161318.html#ixzz17kzcMVLG

I'm naming this recipe in honor of good ol' Otto. Because ... while your family will love it, they really should not watch it being made!

In Nourishing Traditions, there is a mention of making fish broth. Mine never turned out though: it tasted horrible. So when someone offered to make me this wonderful stuff called "Fish head soup" I had to try it. It was WONDERFUL. One of the best soups ever. However, my family would not touch it. Something about floating eyeballs turned them off.

It turns out that what I was doing wrong was: not removing the gills. You want whole fish heads, but you remove the gills, every bit of them. Otherwise the broth will taste awful. I also removed the eyeballs, because, well, I just don't deal well with eyeballs (also they are really HARD, like rocks, when they cook).

OK, so I'm still craving the stuff, and looking at some nice big salmon heads I have in my freezer. I toss them in a pot with a can of coconut milk and a little salt, and do my "cook/pause" thing: bring it to a boil, turn off the heat, then do the same thing at intervals of 1-3 hours. That way there is no scorching. The soup doesn't really cool down much between boilings, at least not enough for bacteria to be an issue. I did this until the fish heads were falling apart.

Then, unlike the first time, I strained the broth, to remove the heads so the family just wouldn't know. There was a lot of juice in them though, so I started mashing them in a strainer. To my surprise, the bones started mashing up too. There were no tough bones left.

So I got what juice I could, and continued making soup: I added clams and potatoes, frozen corn, carrots, onions, garlic, a bit more salt, etc. and cooked til the vegies were done. Again, amazing soup. Except this time the family loved it.

But the mashed bones etc. tasted really good too, and I had a couple of cups of "mash". So I ran them through the blender, adding a couple of eggs and salt, then folded in some frozen spinach. Then put them in a custard dish, and cooked them gently in a water bath til the custard set. Then I let them cool, took out the "custard", and added olive oil, soy sauce, fresh squeezed garlic, and some spice mix (Ozark seasoning from Penzey's).

What it made is the most wonderful dip! It has the consistency of that hot artichoke dip I used to eat at restaurants (and using artichokes in it might make a great addition). I expect the gel from the fish heads is what makes it so creamy. It's got to be super-high in calcium and other good stuff, and doesn't contain any dairy. My only problem is: what to tell the family? Probably I should re-package it in a container from Trader Joe's, and label it: "Bismarck Dip". Don't ask, don't tell.

Enchilada success!

2010-12-04T00:31:00.000-08:00

I grew up eating awesome enchiladas. My Mom made them, and it was always a big deal when she did. She made enchiladas AND tacos usually, and we pigged out on both.

Problem is: she used "Lawry's Enchilda Sauce Mix". Which later, I also used. But, it contains wheat. Actually, wheat is the first ingredient!:

http://www.lawrys.com/Products/Seasoning-Mixes/Enchilada-Sauce.aspx

This is an amazing mix. I miss it.

Sooooo ... I wanted to recreate it, only better. No wheat. Also, I didn't want to have to find some tomato paste to make enchiladas. I never seem to have the stuff around when I need it. My goal is: one envelope of something, add water.

The other problem is, that when I've made enchiladas recently, they have been mushy. Not hard (as in our local restaurant), nor with the nice toothsome feel (my Mom's) but, they just fall apart into mush.

So today I tried. And it worked. Really nice texture, great taste. No cans. So I can package this!

Here is the recipe so far:

1/2 cup dried tomato powder (Harmony house foods).
3 T Jules flour (or any GF blend: probably corn flour would be fine).
2 tsp salt
1T chili powder (you might want more, if you want more "spice")
2t cumin
a dash of ground seaweed
2 tsp Mexican oregano
1 T sugar

4 cups water.

Cook it all together. It makes a thick, nice sauce.

Then: In another pan, put some oil (coconut oil, for me). Fry the toritllas, until they are soft and pliable. This is the step I was not doing in the past. I used a tortilla warmer, which makes the tortillas "pliable", but does not prevent them from being mushy. FRY THEM. Then just stack the fried tortillas for filling.

Also in another pan: Make the filling. Cooked hamburger will work, or pulled pork, or chicken.

Smear some of the sauce in the bottom of a pan, then roll your enchiladas and lay them out. Add the rest of the sauce. Then top with cheese, or fake cheese. I did both, in two different pans, since I don't do real cheese.

Then I put them in the oven for 30 minutes or so, til the cheese melted and they were bubbly. They were great! I kind of wish I'd added some beans and olives, but they tasted fine at any rate. Very much like I remembered. They will probably be wondeful, fried with eggs for breakfast too.

