I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.
-Bill Cosby
On my vacation in America, I have learned some very important things. This is my second time to really observe Americans in the wild since eating differently, and here’s some of what I gleaned:
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
― Clive James
I would like to explain to you today the results of my personal test of the Resistant Starch Craze. I wrote about this starch in this post, which also contains links to both pro- and con- arguments about the stuff. I’ll very briefly summarize here. The craze is largely in the Paleo world, and what everyone is saying is that resistant starch is starch that doesn’t get digested; thus will not spike your blood sugar; is found in potatoes, rice, green plantains, bananas, and a few other things; and will feed your gut biome and result in better energy, blood sugar control, sleep, digestion, weight loss, etc. I believe the gut biome will also volunteer to babysit your children if you feed it enough. I also believe doctors have known about this for ages, and call it indigestible starch.
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.
–Leonardo DaVinci
If you read any news from the low-carb/Paleo sort of world, you can’t help but have been assaulted recently by all the screaming about resistant starch. It’s the New Big Thing.
Now, don’t let my sarcasm fool you. There might really be something to it. The theory seems sound. It’s just that a lot of stuff remains unproven and is down to personal experience. That doesn’t mean everyone promoting it won’t be proven correct in the next few years. It just means a lot remains unknown. Plus, I’m always leery of the New Big Thing. So let’s talk very briefly about what it is and what’s going on. I’m just going to do a basic rundown because there are far better, in-depth analyses of this that have been done by others. If you want to really get into this, I recommend these:
When it comes to eating right and exercising, there is no “I’ll start tomorrow.” Tomorrow is disease.
– V.L. Allinear
In the last post we talked about the book Body by Science. If you read it or are thinking about doing so, you might be left with one last question:
“That all sounds great, and in an ideal world, sure, I’d like to have plenty of protective muscle. But come on. I have this thing. It’s called a life. I have a/three job/s, kids, church, PTA. EVERYONE knows that exercising is good, but in the real world there’s just no time.”
I had that same thought early on in the book. I mean, “everyone knows” that to gain much of any muscle you’re going to have to spend time at the gym and spend money and really,…good grief. I’ve got more urgent things I need to do.
But that’s not at all necessary.
Continue reading The Hamster Wheel–Specifics
It was the year my Aunt Clara went to visit her cousin. Now, her cousin was not only gifted on the glockenspiel, but being a screech owl, also sang soprano in the London Opera.
–Owl
The long silence has been due to illness. I got the flu and it was just too much to blog while living the rest of life. The main problem was not the illness per se, but all the pollution that greatly exacerbates the breathing difficulties of any illness that affects the respiratory system.
However other than having difficulty breathing, which is related to air quality, this illness was not nearly as bad as it used to be.
This is one of the benefits of living a life without refined flours and sugars: better health in general. You don’t get as sick as often, and generally when you do get sick it isn’t as debilitating or as lengthy. We all understand here that I’m talking about common illnesses, right? I can’t say what will happen if you go get malaria, tuberculosis, or polio.
Continue reading Stuff and Bother
There’s a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.
It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I’ve forgotten —
If I ever read it.
–Robert Frost
There’s good, bad and ugly in the news. How about the roundup? We’ll start with the good.
The one who burns his mouth for drinking milk too hot eats even yogurt carefully.
–Turkish Proverb
Let’s talk about dairy one last time. We’ve considered whether we need to abandon it entirely solely because we imagine our supposed Paleolithic ancestors didn’t eat it. We’ve looked at whether it is going to give us cancer (no) or save us from cancer (no). We talked about its insulinogenic quality.
If you’ve come through all that you’ve probably figured out where I land on this issue: in general, dairy is perfectly fine in moderate amounts if you personally tolerate it and don’t show an insulin addictive response to it. (If you’re just reading this or aren’t sure what I mean I’ll give you a hint: if you ate half the block of cheddar at one sitting without even realizing what you were doing, you probably have a disproportionately high insulin response to this low-sugar food. Sorry.)
Continue reading Final Dairy Clarity
Eat butter first, and eat it last, and live till a hundred years be past.
–Old Dutch proverb
What to do about dairy? Some people love it, some people hate it, everyone wants it on pizza. Vegans won’t touch it while Paleos claim it’s too new a food to safely eat. Some are sure it makes them gain weight or at least feel temporarily bloated, yet many Europeans consume it like candy and seem to enjoy both good health and healthy body weights regardless. Some people groups, such as the Chinese or Vietnamese, have rampant lactose intolerance; yet some societies–like the Mongols, Tibetans, and Masaai–have or do subsist largely on dairy and are strong and healthy. Some scientists claim that it will give you cancer and cause gut leakage problems, while others swear that it’s the best and healthiest way to get your Vit D and calcium, and may even protect your from cancer. One study tells you it will spike your insulin and derange your metabolism; another will tell you that it protects from diabetes.
Continue reading Dairy, Dairy, Quite Contrary
There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
–Unknown
After the catastrophe that was yesterday’s loss of all my writing (catastrophe to me; relief to some.) I am going to try again on the subject of idiocy that gets thrown about over the holidays.
You can’t keep trouble from coming, but you don’t have to give it a chair to sit on.
–New England Proverb
When I was visiting Brother #3 in this summer he asked me:
Is there anything your magic diet doesn’t help with?
We both laughed–it was meant in jest, and he himself had seen some real benefits from changing up his way of eating. But what I said and thought at the time is: No. It does help just about everything.
Even though you weren’t there at the time, I’d like to clarify that statement for you. By it, I do not mean that I think eschewing grains, sugars, and Frankenfats and eating lots of saturated fat and meat is a miracle cure of any ailment. There are three things I do mean:
Ask Me How It Happened 