Pain, Pain, Go Away!

I've decided to adopt a troll. What does that mean? Every time the troll leaves some troll dung on a blog I read, I'll donate a dollar to charity. (I'll send a check at the end of the month.) Heifer International seems appropriate. HI provides livestock and other agricultural projects to needy people around the world for income, self-sufficiency and more protein in their diet. An example of their work: One of Heifer International's biggest projects is EADD - the  East Africa Dairy Development  project. It was started in 2008 with a $42.8 million grant from the  Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation . It's helping about 179,000 small-scale dairy farmers to double their incomes. Now, we're happy to announce that we've received a one-year,  $8.5 million grant  from the Gates Foundation to continue that work. The grant will support existing projects in Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda and explore possibilities for expansion in Ethiopia and Tanzania. “We are excited f

Nuts seem like the perfect snack: they're portable, they keep well, they don't need to be cooked, and they're tasty. Problem: I don't feel good when I eat too many of them. Recently, I started snacking on macadamia nuts, which are high-fat, so I thought they wouldn't be a problem. But my stomach was upset, I got a bit of acid reflux and nosebleeds, and generally didn't feel up to par. Nuts have phytates, which bind to zinc and other minerals. This might have caused my nosebleeds. And I don't know what it is about macadamia nuts, but they don't seem to digest well for me; they felt like they were sitting in my stomach causing bloating. I've felt pretty much the same way eating more than a little bit of nuts or goodies made with nut flour. It could be that nuts are seeds and don't "want" to be eaten. Like grass seeds, they defend themselves by sickening those who ingest them. 

After four years eating mostly real food, I'm having the opposite of junk food cravings. For awhile now, a lot of foods have no longer looked like food to me--noodles, pastry, cake, most snack foods that come in plastic bags. (Cookies and brownies still do.) Later, most fruit didn't smell good. I recently made the mistake of getting some shea butter liquid soap, not noticing "honey-citrus" on the label. It smells bad, but I'm too cheap to throw it out. Pizza has long smelled like a wet dog, which is unpleasant but tolerable, but today the pizza in the break room smelled disgusting. So did the burnt toast. Has anyone else had this experience? I never imagined I'd prefer steak tartar to pizza, but steak tartar looks, smells and tastes great to me. A bonus: I've never eaten anything that sat so easily on my stomach. I get full, but it's like there's nothing in my stomach. Steak tartar and salad with Doreen's dressing. Recipes from 500 Paleo

Some people keep touting the Perfect Health Diet as low-carb, but carb levels that are mostly in the triple digits aren't generally regarded as low-carb; in fact, one of the authors says low-carb diets are unhealthy. A lot of us hate the  American Diabetes Association's advice for diabetics: start with 45g to 60g of carbohydrate per meal and go higher or lower from there. That's 135g to 180g of carb. Perfect Health Diet advice for diabetics: eat 20% to 30% of your diet as carbohydrate. On 2,000 calories, that's 100g to 150g of carb. On 1,700 calories, that's 85 to 128g; on 2,200 calories, that's 112 to 168g. Depending on your carb and calorie intake, carbs would be 85g to 168g per day. That's not a mile off from the ADA's recommendations. Paul Jaminet, one of the authors of the Perfect Health Diet, says, "the basic biology here is that the body's physiology is optimized for a carbohydrate intake of about 30%." He warns against a

Years ago, before the Perfect Health Diet came out, I followed a program that involved eating quite a bit "safe starch." It was called Body for Life. It involved eating six small servings of carbohydrate along with six small servings of protein, plus two servings of fibrous vegetables per day. (A serving was the size of your fist or the palm of your hand.) There were six workouts a week (three weightlifting, three cardio) and one free day every week where you ate whatever you wanted and didn't exercise. In all fairness, these two programs are different: BFL allows certain grains, legumes and low-fat dairy and discourages fat. It doesn't call for a wheelbarrow full of vegetation. Nevertheless, my experience eating lots of fruit and lots of starch is relevant to the PHD because the amount and type of digestible carbohydrates are similar, and for the first few years, I didn't eat wheat except on free days. At first on BFL, I felt great. Before, I was continually

I'm on vacation, and it's wearing me out. Yesterday, I laid down insulation in my parents' attic, had a meeting with a Medicaid consultant, and fixed my toilet. My father may need to take out Medicaid, and I wanted an accurate picture of what the options were. Home care and a nursing home are viable; assisted living is not since the facility would take nearly all of my father's income. The Medicaid consultant said we may have to open yet another account to keep a minimal amount of money in my father's name. I'm still transferring direct pays from US Bank to the credit account that Mom opened a few months ago (since US Bank charged fees left, right and center). As of today the insulation project at my parents' house is finally finished. I'm relieved that I never have to see that attic, feel its sharp little nails, or breath its dust again. My next project at my parents' house is to landscape an unirrigated hillside, but it'll have to be rototil

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p