Mark Sisson's Blog, page 231

Are You a Videographer in the Los Angeles Area? We’re Hiring!

Are you a talented, fast-acting, multifaceted videographer in the Los Angeles area? Do you have start-to-finish experience, from shooting to post-production? Do you know someone who does? Then we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you. You’ll have the chance to work with all of us here at Mark’s Daily Apple in shaping the future look and story of the Primal movement. All Grok stars or aspiring Grok stars are encouraged to apply. But most importantly, all filmmakers extraordinaire with boundless creativity, technical savvy, and a passion for bringing ideas to life should definitely give this position a look. So if you or somebody you know feels like they have what it takes, Primal Nutrition, Inc., the company that brings you Mark’s Daily Apple and PrimalBlueprint.com, is looking for a quality long term videographer to fill a number of roles, including but not limited to helping us create the following:

Creative short book trailers
Educational videos that are part of our multimedia educational programs
Live action tutorials, like cooking and workout demonstrations
Promotional videos for company products
Interviews with featured guests

We’re looking for someone who can help us create the inspiring assets that reflect the exciting, cutting edge content we’re known for.

Check out some of our videos to get a taste for what we’ve done in the past.

Have any ideas on how to take things to the next level? Let use hear them and show us what you can do.

Most of our live action filming will be in the Malibu or Oxnard area, so applicants should keep this in mind.

You could be the next integral part of promoting the Primal lifestyle to the world.

So if you think you qualify, apply here.

Thanks and Grok on!

Grass-fed Vs. Conventional: When Does It Matter Most?

By now, you’re convinced of the general overall superiority of grass-fed, pasture-raised meat. If you come at it from the nutrition angle, grass-fed wins across the board. If you’re more concerned with the ethics of animal husbandry, grass-fed animals live overall better lives than animals in concentrated feedlots. If you worry about the use of antibiotics in agriculture and the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, grass-fed animals receive less medication (and sometimes none). Whatever your inclination, animals who range free and nibble their biologically appropriate diet of various grasses tend to be happier, healthier, and produce more nutrient-dense meat, milk, and fat. It’s objectively “better.” Even an honest vegan will admit that.

But the stuff is expensive. I have the luxury of buying and eating solely grass-fed, pasture-raised meat and dairy, but not everyone can. Most folks have to choose. They have to pick their battles. Today’s post will help you choose wisely.

When to buy grass-fed/pasture-raised:

You’re buying high-fat meat

The real difference between grass-fed and conventional meat lies in the fat. Several key differences exist:

Grass-fed fat is higher in omega-3s than conventional fat. The absolute amount isn’t very high, but if you eat a significant amount of animal fat—as many Primal people do—the omega-3 adds up.
Grass-fed fat contains more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a natural trans-fat formed in the rumens of animals like cows and lamb. CLA has anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory properties.
Grass-fed fat is higher in stearic acid, a cholesterol-neutral saturated fat. If your blood lipids are sensitive to saturated fat, even conventional researchers admit that stearic acid (which converts to oleic acid in vivo) is neutral or beneficial.
Grass-fed fat is higher in vitamin E, vitamin A, and glutathione.
Grass-fed fat is higher in antioxidants, making it more resistant to oxidative damage during cooking. Pastured animals allowed to eat fresh grass, wild forage and herbs will effectively produce antioxidant-infused meat with greater oxidative stability than animals raised on concentrated feed.

If you’re buying high-fat meat like roasts, rib-eyes, ground beef, ox tail, and other cuts, go grass-fed and make it count.

You’re buying bacon

As much as we fetishize the formerly forbidden food of bacon, it’s really not supposed to be eaten in massive quantities. My favorite way to eat bacon is as an ingredient in other dishes enhanced by the smokiness and fat. Sure, I’ll eat a few strips of really good bacon but I’m not sitting down to a pound of bacon. I’m not using bacon as a protein source. If you treat bacon like a condiment, you can afford the expensive pasture-raised stuff.

The evidence suggests it’s worth it. Pork raised in the outdoors on a high-oleic acid diet (versus indoors on a diet high in omega-6-rich soybeans and corn) has a better omega-3/omega-6 ratio, less PUFA, and more monounsaturated fat. The improved fat quality renders it more resistant to high heat. Another study found that raising Iberian pigs outdoors on an acorn and grass diet improved both the monounsaturated fat content and O3/O6 ratio.

You’re buying dairy

The evidence continues to mount in favor of organic and/or pastured dairy. Not only is it higher in omega-3 fats and antioxidants, the amount present in organic/pastured dairy is relevant to consumers. It contains about 50% more omega-3 fats than conventional dairy, meaning it has a physiological impact. If you’re eating a lot of dairy, maybe you’re a kid or a pregnant lady trying to get adequate calcium, organic pastured dairy is especially crucial.

You’re buying cream or butter (or ghee)

Butter/cream is (almost) pure milk fat, accentuating the differences between grass- and grain-feeding. Studies indicate that concentrated grass-fed milk fat really is better than the conventional stuff.

Grass-fed butter is less atherogenic than regular butter.
Rats eating pastured cream have stronger gut barriers and better metabolic profiles than rats eating standard cream.
Ghee with higher amounts of CLA (which is another way to say “grass-fed ghee”) increases antioxidant capacity and resistance to heart disease and increases HDL and and prevents hyperinsulinemia in rats.

Is regular old cream, butter, and ghee okay to eat? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet against grass-fed and the price difference isn’t great enough to justify taking the chance.

You care about farmer profits

The reason why grass-fed meat costs so much more than conventional meat is multifold:

They’re less efficient growers. Grass-fed animals are harvested at 22 months; grain-fed animals are harvested at 14 months.

They can’t be produced “in bulk.” Grass-fed livestock cannot, by definition, be crammed into feedlots. Space is a premium, and that means fewer animals per acre.

That makes wholesale grass-fed less profitable in general than wholesale conventional feeding. But when you sidle up to the grass-fed beef farm stand and initially balk at the prices, know that they’re not just artificially raising prices out of greed. Those prices are necessary for the farmer to stay afloat, make a living, and keep raising animals and producing meat the right way. And it means your purchase is going directly to the person who raised your meat, not run through the gauntlet of middle men.

You care about the environment

Last week, I explained how rotational grazing is better for the environment than normal range feeding or conventional feedlotting (yep, that’s a verb). It keeps livestock on a more natural feeding pattern, gives ample time for the paddocks to regrow its plants, and helps sink more carbon into the soil. Grass-fed ranchers are turning to rotational grazing in increasing numbers, so by purchasing grass-fed you are likely supporting farmers who employ environmentally-friendly methods.

You want more collagen

Who doesn’t want more collagen? This is just conjecture, but I’m confident it’s correct. Grass-fed animals move more than feedlot animals. They walk, they run, they cavort, they wrestle. All this means their joints receive more loading than the animal who just stands around eating grain and farting. And since like all other tissues the connective tissue responds to loading by strengthening and fortifying itself, grass-fed meat and bones and joints should have more collagen than their conventional counterparts.

When conventional is fine:

You’re buying protein powder

Protein is protein is protein. Soy isn’t whey, but grass-fed whey isolate is identical to conventional whey isolate. The feeding method does not alter the content and composition of the amino acids present in a protein. Grass-feeding can affect the fatty acid, antioxidant, and micronutrient content of meat and dairy in a favorable way, but not the amino acid profile. Whey protein is about the protein–the amino acid profile. If what you want is pure dairy protein and you’re only worried about the nutrition, the source doesn’t matter.

You’re buying gelatin powder

Same situation as whey; gelatin is a protein. The feeding method doesn’t affect the protein content or amino acid concentration, so there’s no nutritional need to buy grass-fed gelatin. That said, most of the gelatin brands popular in the ancestral health community do come from grass-fed sources.

You’re feeding picky eaters

I love a good grass-fed ribeye. I love the texture, the intense flavor, the deep yellow marbling, the complexity. But to some people, grass-fed meat is “tough” and “gamey.” If you’re feeding a dinner party full of these types of folks, people who’ve never had grass-fed beef, who are picky eaters, who prefer blander, more comfortable flavors, going conventional is probably safer. It’s more forgiving to cook and everyone (except for the hardcore Primals in attendance) will enjoy it.

You’re buying lean meat

If you can budget for it, lean grass-fed meat is still the superior choice, but since the major differences lie in the fatty acid composition and content, lean meat doesn’t have to be grass-fed. As mentioned above, the protein remains the same regardless of the feed. You will miss out on a few nutrients found in slightly higher levels in grass-fed meat, like zinc, sodium, and B12, but these are balanced by slightly lower levels of magnesium and potassium. Either way, it’s mostly a wash and all red meat, whether grass-fed or conventional, is a good source of all those nutrients.

Grass-fed animal foods aren’t a deal breaker for successfully going Primal. You can be incredibly healthy without ever sniffing a piece of grass-fed lamb. But if you’re going to eat a lot of animal foods, you owe it to your health to choose grass-fed when it matters most. Hopefully today’s post helps you decide what that means to you.

Let’s hear from you. When do you buy grass-fed? When do you skip it? I’d love to know your decision making process.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care!

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Dear Mark: Paleo Diet Fattening?

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering one question. It’s a burning one, though, judging from the deluge of emails I’ve received in the past few days. A new study has just come out purporting to show the deleterious effects of a “paleo diet” on weight gain, fat gain, and glucose tolerance in type 2 diabetics. It sounds alarming, so today I’m going to explore just how relevant this study is for you guys following a Primal eating plan. Should you be concerned with the results? Is it time to start radically restructuring the way you eat? I’ll evaluate the study, and its larger implications, to let you know.

Let’s go:

Mark,

The media is abuzz with reports of a new study claiming to show that the paleo diet leads to rapid weight gain. Care to respond? It’s getting hard to ignore my skeptical friends’ chorus of “I told you so”s.

Oh, man. The lead author of the study, one Associate Professor Sof Andrikopoulos, makes some of the most amazing quotes I’ve ever read. I can’t single out any single quote, so let’s examine them all one by one.

He claims that a low-carb, high-fat diet is especially risky in people with diabetes or pre-diabetes. “There is no evidence they work.”

LCHF diets are risky for diabetes or pre-diabetes, meaning they put your diabetes at risk of disappearing outright or never showing up at all. But for diabetics or pre-diabetics, it’s risky not to try a low-carb diet. Here’s one recent study of Japanese men with pre-diabetes in whom a low-carb diet normalized blood glucose and prevented the progression into full-blown type 2 diabetes. Those were human men, by the way, not mouse men.

More quotes:

“We are told to eat zero carbs and lots of fat on the Paleo diet.”

No, we aren’t. I don’t know anyone saying that.

“Our model tried to mimic that, but we didn’t see any improvements in weight or symptoms.”

They didn’t try hard enough, because they managed to slip 6% of calories as pure white sugar into the diet. Funny how that stuff just has a mind of its own. Nope, totally impossible not to add that sugar in. Completely out of their hands.

“The bottom line is it’s not good to eat too much fat.”

Well, okay. It’s not good to eat too much of anything. It’s not good to eat so much that you gain weight and body fat. It’s not good to eat too much fat in the context of a refined diet of isolated ingredients, pure table sugar, and a genetic propensity to get severely obese on such a diet. Don’t believe me?

Just look at the diet composition for the low-carb group.

Cocoa butter—Cocoa butter is a legit fat, particularly combined with cocoa fiber and polyphenols. In other words, chocolate.

Casein—Hmm. An isolated dairy protein wouldn’t be my first choice when constructing a wholesome paleo diet, but I’m not the scientist!

Sucrose—Table sugar, eh? I’ll allow it. You need to make this refined slop palatable enough to get the mice to eat it.

Canola oil—Hold on a minute. Canola oil doesn’t belong in my idea of a paleo diet.

Ghee—Interesting choice. I love me some ghee.

Cellulose—Okay, stop right there. You’re basically feeding these mice paper. What’s going on here? I’m sure there’s a more prebiotic type of fiber coming next. Right?

Calcium carbonate—You do realize you could have simply omitted the isolated, refined casein, ghee, and calcium in favor of some actual whole food dairy.

AIN-93G vitamin mix—You could give them vitamin pellets, or you could give them actual food. That’s just me, though. I’m weird.

Potassium dihydrogen phosphate—If you wanted the mice to get potassium and phosphate, you could have given them a little meat and banana.

DL methionine—An essential amino acid that appears frequently in animal foods. It’s important for health but must be balanced with adequate glycine to reduce inflammation. No glycine appears in the study diet, though.

Sodium chloride, potassium citrate, potassium sulfate—More minerals.

Choline chloride—At least they added choline in there. It’s very important for maintaining liver health, particularly in the context of high fat diets.

AIN-93G trace mineral mix—In the absence of food, you need to add these back in.

Delicious, right? I’m salivating just typing this.

So the experimental diet was made up entirely of refined, isolated “ingredients.” Not even foods, but ingredients. Its sole carb source was white sugar. Meanwhile, the control group got an actual real-food diet consisting of wheat, wheat germ, fish meal, soybean meal, beef fat, vegetable oil, molasses, milk powder, yeast, and added trace vitamins and minerals. Not the “best diet,” but way better than the experimental diet. The two are not comparable. We already know that the refinement of a rodent’s diet determines in part how that diet will affect its health and cognitive abilities, irrespective of that diet’s macronutrient ratios.

In reference to the Mediterranean diet: “It’s backed by evidence and is a low-refined sugar diet with healthy oils and fats from fish and extra virgin olive oil, legumes and protein.”

Reduce/drop the legumes, and what diet is he really talking about? Sounds pretty familiar to me.

Other niggles: These weren’t humans. These weren’t even normal “wild-type” mice, who are already bad proxies for studying the effects of high-fat diets in humans. They were New Zealand Obese (NZO) mice, a type of mouse genetically-engineered to get quickly and severely obese on high-fat diets. That makes them useful for studying obesity.

The good doctor has made questionable recommendations in other venues, like if you’re going to eat fast food, make sure you have a sugary soda with it.

