Around the Web; Controversies Over Rice, Meat, and Warmth Edition

Posted by on April 21, 2012 47 comments

[1] Success Stories: Thanks so much to everyone who reports their results on the blog. Here are a few recent reports:

Matt, an amateur bodybuilder, reports success on PHD: “I’m getting leaner and my muscles are developing better. What’s really surprising is that my calorie intake is higher and I’m losing fat mass!!”

Robin reports that rice cured her constipation.

Karin reports that the ketogenic variant of our diet has cured migraines and other problems:

I’ve been on the keto diet for nearly a month and it is the best thing that has happened to me. I’m migraine free and medication free. My mood is incredibly stable, I fall asleep quickly and stay asleep all night, I have lots of energy, I can concentrate for hours on end, etc. I’ve lost weight also, a much loved side effect. Thank you for writing this!

Brian reports rapid progress against his diabetes.

Jeanie Graham Campbell on Facebook: “My husband is doing fabulously on the PHD…. I felt great. Once I get down to where I want to be (another 7 or so pounds), I’ll be rockin’ the PHD!!!”

Meanwhile, it’s not exactly a testimonial, but I want it known that “Super Newell” Wright can run down young criminals and retrieve stolen computers while carrying a 50 pound suitcase.

[2] Music to Read By: Levon Helm, drummer and singer for The Band, passed away last week. Here they were at Woodstock:

Here’s Levon singing “The Last Waltz”:

And one more for the road:

[3] Interesting posts since our last Around the Web:

Toxoplasma infection is a major cause of birth defects. Treatment of pregnant mothers improves the health of their babies.

Laura Schoenfeld reviews the people of PaleoFX – and the real stars.

Via Dr. Jay Wortman, two attempts to explain why Asian rice eaters are thin on 70% carb diets: Peter Attia and Andreas Eenfeldt offer three and six reasons respectively. I half-agree with half their reasons, but the comments on Dr. Eenfeldt’s post held the most interest. Is Robert Lustig the new Ancel Keys?

Paleo for Powerlifters discusses the benefits of rice consumption.

Paleo has become too limiting for Richard Nikoley. Jack Kruse is also progressing beyond Paleo: in his talk at TEDx Nashville (video not yet online) he reported self-injecting with MRSA. If you find Jack’s posts too long, you’re in luck: one of his fans is putting Jack’s best lines up on Twitter.

“Only Dave Asprey would come back from a Cloud Computing conference with frostbite.” A Paleo conference is the place for that … Keith Norris had a nice post on cold exposure, and Kamal Patel (in comments) reminds us, “What killed the dinosaurs?” Elsewhere, Kamal makes a case for Fire Perspirogenesis.

Melissa McEwen recorded a podcast, and it’s got “nude” in the title. It’s got “sauna” too, so maybe there’s something about Fire Perspirogenesis.

Pal Jabekk quotes Tristram Shandy.

Mark Sisson discusses 5 common nutrient deficiencies. Adam Bornstein of Livestrong.com references Mark, Martin Berkhan, and Brad Pilon in explaining why he has taken up intermittent fasting.

Red wine turns materials into superconductors. (Via Instapundit) Might be a good beverage to consume while earthing.

Dr Briffa thinks earthing may work. I actually bought an earthing mat and put it under my keyboard so that my hands rest on it as I work, but haven’t noticed any effect.

Jimmy Moore has started experimenting with carbohydrates. He tried half a sweet potato per day, mashed with 3 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp honey or stevia, and found that his blood sugar was under control, but he gained a bit of weight.

Scroll down to read how CarbSane imagines the safe starches panel at AHS 2012 will go.

Carl Zimmer in the New York Times discusses a growing sense among scientists that science itself is getting dysfunctional.

That paper on plant microRNAs affecting gene expression in the liver is being questioned. No surprise there.

Don’t tell Ray Peat: Women who drink two cups of sugary soda per day are 37% less likely to become pregnant than women who drink two cups of tea a day. And a New Zealand woman died of a Coca-Cola overdose.

Don Matesz poses the “panda paradox”: Pandas didn’t evolve to eat bamboo but can survive on it. The inference, I guess, is that humans didn’t evolve to eat vegan but we might survive on it.

Via J Stanton, green tea may inhibit hepatitis C virus infection.

Matt Metzgar: what does chocolate have to tell us about food reward theory?

Wired wonders: if there are probiotic viruses, maybe we don’t want antiviral drugs.

Cogito Ergo Edo discusses the Leptin Marketing Miracle.

In the comments, André Risnes offered a corollary to Ewald’s hypothesis.

New Zealand confronts Marmageddon.

Via Newmark’s Door, why do children wet their beds? Constipation! Try giving them magnesium.

Is bee colony collapse disorder due to a corn pesticide in the high-fructose corn syrup that bee farmers have been giving their bees?

Chris Kresser discuss how stress upsets your gut. Chris has a terrific series on salt: this post has the meat of the matter.

Walter Willett defends that red meat study. But Prof Dr Andro says red meat is good for rats. Michael Greger reports that muscle meat is only about 10% of fast food chain burgers; the rest is “waste and by-products including connective tissue, nerve tissue, cartilage, bone, and in a quarter of the samples, Sarcocystis parasites.”

