Some Further Thoughts on Raw and Cooked; Step by Step Kim Chee Recipe

Happy weekend, everyone! The sun is shining here and it is so good to be home. Yesterday was a catch-up day and was also a south-westerly wind storm day. The wind was blowing so hard that I had difficulty applying toilet paper in the outhouse, and then the paper wouldn't drop down the hole--the wind blew it back up!! So, of course, Phil and I went for a beach hike in the crazy wind.

When it blows like this, you can see why erosion happens on our bluff. Here is the southeast corner of our homestead viewed from below--there were several mini-avalanches just while we were there, and the cliff face looks like a sculpture being carved out. I hope that the carving leaves our home up there! Look at the rocks calving out at the bottom.

It's hard to provide a visual for these intense winds, but here is the sand being blown into whorls and traceries--that hit you like bullets if you're downwind...

I was getting ready to talk more about my experiments with and thoughts on PUFAs, especially in aftermath of the Great Health Debate, but there were so many interesting comments on my first post, as well as follow-up thoughts that occurred to me, (things I forgot to mention!) that a revisit seems in order. Also, having recently mentioned kim-chee making, I'm going to share the recipe, step by step.

Raw Food Feel-Good and Appetite Reset
As Mindy and Raederle pointed out, eating mostly raw foods can provide a 'glow' and general sense of well-being for many people. Gena also pointed out that too many people don't eat enough fresh foods. Those people especially could benefit from more fresh plant foods and experiencing the 'glow.' Of course, it's also true that if you have a bunch of heavy food in your system and then eat a bunch of fruit on top of it, the resulting fermentation can make you feel very uncomfortable and not at all glowing. And then there's the whole 'detox' can of worms that can allow people to feel worse before they feel better as they improve their diets. I don't want to get too much farther into that right now.

I'm completely in agreement about the feel-good from fresh plant foods: what I have been wanting to suggest is that this feel-good is negated when it becomes an obsession and you start to view every other form of food as somehow poisonous. Per finding #7 in my 'this much I have learned' post, if you ram home a certain belief that demonizes a certain food or food group, your body is going to manifest symptoms to confirm it. I've noticed that strict raw-foodists (including myself for many years) are much more likely to manifest such symptoms around something of which they feel suspicious, or which is obviously 'cooked,' than around something ambiguous like coconut water (from a can or from a coconut?)

And of course, I'm appealing for openness to compromise. For example, this was my splurge from the Natural Pantry in Anchorage this time:

Powdered coconut water! Now there's no way in a million years I'd have been tempted to buy that when I lived in HI and could harvest my own nuts--or even when I lived in CA and could buy young coconuts for less than a dollar apiece. But it's a good way to get some of the goodness of young coconuts up here where they are so much less available. Similarly, I used to be afraid of eating frozen foods, thinking they were little better than cooked. Now, I'm not too interested in frozen berries when we have tons of raspberries outside in the fall, but the rest of the time, yes please! Freezing reduces some nutrients, but with long, hard winters up here, it's a very acceptable compromise.

The other point that I wanted to address was Lori's comment about resetting taste-buds and appetite. This is a really good point about the value of raw and otherwise minimally-processed foods and it brings us back to the whole 'Pleasure Trap' discussion. Eating lots of raw, fresh, fiber and water-rich plant foods ratchets down our tolerance for intense, artificially enhanced flavors and changes our relationship to foods so that even if we do indulge in 'junk' occasionally, it won't be quite so compelling. It doesn't happen overnight, but it sure is worth holding out for.

Cold Fats and Cooked Crucifers?
One thing that I didn't emphasize in the last post, although I'm sure I've said it before, is that one kind of food that it really is worth keeping raw is Unsaturated Fats. I'm less worried about coconut oil and other saturated fats, since they are less prone to oxidation and more heat tolerant. But as neutral as I try to remain about nutritional information, the oxidation and 'trans-ification' of unsaturated fats when exposed to heat, and the ways that they can affect our bodies in that condition, really do scare me. Please don't cook with vegetable oils! Even olive oil, mostly monounsaturated and therefore somewhat more heat tolerant, has enough PUFA in it to really benefit from being kept at low temperatures.

I also mentioned that the goitrogens in crucifers are not neutralized by making kraut--but other anti-nutrients are, and the krauting process itself improves the vitamin-C profile, provides beneficial bacteria and is otherwise delicious and good. And of course, the funny thing about goitrogens themselves is that there is some evidence that when they're not messing your thyroid up, they might be protective against thyroid cancer! Isn't nature funny?

Bitt asked for a link for the research showing that goitrogens are not neutralized by krauting: I dug around and found this one. It's from the Weston Price Foundation. Whatever you think about their espousal of animal products, they are really interested in traditional food preparation methods like fermentation, and this seems to be a carefully researched article.

There is mention that the goitrogens are most fully neutralized after long boiling--so, Raederle, there's more vindication for your boiled broccoli as beneficial!

Step by Step Kim Chee
I'm open to eating crucifers cooked, and this research helps me to go with my current (idiosyncratic) preference for them that way. But I still love my krauted veggies, and since Lori asked so nicely, I made kim chee again and took pictures! Here it is, step by step.

You need:
A big napa cabbage--pull off the outer leaves and set aside
A couple of carrots (or one very big one)
Scallions (to taste)
Ginger (to taste)
A tablespoon of good quality salt

Start by shredding up the napa cabbage with your chef knife as fine as you can. I like to cut in half lengthwise, then cut each half several more times lengthwise, then chop crosswise.

Then pound it down with something heavy (it's good to use a steel or enamel bowl for this, so it won't bust). My 'something heavy' is simply my upended chef knife--live dangerously, right?

Chop up everything else, and grate in ginger. Yes, for me 'to taste' is a lot! Can also add some crushed chilis. Sprinkle on the salt.

Then, get your hands in there and work the salt in and generally crush and smush everything up. In the above picture, the veggies are overflowing the bowl. In the below picture, they're below the surface.

Now, weight the whole lot down with a plate with something even heavier than your chef knife on top, and leave it to sit...

...until the liquid is up over the surface of the plate. And yes, in the meantime it got dark here. It's amazing how long the days are now--I started that project at about 6pm!

When it's nice and wet like that, stuff the whole lot into a mason jar or similar. Cover the veggies with the reserved outer cabbage leaves. Make sure the liquid is all the way up there and the veggies well tamped down. Weight down with something that fits--this very elegant wine bottle worked perfectly.

Leave out of direct sunlight for a few days and watch out for bubbles!
Enjoy!
Much love...

What is it About Raw Foods Anyway?

Happy Wednesday, everyone! It doesn't feel like 'hump day' or midweek especially: we're in Anchorage,  with good news on Phil's eyes again: his pressure is continuing to hold steady!

So he's off skiing right now and will continue to revel in many dimensions of the beautiful outdoors. We went for a beautiful hike this morning, too, with our friend Terry:

It was -8F (-20C) this morning in Anchorage, but by the time we were walking it was a bit warmer. Cold enough to make your nostrils crinkle!


The other major weather event the past few days has been wind. It has been blowing! We tried to hike along the beach in Homer for a little bit a couple days ago and the wind was spraying the waves up over the road! We had to walk backwards for some of it, and it was one of or shorter hikes, you'd better believe it.

When the snow has started to melt from the trees and then the chilly wind comes in again, it can freeze that dripping water into charming shapes. Look at this wishbone dangling from one of our spruces!

OK--moving to the ostensible subject of this post: What is it about Raw Foods Anyway?

For disclosure of my biases: I used to eat 100% raw very strictly, and worrying about percentage raw even at raw food potlucks was a serious ruling parameter in my life. Nowadays, I eat mostly raw food but I eat cooked food every day too, and I don't put a lot of energy on worrying about the percentage.

There are topics in food and nutrition that I've felt some confusion around as a result of all the recent discussion, but I bring up this topic because I feel that one thing that was clear in The Great Health Debate was that for most people, outside of the serious health crisis situation, the experts (perhaps excepting Robert Young) generally did not claim enormous additional benefits to accrue from a 100% raw foods diet compared to a diet containing some nutritious cooked foods. Even Gabriel Cousens, who is definitely a live foods practitioner, talked about 'protein types' eating cooked beans to obtain purines.

I mentioned at the time that I was impressed by Joel Fuhrman's take: that he didn't think that people gained anything by removing cooked beans and root veggies from their diets. In other words, there are foods that we can eat cooked beneficially.

It seems like a good time to revisit this subject, in the wake of the Great Health Debate, to reinforce the validity of both raw and cooked forms of nutrition and to feel grateful for them. There have been some good discussions of this topic out there quite recently, like Gena's clear and penetrating analysis in response to another blogger's rejection of raw food based on a short-term cleanse, also passionately written and researched. Bitt also has some insightful discussions of the balance between raw and cooked food, including this one. In continued and belated celebration of this little blog's own anniversary, there are also my own posts, written almost a year ago now, analysing and responding to Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire.  I wrote five posts about it in total: an initial overview, a summary, and a three-part analysis of the implications of the book for raw-foodists--part 1, part 2 and part 3. I noticed that during the Great Health Debate, both Dr Goldhamer and Frederic Patenaude mentioned Catching Fire, explicitly to point out that one of the major implications of the claim for cooking's antiquity is that it allowed an increased usage of starchy foods (not edible raw) that drove some great steps forward in human evolution: i.e. it was cooked plants, not raw--or cooked--meat, that made us what we are.

I think that it's important to note, as I did in part 3 of my analysis, that Wrangham's book can actually be interpreted as speaking in favor of eating more raw foods in this day and age of superabundance and super-refined and easily absorbed foods: or at least of more raw and otherwise minimally processed foods.

There is a semantic trap around raw foods too: raw implies "unadulterated," "unmanipulated," "not tampered with," and then much more charged and emotional judgments such as "pure," "clean," (morally) "good."... Of course, nowadays raw foods can be the most decadent, processed, worked concoctions, recipients of great artistry and creativity. When I got into raw foods eight years ago, agave and cacao weren't on the table yet, let alone flours. Things were chunkier back then. 

But even back then, we would sometimes philosophically agree, at our raw food potlucks, we raw food fanatics, that it could be argued that some steamed broccoli might be more nutritious/healthier than a raw pie with tons of nuts and dates. Outside of the sheltered world of the raw potluck, there may be times when the 'raw versus cooked' choice is even less clear-cut.

Travel and Social

As someone who has traveled a lot, I'd be the first to say that it's easy to do so as a raw-foodist. But then I'd have to backtrack a little and to admit that there were times when my refusal to consider cooked food probably left me less well-nourished for my hiking along than I could have been. Off the road, when options dwindle, if all you're willing to eat is fresh fruit and veg, you may wind up with nothing but some tired bananas, whereas a little more flexibility could find some steamed veggies or baked roots. In airports, salads can be exiguous and exorbitant (not to mention covered in cheese, meat and gluten), but if you're not in a panic about whether the guacamole and salsa might contain cooked ingredients, you can get those and be fairly well satisfied.

And then there's the whole world of socializing and accepting hospitality. I accept that it's not good to pull ourselves down to the lowest common denominator, but being willing to share lovingly prepared food that you're not compelled by allergy to avoid is a practice that I have found to strengthen my immune system and open my heart. It's been a long road: initially my internal resistance to and judgments of the foods prevented my enjoyment on this level.

Better Raw, Better Cooked?

I don't subscribe to the 'enzyme theory' of raw foods' superiority. The 'enzyme theory' claims that raw foods spare our own enzymes by bringing their own with them, which have not been denatured by the application of heat. I don't subscribe to this for two reasons. First, I think that any enzymes left on raw foods are denatured in the stomach before the breakdown of the foods actually commences. And second, I believe that it's highly unlikely that there are many enzymes left even in raw foods unless they are literally freshly picked (which may be why microgreens and sprouts are such good food: peak of freshness). It's not just heat that depletes enzymes: many other experiences that each food item undergoes on its increasingly long journey to the table do so too. Roots are not repositories of enzymes to enable growth, but of starch. Seeds contain enzyme inhibitors to keep them dormant and prevent them from rotting (which is part of why sprouting them to remove this is recommended: but the improved hydration is another key).

Without going into too much more detail, I should say that very few raw-foodists that I know personally 'do it for the enzymes.' There are plenty of other good reasons. Interest in raw foods tends to correlate with interest in freshness and quality of the food, which always equates with better flavor and nutritional profile. Raw foods tend to have a higher moisture content--and the water contained in there is some of the best quality, structured water that you can obtain. This structure can improve the availability of the vitamins and minerals contained in fruits and vegetables. Vitamins, of course, are heat sensitive and are generally better available in raw than in cooked foods.

On the other hand, despite the fact that I've put some energy into eating broccoli and cauliflower raw, and have written about it, e.g. in this article, I have to confess that at this time, I'm enjoying them more cooked than I am raw! And of course, they contain goitrogens, which can be a problem for someone like myself with hypothyroid. I recently heard David Wolfe speculating that these goitrogens may be deactivated by juicing but I think that since they are not deactivated by krauting, that may be unlikely. And personally, I'd far rather eat my broccoli than juice it!

Similarly, onions are full of wonderful compounds, some of them not even fully understood--like quercitin, crucial for mitochondrial health, and important sulphur compounds. Well, aside from the fact that I can't stand raw onions, they make me feel sick! So, should I just never eat them? That's what I used to think. Now, going along with Dr Fuhrman's words, I feel good about eating some onions, cooked. If you cook them into a sauce, the huge amounts of vitamin C that they contain may be retained, dissolved in the liquid, so long as you don't boil it for too long!

Another piece of releasing from the black-and-white: I love that raw food techniques can be used with semi-raw preparations, like my peanut butter mousse brownie. Never mind that in retrospect, I think it would have been even better with a raw base...!

A recipe coming soon: this is delicious and part-raw. Peas, barely-blanched cauliflower, coconut oil-sauteed onions in a coconut curry sauce.

Do you think that raw foods are beneficial for everyone? Do you think that this benefit is lost if other kinds of food are included?
Love and balance!

Away from Black-and-White; Amazing Wildlife Sighting; Break in Scheduled Programming

"Forty-seven sea otters hauled out on the beach: who's ever seen that before?"

I had a post (almost) all ready to share about raw versus cooked and other food musings, as part of celebrating the anniversary of this blog and its expressed purpose of moving away from black and white thinking. However, our morning adventure provided a wildlife sighting that was so spectacular that it merited a break in scheduled programming.

Of course, this, itself, is part of a move away from 'black and white.' I don't just talk about food and nothing else. I don't just eat raw food and no other. I don't only write poetry, e-mails and translations/editing! I don't just eat plants (I eat fungi too!) (although I do fear that my vegan friends might not be my friends anymore if I ate an egg one day, even though I have no plans to do so)--and I don't always eat super-low-glycemic. There's so much more to love than just one face of the moon...

So, this morning we took advantage of the huge full-moon low tide and resulting huge expanse of land that is normally underwater to drive for twelve miles up our beach and back again. Some very special scenery gets unveiled at these times.

Here is our cabin as seen from far out on the beach (would usually be underwater)--now you can see how close to the edge we live!

We dropped off some crab pots to use as gabions (cages for rocks) to support the eroding bluff as part of our 'sea-bastion' on the beach below the cabin.

Sometimes, it was very treacherous driving: thank goodness for 'low-4-wheel gear:' it was like a trump card that we pulled out occasionally to get ourselves over some big boulders. Bumpity bumpity...

When we'd gone about five miles further than I've ever been on the beach except on foot or by boat, and were just thinking of turning back, we came upon all these sea otters hauled out on land, probably close to fifty...

...and making ungainly tracks for the beach as soon as we approached. I felt bad for having disturbed them in that way: it was as if we'd interrupted them at church or something!

Sea otters spend the vast majority of their time in the water and we've seen this many of them out in open water before. They are so playful out there, flipping and rolling and tumbling. On the very rare occasions that we've come across one on land, it usually seems to be old or sick. So finding a whole flock of them on land was extremely surprising. They were accompanied and escorted by ravens, who hovered attentively over them: I couldn't tell what that was about. Phil suggested that the ravens were eating the otters' poop (which, upon inspection, looked extremely unappetizing!) but they were following the otters that headed seaward, not guarding their deposits, so I'm not sure about that.

Sea otters have the most incredible pelts--a million hairs per square inch, quite the warm coat for spending most of your life in subarctic waters. They are so graceful in the water, but really ungainly on land--waddling splayfooted with their back humped, they look a bit like inchworms...

Despite the feeling of transgression, of having disturbed something intimate, private and even spiritual, I am grateful to have seen them. Of course we saw dozens of eagles busy on the beach too, and like the ravens, the eagles are starting to pair up and get ready to nest. The mating behavior of the ravens is another whole spectacular story.

We also saw some coyote tracks...

Part of why we came out was for Phil to go shopping. His favorite place to shop is the beach after big tides...

Our raised beds were built from timbers he salvaged from the beach after big storms.

Today, we rescued a bunch of junk and a buoy with a good line on it, but the only timber he brought home was a limb of this gorgeous fallen birch.

This photo scarcely does justice to the beauty of the wood.

Can you believe that the next full moon will be the equinox?

Valentine's Day Recap and Peanut-Butter Mousse Brownies; Questioning Purpose, Sprouts and Kraut

Happy Friday to everyone! The snow got rained on and is now refreezing, so I'll be extra careful when I head out for a walk in just a few minutes: it's like hiking on an inclined rink!

I'll get to the peanut-butter mousse brownie in a moment...

...we had a week off from driving up to Anchorage this week but we're off again for another round on Monday. I tried to used this week to recombobulate and reconnect with my sense of purpose. I also got caught on the wave of The Great Health Debate and shared several posts of analysis of the event. Was that wave part of my true purpose or another wave of discombobulation? I know that it plowed through

my resolution to schedule my time less haphazardly. I also know that nutrition research is something that I have always done and have some passion for.

Things that I missed with the weekly dislocations and enjoyed this week included making kraut...

...and sprouts! Both of these keep me so happy in the wintertime, especially the fresh-fresh-local sprouts.

Several nights this week, my dinner has been some sprouts mixed with kraut, with something spicy like harissa sprinkled liberally over the top, with a baked yam on the side. Virtuous and probably laudable by many of the Great Health Debate experts with whom I resonated most, but not entirely satisfying beyond the conceptual pat on the back. Some coconut oil on the yam helps! I will share some of my personal confusions aroused by the Debate soon as promised...

The other thing that suffered with the dislocation was my poetry writing practice. This is also being impinged upon by the fact that it's the season to apply for financial aid, invoking a slew (and a slough) of paperwork for which I do not have the talent (or much patience)! It's definitely the case that when we're traveling a lot, it's hard for me to get down to my writing practice, and I realized this week that that is partly because of the inextricable link between my spiritual sense/practice and my writing: it's too easy to get knocked off center when we're on the road half the time and to fall down the rabbit-hole of busy-work. And then I even begrudge my blogging and food-creating, because it seems like it falls more under the 'busy work' rubric because I can dive into it and get something done. The truth? Blogging and food-creating are also better and more satisfying when I'm working from a centered place.

I also realize that even though the pervasive cold tends to discourage me from joining Phil spending all hours outside, it's really important to get out and moving, breathing the fresh air, every day. Although that's also a time commitment, it helps with centering, focusing, finding the spiritual point (spirit, after all, is breath).

That's the approach I'm creating for myself right now: it's much better than self-flagellation, don't you think?

Peanut Butter Mousse Brownies

We had a party Tuesday night to welcome home various family and friends who had been gone, celebrate Valentine's day and a birthday. I knew that there was going to be a pile of stunning cupcakes on offer, but I really wanted to make something gluten/dairy free and low sugar too.

We have many peanut butter/chocolate aficionados in the crowd, and I was attracted by this Fudge Brownies with Peanut Butter Mousse from VegNews. I made the brownie more or less as they suggested (subbed gluten free flour with some xanthan gum, erythritol/xylitol instead of sugar, and used nut milk instead of soy milk) and similarly just used chocolate and nut milk for the ganache, but there was no way in heck that I was making the peanut butter mousse with cool whip! (That stuff seriously scares me.)

So, I decided I'd make my own version! I perused a few Sweet Gratitude cheesecake recipes, put my thinking cap on, and here's what I came up with:

1 1/2 cups nut milk

1 cup soaked cashews

1 1/2 cups peanut flour (I used this instead of peanut butter to reduce PUFAs, of course!)

1/2 cup _very dense_ irish moss gel

1/2 cup erythritol (a sugar alcohol with no glycemic index that is naturally found in many foods and doesn't hurt people's tummies)

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Blend all these together very well and add:

2 tablespoons lecithin

3/4 cup melted coconut oil

1/4 cup organic peanut butter

Blend again until everything is very smooth, and pour over your brownie base. At the 'adding oil and lecithin' stage, I also taste-tested and added a dash of white stevia.

I have to say, the peanut butter mousse was by far the best portion of the dessert! The brownie was nice and fluffy, but the flavor was a little disappointing to me (this could have been the fault of the flour mix I used). For the ganache topping, I used dark chocolate chips and nut milk because that's what I had, whereas ordinarily I'll use 100% dark chocolate plus nut milk and then sweeten if necessary. I think most people prefer the dark chips, but for me, they are _way_ too sweet, and too much sugar. A small piece of the cake with that topping took me a day to recover from.

I used my 100% dark chocolate/nut milk technique to make the mint truffles pictured below. They were too dark for most everyone but I think they're to-die-for. There are some hazelnut chocolate balls on the plate too, and peanut butter-chocolate bars that I made specifically for butter-sugar-lovers with no substitutions.

Someone said I should go into business with my allergy-friendly treats. It was a wonderful compliment, but also even more confusing with my current struggle to recombobulate and reorient.

How do you decide what is the most important thing you should be doing in any moment?

Have a beautiful weekend--I'm going to get out and hike that ice and slush!

Some Final (Brief) Thoughts on the Great Health Debate--Listen Inward, Plants, Keep Pleasures Simple, Get Outside! And Questions

I was getting all ready to make a bunch of tables and charts showing which experts on the Great Health Debate said what, who agreed with whom on what, what the overall numbers might suggest. But I have a billion other things to do today, my computer's memory is maxed out and internet connection falteringly slow, and I paid attention to Sean Croxton and Mike Adams in the wrap-up talk on Sunday night, when they said that the major problem they both faced was too much computer time and not enough outside time! I also concluded that detailed person-by-person final analysis and number-crunching on frequency of recommendations would be missing the point of the Debate itself, the dizzying array of different presentations and worldviews as to what works for health.

Instead, then, I offer something more in keeping with the time available to me today and also more in keeping with the spirit of the Debate, I think. It can be summed up in the title to this post, and here are a few more thoughts.

Look Inward
No two experts offered completely identical world views; all experts believed that what they do works. Since I'm celebrating this blog's anniversary, it seems an appropriate moment to link to a post I wrote over a year ago now, on Pyrrhonian Skepticism and its relationship to diet. This school of philosophy observed that there are conflicting phenomena and opinions about everything and advocated suspending judgment to reach the goal of absence of perturbation. This array of different interpretations of different claimed phenomena seems a perfect example of that.

Plants
It seems obvious that eating more plants is beneficial, that eating a diet based on plants is healthful and ecologically sound. Even the proponents of meat-eating or of low-carbohydrate diets recommend eating plenty of vegetables.

Keep Pleasures Simple (not Refined)
This is one of the more important ones to me. You'll remember that I was uneasy about Dr Young's and Dr Goldhamer's rebukes against pleasure, and that I then observed that for me, 'overstimulating' foods are not pleasurable. I've given that some more thought, and compared notes with my husband, who can eat a whole plate of brownies at a sitting and find it very pleasurable, and realized that I do understand what they are saying, agree with them, in fact, and that it comes down to a matter of definition of 'pleasure.' Very concentrated foods, especially very sweet/salty/oily foods (or foods laced with 'excitotoxins'), produce a physiologically overstimulating response that can lead to compulsion around that food--and for sound evolutionary reasons. These are the foods that are most refined, farthest removed from 'ancestral foods,' least familiar (evolutionarily speaking) to our organisms, and most associated with obesity, heart disease and other 'diseases of civilization.' They tend to increase appetite and weight-set-point, especially if the additional stress of guilt and compulsion surround them.

This isn't to say that one shouldn't enjoy one's food. Food can be--should be--pleasurable, but keep the pleasures simple. Note to self: this includes my current yen for almond and peppermint extract and other intense flavors...

Get Outside!
It's essential to health...

and there is so much magnificence...

I seem to be overcoming my own lack of inclination to get outside these past few days and am looking forward to going for a good hike soon if it doesn't snow too hard. I do think that feeling guilty/obligated to get outside, like I was feeling, is counterproductive, though, as once again, pleasure and delight is part of why it's good for us!

A Few Questions
Who gets to be an 'expert?' Sally Fallon made the important distinction between primary researchers (in the lab) and secondary researchers (reading the data, comparing, number-crunching)--and doctors in clinical practice fall somewhere in between, or partake in both. Are the conclusions of someone who has focused in narrowly and knows certain aspects of a particular field completely intimately more valuable than those of someone who may not be as minutely, specifically trained but who is looking at a much larger picture? To complicate the question further, the 'primary' researchers are often funded or otherwise have an agenda, and we know that you can prove anything with research by setting up the study correctly (which is why it was striking that Colin Campbell mentioned in his 'bonus' talk that he hadn't expected to find correlations between animal protein and childhood cancer in the Philippines). Secondary researchers can also have axes to grind, but generally they may stand a better chance of impartiality. People who have had 'road-to-Damascus'-type conversion experiences in their health transformation may often be great experts in their own bodies, and may be inspiring simply for that reason, that they really have discovered what works for them. Often, however, they may wind up less open to accepting that what works for them may not work for everyone.

What research is relevant? In the very first talk, Drs Mercola and Cousens agreed that they keep an eye on research only for 'trends' and do not set enormous store by individual studies--for the abovementioned reasons in part--preferring to rely on their own findings in clinical practice. This was a very striking statement, especially on the very first night, and lent some skepticism to some of the glib citing of research statistics on later nights. For those of us in pursuit of knowledge, it seemed like a good reminder to pay attention to individual studies but to withhold absolute judgment based on them. Any further advice on how to answer this question, of what research deserves attention, is something for which I'd be most grateful.

I will share some odd thoughts over the next while about how my personal thinking has been affected by this Debate, but this is my final 'objective' post about what was offered. So I'll come back and add on if I think of more that needs to be included, and would be grateful for any comments on what else needs to be covered.

much love.

Phil's Laundry and Other Outlandish Things; The Great Health Debate Days 6 & 7

Phil really ought to be the subject of a TV show: almost daily, being around him ensures you'll get exposed to things you'd never imagine otherwise! A little later in this post, I'll share a story about what we took to the laundromat today. Stay tuned! Or, if you're not interested in the Great Health Debate, scroll down to the bottom of the post...

It's a crisp 13 degrees downtown, which means that a little farther from the coast it's well below zero here. Beluga Lake, on which I've been doing my driving practice had more cars on it today than I'd ever seen before! More on that shortly also.

First, though, I hope that my summaries of the talks so far on the Great Health Debate have been useful and interesting. Tonight will be the last night, with Mike Adams and Sean Croxton wrapping things up and also two pre-recorded talks, from T. Colin Campbell and Charlotte Gerson. (Obviously), I haven't listened to those yet, and I'll be back in a day or two with comments about those and some general summaries of what was offered throughout the event. Today, I want to share some thoughts on night 6, with Mark Sisson and Frederic Patenaude, and night 7, with Dr Will Tuttle and Sally Fallon. These were the two most polarized pairs of talks so far: each pitted an advocate of animal products (Sisson and Fallon) against a vegan speaker (Patenaude and Tuttle). However, on night 6 the focus of the debate was  high- versus low-carb and insulin, whereas on night 7 the focus was on the ethics of veganism versus the claimed necessity of consuming animal products.

All four speakers had some admirable things to offer and also some points that seemed highly questionable, to say the least. Perhaps this is because of my personal proclivities, but I didn't come away feeling any more confused as a result of what these speakers had to say, but I think it may partly have had to do with the fact that, as Sally Fallon herself confessed at the beginning of her talk, she--and they all--are secondary researchers: they're not physically present in labs designing and carrying out experiments, nor are they in clinical practice. Additionally, I felt that neither Mark Sisson nor Will Tuttle added a lot to the debate in terms of nutritional discussions, whatever the other merits of what they had to say. Now for some specific remarks on each pair of speakers.

Mark Sisson and Frederic Patenaude
First of all, kudos to Frederic for bringing together such a coherent talk at what was apparently short notice. If he and Kevin hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have realized that he'd had less time to prepare than the other speakers. And kudos to Mark for his light-hearted and humorous approach.

I mentioned above that the main point of difference presented between these two was that Sisson was advocating a low-carb diet (less than 100g of carbs/day, which isn't actually that low, but precludes grains, sugar, more than a little fruit, etc) with animal products, and Patenaude was advocating a high-carb, low-fat, vegan, whole-foods, high-fruit diet. Each was clearly very convinced of the rightness of his own position, and each was also clearly convinced that high amounts of fat and carbohydrate cannot coexist in a diet and have health be maintained: one or other macronutrient has to be restricted. Before I go on to their reasons for this, I should say that this throws up a red flag for me right away. As I shared in my 'this much I have learned' post, my experience has led me to believe that all fats are not created equal and all carbs are not created equal, and therefore to reduce the whole picture of health to a need to restrict a whole class of macronutrient seems like an oversimplification.

Mark Sisson, somewhat like Daniel Vitalis, advocates an atavistic strategy: a return to hunter-gatherer-type food choices, with the belief that this includes exclusion of grains and reliance on a high amount of protein and fat. Aside from the fact that research has been emerging to show that hunter-gatherer societies generally ate a lot of carbohydrate in the form of root vegetables, my question here is the same one I had for Daniel: what of the possibility that our rapid evolution with the rise of agrarianism means that we are no longer 'epigenetically' equipped for a step backwards like that? Sisson agrees with Mercola and Cousens that keeping insulin low is the key to longevity and health, and claims that eating high-carb inevitably raises insulin.

Frederic Patenaude points out that the human body's motor is glucose: that's the source of our fuel, and claims that it makes most sense to derive that fuel from complex carbs and lots of fruit (he claims that the latter is not a problem because of the fiber and minerals accompanying the fruit sugar). His further claim, that we should eat carbs because they are 'what taste good to us' derives from the Natural Hygiene and Instinctotherapy schools of thought. Although I agree that whole foods taste great to a clean palate, I think this claim is a minefield in this day and age of hyperstimulated tastebuds. You end up having to distinguish between what tastes good 'naturally' and what is part of the 'Pleasure Trap,' and can easily be misunderstood by people who think that twinkies and cheeseburgers 'taste good' as arguing for those! So, his first claim, which is essentially a claim of economy (get glucose from carbs rather than by gluconeogenesis from proteins or going into ketosis) is more attractive. Speaking of ketosis, he quoted a newspaper report that mentioned as axiomatic that ketosis slows down brain function. I'll say something in the next post about the credibility of sources like that, but although there are certainly problems associated with being in ketosis for extended periods of time, I think it's very unlikely that people eating the kind of diet Sisson described are in ketosis much of the time.

Sisson's and Patenaude's respective incredulity over the macronutrient ratio opposite from what they favored was amusing. Sisson suggested that the Ornish patients who had lowered insulin with whole grain diets may still have had net elevated levels of insulin 'under the curve' over the course of the day and implied that much of the improvement in readings was due simply to reduced calories. Patenaude cast doubts that low-carb advocates are really eating low-carb, including a personal query against Mark Sisson's cream in coffee and occasional beer! His claim that it's actually impossible to eat low-carb was clearly incorrect, since whole populations have done it (although perhaps he's correct that this wouldn't have been their first choice): also, as I've already mentioned a couple times, you can actually eat quite a lot of carbs on what is still called a 'low carb' diet. Patenaude claims to maintain low blood sugar while eating a lot of fruit but minimizing fat: we don't know what his insulin levels are, however. And while it's great that he feels good eating fruit, he didn't really address the possible problems with fructose. Recent research has suggested that the fact that fructose does not spike blood sugar levels (because it's processed through the liver) does not necessarily mean that it's healthier for the body overall.

Some people took exception to Sisson's philosophy of 'not getting into it with vegetarians:' of accepting that there are vegetarians who are very sure that they are 'right,' and he's very sure of his opposite position. I actually think that this is a sane way to go (of course I think that, living with someone with a very different diet to my own), and overall I enjoyed the level of openmindedness and acceptance of other perspectives displayed by both Sisson and Patenaude: a rare thing where each is a strong believer in a polarized position.

Will Tuttle and Sally Fallon
Acceptance of other perspectives was a feature not much in evidence last night in Tuttle's and Fallon's talks. Sally Fallon said several variations of 'there is no right/healthy way to be a vegetarian or vegan' and went as far as to implore vegan women not to have children. Will Tuttle said that humans continuing to eat meat would destroy the planet in short order. Tuttle's perspective was spiritual (he has traveled in Asia and has a doctorate in Comparative Religion: he was a very passionate, charismatic, inspiring speaker (although he definitely had a tendency to get carried away, rant, lose focus). Fallon was equally sure of her views and forthright, but in a more 'earthy' way. It was interesting that aside from the 'animal products/no animal products' polarity, Tuttle was focused on our need to evolve away from our historical ways of being and move to another level, whereas Fallon was focused on the need to return to traditional ways, meaning pre-Industrialization, small-farm-based food production and including grains and dairy: i.e., not an atavistic/'primal' regression a la Sisson or Vitalis.

I think those two polarities sum up the two talks fairly handily, but each speaker said a few shocking things that I want to mention.

Tuttle's claim that using animal manure in food production is 'absurd' and that animals should not be part of our sphere of influence was problematic. Although I agree philosophically with his claim that we cannot 'own' another animal, where are all the animals going to go if they're all set free? Presumably, as we always did, we need to coexist with them. His picture of veganic farming sounds like a call to create an ecosystem in which we have cut ourselves off from animals and I believe that that is impossible. Even the health of the soil is crucially dependent on earthworms and smaller micro-organisms, and I don't think anyone is going to recommend that we remove them from the ecosystem. Animal poop--including our own--has been a building block of the soil for all time. And although an argument over who got to keep the humanure when someone left a farm was legendary in the community I used to live in in HI, it really is possible to take animal poop without exploiting or dominating the animal. You can go to the beach and collect guano, or go out in the woods...

I've met vegans before who eschewed pets and abhorred companion animals because of that argument against domination, and I understand what they're saying but think it's an oversimplification. It also doesn't say anything against the practice of hunting. Daniel Vitalis might say (and I might agree) that the genetic modification of plant crops is an even worse, and more environmentally detrimental, form of domination. Small-scale polyculture farms are a wonderful thing to strive toward, as is reforestation, but I think that Tuttle's estimation of how much food can be grown on a homestead and how many people it might feed was unrealistically high. Reforestation won't necessarily be compatible with growing a lot more plant food for human consumption: one of things that we struggle with, gardening up here, is getting enough light on the garden plants in the Boreal Forest. Plus, like I said, all the animals have to go somewhere.

Up here, where it's relatively wild, coming through our homestead we have moose, pheasants, eagles, various corvids and songbirds, an explosion of snowshoe hares, squirrels, and the occasional visit from our neighbors turkeys and dogs! When they're not hibernating, we have black bears right here too. And when they come through, they all poop! My point is that we coexist with animals and that treating them with respect shouldn't have to mean an artificial sequestering of them from our ecosystem.

The most shocking thing that Sally Fallon said was that animals raised for human consumption die more humanely than they would in the wild. Having just read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, I find it hard to accept the claim that farmed animals die quickly and instantly--and what about the quality of their life prior to slaughter?

The other shocking thing that she said was that she is not concerned about mercury levels in fish (although she is concerned about mercury fillings): that a healthy gut has the enzymes and other protective agents to escort mercury from the body and allow fish to be eaten without concern. It's true, she was talking about her personal choice, but since so many people nowadays do not have healthy guts; since we are 'bombarded with toxins' from so many sides; since even the FDA warns of the dangers of mercury levels in certain fish, it seemed like a potentially irresponsible claim. Otherwise, most of what she said was about what one would expect: that a whole-foods-based, omnivorous diet, preferably from organically raised livestock, is essential to good health. Some of the scare-mongering stories about vegetarian babies growing in rotten teeth were startling, but of course there are likely just as many positive stories from those who advocate for vegetarian diets. [Edit and afterthought: I agree with some other commenters that her allegation that vegetarianism is responsible for such epidemic health problems seems unrealistic given that in actuality, the percentage of vegetarians in the population is so low! Another fallacy that she perpetrates is the implication that all vegetarians eat tons of soy. Most health-conscious vegetarians are pretty careful about soy, I think. While the story of the prisoners in Illinois being fed soy in an uncontrolled experiment is truly horrific, it doesn't fit the story of most plant-based eaters.]

What else would you like to hear about the Great Health Debate? I will share some closing thoughts in my next post, and then during the week that follows, I'll share some of my personal perspectives and the ways in which it has confused me! And I'll be happy to address any other requests too.


Back to Phil's Laundry...
Anyone who's spent any time around Phil knows that their freezer is at risk of being populated with dead birds and crustaceans, assorted roadkill, and pelts. Phil is endlessly curious and avid to possess the essence of beings that he encounters. This means that when he comes across a dead animal when he's out hiking, he's likely to either bring it all home and put it in the freezer or skin it and bring home the pelt! (Yes, this is a contentious bone sometimes when I need to put food in the freezer!)

Well, this winter Phil has had mercy on me and decided that it's time to tan some of the pelts.
Remember that juvenile eagle that was in our yard? 

He was on cleanup duty! Phil had put out a hide and he cleaned the remaining pieces of meat off. A nice supplement for the eagles in a lean season.

Afterwards, Phil poured kerosene on the hide and rubbed baking soda into it, as much as it would take. He left it overnight and then in the morning thawed it out, washed all the kerosene and baking soda off with some cheap shampoo... And then we took it all to the laundromat! Hopefully no one was looking. We had to put them through twice: still a distinct stink of kerosene when it came out.

Phil has a story of a caribou hide that he took to a laundromat one time years ago, where things went horribly wrong and the hair came off all over the washing machine. I don't think he ever went back there! I was so relieved that nothing like that happened today.

...and Other Outlandish Things
It's outlandish because it's a frozen lake! I've never seen so many people and cars on a body of water before. Here are little kids racing their snow-machines. (For non-Alaskans, snow machines are like all-terrain vehicles for winter: fast, noisy, with runners instead of wheels, enabling rapid access to all kinds of places that would otherwise demand an arduous hike or a day of snowshoeing. Adult-sized ones run around $10k and are the ultimate testosterone toy.)

Speaking of testosterone toys, the adults get their fun too. This is ice-racing--an assortment of beat-up but souped-up vehicles racing around the ice in a circle. Lots of skidding and sliding.

What's the strangest thing you've put through the laundry?

Missed Anniversary and Letter-day; Blog Accountability; More on the Great Health Debate; Mountain Dragon

Missed Anniversary and Letter-day

Perhaps it's not surprising that I missed my blog's first anniversary, given that my parents don't remember their wedding date and we don't even know my mom's actual birthdate for certain (they never quite got clear on converting the date from the Jewish lunar calendar to the western solar calendar). But there it is: in the midst of all this discombobulated to-ing and fro-ing between here and Anchorage, February 1st, the anniversary of this blog's beginning, came and went unremarked. So, happy belated birthday, little blog!

I don't have much to add to that today, but over the next week or so, I will offer some reflections on what this year of blogging has allowed me to offer, what it has brought me, where it came from and where it's going.

Another milestone that came and went this week was my completion of a second 12-week chelation cycle. This is the end of a huge detoxification procedure that began with the removal of mercury fillings last April and May and hopefully leaves my body largely free of the mercury and lead with which she was riddled. Which means that the coast (or tract) is clear for some effective yeast cleansing--on with the rollercoaster and more dietary tweaks coming up soon. 

Chelation involved taking capsules of DMSA, a sulfur-based compound that escorts metals from the body, following each week of this with a Vitamin C IV and then a rest week of mineral replacement. It's a harsh process (nausea, paresthesias (weird physical sensations), crankiness, constipation, mood swings), which I mitigated by sweating in the steam shower--that seemed to help me not to feel quite so lousy. I have to say, though, that the last couple of cycles really were not so uncomfortable and nauseated. This was probably due largely to diminishing amounts of toxic metals mobilizing out, but the addition of starch to my diet and resultant improvement in general 'motility' may have helped too.

I want to get on to talking about The Great Health Debate, so I'll table the post-chelation talk too, but I believe that it's important to celebrate the end of this arduous process.

The Great Health Debate and Blog Accountability

Since my last post, we've heard David Wolfe and Daniel Vitalis, both of whom I know personally and am very familiar with, and Drs J. E. Williams and Alan Goldhamer, both of whom I hadn't heard of before. Tonight, it's Mark Sisson and Frederic Patenaude--I know Frederic and have worked with him (but years ago now) and am at least somewhat familiar with Sisson's work. Two more nights to go after this!

It's probably not at all surprising, but I confess that at this point I'm feeling very confused about diet and nutrition! Just to help that confusion, I've recently been making dietary experiments on my own account, between decreasing PUFAs and adding starches, so I was hardly on firm ground to begin with. However, Tina recently talked on her blog about feeling grateful for the feeling of accountability it engenders and I'm with her on that. When this whole Great Debate is over, after I've summarized what I see as the most important points, I'll talk a bit about my personal dilemmas. 

For now, though, I'm going to continue offering selected observations about the last two nights of talks, as objectively as I can. 

The last two nights were an interesting foursome of talks indeed: a nice contrast for me in that the first pair were very familiar to me and the second totally unfamiliar.

Wolfe and Vitalis

Wolfe and Vitalis share a keen interest in wild plant and fungal foods (superherbs) and their nutritional and vibrational importance, as well as the recognition that it is difficult to acquire adequate calories from these alone: they address this shortfall in very different--opposite ways. Vitalis' approach is atavistic: a return, as near as possible, to 'our ancestral diet,' turning his back on farmed, mass-produced, altered foods: a local, all-wild-food diet, which inevitably means going to animal foods for caloric bulk. Wolfe, instead, turns to the state of the art that modern technologies can offer, bringing the ultimate distillations of the most powerful foods from all over the world. He agrees on the importance of local foods, but eschews animal products to avoid the karmic implications of eating them. I appreciated this spiritually-oriented approach: spiritual karma is really the other side of the physical fact of toxin accumulation associated with eating higher on the food chain. Just because it's spiritual/non-tangible, it's not to be dismissed.

I love David Wolfe's charisma and dedication to creating positive energy: however, a lot of the time I wish that he had his facts straighter! As a Classical Linguist, I find many of his etymological and historical excursions very frustrating, and the inaccuracy contained there tends to make me doubt the credibility of some of his other assertions. I wish that I'd gotten in his face back when I was a regular in the kitchen at his events and asked him to have me edit for him! His comments on chocolate were a whitewash, for sure. He simply dismissed the notion that it causes a problem for anyone (which already makes his claims suspect, because so many have experienced trouble) and insisted that in historical studies, together with olive oil and honey, it's the number one longevity food! (Now, where do those three coexist? I can think of many places where honey and one of the others coexist locally, but where do olives and cacao both grow? I've seen some olive trees on the Kona side in Hawaii, but marginally...)  Something else that David said about which I'm somewhat dubious is that it's a scientific fact that Caloric Restriction creates longer lifespan. Now, as a diehard restricter, you'd think I'd be all over that! But from the research that I've been looking at lately, I'd have to say that the CR hypothesis remains that and is not an established fact at all. But the overall message of increasing your vibration, seeking out the best, doing your best, is always delightful.

Daniel Vitalis is also a very charismatic and persuasive speaker, and his points about the equation between agriculture and deforestation, between cultivating and diminution of potency, are very thought-provoking. The contrast in vigor, speed of growth and herbal properties between wild and cultivated greens in climates as diverse as Hawaii and Alaska has always frustrated me as a gardener and provoked a lot of thought about the value of cultivating at all. I also loved that he made the point that if you're going to eat meat, you should use the whole animal, both from the 'karmic' and from the nutritional perspectives. I strongly believe that if someone is going to eat meat, they need to pay attention to that. I think that like David, however, his silver tongue allows him to get away with some assertions that may not be totally accurate: for example, his discussion of our anatomy versus that of our primate relatives left something to be desired. And while he addressed epigenetic decay and deformity, he did not address the glaring possibility that epigenetics means that we have physiologically evolved to a modern, agrarian diet and may not be able to simply reverse all the problems by reverting to a putative atavistic diet.

Williams and Goldhamer

Drs Williams and Goldhamer shared a focus on whole foods but were very different in personality and approach. Dr Williams, who has been described as 'The Indiana Jones of nutritional research,' was so personable and easy to listen to. Dr Goldhamer was more bombastic and insistent and came across as more of a zealot, somewhat as did Robert Young. 

I really appreciated Kevin Gianni's gracious appraisal of Young's zealotry as being due to the fact that he works mostly with people with very serious ailments and the frustration of working with such people and having them be non-compliant. I suspect that the same is true for Dr Goldhamer, who runs a fasting retreat center and has had some amazing successes with reversal of serious illness through fasting and moving patients onto a no-sugar, no-salt, no-oil high-raw vegan diet. However, I mentioned my wariness of Dr Young's apparent total discounting of the role of pleasure in nutrition. Dr Goldhamer goes even further in this: his main book is called The Pleasure Trap and he alleges that sugar, salt and oil trigger an addictive dopamine response in everyone, causing repeated bad food choices and downwardly spiraling health. Fasting, according to him, is perhaps the only way to cut through this pattern and restore sanity to the palate. 

Now, I have an 'austere' part as big as anyone's, and this kind of reasoning would seem like an obvious hook for me. Which is why it may be a good thing for me that I'm married to Phil, Mr Eat-anything-and-everything-and-remain-pretty-darn-healthy, and have been reading Matt Stone's work, encouraging a more abundant and accepting approach, moving away from demonizing common foods. Because I wasn't totally hooked by this: I had to note that obvious dopamine junkies, like my own husband, are not dying of their habit, and would probably trade extra pleasure for extra years of life. As I said in my last post, wouldn't it be good 'to be able to transmute some of the gray areas and rough edges of perfection with grace and gratitude, to let pleasure and appreciation round out the nutrient levels?' I should also note that my experience with the dopamine-triggering foods that make me feel compulsive (sugar, artificial sweeteners, sometimes chocolate) is very definitely not one of pleasure: it's a compulsive, dirty, unpleasant-turn-in-the-rollercoaster feeling. Icky, not pleasant at all. But maybe that's just me.

I respect Dr Goldhamer and am glad that he provides the service that he does: it sounds like he has really helped a lot of people. However, with respect, I didn't agree with everything he had to say. For example, he placed oils in same the 'deranged-excitement-causing' spot as refined sugar and alleged that as refined, processed foods, lacking in fiber, they give no satiation indication and lead to overeating and that whole doomed road. I used to believe this: I used to avoid anything with any oil in it at potlucks--even olive oil on a salad--let alone eat any at home! But nowadays, I eat a lot of coconut oil and even without fiber, it sure does have a satiation index. Sometimes, if I'm way too hungry, I just pop a little piece of coconut oil and it usually keeps me stable until I can eat something. My experience is that fats generally add satiation. 

I should also say that he was explicit that the health challenges that his center most often addresses are the 'diseases of civilization' like heart disease, hypertension, etc, as well as the autoimmune diseases. In my ND's parlance, I would guess that his patients are mostly 'disease of excess' patients, whereas a 'disease of deficiency' person like myself might not benefit so much (I have to say this, for myself and for any other recovering compulsive faster)!

Dr Williams is so interesting, especially because of his decades of experience with indigenous peoples. He has spent time with Bering Sea Siberians, walrus hunters living almost entirely on animal foods, a very high-fat diet, and with Q'ero Indians near Cuzco, Peru, who lived almost entirely on starchy plant foods. Both peoples were very healthy, as healthy as one another despite the extreme difference in their diets, until they moved to cities and started eating processed foods, pointing up the fact that what their very different diets had in common was the absence of any processed foods. This is, no doubt, a familiar story, but hearing his first-hand experience both as a doctor and a human being, really brought it home.

This experience is perhaps what allows Dr Williams to exude such a sense of balance. He recommended a largely vegetarian diet, but had had the experience of seeing some vegetarians failing to assimilate plant-based protein, even though they were taking in an adequate amount, and had remedied that with small amounts of animal proteins in certain cases. He still came across as recommending predominantly plant-based nutrition, but with caution and circumspection. I really appreciated that he made the distinction between taking in enough nutrition and actually assimilating it once you've eaten it. This is such a crucial issue and I've been surprised that it hasn't received more attention as yet.

I don't want to go on too long, so I'll leave it at that for tonight and come back in a day or two with some comments about the next few speakers.

I forgot to share this in my last post: on the beautiful drive to Anchorage, I look forward to this particular view every time we take the turn up into the mountains. 

Do you see the dragon head? I think I managed to capture it.

I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on the Great Health Debate. And if you're not listening in, is my analysis helpful so far or is it too abstract?