Paleo on $100 a month day 21 - The 3 C's

Hmmm, not so paleo today, trouble with the 3-C's again.  I went to a potluck.  The "menu" was full of Carbs, Corn and Canola.

I am going to have to re-think my potluck strategy.  We used to have attendees who thought someone would starve, so they brought several dishes, enough for each person for each dish.  Those folks don't attend regularly anymore, and the place seems to be taken over by vegetarians and carbaholics.  Some of the meat-eaters started bringing their own dishes, from fast food places, but they weren't sharing. (I wouldn't want to eat crusted, fried meat anyway.)  One thing we can all agree on:  putting aspartame in milk without a label is BAD.

I brought a cucumber salad made with the persian cucumbers I purchased, red shiso, olives and rice vinegar from trader Felix.  Nobody ate much of it.

We also had berries and whipped cream, cornbread, lentils, salad and a custard dessert made with rosewater.  Carbfest for sure.

When I got in, I tore into the leftover braunschweiger and cheese, and finished most of it.

The rest of the day was just leftovers and grazing from the garden, no new purchases today.

Paleo on $100 a month day 11 - this will kill me

Day 11 brought more trades with a trading partner, so for breakfast, I ate more roast beef, with a really sad, sad salad, some cheesecake and coffee from trader Pablo.  After all that, I had to work it off, so took a nice mid-morning walk in the open space.  I would have taken off my shoes except for the rattlesnake warning signs.

For lunch, I enjoyed beef, chicken, mashed potatoes and salad courtesy of trader Pablo, and some diet soda and a brownie.  I'm waaay too high on the aimed-for carb count for the day, but the desserts were worth it!  The food looked like this.

Afternoon snack:  green drink with celery, lemon and orange juice.  The oranges were from trader Noel.

It was a light dinner, with some beef ribs, the last of the bone broth and lettuce.

Beef!  Its what's for breakfast.  And lunch.  And dinner.  I can feel my TMAO rising as I type this last sentence.  Hope I make it to the end.

Things aren't what they seem even more than ever

My diet is dwindling down to fewer and fewer food groups, and moving into dangerous territory.  And I was thinking that it would really dwindle down to only kale, except the bagrada bug has also taken care of kale.  And, it is a good thing that Dr. Kruse just discovered that we can get all the electrons we need from the ground, instead of trying to get them from all this adulterated food.

First it was the genetically modified salmon, but now milk?  I was mostly on the primal side of paleo, but now will I have to go full-blown paleo?

I had planned another milk post even before this new plan came out this week.  It seems like People In Charge want to change our milk again, this time by adding artificial chemicals that cause neurological disruption (OK, at least in me.)  I don't think this is a good idea for this adulateration information not to be included prominently on the label.

This week, I visited that local store that says everything is 99 cents but that they really sell for a dollar.  I grabbed a container of whipping cream.  How bad can budget cream be?  Well, I was shocked that cream now contains milk.  I was somewhat prepared for the variety of gums and thickeners that are added to cream, but this addition of milk to cream and still calling it cream really stumped me.

...Like the label on one bottle of a dairy-type item  "Fat-free half and half".  And I don't know, maybe it the weird math-geek in me, but I am thinking that if it has no fat, how can it be half and half?  To me, half and half means 50/50, not 100/0 with additives.  If someone wanted to sell something with 100/0, then they couldn't call it something that implies some sort of 50/50.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah, aspartame.  Years ago, I actually had something in common with our Dear Dr. Emily.  I had a diet coke habit.  I enjoyed a diet coke mid-morning, and mid-afternoon, until the coke machine at work turned out such bad-tasting water that I couldn't drink it anymore.  Then I started bringing my own cans to work.  This opened up an opportunity to experience a wide variety of diet Coke flavors.

After about a decade of this, I realized that aspartame consumed regularly wasn't doing me any good.  I thought it was the caffeine, but then realized I didn't get those effects from drinking gobs of caffeine-laden real coffee.  I got unnecessarily jittery, and less clear-headed than before, and a bit anxious.  After awhile, after reading so much negative press about aspartame, I switched from Diet Coke to regular Coke, but had only one "serving" a day.  I figured that sugar wasn't be best for me, but better than aspartame.

When I switched from aspartame to HFCS, I did gain weight.  Since then, of course, I have given up all pre-packaged soft drinks.  Every once in awhile I'll buy a bottle of sparkling mineral water and add in some home-made syrup.  I especially like chocolate-mint soda, but I have to be careful with it because it does contain too much sugar.

Now that I am not eating any adulterated unlabeled food anymore, I guess it is time to go to the beach and dig my feet into the sand and suck up all the electrons.  Mmmmmm!  Tasty!  I love being a groundaterian.