But perhaps the most egregious and pernicious aspect of the doctor is his penchant for Hellenic nationalism. There’s his last name. There’s the fact that he concocts imbalanced study designs to promote the Mediterranean diet. What next, Sof? Will you stop at nothing until Greek war chariots pound the streets of every city across the globe and boys and girls have bowls of kalamata olives (pit-in) with red wine instead of cereal for breakfast?

I jest, of course…

But next time, design a study that actually mirrors a Paleo diet. Then we’ll talk.

So if you’re eating Primally and you’re not getting fat (or you’re actively losing fat), the results of this study do not apply to you. The study displays the negative health effects of getting really fat really quickly. That the diet used to get the mice fat was a bastardized version of a high-fat, low-carb diet has little bearing on how we eat around here.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care!

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Weekend Link Love – Edition 388

Research of the Week

Eating high-cholesterol foods still doesn’t increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Organic milk and meat have higher nutrient levels.

Leafy greens feed gut bacteria.

Bribing people to exercise works.

Have kids? Parenting may be altering your immune system.

Good vitamin D intake during pregnancy may stave off allergies for children later in life.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 107: Abel James: Host Elle Russ hangs out with the Fat-Burning Man himself, Abel James, to discuss his recent appearance on ABC’s “My Diet is Better Than Yours” as a fat-loss coach helping a severely overweight man lose tons of body fat on a Primal-type “Wild Diet.”  Since his guy lost the most body fat (from 52% body fat to 30% body fat) but not the most body weight, Abel came in 2nd, but his client was the clear winner. It’s a fantastic story of ancestral health principles shining on center stage.

Each week, select Mark’s Daily Apple blog posts are prepared as Primal Blueprint Podcasts. Need to catch up on reading, but don’t have the time? Prefer to listen to articles while on the go? Check out the new blog post podcasts below, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast here so you never miss an episode.

How I’d Change Grade School
Why Romantic Love is Essential to Human Experience
10 Reasons to Eat More Collagen

Interesting Blog Posts

Whether you’re a forefoot or heel striker when you run, make sure you land softly.

How winter affects brain function (results might surprise you).

Media, Schmedia

Having neanderthal DNA may put you at greater risk for depression (and nicotine addiction).

Why police use sleep deprivation to extract confessions.

Everything Else

Humans and neanderthals mated at least 100,000 years ago.

The now-extinct Denisovans were crafting detailed stone jewelry at least 40,000 years ago.

C’mon, people.

How a dairy farmer is turning cow manure into fuel.

Myopia is set to explode by 2050.

Recipe Corner

Consider this new way to roast veggies in the oven.
Not a recipe, but I’d love some baby pig head confit.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Feb 23 – Mar 1)

Is Your Workout Worth the Risk? – Is it?
Can Getting Your DNA Tested Help You Optimize Your Diet and Training? – Based on my results, I’d say “yes.”

Comment of the Week

“I’m gonna go ahead and take that as a joke. After all, I just had a massive mug of super glycine loaded bone broth and it’s -5 degrees outside here in my driveway and I feel fin…AAAACKKKK!…THUD.”

– In response to my deadpan joke about “myocosbyal infarction.”

Kimchi Pancakes

Kimchi is great as a side dish, but it’s also really delicious as a main ingredient. Take kimchi soup, for example. Or, these savory egg pancakes laced with kimchi, scallions and garlic, and served with sesame dipping sauce.

It’s important to supplement your diet with fermented foods and these savory pancakes are a tasty way to do it. Kimchi is just one of many fermented foods that can help build up an army of gut flora for you. These pancakes also use potato starch as an ingredient, a resistant starch that can feed gut bacteria. However, the starch is heated, which can negate its RS function. So in this case, the potato starch is mainly there to give the pancakes a crispy and chewy texture without using regular all-purpose flour.

If your taste buds aren’t ready for kimchi early in the morning, then serve egg and kimchi pancakes as an appetizer, or for dinner. The pancakes are so flavorful and filling that you don’t need to serve anything else with them. However, there’s nothing wrong with wrapping one around some ground or shredded pork if you’re so inclined.

Servings: 6 pancakes

Time in the Kitchen: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

3 eggs
1 tablespoon potato starch (15 ml)
1/2 teaspoon salt (2.5 ml)
2 scallions, chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 cup kimchi, chopped (about 10 ounces/285 g)
1 tablespoon kimchi juice (from the jar) (15 ml)

Dipping Sauce

1/4 cup coconut aminos (60 ml)
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil (5 ml)
1 scallion, chopped

Instructions:

Whisk the eggs. Slowly add the potato starch, whisking until smooth. The potato starch will be lumpy at first, just keep whisking and it with smooth out.

Stir in salt, scallions, garlic, kimchi and kimchi juice.

Coat the bottom of a non-stick skillet with melted butter over medium heat. Add ¼ cup of the batter. Use a spatula to nudge the edges of the egg back, so it doesn’t spread out too far. Use the spatula to move the kimchi around on the pancake, so it’s evenly spread out.

Cook the pancake 2 to 3 minutes, until the edges are firm and the bottom is lightly browned. Lift the pancake with a wide pancake turner and melt a little more butter in the pan. Flip the pancake over and put it back in the pan, cooking 2 to 3 minutes more until lightly browned, keeping an eye on the bottom so the kimchi doesn’t burn.

Continue cooking the pancakes, 1/4 cup of batter at a time. In-between scooping batter for each pancake, mix the batter so the potato starch doesn’t settle on the bottom of the bowl.

In a small bowl, whisk together the coconut aminos, sesame oil and scallions.

Serve the pancakes with the dipping sauce.

Not Sure What to Eat? Get the Primal Blueprint Meal Plan for Shopping Lists and Recipes Delivered Directly to Your Inbox Each Week. Now Available as an App!

How Primal (Literally) Saved My Life

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

I would like to thank Mark Sisson and the Primal lifestyle for saving my life. But before I regale my death-defying experience, I will give a brief overview of my health history – I’m sure many thinking of starting their Primal journey can relate.

Growing up, I was a skinny kid despite my love for junk food. My parents were busy people, and since I couldn’t stomach the bitter vegetables or watery textures of their home cooking, I often ended up eating packaged foods.

As I entered high school, junk food was available at every turn. Combined with the typical teenage appetite, this led to some prodigious hedonistic feats, such as eight donuts in one morning or a whole large pepperoni pizza for dinner. My friends called me the ‘black hole’ because food would disappear without noticeable impact. But as a physician’s check-up confirmed, it did catch up to me – at age 16 I was almost 170 lbs (borderline overweight for my 5’9” frame). I started jogging and trying to eat less according to the doctor’s orders, but this never resulted in any significant weight loss – the hunger was too strong to fight.

That summer I went on a two week group hiking trip. Though the food wasn’t great (refined grains galore), I lost 15 lbs. I sustained this for the rest of the summer with plenty of jogging, but my junior year of high school ended that. With the high amounts of stress, I turned to junk food and sweets for comfort. I gained back most of the weight I’d lost, eventually re-losing it once school was over through hours daily on the treadmill (my ‘before’ picture is from this time when I was at 155 lbs).

