February 27, 2015

Is Meat Unhealthy? Part IX

Welcome to the last post in the series.  Time to summarize and wrap it up!

Respect

I respect each person's right to choose the diet they prefer.  This includes vegetarians and vegans, particularly because most of them make daily sacrifices to try to make the world a better place for all of us.  I'm an omnivore, but I sympathize with some of the philosophy and I often eat beans or lentils instead of meat*.

Our history with meat

Our ancestors have probably been eating some form of meat continuously for at least two hundred million years.  However, the quantity has waxed and waned.  The first mammals were probably largely carnivorous (insectivores).  Yet our primate ancestors went through a 60-million-year arboreal phase, during which we probably ate fruit, leaves, seeds, insects, and perhaps a little bit of vertebrate meat.  We only outgrew this phase in the last few million years, when we developed the tools and the brains to pursue prey more effectively.

During our 2.6 million-year stint as hominin hunter-gatherers, we ate an omnivorous diet, although we really have very little idea how much meat it contained (it probably varied by time and place).  Historical and contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures are all omnivorous, and typically eat significant to substantial quantities of meat, suggesting that our ancestors may have done the same.  Non-industrial agricultural populations eat as much meat as they can get, although they usually can't get as much as hunter-gatherers.

If there is such thing as a natural human diet, it is clearly omnivorous.

Meat, obesity, and chronic disease

Read more »

February 23, 2015

We Do Science Interview

I recently did an interview with Laurent Bannock, an expert in sport and exercise nutrition.  His podcast We Do Science has rapidly become quite popular, due to Laurent's credibility and the interesting guests he interviews.  We covered body composition, metabolically healthy obesity, the relationship between BMI and mortality, calorie counting, body fat regulation, and other related topics.

If you've already listened to several of my interviews and are starting to find them repetitive, you might enjoy this one because we cover some new ground.  Laurent was a gracious host.  Follow the link below to listen:

Neurobiology of Obesity, with Stephan Guyenet

February 20, 2015

Food Reward Friday

This week's lucky "winner"... the Cinnabon cinnamon roll!!!

Read more »

February 16, 2015

Can High-Fiber Foods Fight the Metabolic Syndrome?

The metabolic syndrome (MetSyn) is a cluster of signs including abdominal obesity, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and blood lipid disturbances.  MetSyn is the quintessential modern metabolic disorder, and it affects about one third of Americans.  Many MetSyn diets recommend eating high-fiber foods, and research on the role of the gut microbiota in body weight and health tends to support this recommendation.  Yet these diets are complex, so it's difficult to attribute positive effects to the high-fiber foods specifically, and some people have questioned the benefits of dietary fiber.  Do high-fiber foods really improve MetSyn and promote weight loss?

The study

Read more »

Sweet Potato Chocolate Spread

What if I told you that 2 tbsp of this spread provides you with all the vitamin A you need in a day? Sounds too good to be true? Well it isn't. Other than being delicious, sweet potatoes are packed with this super important nutrient that keeps your eyes in good condition and your skin beautifully radiant. Plus this recipe is so simple and quick to make and only requires five ingredients! No excuses!




Ingredients:

2 medium-sized, peeled sweet potatoes (380 g)

3 tbsp melted cacao butter or coconut oil

10 dates (100 g)

2 tbsp cacao or cocoa powder

Pinch of salt


How to:

1. Cube the sweet potato and steam until entirely soft and easy to pierce with a fork, approximately 15-20 minutes.

2. Transfer the cooked sweet potato to a medium-sized bowl, add the remaining ingredients and blend with a hand blender until smooth. This could also be done using a food processor.
3. Spoon up the chocolate spread in a mason jar or any airtight container of your choice and store in the fridge.

Enjoy this spread on peanut butter sandwiches, your oatmeal or eat it straight from the jar with a spoon! (That's what I do...)