I'm going to clue you-all in as to why I think dieting makes people crazy.  Here's what is totally STUPID about the state of diet recommendations and our ability to follow them.  Practically every "diet" food being sold on the market has added aspartame.  Recently I visited a chain grocery store right in Dr. Mary Dan Eades backyard.  I was shocked that there was a whole aisle of yogurts and yogurt-like products, and I could not find ONE SINGLE FULL-FAT variety of yogurt!   Everything was low fat, and most contained aspartame.

Am I the only one thinking it is really funny that the People In Charge remove that nasty butterfat from the cow and treat it as toxic waste, and then add a real toxic unnatural additive to what is left and call that milk?  Not funny-ha-ha, funny-this-is-weird.

Oh How I hate Teachable Moments

Welcome new readers!  I got lots of comments on my last blog post about vegan diets.  I don't recall too many holier-than-thou vegans when I was as holy, I think that attitude is much stronger these days.

What bothers me even more is the behavior of some registered dietitians who act like Kashi shills and ram healthywholegrains down everyone's throats.

Once when I was at a weekend camp-out, this attending dietitian made a big deal about explaining to us the wonders of steel-cut oats.  'Course, I had my fill of the little buggers when I was a vegetarian, not so much now, but I used to even grind my own from whole oats.

I casually mentioned that I didn't eat wheat anymore, but she insisted that I try the oats, so I agreed to try them the next morning.  She made a big deal out of soaking them and cooking them all night, too.  Unfortunately, she neglected to tell me that the steel-cut oats also contained plenty of other steel-cut grains, like wheat.

That just made me so mad.  Nothing like healthy, satiating, stomach-rumbling-all-day wholegrain wheat.

Wheat Permutations

I have had the opportunity this week to sample what regular people are eating out these days.  This is the time of the year for Christmas parties, recognition luncheons, anniversaries, birthdays and other celebrations.  Eating out is the common way.

Our food is starting more and more to resemble variations on Hyperlipid's crap-in-a-bag, but with a variety of extruded shapes, sizes, colorings and flavorings to keep the food reward high and to trick us into thinking we are eating some sort of variety.

Here are some the wheat offerings on the menu recently:

Boiled longish extrusions of ground wheat and water coated with a tomato-based puree.

Boiled spiral extrusions of ground wheat and water coated with a yellowed fat-based emulsion, chopped vegetables and chutney.

Boiled tubular extrusions of ground wheat and water coated with a garlic-based puree.

Boiled tubular, curved extrusions of ground wheat and water coated with an orange casein-based puree.

Boiled longish flat extrusions of ground wheat and water coated with a casein and cream-based puree.

Boiled short, flat extrusions of ground wheat and water served floating in a liquid described as having been made from chicken, but seems to contain no real chicken. 

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly puffy and chewy, served with a selection of real and/or fake "butters".

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly puffy and chewy, flattened and covered with an extruded casein product and tomato puree.

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly puffy and chewy, flattened and covered with a grated casein product.

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly puffy and chewy, then diced and served with celery, sage and more chickenless chicken liquid.

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly puffy, crunchy and chewy, then diced and served with lettuce, a grated casein product and anchovies.

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly puffy, crunchy and chewy, then diced and served with spinach, red onions and apple.

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly puffy, crunchy and chewy, then diced and served with baby greens, pecans and pear.

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly puffy and chewy, then mixed with high fructose corn syrup and artificial blueberry pieces.

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly crunchy and chewy, then mixed with high fructose corn syrup and bits of chocolate.

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it crunchy, then mixed with high fructose corn syrup and shaped into a Christmas tree, sprinkled with red sugar and white icing.

Ground wheat and water, mixed with oatmeal and processed in a way that makes it slightly crunchy and chewy, then spread over a mixture of fruit and fruit-like bits and high fructose corn syrup.

Ground wheat and water, processed in a way that makes it slightly crunchy and chewy, then served under an extrusion of frozen fermented casein emulsion mixed with high fructose corn syrup and flavorings.

Nom nom nom.   (Just kidding.  And I really hate that word nom and the people who invented it.)

Next up:  Gaines burgers.

Decluttering!!!!

Yesterday I cleared out and donated the bread pans.

I know to some, this seems small, but maybe their lives didn't revolve around bread and other healthy whole grains as much as mine did.

As soon as I went out on my own, I get several popular vegetarian cookbooks, a grain grinder, some bread pans, a few sifters, and a whisk.

I started grinding the flour and making bread weekly.    I made at least four loaves of wheat bread a week, and a dozen or so oat flour muffins that were to last the week but usually lasted only a few days.  I usually made two large sheets of thick-crust pizza several times a month.  When I was too busy, I just went to the bread outlet store and filled my freezer with stale Bobolis.  Later on when I became a consultant, my schedule was flexible enough for me to make some kind of bread every day.  Real authentic bagels, pita, chapatis, tortillas, nut roll.

Pretty soon I started receiving all sorts of bread-related gifts for every occasion:  fancier whisks, kneading boards, spring-form pans, fancy cast-iron muffin tins, baby loaf pans, cinnamon-roll forms, a gingerbread house mold, crumb-catchers, cutting boards, fancy artisan bread-slicers.  I was easy to buy for.

During the 2009 Locavore challenge, I even grew wheat.  And if the movie is ever finished, you'll get to see me stomping all over the stuff in my crocs, trying to remove the chaff.  What fun!  It is just like making wine, only drier.

I realized a couple of weeks ago that I was finally finished with bread when I offered to help a friend with a party.  She needed food.  What could I make?  She suggested cookies and I had that deer-in-the-headlights feeling.  I couldn't even articulate how I felt about it.  Speechless.

All I could think about was trudging to a conventional grocery store.  What do I need?  Flour, chocolate, baking soda?  Of course, I would complain about the prices.  I would make tons and they would smell wonderful and we would eat the broken kinds and fall back into the wheat abyss.  I would gain 40 pounds before Christmas.  It would be very ugly.

OK, time to do something about this.  I feel lighter already.

Sorry, But I Just Couldn't Hold Back Anymore

Hyperlipid has been hyper-funny lately, but then again, maybe this new prehistoric diet is making me punch drunk with laughter.
Take a look at this!

Three days on the Prehistoric Diet

Day one went pretty well.  (Y'all can see what I ate here.)

Days 2 and 3?  Well...not to plan.  I went camping in the mountains.  Not real camping where you carry stuff on your back and set up a camp somewhere in the wilderness, but the kind of camping where you drive to the campground, complete with large heated lodge and mess hall, and then unload your machine-quilted comforter into little cabins retrofitted with modern (as in handicap-friendly) plumbing and access.

It was a weekend full of me not being in full control of my food choices, that is, if I didn't want to starve, but it was also only four meals (and dozens and dozens of snacks!!!) and lots of hopping over puddles during freezing downpours, so there wasn't an overall weight gain.

I knew I would be in trouble when I saw one of the women near the kitchen.  THE VEGAN ACTIVIST!!  She's very nice, but insists on vegan food at all gatherings because she is convinced that her husband's fatal heart attack was caused by the deadly saturated fat and the paleo people are mean to animals.

To placate all the people who don't like vegan diets, there were some small optional additives, so, yes, I was able to add some cheese and sour cream to my vegan gluten-free burrito.  And even with the cheese and sour cream, I was reminded why I always had trouble with a vegan diet.

Every meal and snack seemed stuffed to the gills with tomato products.  Tomato wasn't optional.  It was in the burrito for lunch, the cheese lasagna for dinner, the omlette for breakfast and the chili for lunch.  There was no way you could pick the stuff out.  It went through and through.  It reminded me of when I tried the MacDougall program.  I could only do it for a few days.  It is just that terrible combination of wheat, green peppers and tomatoes that showed up in practically 100% of Mary MacDougall's recipes that made the program so horrible for me. 

The other thing I was reminded of is the enormous amount of milk fat in a vegetarian diet.  We had sour cream, cream cheese on bagels, ice cream for two meals, lasagna stuffed with ricotta and loaded with melty cheese.  The vegans seemed to have no fat options except maybe a bit of coconut ice cream for some meals.  I was longing for some bacon just for balance.  Well-meaning friends suggested I go down the hill for a burger at the local McDonalds, but I had forgotten my wallet and money and also didn't want to be reminded that I was just down the street from Mickey D's and 20 million people, and I am not thrilled with their food either.

By the second day, my stomach was paying for the diet transgressions, and I was extremely grateful for modern plumbing!  When I got home, I sat down to a huge bowl of fatty pork shoulder before I even started unpacking the muddy camping gear.  Good food is THAT important.  And today is a new day, full of full food freedom, and freedom from beans, tomatoes and wheat!!!

I'm So Bored with the Paleo's - My N=1 Wheat

Here's another anecdote related to the locavore project I promised, and this is about wheat.  If you haven't read it yet, here's part 1.

During the year-long locavore project, we were allowed three non-local food items a month, with the option to switch them out to other foods at the end of every month.  We also were allowed other foods when out for non-local dinner (only two times a month) or when out of town.  After a few months of tinkering, I settled on a plan I would keep to for the rest of the year.  I would pick one grain, one meat, and then something extra, like chocolate, cinnamon, milk or coffee, and everything else was local.

I usually picked rice for the grain, but was looking forward to pasta and home-canned tomato dishes in the summer.  So I couldn't wait until June, when I switched from rice to wheat.  Starting June 1, I started eating wheat at almost every meal.  That meant cracked wheat for breakfast, wheat bread for lunch and pasta for dinner.  I thought I would be in heaven.

After the first week on the project, I lost about 6 pounds on mostly pork and rice with local vegetables, but I hadn't given up wheat entirely.  I still ate bread on my free meals out and oftentimes had some when I was out of town.  But, I never had it several times a day until June.

Around the middle of the month, I got very sick.  I went to the doctor and they did lots of tests and diagnosed me with lupus.  For some strange reason (fever-induced dilirium??) I just couldn't eat certain foods.  One look or thought of them and I felt sick.  I purged my kitchen of foods that made me feel sick:   milk from Von's but not Fresh and Easy, all my garden fava beans and unfortunately, wheat.

I called the locavore project leader, Kris Young (you can find him featured on primal docs) to discuss the situation, and he said it was OK for me to switch from wheat to rice for the remainder of the month, and I wouldn't have to abandon the project.

Slowly I regained my health, and learned lots about the failure of "modern" medical care.  I realized that once you are diagnosed with lupus, you can't get a doctor to take anything else seriously, because just about everything else is a symptom of lupus, which they really don't treat.  So I was on my own to find out what was happening and what to do about it.

I visited the rheumatologist every 4 months, did even more and more tests, and was eventually diagnosed with UCTD and secondary Sjogren's.  I was given pain pills (which I quit taking because they made me sick), dealt with fatigue, extreme morning stiffness and other symptoms.  This went on for about a year and a half until I went lower carb and all my autoimmune symptoms and obesity went away.

One thing I noticed on my food logs is that the little wheat I still ate greatly affected me.  Like Dr. Oz recommends, I had standardized my vegetarian breakfasts.  I had two of them.  One was a small glass of beet kavass, a small amount of yogurt with fruit, a small amount of oatmeal and one egg.  On the alternate day, I added in a bit more yogurt and substituted the egg for a piece of toast with butter.  I started noticing a zig-zag pattern on my food graphs.  Of course, the cholesterol zig-zagged as I went in and out of eating eggs, but my total caloric intake for the day had the opposite pattern.  Interesting!  Then I looked some more at my food diaries and realized that I had much greater trouble with cravings on the bread days.  Reading that it might be the protein in the egg that caused less hunger, I added an egg to breakfast every day, and I still got the same pattern.  Eventually I figured out it was the bread, and after seeing the craving pattern, it was pretty easy to cut the rest of it out of my life.

After two months on lower-carb, I went back to the rheumatologist.  This time, she took the autoimmune diagnosis off my chart, replacing it with "POSITIVE ANA".  I had no more symptoms, no complaints, no markers of AI disease of any kind.  I still hadn't really connected my illness to the wheat, and of course, with an N=1, there could by plenty of confounding variables:  menopause, stomach bug, tick bite, virus, etc.  One thing I do know is that when I add whole wheat bread back into my life, most of the symptoms return.  After three days of a higher-carb wheat-containing diet, I am tired and achy.  After just one meal of wheat, I wake up the next day feeling sick, and my fingers are locked together.

I still hadn't connected what was happening to the autoimmune disease symptoms to wheat.  I think it is a stretch to say that the great increase in eating wheat caused my illness, but I know for sure that avoiding wheat and excess carbs fixes the symptoms.  When I tell people that I have given up wheat, many tell me they could never do it because they just can't give up their bread.  Well, for me at least, I am happy to give up the lupus symptoms in exchange for being breadless.

Update 5/1/14:  Since I first wrote this post I have blood-tested positive for celiac.  I now believe that the great increase in eating wheat IS what caused my illness. This new diagnosis was a surprise, since I thought I was merely wheat-intolerant since I don't have any of the classic celiac symptoms.   I hope the readers of this blog who have any AI disease be tested for celiac.  I chose to NOT do the intestinal biopsy, for I feel it is cruel and harmful.  The fact that I tested positive on a blood test panel after giving up wheat for more than a month indicates to me I have a real problem.  Now, in addition to being 100% percent (vs. 95%) wheat-free, I am also gluten free.

Pillar Envy

There sure has been a bunch of fighting in the paleodome this week.  Before, I was just bored with the Paleo's.  Now I am pretty much disgusted.  I had some time to think things over, and here's what I think is going on.