I was tired of struggling to avoid an unhealthy weight and started eating ‘healthy.’ I ditched the junk food for homemade ‘healthy’ whole wheat baked goods, and started doing a few minutes of calisthenics every morning. At first it worked – I lost another 10 lbs. But after a few months, body fat and my appetite started creeping up. A night of binging, in which I downed almost a whole loaf of homemade bread, made me realize my ‘healthy’ diet was unsustainable and needed to change.

I actually transitioned into the Primal lifestyle very intuitively. I realized I didn’t feel so great after eating grains – one whole wheat biscuit would inevitably lead to a second – so I cut them out cold turkey. I began searching questions on the Internet with a renewed interest in my health, and frequently came across Mark’s Daily Apple, which led me to read the site and learn about the full Primal philosophy.

Reading Mark’s writings reinvigorated my efforts to take control of my health. I adopted a fully Primal nutrition plan, started cooking all of my own meals, and approached my daily calisthenics with the intent of getting stronger, rather than just going through the motions. I stayed at/slightly under my prior weight, but was definitely gaining some appreciable muscle mass and definition, something novel to me.

After half a year of Primal living, my skills were put to the test. I was vacationing in Sedona, Arizona, and enjoying daily, steep, several-hour long, shirtless hikes (no, I didn’t burn despite not wearing sunscreen). On one of these, the trail was very poorly marked at the peak. Only after a while of walking down from the summit did I realize I had lost the trail completely! At first I decided to just start heading down the very steep mountain face (the hike up had been 2 miles of switchbacks over ½ a mile as the crow flies) until I hit the flatter lower portions (stupid, I know). This in itself was perilous enough, be it stabilizing myself after sliding on a deceptively secure patch of ground, or avoiding impalement by agave plant or cactus.

To make things worse, I reached a sheer vertical drop and could no longer continue. With sunset soon approaching, no food, and my water supply running low, I couldn’t climb back up to begin searching for the trail again either. Calling for help wasn’t an option due to a lack of cell signal. The stress response started kicking in – my heart raced forcibly and serious fear of not making it off the mountain set in. But then I thought to myself, what would Grok do? Certainly he wouldn’t panic and ball up into a nervous wreck. I needed to analyze my surroundings and act intelligently to make it out.

Comparing the view of the mountains in the distance to that on the way hiking up, and using my map, indicated I was about half a mile off the part of the mountain containing the trail. My only option was to essentially scale along the side of the mountain, pulling myself across near vertical, crumbly, rocky ledges and boulders. After this harrowing effort, the trail was in sight. But there was one last problem – a large thicket of sharp, snappy manzanita stood between me and salvation. I successfully powered through, ignoring the scratches and snagging of the endless branches, and sprinted the rest of the trail to meet my waiting family. I reached them just in time – they had called a park ranger and were just about to call a full search party!

Thanks to my overall vitality from my Primal lifestyle, I escaped a perilous situation with only some scratches to show for it. Had I carried the excess body fat I would have likely had if I hadn’t adopted Primal eating, lacked the strength gained from focus training after reading about the importance of lean mass on MDA, or missed the mental clarity I gained from living Primally, I may have not successfully navigated the desert’s many perilous situations and sustained some serious injuries (or worse).

Since my brush with death in the desert, I’ve continued to live a successful Primal lifestyle even while starting college. Discovering Primal is the best thing that has ever happened to me – my quality of life has improved significantly. Eating is no longer an existential quandary. I used to think I could either have food that tasted good or was healthy for me, but not both. Every meal was a choice between short-term gratification vs long-term self-care – oftentimes I would turn to ‘tasty’ junk food when feeling down on myself and life. Primal eating is the opposite picture – I can eat absolutely delicious food to satiation, and rest assured that it nourishes my body and well-being. Junk food no longer tempts me – fully knowing its negative impacts on my health makes it impossible to ingest in good consciousness, and the over-saturated flavours are off-putting anyways. Instead I am able to appreciate an entire world of flavours bold and subtle that I never even knew existed before. And I’ve become a great cook, able to prepare all my own meals instead of settling for the dry, overcooked (and not to mention gluten, soy, and seed-oil laden) fare at my college cafeteria.

Beyond diet, I’ve had many other improvements. Ailments like relentless acid reflux, odd skin rashes and acne, and crippling seasonal allergies are no more (or at least a faint shadow of what they used to be). My body composition now (exercising no more than 45 minutes a day) is leaps and bounds better than it was when I spent hours on the treadmill. But most of all, I’m better capable of handling life’s ups and downs without succumbing to mental stress. My experience in the desert really put things in perspective – the stress response is for when you are the brink of death, not for when an exam is approaching or the neighbours play loud music late at night. Life is no longer a slog or struggle to get through daily existence as it once was, but a journey to be embraced and cherished.

Thank you Mark and the rest of the Primal Blueprint team for all you’ve done for me and so many others worldwide. In multiple senses I owe my life to your efforts. Grok on!

Andrew

10 Ways to Encourage Primal Body Positivity

Standing in the checkout line of your average grocery store is a telling cultural experience. For the few minutes it takes for the checker to ring the person in front of you, there you idle with your cart—surrounded by the ironic juxtaposition of junk food aisle caps and fashion/fitness magazines. The images of impossibly smooth or ripped celebrities and models—strategically lit and otherwise doctored—stare you down on your way to check out. And people buy these magazines with gusto, even though they’re basically all the same—featuring the same rehashed articles or selling the same impossible body expectations. Is it any wonder so few people can meet their bodies with acceptance? But this got me thinking: what would a Primal magazine cover and its models look like? (I have a few thousand ideas for both.) I’d like to think it would have a lot to say toward optimizing physical function and embracing individual variance over imposed media standards, but I’ve always been that contrary type. So let’s go down that road a bit and look at some down-to-earth, practical takeaways for encouraging Primal body positivity.

It’s impossible to take apart the topic without looking at the obvious social static we’re bombarded by—and not just on those magazine covers. For women, of course, the common (although thankfully changing) standard has traditionally been thinness—the waif look with its slight waist, skinny legged jeans and bone contoured shoulders. Sure, this comes naturally (and healthily) for some women and might be attainable for others. But it’s definitely not the healthiest form for most women. In Grok’s day it probably wouldn’t have been terribly practical either. There’s a reason most cultures have valued a little softness in a woman’s form. Evolution selected for women as a whole (there are always outliers) to carry more fat (18-21%) in preparation for pregnancy, since those fat stores could serve as essential reserves to nourish the fetus, particularly in times of food insecurity. Furthermore, when women of childbearing age get below a certain body fat percentage (like the percentages depicted in a lot of idealized images in popular culture), their hormonal balance becomes disrupted enough that they can stop menstruating, temporarily shutting down their fertility.

For men, it’s a different picture. There’s the pressure to build bulk and look swole to unnaturally sustainable degrees. The simple fact is, most men don’t have and never should have the muscle mass often depicted in popular culture these days. And, yet, the media standard persists, encouraging a physique more graphic novel than Grok.

A perfect antidote to the insanity is an evolutionary perspective on what is healthy adaptation rather than modern fad. Strength and mobility would’ve been evolutionarily useful. Being bulked beyond reason or fragile would not have been. The respective bulk eating and nutrient restriction required to maintain these looks wouldn’t have been reasonable either.

The ultimate crux of Primal body image is and always has been function over form. What can your body do versus what does it look like? Run a 6-minute mile? Deadlift twice your weight? Do a perfect Dragonfly Pose? Given birth? Fed a child? Split a season’s worth of firewood? Climbed a 13,000 foot mountain? That would’ve told Grok a lot more about your health and fitness than your size.

When we dump the pervading culture’s nonsense of obsessing over comparative perfectionism, we’re free to own our own sense of worth. We’re free to enjoy living in our bodies and reveling in their abilities. We’re free to actualize ourselves physically to our own unique potentials. That sounds to me like a much bolder and worthier project in this lifetime. Let’s look at a few ways to take up this challenge.

1. Kick your scale to the curb.

First things first. Literally—as in this week’s garbage pick-up. Not only do pounds/kilos mean virtually nothing, but there’s no reason to hold onto a device that you’ve likely used against yourself for years. Go Office Space on it for the added benefit. Grok wouldn’t have cared what that thing said, and neither should you. Trust me, you won’t miss it.

2. Get clear on how you measure your self-worth.

Guess how much sympathy someone crying over their appearance would have gotten 40,000 years ago when there was field dressing to do and a fire to build? I’m sure great hair or a broad shoulders would’ve been nice then, but the stakes were higher than that in Grok’s day, and it offers some useful perspective. Appearance has always been a factor (among many) in the genetic game, but the insane obsession over it is a first-world problem, as they say. What do you value in the people you love the most? Think of the experiences you’ve had with these people that make up your favorite memories. Did a single one have to do with them having a perfect appearance? I can safely answer no to that. Stop applying a ridiculous, irrelevant standard to your own self-regard. When you’re dead, people will remember things like how good you made them feel or how fun, kind and creative you were. Let this sink in—every day. Make an active, conscious decision how you will measure your own self-worth and self-development as a human being, and never look at the mirror the same way again.

3. Power dress.

A friend of mine has a 5-year-old son, who these days wears a pirate hat wherever he goes. (Those of you with kids know exactly what I’m talking about.) For him, that hat has nothing to do with making him look good or fit in, but in making him feel powerful and (in a 5-year-old boy kind of way) badass. Consider it time to embrace your own badass by finding garb that makes you feel powerfully yourself. You know what I mean here. The clothes that make you feel most comfortable—not in terms of waistbands and fabric, but in terms of what best flatters your form and expresses your self-image. Grok’s set wasn’t above adornment, and you’d be surprised at how much “primitive” fashion was devoted to making people look larger than life. Find it in yourself.

4. Scrutinize your media and cultural exposures.

Grok had none of it, and maybe you should consider that. Look at the images you consume in a day. That goes for T.V., Internet sites, social media feeds, magazines as well as your social environments like restaurants, bars, gyms and other places. What are the influences that constantly push unreasonable or unwanted “standards” in your face. Dump them. Cancel your subscriptions or your cable. Join a different gym. Find a new coffee shop or happy hour bar. Cull your Facebook followings. Sure, we might be ultimately responsible for the impact of an image on our emotional well-being, but don’t waste the mental energy fending off what you can just turn off.

5. Surround yourself with positive people.

The above point holds for people, too. Be selective in who you surround yourself with. It’s doubtful people who were too negative and annoying would’ve survived small scale band life back in the day. If you have “friends” who always seem to offer back-handed compliments or who spend their time critiquing the appearances of everyone around them (or even themselves), it’s time to make new connections. Hint: you’re not responsible for unconditionally accepting other people’s behavior. You are, however, responsible for the company you choose to keep.

6. Shut down the comparisons.

I’ve written about this before, but suffice it here to say that you weren’t born to look or be anyone else. What anyone else looks like or does isn’t really any of your business anyway, is it? Put your energy into making your own life as awesome and adventurous as possible, and you won’t have time to worry about anyone else.

7. Set goals that focus on experience or performance rather than appearance.

Sure, feeling good about how you look is a side benefit of getting healthy. I don’t think anyone will debate that. This said, when people make appearance their goal, I’ve found they often end up unsatisfied. The “bar” against which they compare themselves just keeps getting moved because the “end result” didn’t end up exactly how they visualized, or because their self-concept wasn’t whole enough to be happy with any change. Shoot for a certain look if you want, but also invest yourself in enjoying the changes you’re making to get there. Make the process worth it in other, fulfilling ways, and relish the benefits of feeling better, lifting more, running faster. This is what living Primally is all about.

8. Show off what your body can do.

Lose the false modesty. Let people take pictures of you doing things you love—or take them yourself. Post them in your home, since that’s the perfect place to fill with shots of you doing your favorite things (often with your favorite people). And that doesn’t mean hiding them all in albums. Sure, you’ll want to have those, too, but put them on bold display wherever possible. We’re happy to fill our walls with other people’s art, but we feel funny putting up photos of ourselves rock climbing or dancing or hiking our favorite trails. But we should considering changing that. (Which do you think Grok would find more interesting?) Those moments are potent reminders of how we live the life we love, which is a rare and infinitely attractive thing.

9. Revise your story.

Maybe you grew up in the shadow of an all-star sibling or athletic parent. Maybe you’ve carried extra weight for most of your life, and over the years others came to identify you by it. Eventually, you came to do the same. Make a new choice by creating a new story. You are not the social role you played (or were given) in high school. You’re a fully autonomous adult who’s free to choose the life and identity you want. They’ll be no do-over when this existence is done. Start making and living your vision of yourself and who you want to be now. One reason I think folks dig the Grok concept so much is his fleshed out reminder of who we all really are beneath the modern window dressing. Start there. Embrace your bad and beautiful Primal self first, deciding how that lives on the page for you. Then create your new story choice by choice, day by day. Keep reminding yourself of it until it becomes the default backdrop of your life as you see it. Let other people accept it in their own time—or leave them behind when they won’t.

10. Have your picture taken.

I have a photographer friend—an artist, really—who somehow has the extraordinary talent of capturing the essence of people, capturing them in moments when everything amazing about them shines through. Photos he’s taken of the people I know and love have left me speechless—seeing my wife’s sunlit profile in a quiet, thoughtful moment, catching the giddy height of my children’s smiles when they were playing. I’ll take the recollection of those images, the most intimate and true reflections of who they are to me, to my grave. As incredible as his talent is, I know there are many like him out there. Find one—and have your picture taken to finally see a reality the mirror will never show you.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I’d love to read your thoughts on living with body positivity from a Primal perspective. Have a great end to your week.

8 Ways Going Primal Can Help the Environment

No, you yourself can’t save the world. You personally won’t make a dent in the climate, or the amount of plastic in the ocean, or the number of cute baby seals that are bludgeoned to death. But collectively, we can. The choices we make, the things we value, the food we eat, the way our food is raised, who we buy our food from, and how we conduct our day-to-day lives in attempted harmony with our Primal natures really does seem to mesh well with the environment. Multiply those small personal choices by millions of readers (and their dollars) and you get real change.

I’m not putting any extra pressure on you. These are things you’re already doing, by and large. These are the ways going Primal can actually help, not harm, the environment.

Grass-fed beef from rotationally-grazed livestock may actually save the planet

The popular arguments against the environmental merits of grass-fed beef are that it’s too inefficient. You simply can’t support enough animals on open grassland, certainly not enough to “feed the world.” Rotational grazing renders those arguments null and void. Here’s how it works:

You pack the animals close together on single paddocks. They graze intensively, not extensively. They eat everything on the paddock to which they’re confined, even the unpalatable but aggressive weeds, rather than range around nibbling their favorite foods all over.

After the paddock is clear, the animals move to the next one. They leave behind a wealth of nutrient-dense fertilizer that’s been stamped into the soil. Since the grass has been eaten, the roots die, decompose, and further enrich the soil.

By the time they circle back around to the original paddock, the grass has regrown and the soil is fully fertilized.

This isn’t a new way to feed herbivores. It’s how wild herbivores behave in natural settings. In the African savannah, zebras stick together to avoid big cats. In the Arctic, caribou gather in herds to avoid wolves. And the recent reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone actually restored the environment by promoting a kind of “forced rotational grazing” in elk.

Holistic management of livestock through rotational grazing has a ton of evidence in its favor, and more and more of your favorite farmers are adopting it. There’s a decent chance the local grass-fed beef you buy at the farmer’s market was raised using rotational grazing. If so, you’re helping.

Eating less packaged food means less packages ending up in the ocean

There’s a massive island of plastic out in the ocean. It may not be a literal island—a solid floating mass of congealed candy wrappers, ziploc bags, and milk cartons—but it’s arguably worse than that. It’s closer to an amorphous swirling vortex of microplastics slowly breaking down and showing up in the seafood you eat. Now, I’m all for the rise of a plastic-based marine society, sort of a Tupperware Atlantis with bitter sectarian violence between rival BPA and BPA-free factions. The sci-fi nerd in me would love that. But I’m also a seafood nerd. I want to standup paddle along the Malibu coast through clear clean seawater, not plastic saline syrup.

Luckily, you’re avoiding most of the packaged food responsible for polluting the oceans. Except if you buy produce from Trader Joe’s; I love the store but man, do they use a lot of plastic.

Organic food has a smaller carbon footprint

Local food doesn’t actually have much of a smaller carbon footprint. Not as a rule, anyway. Sure, your neighbor’s spinach was quite low input. The blood oranges you grab over the guy on the corner’s fence every time you walk the dog are very local and very good for the environment. The vast majority of produce’s carbon footprint takes place on the farm during production. The energy spent on seeding, growing, and harvesting. The application of pesticides. The day-to-day input that happens over the course of a growing season. The transportation from the farm to your hands accounts for less than 20% of the total carbon footprint.

However, organic food (particularly from smaller farms—the kind you usually get from the farmer’s market) can be more friendly to the environment. Organic farmers aren’t applying synthetic pesticides that run off and endanger wildlife. They’re producing fewer greenhouse gases. And if you wait for a few years for soil nutrition to recover, organic yield matches and sometimes even surpasses that of conventionally-grown crops.

Leaner people use fewer resources

The heavier you are, the more food you eat to maintain your bodyweight. The heavier you are, the more immobile you are and the more you need the car to get around. The larger you are, the larger your carbon footprint. Even attempting to be leaner means you use fewer resources because you’re increasing nutrient density and reducing caloric density, moving more, taking a walk instead of a drive, and generally taking less from the world.

We kill fewer animals

Despite directly eating plenty of animals, folks on a Primal eating plan who eschew grains actually cause fewer animal deaths than grain-eaters. To get a few hundred pounds of cow meat, you kill one cow. It’s sad for the cow but actually saves more lives than you think. To get a few hundred pounds of wheat, you clear cut and plough the land to make room for the crop and destroy the habitats of resident wild animals, apply pesticides which poison surrounding wildlife, run a harvest combine that churns through dozens of rodents, rabbits, and reptiles unlucky-enough to be there that day, and set traps and use poison to keep rats and mice out of granaries. It’s estimated that grain agriculture kills 25 more sentient animals per kilogram of useable protein than beef agriculture in Australia, where beef is mostly range-grown.

Now, meat from industrially-raised livestock is not sustainable. I’m not arguing that.

We welcome discomfort

This isn’t a staple of the Primal lifestyle. Not everyone does this. But I’d say, on the whole, that folks engaged with the movement are more likely to accept temperature extremes and use them as a “training” tool. Instead of blasting the heat once it hits 55 degrees (hey, I’m in Malibu here), they’re bearing the chill and calling it “cold exposure.” Instead of hunkering down inside with the AC blasting in summer, they head out for a picnic at the park under shade. To be short, you guys have grit, you’re willing to be a little chilly or sweaty, and the environment thanks you for it.

We use fewer electronics after dark

A growing aspect of the Primal lifestyle is honoring your circadian rhythm. That means more natural light during the day and less light at night. In an ideal world, it means spending more time outside during the day—thus using fewer lights–and turning off the electronics after dark. That’s not what always happens, of course. I get plenty of emails time stamped at 10 PM. But at least we’re aware of the problem and are taking baby steps to solve it.

We commune directly with nature

It’s hard not to love and protect a thing you fervently believe is essential for your health and happiness. I strongly believe that love makes a difference.

Simply going out into nature, buying annual passes to national parks, paying camping fees, and otherwise supporting the preservation of natural spaces with money and energy is good for the environment. It used to be that I’d go out to Yosemite or Joshua Tree or Zion and it’d be mostly Europeans on vacation with maybe the odd dread-locked trustafarian hitchiker. Now—and I mean in the last five years—I’m seeing way more Americans getting out and enjoying the incredible natural beauty our country has to offer. I’m not even rankled by the larger crowds in my favorite hiking spots because it means more people are taking advantage of this precious gift.

I don’t intend to make concrete connections between how much you weigh and your burden on the environment. But it’s clear that many of the things we hold dear contribute to a better world. And that’s the beauty of this Primal stuff: we’re not necessarily setting out to change the world. We’re eating holistically-grazed grass-fed beef because it’s more nutritious, tastes better, and gives animals a better life. We’re eating better and moving more to be healthier and happier, not because Al Gore told us to. We’re avoiding electronics after dark to preserve our circadian rhythm and improve our sleep, not cut back on electricity usage. We’re giving money to the parks because we love spending time in nature. In many respects, ours is a selfish devotion to preserving the beauty of the world. And that’s why it works so well, why it’s often more sustainable than people who do it to “be a good person” or “save the environment.”

Also, [joke about legume restriction and rectal methane production].

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care and drop a comment below if you have any further additions to the list!

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How I’d Change Grade School

Research indicates that the growing emphasis on academic rigor in grade school is ineffectual at best and counterproductive at worst.

Several months ago, a pair of studies threw early education enthusiasts into disarray. The first compared the subsequent achievement of kids enrolled in an academic pre-k program to kids who were not (PDF). By first grade, the kids who’d attended pre-k were slightly more advanced, but by grade two, the benefits vanished and even gave way to deficits. Second graders who’d never attended pre-k were beating those who had. They had better work habits and a more positive outlook on school in general. In the second, researchers found that delaying kindergarten for one year reduced hyperactivity and attention problems at age 11 by 73% and nearly abolished the chance that the average child would have a higher-than-normal rating on the “inattentive-hyperactive behavioral measure.” Other than their preschool background, the kids were all drawn from similar pools.

