Yearly Archives: 2011 - Page 31

Around the Web; and What is the Antidote to Stress?

Posted by on March 26, 2011 44 comments

Here are things that caught my eye this week:

[1] Oxygen Bad, Carbon Dioxide Good?: Gary Taubes told us there were good calories, bad calories; now the New York Times tells us of good air, bad air.  The Buteyko method, a shallow-breathing technique developed in 1952 by a Russian doctor, Konstantin Buteyko, can greatly improve asthma. The explanation:

Mrs. Yakovlev-Fredricksen said: “People don’t realize that too much air can be harmful to health. Almost every asthmatic breathes through his mouth and takes deep, forceful inhalations that trigger a bronchospasm,” the hallmark of asthma.

“We teach them to inhale through the nose, even when they speak and when they sleep, so they don’t lose too much carbon dioxide,” she added.

I find it’s a challenge to keep my mouth closed, so I guess I must be deficient in carbon dioxide!

[2] Gary Taubes should use this: Yes, it is possible to be a 405-pound marathoner.

[3] Interesting posts this week: Emily Deans draws some lessons for healthy weight loss from the Ancel Keys experiments. Dennis Mangan lists a number of papers showing that the elderly live longer when their serum cholesterol is higher. (See also O Primitivo.) CarbSane sets forth her Credo. Beth Mazur comes up with a great scheme for judging the healthfulness of food: Weight Maven’s EZ Points scheme. Julianne Taylor reports that good things happen when pets eat their wild diets.

Finally, Paleo vs non-Paleo:

[4] Comment of the week: Michelle reports that Raynaud’s syndrome might be an infectious condition – and shares the good news that her arthritis is improving with antibiotic therapy:

Dr. Thomas McPherson Brown considered Raynaud’s to be in the family of rheumatoid diseases, and found it responded well to low dose pulsing tetracyclines.  Those pesky stealth infections!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_McPherson_Brown

http://www.roadback.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/studies.display/display_id/96.html

Michelle, on low dose pulsing Doxy for Rheumatoid Arthritis and doing well.

[5] Don’t forget to exercise: From a recent review:

Several large cohort studies have attempted to quantify the protective effect of physical activity on cardiovascular and all cause mortality. Nocon et al. in a meta-analysis of 33 studies with 883,372 participants reported significant risk reductions for physically active participants. All-cause mortality was reduced by 33%

Reference: Golbidi S, Laher I. Molecular mechanisms in exercise-induced cardioprotection. Cardiol Res Pract. 2011 Mar 6;2011:972807. http://pmid.us/21403846.

(Via Fight Aging!)

[6] Animal photo: Are these two married?

[7] Medical Breakthrough from Bangladesh: From Foreign Policy, how a civil war ended cholera.

[8] It’s Dad’s fault: When obese, insulin-resistant, low-testosterone male mice were bred with lean, healthy females, their daughters had diabetes-like pancreatic beta-cell dysfunction. They inherited the condition from their fathers via epigenetically modified sperm.

This supports other evidence that obesity induces hard-to-reverse changes throughout the body, and that these changes can be passed on epigenetically.

In an evaluation at F1000, one of the reviewers wondered if low testosterone might be the key. It turns out that men with low testosterone are more likely to develop pancreatic beta-cell dysfunction. Perhaps low testosterone causes diabetes in men and their daughters.

Meanwhile, Sean at PaleoHacks found a psychology paper asserting that “displays of power” increase testosterone. Might this be a new, annoying cure for diabetes?

References:

Ng SF et al. Chronic high-fat diet in fathers programs ?-cell dysfunction in female rat offspring. Nature. 2010 Oct 21;467(7318):963-6. http://pmid.us/20962845.

Stellato RK et al. Testosterone, sex hormone-binding globulin, and the development of type 2 diabetes in middle-aged men: prospective results from the Massachusetts male aging study. Diabetes Care. 2000 Apr;23(4):490-4. http://pmid.us/10857940.

(via The Scientist)

[9] No, it’s Mom’s fault: Mice born to obese mothers are more likely to be infertile (source).

Reference: Martin JR et al. Maternal Ghrelin Deficiency Compromises Reproduction in Female Progeny through Altered Uterine Developmental Programming. Endocrinology. 2011 Feb 15. [Epub ahead of print] http://pmid.us/21325042.

[10] Turkeys at Harvard Medical School: No, I don’t mean the doctors. These turkeys:

Via Mike the Mad Biologist.

[11] Declining health since 1998: Via J. Stanton at gnolls.org, lifespan isn’t correlated with health, and health may have peaked in 1998. Our lifespans are still lengthening, but our “healthspans” are shortening. Women can expect to be unable to walk up stairs for the last 10 years of their lives:

[A] 20-year-old today can expect to live one less healthy year over his or her lifespan than a 20-year-old a decade ago, even though life expectancy has grown….

A male 20-year-old today can expect to spend 5.8 years over the rest of his life without basic mobility, compared to 3.8 years a decade ago — an additional two years unable to walk up ten steps or sit for two hours. A female 20-year-old can expect 9.8 years without mobility, compared to 7.3 years a decade ago. (source)

I’m shocked at the magnitude of the health impairments people will live with, but not surprised by the trend. It’s a natural consequence of rising consumption of toxic industrially processed foods.

Our book discusses evidence from Pottenger’s Cats, famine studies, and the Flynn effect that toxicity and malnutrition have transgenerational effects. If diets don’t improve, we might expect the biological damage to be fully visible in the third generation born after toxic food consumption rose in the 1970s.

Reference: Crimmins EM, Beltrán-Sánchez H. Mortality and morbidity trends: is there compression of morbidity? J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2011 Jan;66(1):75-86. http://pmid.us/21135070.

[12] Quote of the week: Charles De Montesquieu: “Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.” If they’d had sugary cereals in those days, breakfast would have gotten the third half!

[13] Elizabeth Taylor died this week at 79. Not enough fat and micronutrients in her diet (indicated by osteoporosis, five vertebral fractures, and two hip replacements); too many cigarettes and other toxins (likely contributors, along with nutrient deficiencies, to her congestive heart failure); too many husbands and, to cover up the damage, too much make-up. But there was never a more beautiful girl:

[14] Stress is Bad – Mythically Bad: Some good things on stress this week. First, Chris Kresser concludes his “9 Steps to Perfect Health” series with advice to “Practice Pleasure”. Pleasure, Chris explains, is “the antidote to chronic stress.”

What’s so bad about stress? A study of 17,000 adults in Stockholm, Sweden found that those with mild psychological stress were more likely to become disabled:

Even mild psychological distress was independently associated with the award of a disability pension … Mild psychological distress may be associated with more long-term disability than previously acknowledged and its public health importance may be underestimated. (source)

Reference: Rai D et al. Psychological distress and risk of long-term disability: population-based longitudinal study. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2011 Mar 21. [Epub ahead of print] http://pmid.us/21422028. (Via Russ Farris)

Finally, I enjoyed an excerpt from The Myth of Stress: Where Stress Really Comes From and How to Live a Happier and Healthier Life by Andrew Bernstein.

I was intrigued by the emphasis Andrew places on psychological stress, since I tend to assume that chronic stress is a symptom of some underlying physical ailment. Andrew argues that psychological stress is important in its own right, and that it is remediable:  “the more insights you have … the less you experience stress.”

Even more interesting was Andrew’s critique of stress pioneer Hans Selye, based on later experiments done by Dr. John W. Mason. Andrew concludes:

There is no such thing as a stressor. Nothing has the inherent power to cause stress in you. Things happen (divorce, layoffs, disease, etc.), and you experience stress – or you don’t – depending on what you think about those things. Stress is a function of beliefs, not circumstances.

I believe disease and infections can cause stress in even the most resilient and insightful people, but I’m also willing to believe the psychological aspects of stress are very important. Why did Viktor Frankl survive Auschwitz? Surely insight was part of it.