Chocolate love from Tilda 

Health care is a massive market…

America is spending $3 trillion on health care every year. Does that number include toothpaste? Surely toothpaste is very important to your health. How about baby powder, diapers, condoms, soap, lip balm, nail clippers, detergents, mops, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, smoke detectors, air filters and air bags? How about everything Nike sells, diet books, your gym membership, bicycles, skateboards, everything Sports Authority carries in its stores, and all Weight Watchers products? And then there is quinoa and edamame, spelt, flax, organic kale chips and those scrumptious gluten-free kelp smoothies. You can also count the entire budget of the EPA, the FAA, the CDC, the FDA and the USDA, and while at it let’s not forget the war on drugs, the war on poverty and the war on terror, and of course education and vacation, sunscreen, traffic lights, firefighters, police and those weirdly bluish ice-melting crystals for your driveway. It sure looks like we are spending all our money on caring for our health.

In America, we spend $3 trillion every year on medical care, not health care. Medical care is what you get mostly from doctors and nurses, mostly in hospitals or clinics, and mostly when you are sick or hurt. Medical care is most often associated with pain, suffering and fear, and is something most people, most of the time, don’t use, don’t need and don’t want. The new thinking says that if we could spend less money on medical care, we could spend more on Bluetooth enabled holographic toothpaste, and that this is a good thing. After all, most of our $3 trillion is spent on a small fraction of sick and elderly citizens, most of whom will never get better anyway. Wouldn’t it be more fun to spend our money on nice things for the majority who is basically healthy, so they can be even healthier, and perhaps forever healthy?

Also $3 trillion is too much money to spend on regular people, who truth be said can’t really afford it anymore, because according to none other than J.P. Morgan, “US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP”, while “[corporate] profit margins have reached levels not seen in decades”, and miraculously “reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement in margins” [emphasis in the original]. When your wages and benefits are at a 50 year low relative to GDP, courtesy of the general plutonomy, and your medical care expenses are at an all-time high relative to the same GDP, courtesy of the medical-industrial plutocrats, you have two basic choices. Start a revolution, or let yourself be wooed by the thieves. Revolutions are hard and very inconvenient for consumers, so sit back and be wooed.

Medical care is sick care. Sick care sounds depressing, and sick care is expensive. Sick care is what happens where health care fails. Health care is cheap and pleasant. Better health care will obviate the need for sick care. Ergo, we should invest heavily in health care right here, right now, and quit funding exorbitantly priced products and services for sick care, because soon, very soon, there will be no sick people. For some, midlife crisis means buying a red Porsche, for Google owners it means spending $1.5 billion on the fountain of youth. For Peter Thiel, it means actually becoming immortal. For CVS pharmacies it means changing the company name to CVS Health. For Apple it means releasing a plebian version of the fountain of youth called simply Health. And for the rest of us, it means paralyzing fear.

The best is behind us. The American Century is over. Ebola is going to kill us all, and if not Ebola then the measles will. And if not disease, then surely we will fall prey to the toddler invasion from Guatemala, or the long-range nuclear missiles of the Russian Empire, or the marauding bands of sociopaths roaming the Arabian desserts in Toyota pickup trucks, raping and decapitating everybody in their path, not to mention the global ice age descending on Boston with the fury of a theory scorned. History teaches us that every great nation has to fail and every governance model is destined to perish and all societies will eventually disintegrate. Today is our turn to die. But then the drums begin to bang and the stars fall from the sky, the moon turns red with blood and the trumpet sounds its call.

Behold the vision of the saints as they go marching in, masterfully weaving the Narcissistic obsessions of the young and healthy with the helplessness and impotence imposed on the marginalized masses. An Apple a day keeps the doctor away. We will solve all your medical care problems caused entirely by your failure to be healthy. We will manage your wellness, your food, your activity, your thoughts, your desires and your disillusion, and we will make sure that you function within optimal parameters. We will take preventive actions at the very first sign of malfunction, long before it becomes sickness or injury. We will keep you, your children and your children’s children, healthy and productive. This is our solemn promise to you and we may even keep it, if you obey us and always do right. As the sign that you are keeping this promise, you must strap this bracelet on every man and boy in your family, and yes, of course dear, womenfolk too.