In our book we emphasized that, after processing by the digestive tract, all mammals eat high fat diets. Miki Ben Dor follows this line of thought in his analysis of the diet of chimpanzees.

Dr BG is back! With a major demything.

Jim Stogdill of O’Reilly Radar has started the Perfect Health Diet. Fit Element has had good results:

From my personal experience over the last few weeks adding back more of the safe starches have given me better energy than just eating vegetables alone as the only carb intake in a day. I’m no longer suffering from tremendous DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) and the recovery is quicker. I have lots of energy to do daily tasks and be quite active otherwise. And not to mention that I sleep so much better! Even more muscle definition is coming along in difficult areas such as thighs.

Yoni Freedhoff has the secrets to a happy marriage.

Via Tyler Cowen, the US government is stifling a breakthrough innovation: Tacocopters.

[4] In honor of our friends at Psychology Today:

[5] A culinary color wheel: From Nicole Kosek Caulfield, via Shari Bambino:

[6] Not the weekly video: Rocky’s speech to his son in kinetic typography:

Via Tony Federico. Original speech here.

[7] Shou-Ching’s Photo Art:

[8] Weekly video: The Great Bell Chant:

The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) from R Smittenaar on Vimeo.

Slow Posting

Posted by on April 13, 2012 52 comments

I have a few urgent work deliverables, plus taxes, and haven’t had a chance to finish a blog post.

Even animals are disappointed in me (via Kamal Patel):

This sloth kind of feels like you should update your blog more frequently.

This baby bear is frankly shocked that you missed that deadline. Shocked.

At least I can always count on the Corgi!

Roast Beef, Beets, and Potatoes

Posted by on April 8, 2012 29 comments

Happy Easter everyone! It’s a day for feasting and celebration, and so we’ll offer a complete meal that is easy to make but delicious.

But first, some music to enjoy while cooking. Bach’s “St Matthew Passion”:

Roast Beef

Get a suitable large cut of beef. Fattier is better; prime rib is the fattiest, but here we used a 4-5 pound (2-2.3 kg) sirloin.

Because beef is not fatty enough for us, we made a glaze from butter and Italian seasonings. Melt a stick (8 tbsp) of butter and combine it with 2 tbsp dried herbs and salt and pepper to taste.

Spread the glaze on the beef until all sides are covered. Then, place the beef in a ceramic pot, fatty side up, on a bed of either fibrous vegetables (such as celery and carrots) or wooden sticks to elevate it:

We elevate the beef because we’re going to add water to the pot to keep the drippings from burning. At the end, we’ll re-use the drippings to make a sauce. If we didn’t elevate the beef, the bottom part of the roast would be boiled rather than roasted.

Preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C), and put the beef in the oven with a layer of water in the bottom of the pot. After ten minutes reduce the heat to 300 F (150 C) and cook for 20 minutes per pound if you like medium rare beef and 23 to 25 minutes per pound if you like medium beef.

It will come out looking something like this:

Move the roast to a serving plate:

Cut some vegetables for the sauce. We used tomatoes, garlic, onion, and scallion:

Add the garlic, onion, scallion to the drippings and stir fry them on the stove for 5 minutes:

Then add the tomatoes and cook just a bit longer:

This sauce is ready to be spread over the beef.

Baked Potatoes and Roast Beets

We had space in the oven so we cooked potatoes and beets along with the beef.

The potatoes were wrapped in aluminum foil and baked individually:

The beets take a bit more preparation. We peel and dice them before cooking.

Peel the beets just as you would a potato or carrot, removing the skin. Once the skin is removed, the beet flesh will stain your hands; so we put a sheet of plastic wrap between our hand the beet during peeling.

Then dice the beets and put them in a ceramic pot for roasting:

Beets deserve a sauce, just like the beef. Ours used olive oil, garlic, butter, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, and dried herbs:

Mix the sauce ingredients apart from the butter in a mixing bowl, then add the butter and sauce to the beets:

Cover the beets in aluminum foil and put them in the oven at 300 F (150 C) along with the beef and potatoes. At this oven temperature the beets and potatoes need about 30 to 45 minutes to cook.

When the beets are done they look like this:

Conclusion

The complete meal looks like this:

Roast beef, baked potato with sour cream, and roast beets. Plus an abundance of leftovers!

We wish you a joyful and blessed Easter!

A Good Friday Prayer

Posted by on April 6, 2012 81 comments

The Pange Lingua is one of the great prayers of the Catholic Church. There are actually two hymns, one (the Vexilla regis) written by Venantius Fortunatus in honor of a relic of the Cross brought to the Merovingian court in November 569 and sung on Good Friday at the Liturgy of the Cross, the other (the Pange Lingua) written by St. Thomas Aquinas for Corpus Christi and sung on Maundy Thursday as the consecrated Host is taken to the Altar of Repose. The origins of the hymn, Father Hunwicke tells us, lie in the ribald victory songs of Roman soldiers. The lyrics link the cross to the trophy tree, a battlefield tree which victorious Greek and Roman soldiers decorated with the armor of their fallen enemies. The melody was used for the chants of ritual abuse by Caesar’s soldiers during victory processions. The hymn thus honors the full scope of human experience: it mourns the disaster of Good Friday and celebrates the triumph of Easter.

This version, from the album Illumination: Peaceful Gregorian Chants (CD, MP3 download), has become a PHD Holy Week tradition: