Andrew Zimmern, Paleo?

This unexpected tweet came across my newsfeed the other day:

• Retweeted by Whole9

  Andrew Zimmern ‏@andrewzimmern Apr 28

  #PALEO HACK: Creole Chicken with Coconut Cauliflower Rice. http://ow.ly/wazAv #recipe @whole30 @whole9life

WTF.  There are no aardvark spleens in that recipe.

So I did some digging and found this episode of his podcast (JFC everyone has a podcast) in which his co-host featuring Whole9 guru Melissa Hartwig. It turns out his co-host was about to start the Whole 30 program.

It is hinted in the podcast that he has dabbled with paleo, but probably not a strict adherent.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Still, if he is paleo, I can envision at least one difference in our diet plans.

Eat Meat, Save the World

I’m taking a break from my break from blogging to present THE most interesting TED Talk ever.

Now Will You Stop Drinking That Horrifying Skim Milk

And don’t even get me started on the truly evil soy milk.

Sorry for even more science,  but the funny stuff is hard to come by this week.  And this is my blog and thus about the stuff that is of interest to me.  So if you want quarrel with me about what I post to my blog I say to you, kind sir:

GO START YOUR OWN FUCKING BLOG!

So please to enjoy Stephan Guyenet’s reviewing of  his recently published review of recent research about high fat dairy and its alleged link do obesity and heart disease.

 

 

Here are our basic findings:

• High-fat dairy consumption is not associated with obesity, in fact, 11 out of 16 studies found that higher dairy fat intake is associated with lower body fat and/or less fat gain over time.  None identified an association between high-fat dairy consumption and fat gain, although some did find an association between low-fat dairy consumption and fat gain.
• High-fat dairy consumption is not associated with poorer metabolic health.  Six of 11 studies found that higher high-fat dairy consumption is associated with better metabolic health, while only one found that it was associated with one marker of poorer metabolic health (and this study used an odd design). 
• The association between high-fat dairy intake and diabetes risk is inconsistent.  Zero of eight studies found that high-fat dairy consumption is associated with diabetes risk, and three found that it was protective.  However, three studies also found that low-fat dairy intake was inversely associated with diabetes risk, compared to no association with high-fat dairy, suggesting by inference that the fat content of the dairy could be harmful.  These studies all adjusted for body fatness.  Since body fatness is a key risk factor for diabetes, and dairy fat intake is inversely associated with body fatness, this is obviously a major confound.  We discussed this and other potential confounds in the paper.
• The evidence on cardiovascular disease is inconsistent, with a number of studies suggesting a protective association, a few suggesting a harmful one, and several suggesting no association.
• Dairy fat is a complex substance.  There are major differences in the fatty acid composition of dairy from pasture-raised vs. conventionally raised cows, and many of these fatty acids are bioactive and could influence human health.
• We also discuss the limitations of observational studies in some detail, and many other issues that I won't touch on here.

So stop pouring skim and soy in your coffees and join us cool kids and bask in the luxuriousnessitosity of heavy cream.

Paleo Sangwuch

Who says you can’t eat a sandwich when you’re paleo?  Just make the meat the bread, full it up with sliced onions and arugula  and slather that bad boy with homemade garlicky macadamia nut mayo.

Here’s a Better Reason Not to Eat Chick-Fil-A

I honestly could not give two shits about the political leanings of the people and organizations I get my fast food or entertainment from.  As a quasi-anarchist libertarian, there just aren’t that many people whose political views are in lock-step* with mine.  I would find myself bored and hungry if I ever made such a restriction on myself to only support like-minded people.  To me there is no disconnect in enjoying a delicious box of chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-a and falling off the couch in laughter at yet another Jack Donaghy Masterful Bon Mots.

 

But if you’re itching to boycott the noted southern chicken joint, do it for a good reason as one of my favorite paleo blogger suggests.

 

But a craving struck when I lived in Sweden. Obviously, it's impossible to get Chick-Fil-A there. So I hit the internet hoping to recreate it in my own kitchen. By then I was a lot more educated about nutrition, so the "top secret" recipe seemed a little horrifying to me. I wasn't about to coat chicken in sugar and flour and fry it in omega-6 garbage peanut oil. The real recipe also contains a form of MSG called autolyzed yeast extract, making it a super-palatable addictive monster, probably why it still makes my mouth water a decade later.

 

Still, those nuggets are so goooood once they hit your lips.

* Intentional use of irony putting “quasi-anarchistic libertarian” and “lock-step” in the same sentence.

It’s Not Just Jokes and Bacon Around Here

Well, maybe bacon.

This blog is primarily about stuff I’m interested in.  For the most part that’s booze, great food, travel, booze, my stories* and bicycling. 

Oddly, one of my seldom blogged about interests is nutrition.  If you are at all interested in the subject and specifically how the government and the media have misinformed us about the relationship between saturated fats, cholesterol and heart disease, then you’ll want to watch this.

What follows is a fascinating history of the lipid hypothesis and despite zero clinical evidence, continues to be the conventional wisdom with regards to heart health.  If you’ve read Good Calories, Bad Calories, you’ve been exposed to much of this information.  But this is still a great, concise lecture on the history of the terrible science used in the nutrition community.

And if you want to know just about everything that is knowable about the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease and you’re not afraid of lots of scientific jargon, read Dr. Attia’s now nine part epic on cholesterol that starts here.

Again, I’m sorry this isn’t funny or contains any of my stolen catchphrases like asshat and douchenozzle.  We’ll return to jackassery in the next posting, I’m sure.

* Currently that means Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones.

How Bad Science and Big Business Created the Obesity Epidemic

This video went wrongfully unposted during my recent blog break.

Filthy facebookers should avoid this video and just get fat playing Farmville.

Paleo Resources

Since Pokey requested postings about Paleo I figured I would start with my favorite resources I use to guide my way through my new lifestyle (I hate that word.  Please someone come up with a better term for this.)

Books

Although not technically a book about Paleo, the great Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calorieis my number one scientific resource that, at least in my mind, lays out the story of how bad science has led to our current obesity epidemic through the government’s decree that we all eat low-fat/high-carb. 

For a good foundation in Paleo (or Primal, if you will), Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint not only gives you the information to correct the damage Neolithic foods have done to you, but also contains the philosophy of 80/20.  This is, paleo/primal is not a religion in which we must do penance because a molecule of fructose/gluten/omega-6 fatty acid may have snuck into our bloodstream.  We live in the real world with real world problems and sometimes you really need some ice cream.  Just don’t do it every day or even every week.  But mostly, just don’t sweat it.  In other words, do the best you can most of the time and you won’t end up looking like Phatty McFaterson.

Blogs

Unfortunately, my two favorite bloggers are experiencing a bit of bloggers block and haven’t posted much if at all recently.  The Archevore is my favorite scientific paleo blog.  It is here that I Dr. Kurt Harris has simplified Paleo (what he calls the Archivore Diet) approach of avoiding/eliminating the three horsemen that cause the disease of civilization – grains, seed oils and fructose.

For a more in-your-face form of paleo, I turn to Free The Animal.  Richard Nickoley’s uses his blog to promote the paleo lifestyle that often criticizes the stupidity of veganism as well as the more religious aspects of paleo conformity.

Podcasts

I’m now down to just one paleo podcast a week, Angelo Coppola’s  Latest in Paleo.  It’s a very well done recap in all things healthy food/lifestyle related.  My favorite thing about the podcast is it’s motto, “Human beings are not broken by default.”

I did, for a time, listen to Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution podcast.  This is a question/answer style podcast and after a while, you can pretty much answer the questions yourself. 

Or Maybe You Could Just Put Down the HotPockets

In a study published in the journal Nature Genetics, the British researchers said that since fat plays an important role in peoples' susceptibility to metabolic diseases like obesity, heart disease and diabetes, the regulating gene could be target for drugs to treat such illnesses.

So keep loading up on crap.  Big Pharma will have a pill to turn off your fat gene.

 

Scientists find "master switch" gene for obesity - Yahoo! News

Science!!!

Tom Naughton tears the “science” of observational studies a new arsehole.

Dirty facebookers can go here.

Meatza! Meatza!

Jebus bless Richard at FreeTheAnimal.com for turning me on to this.  It’s a pizza with a hamburger crust.  And, yes, there is a layer of bacon between the cheese and the sauce.

For my test run I went with both mozzarella and ricotta.

Enjoy your Lean Cuisines suckers.

I’ve Joined A Cult

No I haven't joined the Moonies or The Tea Party. I've gone paleo.

First, let me say, this is a long article (for me) and contains a number of videos that The Facebook won’t show you.  So, if you’re reading this on The Facebook and want to see the whole thing, scroll to the bottom of the article and click on View Original Post.  Or you can just click here.

For those not familiar with what us hip, young kids are doing these days, paleo (actually Paleolithic diet) is a diet/lifestyle where one attempts to eat and exercise like our Paleolithic ancestors. Generally speaking that means not eating any sugars, grains or seed oils.  What it really means is eating lots of steak and bacon.

Fat Head: Watch It Now

I’ll have a longer form blog posting next week about the topic of this movie.  For now, do some homework this weekend and watch it.  You’ll be glad you did.  And maybe, if you’re lucky, we can meat up at Fogo de Chão and discuss it.

This movie starts out as a refutation of Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me. But during the journey we get a trip through how  and why we’ve been lied to about fats and carbs.

If you want to forego the Hulu commercials, it is available on Netflix Watch Now.

Dirty Facebookers go here.