Pain, Pain, Go Away!

On the theory that popcorn is just a vehicle for fat and salt that's lightly crunchy, I have a great substitute: chard chips. You can even eat them hot! They're full of vitamins and nutrients, too, and don't contain glyphosate (unlike corn). I like this recipe better than others I've tried because pre-drying the leaves makes them crispier and greatly reduces cooking time. Note that Swiss chard is high in oxalates if that's something you have to watch.  Photo from Pexels .  Recipe 1 batch Swiss chard, washed Nutritional yeast (available in the spice aisle) Avocado oil Salt Separate the Swiss chard leaves and hang them out to dry for a few hours until they're wilted.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Cut out the center vein and any other large veins in the leaves. Cut the leaves into sections about 3" to 4" square. Place them on a wire rack on a cookie sheet. Brush them on one side with avocado oil. Sprinkle with nutritional yeast and a little bit of s...

Pants Don't Fit? It Might be the Pants If the clothes-o-meter says you're gaining weight, it might be the clothes that are off. Half the ladies' blouses I recently bought are medium sized (I normally take a small) and the jeans I just bought are smaller than the ones from before, even though they're they same brand, cut and size.  They're smaller in the thighs, too. I thought I'd had too much prebiotic fiber. This doesn't seem to be a one-off. One reviewer who bought the same jeans said she bought them a size up to wear over tights, but couldn't get them on even without tights. Over at Talbots--which normally carries high quality clothes--several reviewers complained about undersized jeans.  Click to enlarge (the screenshot--alas, it doesn't work on jeans) Of course, if your jeans used to fit--well, jeans don't shrink from sitting in a drawer.  Another Cold Averted? Regular readers know I'm prone to respiratory illnesses. But my last cold onl...

Fat Head Kids: Stuff About Diet and Health I Wish I Knew when I was Your Age by Tom Naughton. Written for older kids, but has information that will probably be new to a lot of adults. It uses a spaceship as a metaphor for the human body and programming as a metaphor for personal metabolism. Drs. William Davis, Richard Feinman, Ann Childers, John Briffa, Michael Eades, Andreas Eenfeldt, Michael Fox, Dwight Lundell, Robert Lustig and Eric Westman provide interviews through the movie. Love Paleo. This movie was released in 2015, but I hadn't heard about it until recently. Several people--including Dr. John Briffa, discuss the major health improvements they've seen on a paleo diet and why it works.  What's with Wheat? Regular readers already know that wheat in its current form is genetically very different from what it was a few decades ago. What they might not know is that monocrop agriculture  isn't good for the environment, that wheat has glyphos...

I've been seeing more and more articles by women (it's always women) whose heads have exploded trying to figure out life without yogurt and cupcakes. Oh, the shenanigans they get up to: bathroom problems from stuffing themselves with vegetables, paleo baked goods that don't taste the same as ones from the bakery, and especially the irresistible urge to eat "normally." The technical problems aren't hard to sort out: substitutes like baked goods will taste different because they are different, but an adjustment period of a few months will make those foods taste normal. And whatever you eat, don't stuff yourself. First, though, read a book by Loren Cordain or Mark Sisson to learn about the paleo diet before diving in. The articles I keep reading, though, have more to do with attitude: the urge to be exactly like everybody else or the urge to be helpless. If you're in the second category, I can't, by definition, help you. If you'd rather be Lu...

Some years ago, I wrote a blog post on fibromyalgia relief. I don't suffer from it myself, but hoped a friend could benefit from it. The post referenced a book by Dr. Jean Seignalet, who recommended a mostly raw, mostly paleo diet. Really--don't knock s teak tartar and a salad on a hot summer day until you've tried it. Anyway, Dr. Seignalet's book has been translated into English and it's available on Kindle for only $2.99. The description says you can prevent and reverse 100 diseases "the French way." I haven't read it, but will get it to see if I can avoid ENT infections. (If anything like the Spanish flu ever made a comeback, I'm sure it would kill me. Three dollars and a few hours seems like a reasonable investment to avoid that outcome.)

Cauliflower is the usual low-carb substitute for starchy foods, but celery stands in surprisingly well for potato in soup. 1/2 can coconut milk (~1 cup) 1 carton chicken stock (1 quart) 1 packet gelatin 15 oz canned salmon 1 T lemon juice 1/2 t ginger 1 carrot, sliced into coins 4 stalks celery, sliced 1/2 t basil 1 t curry powder 1/4 t cayenne pepper salt and pepper to taste Pour the coconut milk and stock into a sauce pan and bring to a simmer. While that's happening, pour the gelatin onto the liquid, let sit for a minute, then stir in. Add salmon, ginger, carrots, and celery and simmer. Stir in curry, ginger, cayenne pepper and salt and pepper and simmer for 10 minutes. Puree in batches and add lemon juice.

My posts on fibromyalgia relief (which propose trying a paleo diet) have been getting a lot of traffic lately. I'm curious how it's been working out for people. Your results?

From a press release sent by the Institute for Justice : Last week, the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition voted to adopt new guidelines allowing people to give ordinary diet advice without a government license, thus settling a May 2012 First Amendment lawsuit filed by diabetic blogger Steve Cooksey of Stanley, N.C.... “Last week’s board vote recognizes that North Carolinians do not need the government’s permission to give someone ordinary advice,” said Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Jeff Rowes, who represented Cooksey in his lawsuit. “North Carolina cannot require someone like Steve to be a state-licensed dietitian any more than it could require Dear Abby to be a state-licensed psychologist. More at Reason.com .

Homeschooler and creationist Megan Fox (not the actress) recently "audited" the Evolving Earth Exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. "Audit" is a strong word: I work for real auditors (CPAs), who are highly educated experts in their subfields and concerned with accuracy (because they can be sued). When they don't know something, they look for the answer. They've also passed the long and difficult CPA exam administered by the State of Colorado. Megan Fox doesn't have the equivalent of any of these qualifications in the field of biology: what she's produced isn't an audit, but a silly video that I'm watching so you don't have to. Megan Fox at the Field Museum. Image from wonkette.com via Google images. Fox jumps right in with eukaryotes, which she doesn't know how to pronounce. The exhibit says that at first, all eukaryotes were single celled, and some are still single-celled, implying that others are not....

It's been a stressful year: my father rapidly declined and died, and my mother ended up in the hospital and then in a nursing home for a while. While she was staying with me for a few weeks, a relative told the county I was starving and stealing from her. (Of course, the county determined this was a load of horse shit.) Lately, the same relative has been meddling in my mother's financial affairs, making messes as fast as I can clean them up. From the time early this year when I was doing a lot of work on my parents' house (e.g., insulating their attic), I wasn't taking my vitamins regularly or eating liver and oily fish weekly. A few years before, I started what I called the cavity-healing diet to heal my teeth; surprisingly, it made my TMJ better. Given my gum graft surgery last summer, I should have really been diligent about the diet, but I wasn't. I ended up with redness in the area of the graft, roaming TMJ, and the beginning of a cavity between two molar...

One study after another over the past few years has shown low-carb, high fat diets to be good for correcting weight and lipids. Other studies have found iron deficiency is very common in women. So why do so many young women in the paleo community advise limiting red meat (high in iron) and animal fat and eating lots of vegetables instead? They remind me of the Intelligent Design crowd: people who recognize intellectually that the creation story in Genesis is a myth, but emotionally aren't ready to abandon it or make waves with friends and family who still believe. Some of the authors say (credibly) that they have or had an eating disorder; others seem to want to keep on being nice girls who don't eat too much or too richly and don't want to lead others astray. At least, that's how it comes off to me, someone from a blue collar family who grew up in the 80s when priss was an insult and a lot of girls went to McDonald's for lunch. What no nice paleo girl woul...

When they're nomadic, even if they grow neolithic crops and have herds of sheep and goats.  Truck drivers are nomadic, too. So were my parents in the early years of the marriage. Does that make them hunter-gatherers? A word from someone who knows the difference between farmers and hunter-gatherers is here . Spoiler alert--the farmers had more tooth decay, iron deficiency and starvation than the hunters. Check out the pictures of skulls, tibias and teeth.

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 often hear the term "balanced diet" used to attack low-carb eating. "You're cutting out entire food groups!" some people cry, as if their own recommendations didn't curtail or cut out other entire groups like red meat and fat. "Good health = balanced diet, and that means some carbs," said Paul Nuki of the NHS Choices web site after he called low-carb proponents "quacks." To be clear, a low-carb diet isn't a no-carb diet. Even Atkins induction call for two small green salads a day; it's just starchy foods such as potatoes, sugary fruit and grains that are limited so much that many of us don't bother with them. It might also clarify things to know where the idea of a balanced diet came from. Early in the 20th century, the disease pellagra was the scourge of the American South. Poor Asians from India to Japan suffered from beriberi. Rickets was rampant in parts of the United States. What do pellagra, beriberi, and rickets...

I love Mexican food, but the tortillas, beans, rice and corn chips are too carby. Green chili (or chili verde) doesn't have to be, and if you simplify the steps in 500 Paleo Recipes, it doesn't have to be hard or time consuming to make. I started with 12 oz (by weight) of thawed medium chilies, two pounds of chopped pork, and a few other ingredients... ...and had green chili 90 minutes later.

I've never been a shoe horse. Being wide, my feet don't fit into most shoes of the right length. I went barefoot whenever I could as a kid and even now I prefer tennis shoes and flat sandals to ballet flats and stilettos. But tall boots are handy this time of year. I have a pair of Italian leather boots that are a little too long for me and rubbed my heels--until recently. Now, they're as comfortable as socks. Since I hardly ever wore them, it's hard to say when the change happened. But I've also noticed that I can brush hot grease off my skin and forget about it where it would have left a burn before. Several years ago, a grease splatter from a pan of Moroccan chicken left a trail of blisters up my left arm. I don't have unassailable evidence that a low carb, high fat diet made my skin more resilient, but people on such a diet often find the same thing. Maybe it's better absorption of fat-soluble vitamins A and D and higher intake of zinc that make a d...

T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study, has written a new book (more of a report at 57 pages) called The Low-Carb Fraud. Let's start with what Dr. Campbell gets right: There are different kinds of carbohydrates. Most carbohydrates are broken down into glucose in the intestine. Refined carbohydrates are bad.  Low carb diets are fun! (I swear I'm not making this up) Calories don't matter unless you're going to extremes. People lose weight on low carbohydrate diets. People lower their insulin levels on low carbohydrate diets. That's about it. Mostly, he slanders low-carb proponents and he lies, lies again, and lies some more. He lies when he doesn't need to lie. To wit:  " Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution ...had not been especially successful in the marketplace." According to Dr. Atkins' obituary in The New York Times, " its various editions sold more than 15 million copies, making it one of the best selling books ever....

This article from the Miami Herald, " Popular Paleo Diet Still Has its Skeptics " by Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley, is a textbook example of how to write a nutrition article. Choose a hot topic. In this case, paleo diets. Describe the topic and how it got started. This article cites popular media and books written no less than 12 years ago; one book is from 1975.  Find some examples of people who've tried the regimen. One man interviewed lost 200 pounds (yes, two hundred) and got rid of his acid reflux; a bariatric surgeon lost 40 pounds. Somewhere in the article, mention that they are not alone.  Create conflict. A couple of registered dieticians interviewed trot out the gospel of food groups, healthy whole grains, and warnings that more research is needed. Recommend people talk to their doctor. What NOT to do when writing a newspaper article on nutrition: Proofread. "Just about everybody , including daytime talk show hosts and fitness bloggers, are touting....

Did I just wake up in another city? Three years ago, people here in Denver looked at me like I had two heads when I told them I limited carbohydrates. When I was a kid, my parents' fussy neighbors complained about the roosters crowing, even though they moved into a house adjacent to an agricultural lot. But maybe in a city that loves meat and attracts health and fitness buffs, it had to happen: more people want real food and real solutions to their health problems. I just spent the morning at a chicken exchange, where people also had goats, ducks, rabbits and turkeys for sale. The exchange was in an urban neighborhood of Denver between Broadway and the tracks, five minutes from downtown.  Chicken Swap . Image from http://www.denverchickencooptour.com/ From there, I went to Vitamin Cottage, a health food grocery store, where some of the vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free books and magazines have been replaced by paleo, anti-sugar and pro-cholesterol books. T...

"Out with the old spiritual mumbo jumbo, the superstitions, and the backward ways. We're gonna see a brave new world where they run everybody a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes, sir, a veritable age of reason." -Ulysses McGill, O Brother, Where Art Thou? If only. Eighty years after the Tennessee Valley was put on the grid, health gurus recommend mumbo-jumbo like two-thirds of a cup of sugar a day for diabetics ,* inflammatory foods like wheat for the inflamed , and a low-fat, high-fiber, grain-based diet that fattens up livestock (in weeks!)** but is supposed to make humans slim and trim. The crazies are running the asylum. Are there any reasonable people in the mainstream? I recently sent a friend of mine the book It Starts with Food. It discusses the major hormones involved in fat storage, fat burning and inflammation, along with the authors' dietary recommendations based mostly on our paleolithic ancestors' diets and their clinical experience....