Pain, Pain, Go Away!

One thing I've always missed on a low-carb diet is chip and dip. There are low-carb alternatives, but most of them are full of junk ingredients like emulsifiers or vegetable oil. Surprisingly, Kroger (and probably other chains it owns ) has chips, dips and more that are low-carb, free of junk ingredients and taste great.  Pork rinds, chicken drumettes, seed crackers, cheese crisps, dip, and guacamole. The seed crackers are thin and crunchy and hold up well under a scoop of dip; the cheese crisps are crunchy and filling (great to take on the road); the dips are delicious and even dairy-free. Look for the dips and guacamole in the refrigerated section.  The chicken drumettes from Miller Poultry (no relation) come from "egg to table" farms whose barns are certified by the Global Animal Partnership and meet or beat Step 2 standards. This particular brand isn't available at all stores, but there are probably similar brands near you. 4505 chicharrones (aka pork rinds ) are...

Readers might recall that I started doing strength training this year. I work out with free weights, a stability (Swiss) ball and do some bodyweight exercises so I'll have strong bones and better metabolic health. (Muscle burns energy; fat mostly sits there.) I use 10- to 25-pound free weights. Some women worry that lifting heavy weights will make them look like body builders. ( Here's what actual Olympic female weightlifters look like ; they wouldn't get far in a bodybuilding contest.) In my case, I'll let readers be the judge.  March 19, 2023.  Around December 20, 2023.  It's not a dramatic transformation, but you can see my shirt is looser in the bottom picture. I'm about five pounds lighter and had to get new pants last month. Oh--and I don't look like a lumberjack. Dip! Kroger's organic brand, Simple Truth , has some terrific dips that are less than half the price of Primal Kitchen. The tzatziki is like onion and dill dip that I haven't had in o...

It can be hard finding prepared foods like dairy, sausage and sauces without emulsifiers (food thickeners). These additives can damage the mucus lining of your stomach, if only temporarily, and allow bad bacteria into your system. That's how Dr. Davis explained what he thought was happening when I talked about it at the last Inner Circle meetup.  Thickeners like carrageenan, guar gum, gellan gum, locust bean gum, even palm oil (used as an emulsifier in almond butter) and others are in foods you wouldn't suspect. I've had to toss out cream, protein powder, cream cheese, coconut milk, deli chicken--I even had to return a package of raw chicken once. Raw chicken! Why does raw chicken need anything added to it but butter, lemon and heat? Are they trying to make people sick? It must have been making me sick because I've felt so much better without emulsifiers and thickeners. I can do physical work without wearing myself out, my palpitations are gone, my puffy face is gone, ...

Amish Red gooseberries from my garden. First, the tiny gooseberry plants that arrived in the mail were too small to bear fruit. Then the neighbors' lawn guy cut them down while mowing drunk in the dark. But finally, after putting some bricks around them (and not doing much else), I have a crop of tasty gooseberries.  Gooseberries are juicy, a little tart, and they last longer than other berries. They're like seedless grapes but less sweet with only about 7 grams of net carbohydrate per cup, 42 mg of vitamin C and 297 mg of potassium . If you've never heard of them, you're not alone (and you're probably not English). Gooseberry bushes were banned in the United States for a long time because they were a host plant for a disease that killed white pines. They're still banned in some places. But they're allowed where I live (we don't have many pines in Indiana) and they've grown like champs on the north side of my house. 

This weekend, I picked up three bottles of low-carb barbecue sauce with no frankenfood ingredients at Whole Foods to try out. I put them on chicken wings and tasted them by themselves. Results: Good Food for Good BBQ Sauce Classic , 4g carbohydrate per 2 tablespoons. No sugar added, but the dates make it the sweetest of the bunch and with a warm hint of mustard. It's organic, has a very short list of ingredients and no thickeners or emulsifiers. It's a little runny, but I recommend it for people who like a sweet sauce. Who knew Canadians made such good barbecue sauce? Primal Kitchen Classic BBQ Sauce , 3g carbohydrate per 2 tablespoons. This was the lowest in carbohydrates and the tangiest and smokiest, with vinegar and mustard in the mix. The tapioca starch made it the thickest sauce. It's also organic--what else would you expect from Mark Sisson? Recommended for strict carb control and occasions when you need a thick sauce. LocalFolks Foods Hab-A-Q (Habanero Bar-B-Q) , 5g...

