You may have seen a recent news report that stated that high fat foods were "addictive."
Instead of linking to the report, I'll just link you to the Fat Head analysis.
I admit, I hit the roof when I read about it, because they almost completely ignore the role of SUGAR in the addictive nature of certain foods.
I doubt very much that the rats couldn't stop eating a plain stick of butter. Have you ever tried to eat just butter? I can do it in small amounts, but I guarantee you I couldn't eat the whole stick.
But if you soften the butter and mix it up with sugar, I'm betting you could eat it all juuuuust fine.
Blah!
Friday, April 2, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Food recalls
I haven't seen this discussed on any other blogs recently, but there has been a massive food recall concerning hydrolyzed vegetable protein.
If you're interested in following these issues, visit the U.S. Food Safety blog.
If you're interested in following these issues, visit the U.S. Food Safety blog.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Broken oven!
I know I haven't posted here for a while, but I had some good reasons.
One of the reasons was because we took a very short vacation. This is significant because we haven't actually had a vacation in seven years!
But, of course, drama must ensue.
The week before we left, our oven broke. The stovetop still worked, but the heating element in the oven was completely broken. Not only that, maintenance had to order the part. So I was stuck having to cook food for a trip with no oven.
What's an SCD girl to do?
Well, Pecanbread came to the rescue! I couldn't make my son's favorite almond butter brownies, so instead I used the nut butter pancake recipe found here.
I'll post it below for the peeps too lazy to click the link:
Of course, I had to adapt this into traveling food proportions.
So I used a 16 oz jar of almond butter and 20 eggs, along with a teaspoon or so of baking soda and a teaspoon or so of salt. And then I cooked a stack of flapjacks like you have never seen!
All went well with the recipe, but they turned out kinda bland. Still, though, I will definitely tinker with this further in the future, and served with honey, they were pretty good. I will definitely make these again.
Other than that, well, I live in Los Angeles, so I fired up the grill and cooked six pounds of hamburgers to take with us. I also had three or four pounds of leftover chicken in the refrigerator, so I made a chicken salad with olive oil, vinegar, and SCD legal spices.
I brought the normal veggies and grape juice jello to round it all out. So the trip was saved.
I was very much hoping to post my almond butter biscotti recipe, but I need to make it again. In fact, I was going to make them to take with us on our trip, but because of the oven fiasco, that wasn't possible.
Thanks for hanging in there, my darling readers! :)
One of the reasons was because we took a very short vacation. This is significant because we haven't actually had a vacation in seven years!
But, of course, drama must ensue.
The week before we left, our oven broke. The stovetop still worked, but the heating element in the oven was completely broken. Not only that, maintenance had to order the part. So I was stuck having to cook food for a trip with no oven.
What's an SCD girl to do?
Well, Pecanbread came to the rescue! I couldn't make my son's favorite almond butter brownies, so instead I used the nut butter pancake recipe found here.
I'll post it below for the peeps too lazy to click the link:
PLAIN NUT BUTTER PANCAKES
by Caroline
1 tablespoon nut butter
1 whole egg
2 egg yolks
dash of baking soda
Of course, I had to adapt this into traveling food proportions.
So I used a 16 oz jar of almond butter and 20 eggs, along with a teaspoon or so of baking soda and a teaspoon or so of salt. And then I cooked a stack of flapjacks like you have never seen!
All went well with the recipe, but they turned out kinda bland. Still, though, I will definitely tinker with this further in the future, and served with honey, they were pretty good. I will definitely make these again.
Other than that, well, I live in Los Angeles, so I fired up the grill and cooked six pounds of hamburgers to take with us. I also had three or four pounds of leftover chicken in the refrigerator, so I made a chicken salad with olive oil, vinegar, and SCD legal spices.
I brought the normal veggies and grape juice jello to round it all out. So the trip was saved.
I was very much hoping to post my almond butter biscotti recipe, but I need to make it again. In fact, I was going to make them to take with us on our trip, but because of the oven fiasco, that wasn't possible.
Thanks for hanging in there, my darling readers! :)
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Healthy eating
I popped over to Jimmy Moore's blog for a few minutes to see how he was doing.
If you're familiar with Jimmy Moore at all, he's lost over 100 pounds on a low carb diet. He has no heart blockages to speak of (yes, he's been tested) and he lost his brother to heart disease.