Here is a free app if you agree to swallow our drugs, and here is a free test if you let us decide what to do with the results, and here is a free toaster if you get a mortgage, and here is free health insurance letting you have any doctor or hospital you want, as long as it’s the one we picked for you. Here is your freely elected representative, programmed to say what you want to hear, on a soft bluish background because we know from your genomic sequence that bluish colors engender your trust in us. No sweetie, we don’t think you’re stupid, but you are weak and frightened. We are just trying to do what’s best for you and we appreciate your input, your tweets, your blogs, your amusing comments, your die-ins and even a little arson and looting, if done in good taste. One day you will be grateful for our guidance and the limits we are setting for you now. Or maybe not, but by then you’ll all be dead anyway, so frankly darling, we don’t give a damn.

February 13, 2015

Is Meat Unhealthy? Part VIII

Health can be defined as the absence of disease, and that is the lens through which we've been examining meat so far.  However, most of us have a broader view of health that also includes optimal growth and development, physical and mental performance, well-being, fertility, immunity, robustness, and resilience.  What role does meat play in this broader view of health?

Non-industrial cultures

One of the things I keep coming back to in this series is the strong natural affinity that our species has for meat.  Every culture that does not prohibit meat consumption for religious reasons (e.g., Indian Hindus) seeks and eats meat avidly.

A key fact that stands out from my recent conversations with anthropologists is that hunter-gatherers and subsistence agriculturalists place a high value on meat, even if they already have regular access to it.  Here's an excerpt from a paper by Kim Hill, Magdalena Hurtado, and colleagues (1):
Observations of the exchange rate between other foragers and their agricultural neighbors indicate that meat is worth much more than carbohydrate calories (e.g., Hart 1978; Peterson 1981). Hart, in his study of exchanges of meat and casava between Pygmy foragers and neighboring agriculturalists, found that approximately four and one half times as many calories of casava were exchanged for each calorie of meat given. In addition, it appears that almost everywhere in the world meat calories from domestic animals are probably expensive to produce relative to plant calories, and yet subsistence farmers continue to use at least some of their "cheap" plant calories to produce "expensive" animal calories (see Harris 1985 for discussion)
Why do humans around the globe value meat so much?  This strongly suggests that we've evolved an affinity for meat because eating it provides a reproductive advantage.  In other words, meat may increase our "Darwinian fitness".

Read more »

February 08, 2015

Creamy Dreamy Peanut Butter-Blueberry Sundae





Ice cream:

- 3 ripe bananas, sliced and frozen (300-330 g)


- 3-4 tbsp almond milk

- 1 heaped tbsp Arctic Berries Blueberry Powder

- 1 pinch vanilla powder or extract

Peanut Butter Sauce:

- 1 tbsp peanut flour (or peanut butter)


- 1 tbsp almond milk

- 1 pinch sea salt

Optional:

- Toppings such as mulberries, coconut chips or raw cacao nibs


How to:

1. Start by making the peanut butter sauce: in a small bowl combine the ingredients for the sauce with a fork until you're left with a thick yet runny sauce. Set aside while you make the ice cream.

2. Place all the ice cream ingredients except for the almond milk in a food processor or high speed blender and blend on high*. Blend for approximately 60-90 seconds or until the frozen banana slices have all been broken down to tiny pieces. Stop to scrape down the sides if necessary.
3. Carefully remove the top cap from your blender and slowly pour in the almond milk while blending. Blend on high until smooth and again, stop to scrape down the sides if you need to. Be patient and don't add more liquid unless you really have to. The ice cream will be much creamier and not as runny this way.
4. Spoon the ice cream up in two bowls and drizzle generously with the peanut butter sauce. Top with whatever you desire and eat immediately before it melts! (And feel free to just have it ALL for yourself. That's what I did.)

*I find this the most effective way to get a creamy, completely smooth ice cream but if it seems too complicated to you, simply place all the ice cream ingredients in the blender/food processor and blend until smooth.

February 06, 2015

Berry-Boosted Blueberry Jam (Naturally Sweetened)

There's something oddly comforting about jam. That sweet, slightly sour taste adds another dimension to basically any carb-y meals. On top of a steaming hot bowl of oatmeal is how we usually enjoy our jam here in Sweden but I have always loved to spread a thick layer of raspberry preserves on top of a crispy, golden brown slice of toast. Mhm. And I know I just said raspberry even though this recipe specifically calls for blueberries. Confession: I didn't like blueberries as a kid. I loved spinach but not blueberries. Yes, I was weird. Moving on.



I must say I'm very pleased with this recipe. It's thick, just like jam is supposed to be. Don't want any of that runny, slimy stuff, no thank you. So it's thick, packs a punch of blueberry flavour only rounded off by a hint of vanilla. I even got my mom hooked on it so now it's a battle against time to have as much as possible for myself before she eats it all up!




Also, I finally got to use a jar from the collection featured throughout this post. To say that I have an obsession with jars is an understatement. This recipe makes one small jar but if you feel like you're likely to finish it soon after making, feel free to double the recipe. You could probably even freeze some for later if you wanted to, even though I haven't tried this myself yet.

Finally I want to point out that this jam is even more nutrient-dense than your average Homemade-healthy-jam all thanks to the Arctic Berries powders! I added some of the blueberry powder and some of the sea buckthorn powder in this but combine them however you want for your own personal touch! Hope you enjoy the recipe!


Berry-Boosted Blueberry Jam

-1/2 lb (225 g) frozen or fresh blueberries

- 6-8 fresh dates (75 g)

- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla powder

- 1/2 tbsp  any Arctic Berries Powder (I used the Sea buckthorn and blueberry powders)

- 1 tbsp chia seeds

How to:

1. Place the blueberries in a small sauce pan and slowly thaw them over medium heat.

2. Meanwhile, pit the dates and put them in a small bowl. Blend the dates with a hand blender until smooth and set aside.
3. Once the berries start to release their juices, bring it up to the boil and let boil for about a minute.
4. Remove the blueberries from the heat and stir in the date paste, vanilla powder and Arctic berries powder(s). If the date paste feels very dense and hard to incorporate into the berry mixture, start by transferring a few tablespoons of blueberry juice into the bowl with the date paste and mix the two to make it a bit looser in consistency.
5. Lastly, stir in the chia seeds and make sure they're evenly divided throughout the jam.
6. Spoon the jam up in a glass jar, seal it and let sit on the countertop to cool off before putting it in the fridge.



My favourite way to eat this jam - thinly spread on top of a rice cake.





Best Granola Ever (no oil!)

Prepare yourselves for the crunchiest, sweetest, most delectable granola ever! Though you could never tell from how they taste, these caramel-ly clusters are 100% refined sugar-free and contain no added syrups or oils whatsoever! That's just how we do it around here. ;)



The added nutrient-boost from the sea buckthorn powder gives this granola an extra umph, a je-ne-sais-quoi that is hard to beat. I know that I'm going to add this beautiful orange powder to many more recipes from here on out and after tasting this granola, I hope that you are as well.


Sea Buckthorn & Buckwheat Granola

1 cup raw buckwheat groats (175 g)

1/2 cup quinoa pops (15 g)

1/2 cup raw almonds (75 g)

14 dates, pitted (160 g)

2 tbsp Arctic Berries Sea Buckthorn Powder

2 tbsp water

How to:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 130C.
2. Chop the almonds coarsely and pale them in a large bowl along with the buckwheat groats and quinoa pops.
3. In another, smaller bowl, blend the pitted dates, water and the sea buckthorn powder with a hand blender until completely smooth.
4. Transfer the date paste into the bigger bowl and mix well with the grains and almonds until you have a chunky 'dough'.
5. Bake in the oven for 35 minutes. Remove to stir around every ten minutes to prevent the clusters from burning!
6. To make sure the clusters stay crunchy, leave them in the oven overnight to dry out, preferably with the oven lamp on.
7. Store in an airtight container and enjoy on top of your smoothies, oatmeal, banana ice ream or anything really!