I love novelty. Despite getting in trouble for trying new foods (I ended up in an ambulance once), I enjoy new foods enough to keep trying them.  With the flu going around the office, I thought I'd try fermenting L. casei shirota in pawpaw fruit puree. Pawpaw is a mango-like fruit native to eastern North America. It's very sweet, but fermentation reduces sugar. I cooked the raw puree before fermenting it, then had a few bites with some pork. A few hours later, I was vomiting. It's been days and I'm still not feeling right.  Despite the web full of articles on the amazing properties of pawpaw fruit, it contains neurotoxins . Even members of the Lewis and Clark expedition might have gotten sick on it .  Fortunately, I have fermented pear juice. I put a few capsules of Floristat in the bottle and left it on the counter for a few days. It tastes good and makes my stomach feel a little better.  Finally, Mark Sisson has come out with a healthy queso dip in his Primal Kitch...

Processed foods have a bad rap these days. "Just eat real food," everyone says, and the real food will cure anything from arthritis to migraine headaches. The people who give this advice do tend to be in good health and do tend to eat real food. Well, except when they're eating dark chocolate, or sugary fruit that's only existed for a few hundred years, or drinking wine. The first and third foods are about as real and unprocessed as a Cadbury egg. But if we can wink at dark chocolate, bananas and wine, why not fake cheese? Real cheese and cream give me acne. Fake cheese, like Velveeta and American cheese, don't. For me, they're better than real cheese (and Velveeta melts better than real cheese, too). If you'd like to add fake cheese to your real foods list, here's a wonderful recipe I made (up) tonight. It would have been good with shiratake noodles. 1 pound grass-fed ground beef 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce made with local, vine-ripened tomatoes...

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."

My refrigerator: Ox cheek and homemade mushroom soup in the containers. Bacon and liver sausage in the meat drawer.  My freezer: Black angus beef. My pantry: Note the coffee, jalapeno peppers and full-fat coconut milk--so-called "trigger foods" for acid reflux, which I had until I started a low-carb diet.  My medicine cabinet: All the medicine I own, aside from some Neosporin. I just threw out a bunch of decongestants and Pepto Bismal that expired years ago. The aspirin shown expired nearly two years ago. The toothpaste is for a cavity that started forming last year when I was stressed out and wasn't taking extra-good care of myself. 

I've found some great products over the past couple of weeks I'd like to share. I'm not affiliated with the companies that make or sell these products. Organicville Sesame Teriyaki Sauce Image from vitacost.com With four grams of carb in a tablespoon, this sauce is a lot lower-carb than most others. It's not too sweet, either. It has a bit of soybean oil, so it's not paleo-kosher, but it's just a condiment, eaten by the spoonful. I stir-fried some onion, broccoli, bell peppers and cherry tomatoes, added some pulled pork and sauce, and had a dinner worthy of my favorite Chinese restaurant in 15 minutes. Purchased at Sprouts. Nutiva Shortening It's shortening without transfats or frankenoils! This shortening is made with palm fruit oil, unrefined red palm oil and unrefined coconut oil. Palm oil is a source of CoQ10, carotenes and vitamin E. According to some other sites I've read, palm oil shortening is made by removing some of the polyu...

I normally gather information, analyze things and take measurements. Lately, though, things have been too hectic to go about life like a monk: a deadline at work and family issues that have been...bizarre. Let me know if you need material for a black comedy. I've been eating on instinct, and instinct has led me to eating more protein and probably fewer calories than normal: mostly black coffee, diet Dr. Pepper (caffeine soothes me), bunless burgers, a little veg, a few egg rolls (they're comfort food), and a lot of Atkins bars. No fatty sauces--they just haven't sounded good, especially in the morning. Result: I'm down two belt holes on my rain coat from a few months ago and my shoes are slightly loose where they used to hurt my feet from being too tight. Atkins induction made me feel weird for a while, and Body-for-Life made me feel great (in the beginning). BFL is much higher-protein than Atkins induction. I noticed back in my 20s that I felt a lot better when I ...

I'll admit it: even though my dietary requirements include organ meat, it was a chore to eat it...and you know what happens when that's the case. I ended up eating Atkins bars instead of liver. Partly, I've been too busy the past few weeks to eat many home-cooked meals, but mostly, there are a lot of things--even on Atkins induction--that I'd rather eat than liver. Last Saturday, needing some wind in my sails after a few weeks of family emergencies, uncluttering my parents' house with a room temperature of 85 degrees, and being too wound up to get much sleep, I checked out a book called Freakin' Fabulous by Clinton Kelly from  What Not to Wear and The Chew. Just looking at the pictures at red lights on the drive home inspired me to stop at the store--the grocery store. I knew Kelly was a stylist, but didn't know he could cook, too. He's quite the meat eater--his good looks attest to that. That, and it sounds like he eats little or no junk food. I ...

Newbies in the low-carb and paleo community often say, "the diet is great, but I still have problems eating (fill in the blank). What should I do?" Maybe they're too young to remember a certain old joke. A man goes to see his doctor and says, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." (Picture the patient holding his arm in odd way.) "What should I do?" The doctor says, "Stop holding your arm that way." This old joke now represents a radical idea. If you have trouble eating something, then stop eating it. Or eat smaller amounts of it if the smaller amount doesn't give you problems and you can stop yourself at a little bit. I have FODMAPs problems--polyols in particular. I can't eat more than a strawberry a day or a few spoonfuls of lemon juice without getting an upset stomach and acid reflux. Too much alcohol sugar gives me gas. I could try probiotics, resistant starch, fermented foods and the other latest things that purportedly heal ...

I love vegetables. There are so many foods that I can't eat that meals would be boring without them. In fact, I like them so much that I planted five kinds of lettuce and two kinds of tomatoes in my garden today. All the same, stuffing yourself with vegetables (or anything else) isn't good. 1. Fibrous vegetables can drive up your blood sugar if you eat enough of them. In one of his books, Dr. Richard Bernstein discussed a patient who ended up with a very high blood sugar after eating a head of lettuce. There are stretch receptors in your intestines that, when they sense you've eaten a big meal, release hormones that can end up raising your blood sugar. Bernstein calls this the Chinese Restaurant Effect. 2. All food is inflammatory. As Michael Eades put i t, Eating is an inflammatory process. A number of scientific studies have shown that eating a meal, regardless of the macronutrient composition, causes acute inflammation, which makes sense when you think about it. F...

Coconut in a Can This can of Natural Value coconut milk from Natural Grocers (fka Vitamin Cottage)... ...looked like this... ...and made a gloppy, eggy mess out of a custard dish I've made successfully many times. (I added 3T lime juice to the custard, which I hadn't tried before, but I don't think that would have ruined it.) From now on, it's Thai Kitchen coconut milk or Sprouts premium organic. Thai Kitchen coconut milk (full fat). Sprouts premium organic is similar. Kale Chips Today I ruined a bunch of lacinato kale making kale chips. 500 Paleo Recipes says to cook the chips at 375; some recipes on the web call for 300 degrees when using lacinato kale. They're probably right; at 375, the chips filled the kitchen with smoke and tasted exactly like you'd expect burnt leaves to taste. Red Russian kale has worked well at at the higher temperature, though. With some salt and dip made of mayonnaise, chives and lemon juice, they were way be...

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. 

Quite by accident, I came across an article proposing fortification of rice to prevent nutrient deficiencies. I'm not against fortifying rice, since it could greatly improve the health of people for whom it's a staple. But the fact that rice needs to be fortified belies that idea that rice, or grains in general, are nutritious enough to be a dietary staple. It hasn't done much good for people who depend on it: [A] concern [with fortification] may relate to the possibility of over-consumption of rice given the potential benefits of additional vitamins and minerals. As a public health intervention, the use of a vehicle would imply not encouraging the population to consume greater amounts of the ’fortified’ rice. Higher consumption of white rice is associated with a significantly increased risk of type 2 diabetes, especially in Asian (Chinese and Japanese) populations. Micronutrient deficiencies of public health significance are all widespread in most high rice ...

Here's a tale of two holidays. Thanksgiving day, I could barely get out of my chair. Answering three phone calls was a major annoyance and baking a crustless pumpkin pie was a slog. But over Christmas week, I've put plastic weatherstripping over windows at my parents' house, gone to a movie, done a lot of shopping (after watching a lot of What Not to Wear ), learned to use my new Mac, recycled my old computer and printer, and taken two trunk loads of stuff to Goodwill after cleaning out my basement. I haven't cleaned out my basement in almost 18 years. I'm working out twice a week again. And my pants are falling off me. What made the difference? Before Thanksgiving, I'd gotten out of the habit of taking an iron supplement. I was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia a few years ago when I went to see a doctor for an unrelated problem. (He noticed I was pale and ordered a test.) Even with good diet habits since then (no medications, no grain, no dairy except b...

My father will be coming home from the hospital any day. He went last week because he was so weak that he could barely move after he fell. He's doing better, but he'll need round-the-clock supervision. Dad has the impression that he's stronger than he is. I was with him during a visit with a psychiatrist, who saw him because he said he was going to call a taxi and leave. Dad said he thought he was at a bank. He drew a good clock, but put the wrong time on it. He did well on other questions, such as the date, the president, and his personal history, but last night, he kept saying that my mother was at the hospital. She wasn't, and has no way of getting there on her own. When Dad comes home, he'll find some new furniture, some technology to help him, and someone besides Mom to make sure he doesn't hurt himself. What he won't find is a bunch of junk food. I took home four trash bags full of chips, crackers, cookies, pretzels, potato mix, gravy mix, cake mix,...

Check out the little red symbol in the ad for ground beef. I didn't see it with any ads for hearthealthywholegrain products. Click to enlarge. Sprouts sale flyer. Not Photoshopped. Sticker shock? Ask the butcher for some grass-fed fat to add to your burger.