Over the past two years, he's gained some weight, inexplicably. He's lost some of it, but he's being tested for thyroid issues right now. All in all, he's a great guy.
He recently blasted Whole Foods for going with conventional wisdom and promoting a whole grains, low-fat based diet -- that same diet that has made many people sick and fat.
Arguably, a diet like that is the reason people go on SCD. Grains are extremely hard for people to digest, and refined grains are like pure sugar that feed all kinds of naughty bacteria. Add that to a history of antibiotic use (I myself had probably been on antibiotics more than 20 times before I was 20 years old), and you've got a recipe for gut dysfunction.
I was most disturbed by the comments section of the article, though. A lot of vegetarians outright mocked Jimmy for what they thought was an overweight guy. Jimmy is a HUGE man, but I wouldn't exactly call him fat. He's kind of like the Jolly Green Giant. Very huggable!
The other problem I had was that people automatically think low carb diets equal all meat diets. That's just not true. Jimmy eats a salad every day. I know, because he blogs about it. Most low carbers enjoy leafy greens, tomatoes, and fruits like berries.
Now I believe in real food. There are an awful lot of vegetarians who don't. But some do. And for the most part, our similarities outweigh our differences, so we shouldn't be fighting. Here's why.
Most low carbers who believe in real food will agree with vegetarians -- that factory raised meats are bad, that free range doesn't really mean much. The difference is that real food advocates who are meat-eaters will seek out pastured, organic meats. We don't believe in needless suffering and we don't believe in consuming unhealthy forms of meat. Those are commonalities.
Real food advocates (both vegetarian and not) also know the health dangers posed by overconsumption of polyunsaturated fats. It's the same reason that conventional beef is unhealthy -- the fat in conventional beef is bad because they are fed grain and corn, which are both very high in omega-6 fats.
The fat in corn oil is also bad for you for the same reason.
And that is why grains are bad for you -- they are filled with inflammatory omega-6. Yes, your body needs a small amount of omega-6, but we're consuming huge amounts that we'd never be able to consume or produce in a natural setting. Could you produce corn oil or refined flour without machinery? Of course you couldn't. It's not natural nor healthy to eat large amounts of those foods.
So while the vegetarians will likely mention that conventionally raised beef is bad for you, they won't draw that distinction back to the source of the problem -- grains.
So let's be on the same side here, veggies! Real foodists unite! :)
If you're familiar with Jimmy Moore at all, he's lost over 100 pounds on a low carb diet. He has no heart blockages to speak of (yes, he's been tested) and he lost his brother to heart disease.
Over the past two years, he's gained some weight, inexplicably. He's lost some of it, but he's being tested for thyroid issues right now. All in all, he's a great guy.
He recently blasted Whole Foods for going with conventional wisdom and promoting a whole grains, low-fat based diet -- that same diet that has made many people sick and fat.
Arguably, a diet like that is the reason people go on SCD. Grains are extremely hard for people to digest, and refined grains are like pure sugar that feed all kinds of naughty bacteria. Add that to a history of antibiotic use (I myself had probably been on antibiotics more than 20 times before I was 20 years old), and you've got a recipe for gut dysfunction.
I was most disturbed by the comments section of the article, though. A lot of vegetarians outright mocked Jimmy for what they thought was an overweight guy. Jimmy is a HUGE man, but I wouldn't exactly call him fat. He's kind of like the Jolly Green Giant. Very huggable!
The other problem I had was that people automatically think low carb diets equal all meat diets. That's just not true. Jimmy eats a salad every day. I know, because he blogs about it. Most low carbers enjoy leafy greens, tomatoes, and fruits like berries.
Now I believe in real food. There are an awful lot of vegetarians who don't. But some do. And for the most part, our similarities outweigh our differences, so we shouldn't be fighting. Here's why.
Most low carbers who believe in real food will agree with vegetarians -- that factory raised meats are bad, that free range doesn't really mean much. The difference is that real food advocates who are meat-eaters will seek out pastured, organic meats. We don't believe in needless suffering and we don't believe in consuming unhealthy forms of meat. Those are commonalities.
Real food advocates (both vegetarian and not) also know the health dangers posed by overconsumption of polyunsaturated fats. It's the same reason that conventional beef is unhealthy -- the fat in conventional beef is bad because they are fed grain and corn, which are both very high in omega-6 fats.
The fat in corn oil is also bad for you for the same reason.
And that is why grains are bad for you -- they are filled with inflammatory omega-6. Yes, your body needs a small amount of omega-6, but we're consuming huge amounts that we'd never be able to consume or produce in a natural setting. Could you produce corn oil or refined flour without machinery? Of course you couldn't. It's not natural nor healthy to eat large amounts of those foods.
So while the vegetarians will likely mention that conventionally raised beef is bad for you, they won't draw that distinction back to the source of the problem -- grains.
So let's be on the same side here, veggies! Real foodists unite! :)
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Raw milk
There was a post on the Fat head blog about raw milk, and I thought I'd take a little bit of time to do some research on it.
The basic position of raw milk proponents is that pasteurized milk is not as digestible as raw milk. The pasteurization process kills off beneficial enzymes and changes the protein structure of the milk.
I can buy that. Ultra high pasteurized milk doesn't even need to be refrigerated. That's kind of disgusting.
My main concern with raw milk is about the possibility of contamination with e. coli and other pathogens. There are several disease outbreaks attributed to raw milk.
Weston A. Price says that bias does exist here. That may be true.
Now, I'm not saying that all raw milk producers make contaminated products. The risk may be low, but it's still there.
And if you're following the SCD, chances are you have a compromised immune system. A compromised digestive system goes hand in hand.
So if you have compromised digestion, you should probably avoid raw milk. If you wish to use it for yogurt, you should heat it yourself slowly to kill pathogens, as Elaine recommended in Breaking the Vicious Cycle.
I have even more reason to avoid raw milk products, because I am on long-term antibiotic therapy.
If I were to be exposed to e. coli, my antibiotic use could destroy my kidney function, land me in the hospital, and/or kill me. Antibiotics are expressly contraindicated in e. coli infection.
Please keep these concerns in mind, should you decide to try raw milk products.
The basic position of raw milk proponents is that pasteurized milk is not as digestible as raw milk. The pasteurization process kills off beneficial enzymes and changes the protein structure of the milk.
I can buy that. Ultra high pasteurized milk doesn't even need to be refrigerated. That's kind of disgusting.
My main concern with raw milk is about the possibility of contamination with e. coli and other pathogens. There are several disease outbreaks attributed to raw milk.
Weston A. Price says that bias does exist here. That may be true.
Now, I'm not saying that all raw milk producers make contaminated products. The risk may be low, but it's still there.
And if you're following the SCD, chances are you have a compromised immune system. A compromised digestive system goes hand in hand.
So if you have compromised digestion, you should probably avoid raw milk. If you wish to use it for yogurt, you should heat it yourself slowly to kill pathogens, as Elaine recommended in Breaking the Vicious Cycle.
I have even more reason to avoid raw milk products, because I am on long-term antibiotic therapy.
If I were to be exposed to e. coli, my antibiotic use could destroy my kidney function, land me in the hospital, and/or kill me. Antibiotics are expressly contraindicated in e. coli infection.
Please keep these concerns in mind, should you decide to try raw milk products.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Omelet of Yum
Here's a quicky to hold you all over.
I found some jarred jalapeno peppers at Smart and Final here in the Los Angeles area. Instead of using artificial coloring, they are colored using turmeric. How cool is that?
Anyway, I've been making a bunch of stuff with them. I've been eating a ton of salads with hardboiled eggs and jalapenos.
Then I had the idea to make a cheddar jalapeno omelet.
Oh yes.
It was pretty easy.
All I did was break some eggs, stirred them briefly, tossed in the jalapenos, and cooked the whole mass it until it was set on one side.
Then I flipped it over, put some cheese on, and pathetically attempted to fold it.
It's on a Gordon Ramsay plate, which counts for something.
Right?
Enjoy! :D
I found some jarred jalapeno peppers at Smart and Final here in the Los Angeles area. Instead of using artificial coloring, they are colored using turmeric. How cool is that?
Anyway, I've been making a bunch of stuff with them. I've been eating a ton of salads with hardboiled eggs and jalapenos.
Then I had the idea to make a cheddar jalapeno omelet.
Oh yes.
It was pretty easy.
All I did was break some eggs, stirred them briefly, tossed in the jalapenos, and cooked the whole mass it until it was set on one side.
Then I flipped it over, put some cheese on, and pathetically attempted to fold it.
It's on a Gordon Ramsay plate, which counts for something.
Right?
Enjoy! :D
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