Jimmy Moore posted answers to his question concerning Jaminet's "safe starch" concept and all hell broke loose.  Either I can't remember where things are posted, or things have been seriously scrubbed.
Here are some links
Jimmy's post.
Posts on Paleohacks.
Jaminet's overview and response.

So, for background, Jaminet recommends "safe starches", and these are foods like potatoes and rice, foods that contain starches but don't negatively affect the gut like gluten-containing grains.  Other Paleo "experts" jumped on this concept and started trashing the people who have been the most successful on a low carb diet.  Of course, this behavior was a concern to the low-carb fans, so Jimmy's post attempted to bring more of the controversy out into the open.  To many low-carbers, there is no such thing as a "safe starch".
Jaminet pointed out in his overview blog that at least some people are able to keep a sense of humor throughout it all.  Some people haven't.  It seems like several of the luminaries lost it.

Now Jaminet, though I disagree with him on a number of points, is always polite about things and tries to keep the focus on the topics.  I like that.  Even though he did mention the quip about "pillar envy" I am afraid that many of Jaminet's most fervent readers will mis-interpret the comment.

Though I can no longer find the post, Harris really went after Kruse, posting that "they're" all snickering about him in their e-mails back and forth to each other and then tried to mop it up with an "honestly, I don't understand the infighting"-type message.  On the Paleohacks board, there have been many nasty sniping-like comments by Melissa (of hunt, gather, b*tch).  First it was trashing the low carbers.  Then it was going after Dr. Kruse, and commenting that Dr. Rosedale wasn't a real researcher and his studies showing the benefits of a low-carb diet weren't real studies.  She is really starting to sound more and more like Coach [redacted] at [redacted]people.com.  Arrogant.  Entitled.  Privy to esoteric knowledge the little people can't understand.  Coach [redacted]'s "One must be reading the correct research," comment comes to mind.

I think she was just mad that Jimmy didn't ask her.  You see, she fancies herself as heir to the paleo throne, and any official comments she may have had were not included.  She envies the pillar.  Now that the low-carb pillars have been toppled, she is ready for the inheritance.   Cordain's leadership status has fallen, Taubes has been discredited, Eades has been shunned as a has-been and off to the appliance section, Hahn and Kruse are just puffy and red-faced, Rosedale isn't a "real" doctor, etc. etc.  the new queen of paleo, claiming full backing by all those other real university researchers who use lots of fake people (lab rats) and real statistics can enter her court in her full regalia.  I think that Melissa has already picked out the new upholstery for the throne cushions and now she's irked when people like Kruse, Rosedale, Feinman, Su and others say "hey, wait a minute!"

It is stuff like this that decides what blogs I recommend, what blogs I merely follow and what blogs I generally avoid.  I originally started this blog for my fat buddies who were trying to lose weight.  In my next post, I'll discuss why I would place my bets on Rosedale and Kruse.  You can read it here.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Dr. Kurt Harris created quite a stir on his blog recently when he came out as an evil Rice'Crispies-chompin' starch-eater. Unfortunately, I found his blog just as he was closing the comment option and the forum, due to all the hoopla created by his posts.

I am really glad to see this, and his situation addresses one of the concerns I have had about the Paleo diet.  (I'll be posting soon on why I am not really a Paleo.)  And, I can plug his wonderful blog while at the same time showing you that I can be somewhat unbiased by showing you a work extolling the virtues of carbs.

Dr. Harris found that when he was very active he lost too much weight on a very low carb diet.  So he added the starch back in.  Here's the post that started the commotion.
http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2011/2/6/thoughts-on-ketosis-i.html
Read Part II, posted next.
His experience mirrors my own in that I find I need more carbohydrate when I am extremely active.

However, it is difficult (at least for me) to ascertain the correct level to eat by reading many of the popular low-carb diet books.  Many, in fact, recommend various levels of nutrients and also say that tons of exercise isn't necessary for weight loss.  And, while it may be true, such recommendations don't adequately apply in the situation of a person who has an extremely active lifestyle.  In my own case, much of my exercise is in the garden, and the work can get pretty intense, especially in the fall.  I'm not about to stop it because some diet doctor says I don't really need all of it.  I work hard in the garden no matter what my weight or diet success.  I work in my garden because I want good veggies and I am obsessed.  (OK, I'm obsessed first, but justify the obsession by talking up the healthy veggie side-effect.)

Oh, Rice Crispies?  What were they doing in the cupboard of a Paleo?  Maybe, like my grandma for sure, he had one of those hand-cranked rice crispers.  I hope he didn't wash them down with a container of chocolate soy milk!