Reading the excerpt was both pleasurable and insight-generating, so I’m expecting the full book to be a great stress-reducer!

[15] Why the Neandertals went extinct:

French paleontologists have discovered a Neanderthal cave painting said to represent hands eagerly reaching for a Big Mac, or at least proto-Big Mac, according to the journal, Ancient Discoveries….

“What is most striking about this painting,” says Bouisquet, “is that this is precisely the time period during which Neanderthals went extinct. One naturally wonders, Could the consumption of fast food have contributed to the extinction? As yet we simply don’t know.”

From Glossy News, via John Hawks.

[16] Video of the week: The sky of the Mayas.  Tikal was the capital of one of the most powerful Mayan kingdoms. It is now part of Guatemala’s Tikal National Park and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The soundtrack is a recording of Howler monkeys. The video was made by Stéphane Guisard. Enjoy:

Why Did We Evolve a Taste for Sweetness?

Posted by on March 24, 2011 83 comments

After I did my post on Seth Roberts’s new therapies for circadian rhythm disorders, Seth learned of my experience with scurvy and blogged about a similar experience of his own.

Seth made the important point that food cravings are driven by nutritional deficiencies – a point I heartily agree with, which is why it’s so important for those seeking to lose weight to be well nourished – and asked, “Why do we like sweet foods?” His suggested answer was that the taste for sweetness encouraged Paleo man “to eat more fruit so that we will get enough Vitamin C.”

This led to a fascinating contribution from Tomas in the comment thread:

I have read several books on the Traditional Chinese Medicine and they attributed that increased craving for sweets is in fact signaling some serious nutritious deficiencies. They said that it’s in fact meat or starches or other nutritionally dense foods that will soothe the craving, but sweets are more readily available. The taste of meat is in fact sweet as well.

In my experience this seems (the TCM view) to be true. I always have been very skinny, but eating enormous amounts of sweets. After I switched to a proper, paleo-like diet, the situation changed in many aspects and I no longer have such strong cravings and slowly I am gaining some weight.

Shou-Ching and I have great respect for the empirical claims of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and so I found this a fascinating idea. Is our modern taste for sweets actually derived from a taste that evolved to encourage meat eating?

Human tastes

It is generally agreed that animals evolved the sense of taste to detect nutrients and toxins:

Taste helps animals to decide whether a food is beneficial for them and should be consumed or whether it is dangerous for them and should be rejected. Probably, taste evolved to insure animals choose food appropriate for body needs. [1]

The five basic human tastes are sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. Each taste detects either a nutrient class we need or toxins we should avoid:

  • Sweet – carbohydrate.
  • Salty – electrolytes.
  • Sour – acids.
  • Bitter – toxins.
  • Umami – glutamate and nucleotides.

Electrolytes are essential to life, and toxins best avoided, so the evolution of salty and bitter tastes is easy to understand. The umami taste is mainly a sensor for natural (healthy) protein. The sour taste is interesting, in that it is attractive in small doses but aversive in large. Seth argues that low-dose sourness is desirable because it leads us to seek out fermented foods, which supply probiotic bacteria and their fermentation products such as vitamin K2. If so, it is natural that strong sourness, indicating high bacterial populations, would be aversive.

But what of the sweet taste? Is it really a sensor for carbohydrates? If so it does a rather poor job. The healthiest carbohydrate source – starch, which is fructose-free – hardly activates this taste, while fructose, a toxin, activates it in spades. If this taste evolved to be a carbohydrate sensor, it should have made us aversive to the carbohydrates it detects, as the bitter taste makes us avoid toxins. But sweet tastes are attractive!

Sweetness activators

It turns out that the sweetness receptors are complex; many things activate them, and they appear to serve multiple functions.

Wikipedia (“Sweetness”) notes:

A great diversity of chemical compounds, such as aldehydes and ketones, are sweet.

Some of the amino acids are mildly sweet: alanine, glycine, and serine are the sweetest. Some other amino acids are perceived as both sweet and bitter.

The sweetness of some amino acids would seem to support Tomas’s assertions that sweetness detect meat: perhaps it is detecting amino acids. But this seems a bit odd: there is another taste, umami, that detects protein. Would we really need two taste receptors for protein? And lean meats don’t taste sweet.

A possible clue is that the sweet tasting amino acids are hydrophobic, while hydrophilic (or polar) amino acids are not sweet.

Proteins that are hydrophobic end up lodging in cell membranes alongside lipids; proteins that are hydrophilic dissolve in water and reside apart from the fat. Glutamate and nucleotides, which are detected by the umami taste, are hydrophilic and water-soluble.

So maybe the umami taste detects proteins that aren’t associated with fat, while the sweet taste detects proteins that are associated with fat.

Indeed, a leading theories of sweetness holds that compounds must be hydrophobic, or fat-associated, in order to invoke the sweetness taste:

B-X theory proposed by Lemont Kier in 1972. While previous researchers had noted that among some groups of compounds, there seemed to be a correlation between hydrophobicity and sweetness, this theory formalized these observations by proposing that to be sweet, a compound must have a third binding site (labeled X) that could interact with a hydrophobic site on the sweetness receptor via London dispersion forces. Wikipedia (“Sweetness”)

The sweet taste seems to work in collaboration with the bitter taste to regulate toxin avoidance. Wikipedia (“Sweetness”) again:

Sweetness appears to have the highest taste recognition threshold, being detectable at around 1 part in 200 of sucrose in solution. By comparison, bitterness appears to have the lowest detection threshold, at about 1 part in 2 million for quinine in solution.[4] In the natural settings that human primate ancestors evolved in, sweetness intensity should indicate energy density, while bitterness tends to indicate toxicity[5][6][7] The high sweetness detection threshold and low bitterness detection threshold would have predisposed our primate ancestors to seek out sweet-tasting (and energy-dense) foods and avoid bitter-tasting foods. Even amongst leaf-eating primates, there is a tendency to prefer immature leaves, which tend to be higher in protein and lower in fibre and poisons than mature leaves.[8]

This makes some sense: we need a certain number of calories per day, and since “the dose makes the poison,” what determines the toxicity of the diet as a whole is not the amount of toxins in a food, but the ratio of toxins to calories. In an evolutionary setting, our ancestors needed to eat foods with a low toxin-to-calorie ratio in order to minimize daily toxin intake.

So if sweetness is an “energy density” detector, it should be especially strongly activated by fatty foods. If it detects fat-associated compounds, then it would do so.

Why not detect fats directly? In natural foods, fats are bound in triglycerides or phospholipids which are chemically inert. So they won’t bond to taste receptors. Free fatty acids will, but these are not present in fresh foods and would probably indicate some kind of degradation of the food. In fact there seems to be a taste receptor for free fatty acids, CD36 [2], but this may be an aversive sensor for decayed food.

Interestingly, color also affects sweetness:

The color of food can affect sweetness perception. Adding more red color to a drink increases its sweetness with darker colored solutions being rated 2–10% higher than lighter ones even though it had 1% less sucrose concentration.[26] Wikipedia (“Sweetness”)

So red meats are sweetest. Richard Nikoley would approve.

Summary and A Puzzle

A plausible inference would be:

1.      The sweet taste evolved primarily to encourage the eating of fatty, energy-dense meats; and of essential fat-associated micronutrients such as choline and inositol.

2.      The sweetness of fruit may result from plants having evolved a way to hijack the sweetness receptors, and animal food preferences, for their own purposes.

This still leaves a few puzzles. Why, Seth asks, do we tend to neglect sweet tastes when we are hungry, but after dinner is done crave sweet desserts?

Here’s something to consider. Fats are a special macronutrient. We have unlimited storage space for fats, in our adipose tissue, but very limited storage space for other calories. Once we’re full, of course we should lose our appetite for calories we cannot store. But for fats, why not get a little extra in case food is scarce in days to come? There’s always room for a little more fat.