So now I have Mix 1: Enchiladas!

Christmas Present Ideas

2010-11-30T21:35:00.000-08:00

Ok, it's the season to overbuy and shop til you drop and otherwise exhaust yourself in the name of consumption! I'm actually pretty tired of consuming, having spent too many years trying to "buy" people's admiration. Doesn't work. But also, we all have *too much stuff*.

So I'm trying to figure out, what could I do that would actually be useful, and amazing? And then it hit me. Spice mixes! Some of the people I know are gluten free, and some are not, but none of them are very good at cooking. Most have like 3 jars of spice in their cabinets.

Since I tend to buy spices in bulk from Penzy's, I have plenty. Lately I've been experimenting with actually measuring amounts rather than "winging it", and the results have been pretty amazing. But it's a lot of work to measure accurately say, 6 different spices to make the perfect curry. So my idea is to make up little packets of mixes for some good food, and give those packets plus a recipe card to the people involved. Here are my ideas so far:

1. Curry. Curry spices plus thickener and salt, all ready to go.

2. Enchilada sauce mix. Like Lawrey's, but without the wheat. I have some tomato powder too (from Harmony house) so it could really be a "just add water" mix.

3. Deep fry mix. The crispy fish came out sooooo good that it's just asking to be made into a mix. Just add 1 egg and fizz water.

Actually, having some packets for US would be great too. I have some very nice 4x6 plastic indestructible envelopes I keep around for small amounts of things (you can buy them in packs of 100 or 1000, so I have enough for this lifetime, anyway). If they are kept in the freezer they'd stay fresh for a long time.

Any other ideas? I'll post the recipes as I make them in bulk.

At last! Crispy fish! And creamy pumpkin pie!

2010-11-27T23:14:00.000-08:00

One of the things I have really missed since being gluten-free is going to fish and chips places. I do seriously like fried fish. The problem is, that even if they do decide to go gluten-free, at this point I'm so picky about oil quality that I probably won't enjoy it. Sigh.

However ... I think I have finally discovered what makes crispy fish. And it isn't gluten!

Some weeks back I had purchased some frying batter mix. It worked really, really well. Stuck to the food, fried up nicely. I ran out ... and then I could not find which brand it was, because I had tossed the bag. So I bought another brand, and cooked some up today. It didn't work at all. Didn't stick, and it wasn't very crispy.

OK, but both of them were made with rice flour as the main ingredient, I recall that much. Seems like the old brand was *sweet* rice flour though. So I whipped up a mix:

1 cup sweet rice flour
1 egg
Salt and spices
Enough club soda to make a batter

Voila! Stuck to the onion rings and fish, fried up light and crispy. Easy and cheap too ... I made the rice flour by running some sweet rice through the ol' grain mill.

Of course in hindsight this is painfully obvious: sweet rice flour is the main ingredient in traditional tempura.

On a lark I made some battered apple rings too, sprinkled with powdered sugar and Penzy's Vietnamese cinnamon. Ummm. They beat out donuts anytime.

My other surprise this year was pumpkin pie. I always make pumpkin pie, and it's usually pretty good. But it's never as smooth as I'd like it to be, no matter how long I run it through the blender. This year, I made up the puree in advance, and somehow managed to lose it. So at the last minute, I used some canned pumpkin ... my husband had bought some. I NEVER buy canned pumpkin, since it seems like cheating. But this year it's what I had, so I used the recipe on the can (Libby's), using So Delicious coconut milk instead of evaporated milk.

It was amazing. So amazing I had to make another one today. It set up nicely, perfect texture. Pumpkin pie is one of those desserts that's actually pretty good for you ... and if it's this easy, hey, it's got to become a fixture. Now I just need an easier way to make a crust!

Crawl off ... or not ...

2010-11-22T21:14:00.000-08:00

The babies that hatched from the laid eggs are doing fine. That is, they eat like mad. They are out in the greenhouse, with a bunny-warmer for warmth. Outside, it is snowing, and very cold. We've even had a power-outage or two.

Thing is, very few have "crawled out", at least that I can detect. They are in a bio-pod now, and a few have harvested themselves. Some others have got stuck in the roof, and other probably have gone into the gravel or elsewhere in the greenhouse.

But most of the grubs seem to be just where they were. They don't want to crawl out. So my question is: why?

Today it hit me: *it is cold*. Inside the pod, it is warm (thanks to the bunny-warmer). Outside, it is cold. Ummm ... you think they can figure this out? I think so. They had zero problems crawling out in our house (and some of those are still emerging, and flying around! They apparently made it down a flight of steps, at that).

When they were in the house, where it is warm, they turned into "dead" zombie grubs rather quickly. The ones outside are not doing that. It's like: they are trying to avoid going zombie as long as they can. They are getting bigger and bigger ... a lot bigger than the ones in the house. But they are still white and active.

I expect a lot of these are the "babies" I saw earlier, so it's hard to say how fast they are actually growing. The size is pretty obvious though. Neither of the two previous batches got this big.

Since the males compete for females ... one strategy would be ... put off adulthood as long as possible, get as big as you can get, so you can out-compete the other males (or females, for that matter). The more fat the adult has, the longer it can live, the more eggs it can lay.

If there are not many competitors, it makes sense to mature early, even if you are small, so your eggs get there first. If it is cold out (even if you happen to be in a warm decomposing mass), then it makes sense to wait until it is warmer to emerge, so your babies have a better chance at life.

Or so I theorize. These insects are really fascinating. I can't say that I've seen this much variation on one insect species before. Most flies are always the same size, always. Ditto for moths.

I kind of wonder if humans are more like the BSFs. Humans in the Middle Ages were very, very short. Now they are taller, like a foot taller. Humans vary in height a lot depending on diet and probably other factors that are not genetic.

----

Inside the house: the zombie grubs that escaped hatched, and we had a dozen or two flies around. They are not very bothersome (esp. compared to the houseflies and fruit flies we usually get: these mostly just perch on a window and sit there). The zombie grubs that I captured and put in a jar are hatching, and are back in the Honeymoon Hotel. There is not much light, so they are mostly just sitting there. I have 4: 3 males and one female. Hopefully we will get more females.

If the ambient light doesn't excite them, then my plan is to try a grow-light ... I have a couple of very intense ones that are slated for the greenhouse but not installed yet.

Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical

2010-11-12T00:22:00.000-08:00

Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity.

Neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is either the only one, or the only correct one. NTs find it difficult to be alone. NTs are often intolerant of seemingly minor differences in others. When in groups NTs are socially and behaviorally rigid, and frequently insist upon the performance of dysfunctional, destructive, and even impossible rituals as a way of maintaining group identity. NTs find it difficult to communicate directly, and have a much higher incidence of lying as compared to persons on the autistic spectrum.

NT is believed to be genetic in origin. Autopsies have shown the brain of the neurotypical is typically smaller than that of an autistic individual and may have overdeveloped areas related to social behavior.

http://isnt.autistics.org/

OK, I have to say I love this. Yes, it is *humor*, so take it as such. But it is very difficult to read that "our way of thinking" is somehow disordered. Aspies have a different brain type, and it is a brain type that is hard to have in our current society with it's current diet. But that doesn't make it a "disorder" ... in fact, Aspies have contributed way more than their share to the technological development of humanity. As Temple Grandin put it:

"

If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave."

Personally I'm all in favor of "diversity" in a global sense: it's a kind of parallel processing, where large numbers of people find what works. Most experiments fail, but you find out what works, fast. Aspies tend to be rather tolerant of "whatever works". NT's are not, usually: the idea is "we all work together, in the same way".

Vinegar goes mainstream

2010-11-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough, WebMD is now talking about vinegar! Specifically about how it increases glucose tolerance and helps you lose weight.

http://www.webmd.com/video/vinegar-for-diabetes

Also ... bloodletting to lower iron stores, to help fight staph!

http://diabetes.webmd.com/features/maggots-worms-scary-medicine-goes-mainstream

So hey, the folk medicine that works will get back into the mainstream eventually. I have to say though, that the idea of putting "vinegar in a pill" because "it tastes so bad" is just a little weird. Vinegar is a great culinary ingredient, and an easy way to preserve just about anything.

How to cut an onion

2010-11-05T20:23:00.000-07:00

Some wise people have said that the basis of humanity is technology. Basically, we started to change when we started to learn to do things like: cook! Cooking food meant we needed smaller jaws, and could extract more nutrients. But we also got more technology, like: knives! We could cut up meat in to smaller pieces.

OK. So both of those technologies are alive and well. Yut a lot of people aren't really comfortable with either a knife or cookery. I'm really shocked when I visit someone, about how much of their cooking time is spent on: chopping vegies. They seriously dislike fresh vegetables, because it takes them (really!) an hour to chop them. And in the worst cases, the person just won't handle knives much at all, because they had a bad experience that involved lots of blood.

So I'll tell you now: human beings .. even ones that don't know advanced calculus ... really CAN chop a vegie. THAT MEANS YOU! It's not that hard. If you can master the art of putting on clothes or tying shoes, you can use a knife. And fresh vegies and herbs are what make food awesome. Meat and fish etc. are important too, but it the aromatics are mostly from plants.

The staple in my family is onions. I've relied on onions as a "filler" since my college days, because they were just really cheap. I would get a bag of onions and a bag of potatoes and a chicken ... and I was pretty much good to go for the week. Took me many years to get the hang of technology like "cutting boards" and "knife sharpening" and "how to cut an onion". But fortunately for you: these days we have the Internet! And videos! Like the one above, which I think is about the most succinct "how to cut an onion" video I've seen.

So find a good knife, a good cutting board, and a good onion. Join the ranks of human beings, who have been eating onions since forever.

More little babies

2010-11-05T18:30:00.000-07:00

OK, now this is interesting. I've been very busy, so didn't go up to visit my BSFs for a bit. The last time I was up there, I moved around "the stuff" in the bin to see how the grubs were doing. Lots and lots of grubs. Naturally I wore gloves ... they were eating poultry sludge from the bottom of the cage. I dropped the glove off in a wheelbarrow full of dirt that I use for potting.

Today I went to pick up the glove. It was loaded with teeny little grubs, probably BSFs. That has never happened before.

My first guess is that the "grub box" still includes a whole lot of unhatched eggs. Those stuck to my glove ... and when some chemical trigger said "ok, no big grubs around" ... they hatched. If that is the case, then there are a LOT of unhatched eggs yet, since my glove had only a teeny bit of the goop on it. The eggs would be those of my first batch.

Second guess: the BSFs are still laying eggs randomly in the greenhouse. Or (I hope not!) some other flies.Some could have been laid in the grub bin.

Thing is: there are too many grubs now. My trash can is getting too full, and it appears to be mostly grubs. So I'm thinking: take out some of the grubs, put them in another container with some sawdust, and no heater. It will be cool, so they will "hibernate" a bit. Let the rest of them in the heated container turn into pupae and hatch. Then I'll still have a backup of older grubs and maybe unhatched eggs?

For people in colder climates: each person would not have to have their own "Honeymoon Hotel". All they need is some inoculated sawdust. Toss a handful in to your BioPod, as needed. Kind of like people buy probiotics for their compost containers now.

The Fiber Menace again

2010-10-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.gutsense.org/fibermenace/about_fm.html

Since he is getting some popularity, it would be good if someone did a comprehensive review of what he is saying. It is difficult though. A coworker asked me once to review Bob Barefoot's Calcium book and it just drove me nuts ... for 4 pages of his text I had 5 pages of notes! There was so much truthiness mixed with so much misdirection, it was like watching a stage magician. In that case, the basic facts are: Yes, calcium is good stuff, and it's critical to every cell in the body. But the misdirection is: coral calcium isn't a great source of calcium, and Bob Barefoot was basically going after your money.

In the case of "The Fiber Menace" the truth part is:

1. Your gut is supposed to have trillions of bacteria,

2. They need to be the right kind of bacteria,

3. Grain fibers (the ones touted in the 70's) are problematic in that they are rather irritating and also block nutrients.

The parts about bacteria that he doesn't mention, and maybe doesn't know about, are:

1. The bacteria in your lower intestine eat mainly semi-indigestible polysaccharides, which are basically a kind of fiber. They don't get fed UNLESS you feed them fiber, because everything else you eat gets absorbed before it gets there.

2. Those bacteria are the main source of butyrate. If you eat butyrate, then it gets absorbed before it reaches the colon.

3. Butyrate is the preferred food of your gut cells. It also kills colon cancer cells.

So not eating fiber is very bad for your gut! It is possible that eating a lot of fat might feed those butyrate-producing cells, but you would have to eat more fat than your body will absorb in the upper gut, which is a LOT of fat. Usually when people stop eating polysaccharides though, they stop producing the good bacteria.

Now, the other thing is that he is putting all fiber into the same bucket. A lot of the "fiber" that has been touted as "good" is grain fiber, esp. wheat germ and whole wheat. Anyone who knows me knows I think that if there is such a thing as a "bad" food, wheat is it! The gluten in wheat gloms on to the villi in the gut and temporarily prevents them from working correctly, or, if you are celiac, permanently damages them. Wheat is likely at the root for a *whole lot* of the gut problems in the West. The idea that you can write a book about gut damage and not mention gluten is just weird.

But the husk of wheat is also very bad. It's really, really rough: like sandpaper. Also it contains antinutrients that are good at glomming on to nutrients and getting them out of your system. I do think that people who eat that kind of fiber show some better health in one way though: wheat bran blocks absorption of iron, and we absorb too much iron from our diets. The Japanese though, drink tea with their meals, which does the same thing.

The idea that the Japanese don't eat much "fiber" is hogwash. They might peel their eggplant, but they eat a LOT of vegetables, and also some incredibly good fibers like seaweed, konjac, daikon and sata-imo yams. It is true they are smart enough to not eat brown rice. Basically they are noted for eating lots of "gooey vegetables" ... the kind that are full of the right polysaccharides.

As for the fermentation and bloating ... yes, that is what you get when you have bacteria in your gut! Once you get the right bacteria, there isn't so much bloating or gas ... part of that is just getting used to eating the right foods. A lot of the "gas producers" though aren't bacteria, they are yeast, and they thrive off quickly-digesting foods, esp. stuff like baked goods. They tend to go away though, if you eat the polysaccharides with them (konjac is especially good in that regard, probably pectin too).

Some of the research done on butyrate concentrates on wheat bran, which is why I think it might have gained popularity:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1374147/

But in that study, they used oats, guar, or wheat bran ... none of them are an ideal fiber, and there is no cuisine that uses guar much at all (it's a new thing). Konjac yam works better, I think, with fewer effects:

http://www.jacn.org/cgi/content/full/27/1/102

I also think Fast-5 helps in this regard, and it was one of my initial reasons for doing it. It is VERY IMPORTANT to have your gut bacteria properly regulated. I think having the gut be EMPTY for some hours lets the gut do housecleaning. Kind of like what happens when you take off your shoes every night to let them air out. If you wear the same shoes all the time they stink worse and worse ... because they get too many of the wrong kind of bacteria in them. I think something similar happens when you fast between meals. The worse kinds of bacteria and yeast die back, and the ones you need (like boulardii) can take over.

Anyway, the information I got was from his website, not his book, so maybe he has some incredible insight there. Mostly what I've gotten though is that it's another "demonize this food" book. We really, really like to demonize one food or another, and we do it without much nuance: we've gone from "sugar is evil" to "fat is evil" to "meat is evil" to now, "fiber is evil". The people who fight against this usually do the insipid "moderation in all things!" response, which really doesn't mean anything (moderate amounts of toxic mushrooms are still very toxic). Fact is though, your brain runs mainly on sugar, protein is essential to your body, and your gut likes fiber, esp. certain kinds of fiber.

The fact is, food is complicated. Human beings have managed for thousands of years to simplify it by means of "cuisines" and "food traditions" ... some cuisines work better than others at keeping people healthy. Turning a cuisine into a chemistry experiment using "macronutrients" as ingredients just doesn't work very well, because there are many kinds of fats, proteins, sugars, and fibers ... and the SOURCE of each is important, as is the freshness and quality.

The thing is ... YOU have a really good chemistry set built into your brain. You might not be able to say the exact number of grams of fiber or fat in your dinner, but in fact is, if your appestat is working and you are allowing it to work, your body does calculate exactly how much of each nutrient you need right now, and will regulate your intake with incredible accuracy. Your nose and tongue are also very good at detecting fresh food, and when fat is rancid. In order for this system to work, you have to unlearn the "clean your plate!" attitude many of us grew up with. Also the "eat what you are served" attitude. And the "the advertisement looks so good!" attitude. I really and truly think a lot of what I used to eat I ate just because I was "supposed to", either because "everyone else thinks it is great" (donuts!) or "it is good for you, you should eat it".

You need to get some of that "food snobbery" kind of attitude ... don't eat it if it doesn't taste good. Don't eat stuff that makes you feel lousy 2 hours later or the next day. If you have gut issues: keep a food log, see how your gut feels after eating certain foods.

Then: pursue foods that DO make you feel good. I mean, when you get a dinner that just makes you feel great, that tastes great ...write it down. It's a winner! Find really amazing recipes. Explore new fruits (mangoes are awesome!).

Then you can ignore the "food experts" for a bit, and listen to the chefs. Really GOOD cuisine also happens to be really good for you, oddly enough**. And fast to make too.

**(Ok, I make the caveat that I substitute other stuff for "wheat" ... that is one food I will demonize ... but part of why I do it is that it's so ubiquitous in our food chain that people don't think about it as a possible problem).