Earlier pre-school studies have had similar results: small short term benefits to academic performance which dissipate quickly, give way to performance deficits by the second grade, and make kids feel worse about school.

Now, some kids thrive on this kind of system, while others thrive despite it. That’s obvious, given our overall success as a country. But there are millions of kids, particularly the rambunctious, energetic ones, for whom the traditional public school set-up doesn’t work.

So what’s wrong with most early education?

The kids sit in boxes

Grade school teachers try to spruce up their classrooms with books, posters, decorations, class pets, colorful wall paper. But you can’t escape the oppressive banality of the four walls, a ceiling, and a door you can’t access without explicit permission from an adult. Too many schools are slightly more friendly prisons.

The kids sit

Humans aren’t born sedentary (well, maybe a newborn is pretty dang immobile). Years of sitting changes our bodies and makes us inured to the ravages of sedentary life. Young kids aren’t there yet. They have yet to accept the inevitability of their classroom situation. They fidget. They fuss. They manage to be incredibly active while somehow staying in their seat. Give them the chance and they’ll burst out of their chairs to throw themselves into anything requiring ambulation. If I sit for more than a few hours, I feel like garbage. And I’m in my 60s. Imagine how your first grader feels. I’m convinced that the 12 years of primary schooling inures us to the ravages of sitting and makes it the default setting for the rest of our lives.

The kids have very little agency

If you’re walking through a Whole Foods parking lot, hold your kid’s hand and watch where they’re going. Prius drivers on juice fasts are not to be trifled with. But in safe environments with a low risk of traumatic injury, we should support kids’ instinct to roam and at the very least decide what to do with their time. School kids today have no agency. Heaps of responsibility (homework, routines, tests, extracurriculars) and little respect for their decision making skills.

Recess is undervalued and inadequate

Recess is shrinking. Most grade school kids are lucky to get a single 20 minute block of free outdoor play per day. Some schools don’t even give first graders any recess at all, and a disturbing number of them even hold recess hostage as a punishment for poor behavior or performance. This is a travesty, not only because recess (and PE) increase physical activity and step count, but because physical activity improves learning and reduces acting out. In one Texas grade school, implementing four 15-minute recesses a day reduced bullying and tattling, improved focus and eye-contact, and even stopped the neurotic pencil chewing teachers were noticing among their students. The kids are testing ahead of schedule despite less actual classroom time and test prep. Recess improves academic performance, and physical play improves subsequent learning capacity. Give a kid a 15 minute play break for every 45 minutes of book learning and he’ll learn more than the kid who studies an hour straight.

They’re failing boys especially

In both the US and the UK, boys trail girls through primary, secondary, and higher education. The nurture versus nature debate notwithstanding, anyone who’s met a handful of them knows that boys are in general more rambunctious, more boisterous, and less able to sit still for extended periods of time. They’re also far more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD and placed on stimulants. Girls and boys who can’t sit still are penalized, but this “problem” afflicts boys disproportionately.

They are unnaturally rigid

The structure of school is unnatural. School starts at 7:30, sharp. You form lines. You arrange your desks in grids. You follow the lesson plan. Recess is 10 minutes to the second. Piercing alarms signal the end of fun. Back to class! Don’t run. Everything is distinct and separate. Math is 50 minutes. Break. Put away your math books; take out your English books.

Life flows. Life is fractal. Moments bleed into each other. School should reflect that.

Here’s what I’d like to see:

Later start times: 8:30, 9 AM. This would give kids extra sleep. Everyone needs sleep, but kids need it more than anyone. It helps them consolidate memories and recently learned skills. Even the CDC has called for later start times for schools. as kids especially need a lot of sleep. Kids are staying up later and later thanever before. Particularly in studies using teen subjects, delaying school start times by 25-60 minutes can increase total sleep duration by 25-75 minutes per weeknight. That’s up to more than an hour of extra sleep a night, five days a week. That’s a huge ROI.

There’s more beneficial fallout that the studies don’t address. When you push the start time back, the mornings are less stressful for everyone. Instead of giving your kid cold Poptarts and Gogurts in the car, you’re scrambling eggs, slicing apples, and frying bacon. You’re not worried about being late, you’re taking your time. Hell, maybe there’s even time to walk to school.

Walking to school: Until recently, kids weren’t even allowed to show up to school alone. They needed to be dropped off or accompanied by a parent or guardian. I’d go a step further. At my ideal grade school, the default would be arriving alone. If a parent wanted to drop their kid off, they’d need a permission slip and doctor’s note.

More and longer recess: Recess needs to be longer. The absolute daily minimum is 45 minutes (spread across 1-3 sessions), though I’d like to see the entire day spent outside with movement interlaced with learning/lessons..

More time in nature: Ideally, the entire school day takes place outdoors, but even a small daily nature excursion is better than nothing. The benefits are immense and irrefutable:

Kids with ADHD can focus better after exposure to green spaces.
Kids who frequently spend time outdoors get sick less often and show better motor skills and physical coordination.
Kids with exposure (even just visual) to nature have better self-discipline.
For kids dealing with stress at home (who isn’t?), nature can act as a buffer.

Add to those the general benefits of green space seen in all humans and the forest kindergarten setting looks more attractive.

More male staff: Quotas are abhorrent and I would never support them, but I’d certainly try to make schools more attractive to qualified males. As it stands now, over 80% of elementary and middle school teachers are women and it’s even more lopsided in kindergarten and first grade. Both boys and girls can benefit from a male perspective. It’s nearly impossible for people to avoid injecting their personal biases or preferences into their teaching style, whether the teacher’s a man or woman. Having both men and women teachers balances out the biases.

Fewer rules at recess: Kids can climb trees, roughhouse, leap fences, ride bikes, play tag, play dodgeball, play butts up, and all the other classic playground games that carry a modicum of danger. Kids won’t be expelled for playing cops and robbers or making finger guns. Staff intervenes only if kids request it or injury is imminent. The whole point is to introduce kids to risk. Navigating relatively small risks (skinned knee, hurt feeling, short fall, wounded pride) builds mettle and prepares developing brains to deal with bigger risks. People talk about school as preparation for the meat grinder of “real life,” but most schools eliminate any real prep work because adults mediate every conflict, grievance, hogged sandbox, and stolen dinosaur toy.

Tons of climbable structures and trees: Kids (and adults) need to climb things. It’s fun, it builds strength, and introduces manageable risk. You get stuck, you get yourself unstuck. You can climb all the trees you want, but you’ll have to get yourself down.

No busy homework: The evidence for homework is weak to nonexistent. Instead of giving five year olds an hour of paperwork to complete, give them open-ended suggestions.

“Read a book with your parents and tell the class about your favorite part of the story.”

“Find 7 leaves, each from a different tree, and bring them to class.”

“Make $20 by next Monday. Tell us how you did it.”

More doing: Humans learn best by doing. Everyone accepts that we learn languages best by speaking it or being thrown into a foreign country, not by reading language lessons. But learning through doing works for everything. Learning the fundamentals matters, but only if you also practice them. I learned to write by reading and aping other writers. This even works in subjects like math. One American educator, Benezet, showed that children who delayed formal math instruction in favor of natural math instruction (doing) until 8th grade quickly caught up to and outperformed kids taught the traditional way.

Mixed ages: Segregation by age makes little evolutionary sense (until the public school system arose, children had historically hung out with other children of all ages) and without age mixing children miss out on many benefits (PDF):

Younger kids can’t learn from older kids.

Older kids can’t learn how to teach younger kids.

Younger kids can only do age appropriate activities. With an older kid’s help, a younger child can accomplish much more. Two 4-year olds throwing a frisbee around is an exercise in futility. Include a 7-year old and it gets a whole lot more productive for everyone.

If all that sounds good to you, fear not. Similar education models are out there and available. Homeschooling is growing (and homeschoolers generally outperform public school attendees), as is unschooling (a more radical, child-directed version of homeschooling; unschoolers also have good outcomes). Democratic schools, like Sudbury Valley or NYC’s Agile Learning Center, give children the chance to direct their own learning with staff as facilitators, not teachers.

Parents are going to have to ease up and let go and just let kids be kids rather than tiny college applicants. The hovering needs to cease. It’s one thing to share articles about the value of letting children fail and walk to school alone and take risks. It’s another to actually do those things.

But I’m optimistic. In the near future, I can see this model of school, or something approaching it, only growing more popular. It’s all part of the growing acknowledgement by everyone that the way we currently do things—whether it’s what we eat, how we exercise, how we raise and grow food, or how we educate our children—may run counter to our evolutionary heritage and that other, better ways probably exist.

What do you think, readers? Parents, kids, non-parents, teens, teachers: what does your ideal vision of early education look like?

Thanks for reading.

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Dear Mark: A Few Collagen Questions

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering some questions from the comment board of last week’s collagen post. You guys came up with some really interesting, useful ones that deserve closer examination. First, I explore whether—and how—increasing one’s collagen intake could conceivably worsen a person’s lipid profile. There’s actually a possibility, believe it or not. Next, I give a recommendation for optimal gelatin intake in terms of grams per day. After that, I tell a reader how to know if his store-bought broth is truly gelatinous (and offer an alternative source), discuss the worthiness of octopus and squid as collagen sources, and give a non-bovine gelatin recommendation to a beef-sensitive reader.

Let’s go:

Mark, you convinced me on the merits of collagen and I love the taste of bone marrow and bone broth. However, my recent lipid profile showed a spike in total cholesterol to 287 and LDL to 198, from about 230 and 130 respectively. This seems too high a risk for the wonders of collagen! Please advise.

Interesting. If I’m understanding you correctly, your lipid profile changed after you started eating more broth?

What could be going on? I’ve never considered the chance gelatin could throw off blood lipids, so I did some digging.

A big reason gelatin/collagen is so important is to balance out our meat intake. You know this. The glycine in gelatin balances the methionine in muscle meat. What happens when the imbalance is flipped—when you have too much gelatin and not enough muscle meat? In mice, cholesterol goes up when you feed gelatin and remove all sources of tryptophan (an amino acid found abundantly in meat, often accompanies methionine). Triglycerides and total cholesterol go up (this was an old study, so they may not have been up on the importance of different types of lipoproteins). Keeping the gelatin level constant and adding back in L-tryptophan prevented the rise.

So make sure you’re not only eating gelatin. Eat some steak, too.

Another study found that only ApoE knockout mice experienced negative changes to their blood lipids when eating a gelatin-rich diet (10% gelatin and 10% casein versus 20% casein). Their total cholesterol decreased, but the HDL decreased enough to increase the total:HDL ratio and double the rate of atheroma formation. The “wild-type” mice saw no effect. ApoE is the access code for lipoproteins that carry nutrients past the blood brain barrier to deliver them. Low-activity ApoE variants have trouble delivering nutrients to the brain and are associated with bad blood lipids, Alzheimer’s, and other types of health conditions; an ApoE knockout is the extreme version of this.

So make sure you’re not an ApoE knockout mouse. Do you have whiskers and a tail? Are you actually reading and comprehending these words? Are you in an office or a glass cage filled with newspaper shavings and your own feces? Look at the keyboard; do you see scrawny rodent paws or human hands? If you are human, it might be worthwhile to get your ApoE profile sequenced.

Whatever you do, never drink gelatinous broth before going outside in cold weather. The gelatin may thicken in your blood, leading to painful, often fatal blockages. This is the dreaded “myocosbyal infarction.”

Okay, I’m convinced. So how many grams a day of gelatin would I want to use?

We need about 10 grams per day for basic metabolic functioning. We can make 3 grams from endogenous synthesis, leaving 7 grams that must come from the diet. Gelatin is about 33% glycine, give or take a few. A tablespoon of gelatin is 11 grams, all protein, so you’re getting a hair over 3 grams of glycine per tablespoon. A couple tablespoons of gelatin should be enough. Check your nutritional label to confirm the protein content of the gelatin you’re using.

Sleep research uses 3 grams of glycine to great effect, so that’s probably the bare minimum.

I drink about 3 to 5 ounces of VERY gelatinous bone broth every morning (usually from Prather Ranch here in the Bay area). Anyone know how much glycine that would provide?

It depends.

What does “VERY” gelatinous bone broth mean to you?

Does it stay in its container turned upside down?

Can you bounce a dime off it, or does the coin disappear into the broth? How about a nickel or a quarter?

Can you plunge a fork into it and have it stand straight up?

Is it still gelatinous at room temperature?

Does it make your lips sticky when you drink it?

If you didn’t say “yes” to any of those, your broth might not be all that gelatinous and might want to find another source. I’ve got a buddy in the Bay Area who makes very legit broth in small batches. You can email him at erik@boneliquorbroth.com if you’re interested.

In the end, the only way to know for sure how much gelatin is in your Prather Ranch broth is to recreate its consistency using powdered gelatin that you measure. Good luck!

I am wondering how beneficial it is on the collagen spectrum, and if the collagens found in octopus (and squid) are made nutritionally available during human digestion?

Great question.

Yes, octopus is an underutilized, often-ignored source of collagen. Research shows that octopus collagen is quite similar to calf skin collagen (PDF). Both are about 30-35% glycine. Both have about the same physical properties. In other words, they can serve the same dietary role for humans despite following independent evolutionary paths (the octopus and the cow have very distant common ancestors).

That goes for any “tough” animal food that “needs a lot of cooking.” They’re all going to be high in collagen, because it’s the collagen maintaining the structure of the meat.

Squid isn’t as tough or rubbery as octopus, but it’s a better source of collagen than most common sea creatures.

However, my nutritional therapy practitioner had me tested for all sorts of reactions to food and beef was rather high on my list as reactive. Are there any other sources of collagen that I could access?

Pork gelatin is available and delicious.

And as mentioned earlier, any “tough” cut of non-beef animal will provide ample collagen. Necks, feet, tails, snouts, ears, tendons, shanks, wings. All the odd bits. They all work. You just have to be willing to cook.

That’s it for today, everyone. Thanks for reading!

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