Implications for Binge Eaters

Correct me if I’m wrong, but when people go on an eating binge, they go for sweets.

Presumably, they have a craving for the sweet taste – which, evolutionarily, may be a craving for fatty meats and fat-associated micronutrients.

But if they’ve imbibed the anti-fat propaganda of recent decades and are afraid to eat fat, binge eaters must follow their taste buds to sugars – which unfortunately fail to satisfy any of the micronutrient deficiencies the sweet craving is designed to redress.

Perhaps, then, a good fatty steak, preferably accompanied by some liver and cream sauce, would be the best cure for binge eating. It would satisfy the craving, but also satisfy the underlying nutritional need that generated the craving.

Implications for Weight Loss

If, as I believe, the key to weight loss and curing obesity is eliminating appetite, then it’s important to eliminate any deficiencies of fat-associated micronutrients. Micronutrient deficiencies trigger food cravings, and deficiencies of fat-associated micronutrients will trigger a craving for sweets.

In the modern world, we know how a craving for sweets is likely to be satisfied – by eating sugary, nutrient-poor foods. Unfortunately these foods do not contain the fat-associated nutrients (such as choline) whose deficiency is probably driving the craving. So the craving persists unabated no matter how many sugars are eaten.

Persistent food cravings despite an excess of caloric intake is probably a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for obesity to develop. Unsatisfied cravings probably make weight loss extremely difficult.

What of Vitamin C?

Vitamin C – ascorbic acid – is an acid so it directly activates the sour taste.

So perhaps the sour taste evolved to help us get vitamin C. This would actually complement Seth’s idea that the sour taste encourages us to eat fermented foods. Fermented foods are high in vitamin C.

I had a fairly severe case of scurvy and don’t recall being attracted to sweet flavors. Instead, I was ravenously hungry. My appetite generally, not craving for any particular taste, was promoted. If anything, I was less attracted to sweet tastes. So I think it’s plausible that vitamin C deficiencies may lead to a general appetite upregulation, or to cravings for sour foods, rather than a craving for sweets.

Conclusion

Our evolved taste receptors can tell us a lot about what our bodies need. Food cravings are a pretty good sign of an unsatisfied nutrient deficiency.

But sometimes, it’s less than obvious what a craving signifies. Our modern food environment is so different from the Paleolithic: We have many industrially produced foods designed to fool our Paleolithic taste buds into eating nutritionally unsatisfying calories.

Humans evolved, not in the forests where fruit was available, but in open woodlands where tubers and other tasteless starch sources were abundant but fruit rare. In this context, our cravings for sweet foods may have been directing us to eat animal fats.

It may be that the cravings for sweets often experienced by binge eaters and the obese are really a craving for animal fats. If you feel drawn to sugar, perhaps you should ask yourself: Steak or salmon?

References

[1] Bachmanov AA, Beauchamp GK. Taste receptor genes. Annu Rev Nutr. 2007;27:389-414. http://pmid.us/17444812.

[2] Laugerette F et al. CD36 involvement in orosensory detection of dietary lipids, spontaneous fat preference, and digestive secretions. J Clin Invest. 2005 Nov;115(11):3177-84. http://pmid.us/16276419.

Seth Roberts and Circadian Therapy

Posted by on March 22, 2011 80 comments

A while back I noted that hypothyroidism is a circadian rhythm disorder and that dietary steps that restore circadian rhythms, like intermittent fasting and daytime eating, should be therapeutic (“Intermittent Fasting as a Therapy for Hypothyroidism,” Dec 1, 2010).

Many other disorders besides hypothyroidism feature disturbed circadian rhythms:

  • Sleeplessness and poor sleep
  • Depression, bipolar disorder, and other psychiatric disorders
  • Dyslipidemia, metabolic syndrome and obesity.
  • Neurodegenerative disorders

Circadian rhythm disruption also suppresses immune function and increases vulnerability to infectious disease.

Restoring or strengthening circadian rhythm may be therapeutic for all of these conditions. Even for healthy people, tactics for enhancing circadian rhythms may improve health.

Which brings us to Seth Roberts.

Seth Cured a Sleep Disorder With Circadian Therapy

Seth is a well-known blogger, a Paleo dieter and psychologist, author of  The Shangri-La Diet, and a great self-experimenter.

Seth recently gave a talk that tells the history of his self-experimentation.

It turns out he suffered from disturbed sleep for many years. He experimented to find cures for 10 years; nothing worked. But then he got a lead.

When a student suggested he eat more fruit, he started eating fruit for breakfast. His sleep got worse! This was exciting to Seth because it was, in 10 years, the first thing he tried that changed his sleep.

He had the idea of trying no breakfast. It turned out that skipping breakfast improved his sleep. One of his slides:

This directly supports our idea that intermittent fasting (confining eating to an 8-hour window each day) should be therapeutic for circadian rhythm disorders such as disturbed sleep and hypothyroidism.

But what’s exciting is that Seth continued his experiments to find other ways to improve his sleep. As a psychologist, he knew that human contact controls when we sleep: people are most awake at the times they have contact with other people, and asleep when isolated.

He knew that watching TV can have effects similar to socializing. So he tried watching Jay Leno one morning. He slept very well the next night.

It turns out that looking at human faces is almost as good as real socializing. Here is Seth’s data relating mood to whether he looked at faces:

Seth also tracked his mood over the course of the day. The response of mood to seeing pictures of human faces clearly followed a circadian (24-hour) rhythm:

Another thing that relates to circadian rhythms is exercise: we normally exercise during the day and rest at night.

For a scholar, the easiest way to exercise is to stand rather than sit (for instance, by working at a standing desk). Seth tried standing 9 hours a day – and it cleared his sleep problem!

Of course, standing is not a very strenuous exercise. Seth found that if he just stood on one leg, the effect was much more intense, and he could fix his sleep problem with only minutes of one-legged standing per day.

He also found that eating more animal food improved his sleep. It’s possible that animal fat may enhance circadian rhythms more than other foods.

Conclusion

I found this fascinating – because it adds more evidence regarding the centrality of circadian rhythms in health – and exciting, because it shows that simple tactics can be therapeutic for circadian rhythm disorders.

In the hypothyroidism post, I suggested the following tactics for improving circadian rhythms:

  • Light entrainment: Get daytime sun exposure, and sleep in a totally darkened room.
  • Daytime feeding: Eat during daylight hours, so that food rhythms and light rhythms are in synch.
  • Intermittent fasting: Concentrate food intake during an 8-hour window during daylight hours, preferably the afternoon. A 16-hour fast leading to lower blood sugar and insulin levels, and the more intense hormonal response to food that results from concentration of daily calories into a short 8-hour time window, will accentuate the diurnal rhythm.
  • Adequate carb intake: Eat at least 400 “safe starch” carbohydrate calories daily during the afternoon feeding window. Relative to a very low-carb diet, this will increase daytime insulin release and, by increasing insulin sensitivity, may reduce fasting insulin levels. It will thus enhance diurnal insulin rhythm.

To these, we can add several more based on Seth’s findings:

  • Looking at human faces: If you work at a computer, keep a window up that cycles among photos of faces, or shows a video of a talk show; keep photos of your family near your screen.
  • Standing: Work at a standing desk or, failing that, get in the habit of standing on one leg rather than two.
  • Animal fat: Eat a diet high in animal fats.

These tactics cured Seth’s sleep disorder. Might these tactics also cure or greatly improve other circadian rhythm disorders – including hypothyroidism and psychiatric disorders like depression and bipolar disorder? Could looking at human faces help the obese lose weight and improve their lipid profiles?

I don’t know but I’d certainly give these techniques a try before pharmaceutical drugs. I believe these techniques deserve clinical testing as therapies for all diseases associated with disrupted circadian rhythms. I believe that they may be just as beneficial for the healthy: by improving immune function, they may delay aging and extend lifespan.

A few weeks ago, when I posted a video of Don Rumsfeld defending the use of a standing desk (the same video was later linked by John Durant and Mark Sisson), I brashly stated, “There are few single life adjustments more likely to improve your health than working at a standing desk.”

Perhaps that statement wasn’t as exaggerated as it may have seemed!

Seth’s Talk

Steak Diane (Ribeye with Cream Sauce)

Posted by on March 20, 2011 22 comments

Ribeye steak is a staple in our house; we eat it almost every week. Its low omega-6 content makes beef, along with fish like salmon, our favorite meat. Ribeye is a fatty cut, which fits Perfect Health Diet macronutrient ratios.

Given how important it is in our diets, you might think we’d have a lot of fancy recipes; but simple grilled or pan-fried steak is highly satisfying, and also very quick. We’ll usually have a simple seasoned grilled steak, or pan-fried steak with a simple sauce, along with vegetables and a starch on the side.

Although our steaks are usually simple, I think it’s worth a post to show what we do. We would be curious to hear what sauces our readers like on steak.

Pan-Fried Steak in Cream Sauce

This is better known as Steak Diane, after Diana the Roman goddess of the hunt; it is a simple recipe such as a hunter might use.

Here’s what we typically buy:

These are regular grain-fed, not grass-fed, steaks; grain-fed is cheaper and fattier, both of which we like, and the omega-6 content is reasonably low even in grain-fed beef.

We eat toward the lower half of our recommended protein range, which translates to between 0.5 lb and 1 lb (0.4 to 0.8 kg) meat per day. So this $20 package represents a 2 day supply of meat for 2 people. At $5 per person per day, it’s quite affordable. Certainly cheaper than restaurant meals!

Here are a few ingredients for the sauce:

Butter, cream, lemon for juice, rosemary, garlic, and bay leaves. The bay leaves are rather old and brown, but might as well use them up.

We start with some coconut oil, rosemary, garlic, and bay leaves, and two steaks seasoned with salt and pepper.

We brown them about 1 1/2 minutes per side at medium to high heat:

At that point we pull them out, carve them into smaller sizes, and return them along with the butter to the pan:

After another 2 minutes per side, the steaks are ready to remove from the pan. We then use the pan residue to make a sauce.

Normally we might add mushrooms, onions, or other vegetables to the sauce, but today we were pressed for time and just added cream and some lemon juice to the pan. It looked like this at first:

Stir it at low heat and remove as soon as ingredients are mixed; the sauce looks like this:

Note: Don’t eat the bay leaves! They flavor the sauce, but the leaves contain toxins. We removed the bay leaves before adding cream to the sauce.

We always have some rice around – we run the rice cooker once every 3 days or so – and some seasoned seaweed, kimchi, and baby carrots for vegetables when we need them. So if we’re pressed for time and don’t feel like cooking plant foods, dinner will look like this:

(Kimchi and seasoned seaweed not shown. We also put the sauce over the rice.)

Table-grilled steak

If we’re even more pressed for time and would like to relax in our living room while cooking – maybe to watch a movie or television show – then we’ll grill our steak at the table.

Cooking at the table is a tradition in Asia; many restaurants have grills built into the dining tables so that diners can barbecue their food.

The easiest way to do this is to buy an electric table grill. We got ours for $20 at an Asian supermarket. Amazon has some fancier models:

Here’s the steak cooking:

On our table grill, the heat is lower near the edges than in the center. So we usually need to pull the steak when the center part is cooked, cut off the edges, and return the undercooked edges to the grill:

Here’s the steak fresh off the grill:

Add whatever plant foods you like! We’ll typically do bell peppers as here, onions, portobello mushrooms, or asparagus.

It’s hard for a meal to get easier to prepare than this. The table grill is easy to clean also – both the grilling surface and a pan to catch drippings pull out and clean easily.

Steak Diane with Gordon Ramsey

Here is Gordon Ramsey cooking essentially the same meal: