Mark Sisson's Blog, page 333

Dear Mark: Food Combining

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’ll be covering all the different questions I receive regarding the topic of food combining. Now, food combining can refer to different things. First, there’s the dietary philosophy known as “food combining,” which says things like “never eat carbs and proteins together,” or “always eat fruits alone,” or “never, under any circumstances, consume melons with any other food,” or “eat an acidic fruit with your nuts.” It gets very specific and sounds kinda hokey, but I’ll look into it. Then, you’ve got the more general questions around food combinations, such as “does eating fat with carbs promote fat gain?” Many of you are interested in food combining as a general concept. You want to know how to overeat without gaining fat, how to maximize nutrient absorption, and about the specific foods that can change how other foods affect you. I’ll cover those as well.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

Dear Mark,

I have heard two competing ideas on food combining and insulin release/fat storage. One says that you should combine high carb foods with fat or protein to minimize insulin spikes.  The other says that you should eat carbs by themselves because the insulin stimulated by the carbs will also store protein or fat as fat if eaten in the same meal as carbs. Which theory is correct and does it really matter for health/weight loss?

Thank you so much!

Sara

For the most part, there’s no need to separate fats from carbs from protein in a normal meal with reasonable amounts of calories. In one study, researchers put patients on one of two hypocaloric diets: either a balanced diet, where fat and protein and carbs were eaten together, or a food combining diet, where macronutrients were consumed mostly separately. Both groups lost the same amount of weight, though people who ate macronutrients together achieved better blood pressure numbers and lost slightly more fat. Those were low calorie diets, however, not massive ad libitum feedings. If you’re eating normal amounts of food (i.e. not stuffing yourself or purposely overfeeding), I see no reason why some sweet potato fries cooked in coconut oil or a bowl of Greek yogurt and berries will do any harm. Your body doesn’t have to handle extra energy, so switching between fuel substrates isn’t much of a problem.

When overfeeding, whether on purpose or inadvertently (the buffet effect), macronutrient selection begins to matter. One of the reasons why I recommend that folks doing a carb refeed for weight loss limit fat for the duration is that overfeeding with carbs boosts leptin and energy expenditure, while overfeeding with fat does not. It’s also why bodybuilders typically follow their workouts with a super high-carb, high-protein meal – to spike insulin and shuttle nutrients into their gaping, starving muscle cells – and go lower carb and higher fat on rest days – to keep fat burning elevated. As a general rule, burning massive amounts of fat precludes burning massive amounts of carbs, and vice versa. Plus, there’s the simple fact that carbs and fat are incredibly tasty together – think pizza, cookies, ice cream, french fries, and so on. Fat alone or carbs alone aren’t very appetizing, but combined they definitely promote overeating. That’s not a problem for people who want to gain weight, or have no issue with incredibly tasty foods, but it bears mentioning. For an idea of the long term effects of a high-carb diet with significant amounts of (bad, refined, seed-based) fat, just look at the obesity rates in America.

I will keep this short. Just a quick question about combining foods to make them more effective or less depending on which we combine. Take local raw honey and ingest it with organic cinnamon in a tea. If the honey causes a slight glycemic rise does the cinnamon reduce that from happening? Given cinnamon’s natural effect on the body’s insulin levels, is this a possibility? Thank you for your time.

Liza

When it comes to interactions between specific foods or nutrients, I could go on forever. To keep this post to a reasonable length, I’ll just mention a few.

Cinnamon + Carbs: Yes, you are correct. It appears that cinnamon, which is known to increase insulin sensitivity (even countering the insulin resistance caused by sleep loss), also reduces postprandial blood glucose area under the curve. In other words, having cinnamon with your carbs makes the glucose increase more gradually, rather than spike. Of course, cinnamon isn’t a panacea, judging from the collective body composition of a typical line for Cinnabon.

Vinegar + Carbs: Eating vinegar before or during a carb-rich meal blunts the glycemic response. So, if you have a salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing before your steak and sweet potatoes, or pickles and sauerkraut before your sausage and potatoes, the blood glucose spike that may have been will be lower and less “spikey” because of the vinegar. Not only that, but vinegar seems to increase satiety and lower insulin in addition to lowering postprandial blood glucose.

Plant Foods + Meat: Although the references are escaping me now, there’s evidence that polyphenol-containing foods, like leafy greens and berries, can inhibit the formation of carcinogens when eaten with meats cooked and seared over high heat. So, there’s a reason salad goes so well with steak, or orange slices go so well with bacon and eggs – they make the meal healthier.

Now, the “food combining diet” questions.

Finally…whats the deal with food combining???? Is it baloney? Should we not have fruits (sugary things) with proteins, etc?

Steve

The idea that our digestive systems evolved with a kind of built-in fragility that prevented us from eating different food groups at the same time is preposterous. In a normal, healthy stomach, gastric juice is released on an as-needed basis until the pH hits somewhere around 2. Pepsin – an enzyme geared toward breaking down protein – is also released in the stomach. Then, as the considerable musculature of the stomach churns and mixes the food together, bathing the lot in a wash of stomach acid and pepsin, the small intestine gets the cue to prepare digestive enzymes like lipase (for fat) and amylase (for starch) and more protein-digesting enzymes. When the small intestine begins receiving the first of the chyme (the partially-digested food smoothie your stomach just produced) from the stomach, those digestive enzymes are primed to break down the rest of it.

Here’s the thing about the pancreas: it’s a great multi-tasker. It can secrete lipase, amylase, and protease all at the same time. It can handle a mixed meal containing carbs, protein, and fat with grace and aplomb. Now, if food entered your small intestine in sequential order in its original form, I’d say the food combining folks are on to something. But food enters the small intestine after being churned and blended into chyme. It’s an unrecognizable mix of everything you just ate, not a layer of meat followed by a layer of potato followed by a layer of salad.

There are confounders, of course. If you have low stomach acid, your digestive flexibility may be impaired. If you do not chew your food, instead opting for the gulping method, your stomach will have to work harder to turn it into chyme, and it may fail at that task. If you’re coming off a no- or low-meat diet, your stomach may not be accustomed to producing the required amounts of acid. But that doesn’t mean a normal digestive system can’t handle a mixed meal.

There’s also a funny claim by food combiners that sounds reasonable on the surface yet falls apart under scrutiny: that the acidic environment required for protein digestion in the stomach impairs carbohydrate digestion by amylase, which requires a less acidic environment. It’s true that amylase requires a more alkaline environment. It’s also true that protein digestion requires an acidic environment, and that an acidic environment can impair amylase function. However, it’s also true that the release of acidic gastric juice in the stomach acts as a signal for the pancreas to begin secreting digestive enzymes, including amylase, into the small intestine. In fact, low stomach acid impedes this communication and results in lower levels of digestive enzymes, including amylase, in the small intestine. So, you see, a highly acidic stomach environment is actually essential for proper carbohydrate digestion. And, since eating meat tends to increase stomach acid, it might be even better to eat carbs with your meat.

There has been very little direct research into food combining. That study I mentioned up above, where researchers examined the effects of a “food combining diet” and a “balanced diet” and found that they both elicited similar effects on weight loss (with the normal diet causing an insignificantly greater amount of fat loss), is the only one to explicitly study food combining. While it found no effect on weight loss, it didn’t examine digestion. It may very well be that the food combiners experienced “better digestion,” which is tough to objectively measure, but we can’t say either way.

Hi Mark,

I like to blend fruit and vegetable smoothies in the morning in order to jump-start my greens (and other colors) intake for the day. Recently, I heard from a doctor that eating fruits and vegetables at the same time cancels out nutritional benefits and hurts digestion.

Is there any merit to this “food combining” principle? What about with other foods, like meat?

All the best,

Daniel

This seems even sillier. Who was this doctor, and what exactly did he or she say? I can’t imagine a physiological mechanism that would make eating spinach and bananas at the same time cancel each other out. The only thing I can think of is that the fiber and oxalates in certain raw vegetables may bind to minerals like calcium, magnesium, and potassium and prevent their absorption and utilization by the body, but that effect doesn’t require food combining to occur. It could happen even if you ate a high-oxalate vegetable by itself, because it would simply bind the minerals present in the high-oxalate vegetable. It doesn’t only affect nutrients from other foods. Besides, as you might recall, all that food gets blended together in the stomach, effectively becoming one.

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

I’d love to hear from you guys, if you’ve got any food combining stories, experiences, or pertinent research.

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Weekend Link Love

Research of the Week

Access to treadmill desks (even with infrequent usage) help obese workers lose body fat without affecting performance.

Why the anxious should exercise regularly.

Folks who are depressed tend to pursue more “generalized goals,” as opposed to more specific goals.

Being infected with parasitic worms may protect you from heart disease.

Interesting Blog Posts

As corn pests wise up to our feeble attempts to genetically engineer pest resistance into corn seeds, farmers are having to pump even more pesticides onto their crops. Or, you know, they could do some old-fashioned and time-tested crop rotation and limit the resistance in the first place, but that wouldn’t be better living through chemistry.

Why software developers need to worry about their nutrition.

Media, Schmedia

I love it when a big government agency admits they were wrong: the CDC begrudgingly admits they may have been wrong about salt restriction.

The drug-resistant bacteria situation on America’s farms and the food they produce is only getting worse.

Everything Else

Drug companies are rushing to perfect a drug that mimics a rare LDL-lowering genetic mutation. People with the mutation have a drastically lower risk of heart disease, but I’m not sure that means the drug will have the same effect. Will this turn out like all the others?

Citing the increasing numbers of chickens being given up, animal shelter workers are calling the end of the urban chicken trend. “It’s the stupid foodies” getting in over their heads, they say. But, according to NPR, the actual problem is the hatcheries, who often mistakenly sell male chicks as females. When the males come of age and become loud-beaked roosters, most urban farmers must dump them or run afowl of the law.

Although we’re exercising more than ever, Americans are still failing to lose weight.

Recipe Corner

Go on and make yourself some chicken heart stroganoff in that slow cooker lodged in your cabinet.
The blueberries are beginning to appear, just in time to make blueberries n’ cream scrambles.

Time Capsule

One year ago (July 14 – July 20)

Is Wheat Addictive? – This gets thrown around a lot, but is wheat truly, physiologically, psychologically addictive?
Ancient Wisdom Confirmed by Modern Science – Don’t you just love when that happens? Jonathan Bailor guest posts.

Comment(s) of the Week

I thought spouse wrestling was chronic cardio. – Randy

I think you must be doing it wrong, spouse wrestling is definitely HIIT. – Dzoldzaya

- Excellent exchange.

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Salmon, Zucchini and Lemon Skewers

The simple trick of threading lemon slices to these skewers adds a bright color and a light, tart flavor to the salmon and zucchini as they cook. A sprinkle of cumin and coriander and a dollop of chive-butter bring more mouth-watering flavor.

These skewers are great for parties – they look fantastic piled on a platter. Assemble the skewers ahead of time and they’ll only take a few minutes to grill when you’re ready to eat.

Pre-ground cumin and coriander work fine for this recipe, but seriously consider using whole cumin and coriander seeds, instead. Toast the seeds in a pan for a few minutes, grind them yourself in a coffee grinder and you’ll be rewarded with a spice blend that has a much bolder flavor and aroma.

Servings: 4

Time in the Kitchen: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons butter (30 g)
1 tablespoon finely chopped chives (15 ml)
1 1/2 to 2 pounds of salmon, 1-inch thick and cut into 1-inch wide squares, skinned or not, your choice (450 to 900 g)
2 lemons, thinly sliced
2 to 3 small zucchini, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon cumin seeds (or ground cumin) (5 ml)
1 teaspoon coriander seeds (or ground coriander) (5 ml)
3/4 teaspoon salt (5 ml)
2 tablespoons olive oil (15 ml)

Instructions:

Prepare grill to medium heat. Or, if using an oven broiler, set to high heat.

Mash together the butter and chives. If the butter is unsalted, add just a pinch of salt. Smooth the butter into a small bowl and set aside.

If using pre-ground cumin and coriander, just combine them in a bowl with the salt.

If using cumin and coriander seeds, toast them in a dry skillet over medium-high heat until slightly darker in color and fragrant, 3 to 4 minutes.

Grind the seeds into a rough powder (a coffee grinder works well for grinding whole spices). Combine the cumin and coriander in a small bowl with the salt. Set aside.

Set your sliced lemon, zucchini and salmon in front of you with the skewers.

Use two skewers to thread each kebob; this helps hold the pieces of salmon together better. Alternate salmon with zucchini and lemon slices. Fold the lemon pieces in half to skewer.

Brush the skewers lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle the mixture of cumin, coriander and salt on top.

Grill for 6 to 8 minutes, turning once or twice.

If using an oven, broil on high for 3 minutes on the second rack from the top.

Turn the skewers and raise the oven rack to the top rung. Broil 1 to 3 minutes more, watching closely so the skewers don’t burn.

Serve the bowl of chive butter on the side.

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I Was Unhealthy and Getting Sicker: Something Had to Change

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!

Hi Mark,

I’m 47 years old, happily married, and have a 12-year-old son. I encountered The Primal Blueprint in May 2012, and it’s changed my life.

I’d been working on some health issues for a few years and had seen solid progress. However, something wasn’t clicking. My weight was still going up and down and my triglycerides were always high, never falling below 240. Nine weeks after I started following The Primal Blueprint, I dropped 12 pounds and my triglycerides fell below 100 for the first time in years. After 9 months with The Primal Blueprint, my triglycerides are at 105 and I’ve lost a total of 25 pounds.

I like The Primal Blueprint because it targets overall health, not just weight loss and physical fitness. It’s also about playing, thinking, resting properly, and managing stress.

Some background: About 10 years ago, after a lifetime of “enjoying” the Standard American Diet (McDonald’s was my kind of place), I began experiencing a steady decline in health. I developed painful tendonitis in both Achilles. I had occasional bouts of gout in my big toe. (One of the most painful things I’ve experienced in my life.) My forehead was constantly broken out with rosacea. I was overweight. I easily became irritable and got the low-blood-sugar shakes when I went more than a couple of hours without eating. I was having dizzy spells and at times stumbled while walking down the hall at work. And I was starting to really be concerned about my weight, which at 190+ pounds was the highest it had ever been. (I’m 5’ 7” and feel that my “ideal” weight is somewhere between 140-150 pounds.)

During a bout of Achilles tendonitis in 2009 that kept me home from work, I felt it was time for some self-examination. I looked at myself and saw an out-of-shape, overweight middle-aged man (I was 43) who couldn’t walk, who was experiencing dizziness for no apparent reason, and who had embarrassing acne on his forehead. I was unhealthy and getting sicker. Something had to change.

It was at that time I was told by my chiropractor/nutritionist that I had Metabolic Syndrome, was suffering from insulin resistance, and was in an almost-constant state of inflammation. Over the next 3 years under his guidance, I cut out soda and fast food and began to eat organic vegetables, farm-fresh eggs, and grass-fed beef. My health improved markedly, and I felt a lot better. My tendonitis flare-ups were less frequent and less severe. And my rosacea cleared up completely. My weight, however, was still going up and down, generally hovering in the mid-180s. And my triglycerides remained above 240, topping out at 446 in March 2012!

There is a history of high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease in my family (not to mention gout), and I was concerned I was heading down the same road. I knew I had to ramp up my efforts to get my triglycerides down. I had learned over the past few years that excessive dietary sugar is stored in the body as triglycerides, so I decided to get serious about eliminating grains and sugar from my diet.

Shortly thereafter, in May 2012, I came across a copy of The Primal Blueprint in my acupuncturist’s waiting room. It was beside a sign that read “This is the type of eating style we recommend.” I opened the book and knew right away I had found something special. The stories of Ken Korg and his family really spoke to me. I was exhilarated! I bought a copy and haven’t looked back.

The book’s description of the role of insulin in fat storage and retention fascinated me. I had known that grains and sugar were problematic, but I began to understand exactly why. I became convinced that controlling insulin production and exercising Primally were the keys to not just burning stored body fat, but to finally reducing my triglycerides. The Primal Blueprint was the missing piece of my nutritional puzzle, the missing link in my nutritional evolution.

I immediately cut processed carbs from my diet. I started exercising with the Primal Essential Movements. And I made a hobby of discovering more and more local sources of pastured meat, organic vegetables and fruit, farm-fresh eggs, and grass-fed raw-milk dairy products. (Living in the Black Dirt region of southern New York is very conducive to my foraging.)

Using The Primal Blueprint carbohydrate curve as a guide, I started losing 1-2 pounds a week. Nine weeks after first reading The PB I had my next round of blood work. My triglycerides, which had measured over 400 two months prior, were now down to 76! “You’ve reversed your insulin resistance” my nutritionist surmised with a smile. That was incredibly fulfilling.

My wife, who has always been supportive of my attempts at improving my health, was so impressed; she joined me for a 21-Day Challenge. My 12-year-old son joins me on my weekend foraging trips to local farms and farm markets and is learning where his food comes from. He’s gotten used to bun-less burgers, enjoys yogurt and fruit for dessert, and prefers raw grass-fed cheese to “that flappy cheese” as he calls process cheese product singles.

After 9 months with The Primal Blueprint, my triglycerides are in a healthy range at 105 and my weight, now at 160 pounds, continues to go down. While I love the drop in waist size, I know that the real signs of my improved health are on the inside, where my systems are functioning more as nature intended, and my lifestyle is promoting optimal expression of my genes.

Thank you, Mark. Grok on!

Tim T.

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An Open Letter to Doctors

I realized recently I’ve never written this kind of open letter. I figure if kids and Taco Bell got the benefit, maybe primary care physicians could as well. Kidding aside, there’s a genuine mismatch these days between standard medical advice and effective lifestyle practices. I think we can all do better. I’m not letting patients off the hook here either. (Maybe that’s fodder for another letter.) However, we naturally look to our physicians as our healers, as the experts, as our guides. Unfortunately, we’re not always well served by that kind of faith. I’m of course not talking about any one doctor or set of doctors. I happen to know a great many primary care doctors and other medical practitioners who are incredibly forward and critical thinking professionals. They balance their perspectives with the likes of medical logic, broad based study of existing research and close attention to real life results. While I think I’m not the only one who would have much to say to many specialists out there as well, let me specifically address primary care physicians here. They’re on the front lines – for all the good and ugly that goes with it. More than any specialist, they have the whole picture of our health (and a fair amount of our life stories to boot). It’s more their job (and billing categorization) to provide general health and lifestyle counseling to their patients. It’s with great respect that I offer these thoughts. As my readers can guess, this could easily be a tale of ninety-nine theses, but let me focus on a few central points.

The State of Weight Counseling

Can we talk about this for just a moment? Statistics vary, but generous numbers suggest two-thirds of physicians don’t counsel their patients about their weight – this at a time when approximately two-thirds (yup) of the adult population in our country is overweight or obese. I’m not pointing fingers at any specific people here, but this is disconcerting. It seems to be a downward aiming trend to boot. One study of primary care appointments, for instance, found doctors offer weight related counseling less often than they did twelve years ago. In fact, of the appointments researchers analyzed, doctors only discussed weight in a mere 6.2% of visits! In the year these statistics were gathered, 63.3% of adults were overweight or obese. Does this even make any sense? But there’s more. The same research found those with high blood pressure and/or diabetes were also less likely to receive weight counseling than they were twelve years ago – 46% and 59% less likely respectively. Any jaws dropping yet? Pardon me, but does this jive with some version of the Hippocratic Oath I don’t know about?

This utterly confounds me. Sure, I get it on an emotional level. It’s awkward. You don’t want to make anyone feel bad. But it’s your job to tell the truth – whether it’s convenient or not. It’s your job to steer folks in the right direction health-wise, to educate them in making better choices for their health. No one’s suggesting you call them at home to wake them up in the morning to encourage them to go workout. No one thinks it’s your job to write a personalized menu plan.

Nor is anyone saying you have to be a jerk about it. (Please don’t.) You really can have a conversation with a patient about his/her weight without shaming or blaming. The thing is, I’ll bet the person already knows he or she is overweight (just a wild guess). Mentioning it won’t dismantle any delusions of god-like svelteness or superhero health. I’d even venture to say they’re waiting for you to talk about it – as in, their weight and assorted related concerns/questions are already on their minds. Just be honest – and professional – and compassionate (without patronizing). Be down to earth about the real risks they face and the concrete strategies they can use. Bond as you would with any other patient. I say this because – guess what – research also shows physicians tend to bond less with overweight patients than they do with normal weight folks. As the researchers note, less engagement likely means less adherence to whatever good advice you do offer, and you might be wholly missing the patients who need you (and the care you provide) the most.

The Questioning of Conventional Wisdom and the Myth of the Magic Pill

With all of the above in mind, can we talk about the information itself? This is kind of big. In fact, it could be a book in and of itself. (I do have a few recommendations on that front….) I realize I’m not the first one to observe we’re living in a health care system that favors intense intervention and fails too often at basic prevention.

One of the things that troubles me most is the all-too-frequent, razor-focused commitment to conventional medical wisdom. I’m talking particularly about the red herrings and ridiculous claims like saturated fat is the bane of human existence, that dietary cholesterol is the culprit behind unhealthy lipid profiles, that 350-450 grams of carbohydrates are reasonable if not desirable each day, that whole grains (including GMO corn and gluten giant – wheat) are an essential part of a healthy diet. The research doesn’t line up – and never really did line up – behind these assumptions. The more our population follows these recommendations – eschewing whole foods like eggs, pastured butter, coconut oil and organic meats for the likes of whole wheat snack products and carb heavy dishes at every meal, the more unhealthy we get. Diabetes isn’t an organism that mutated. We’ve just never worked so miserably against our own physiology before in human history/pre-history.

The fact is, even studies published in some of the bigger name journals are beginning to demonstrate these truths and dismantle decades of erroneous conventional assumptions. To an extent, it’s a matter of reviewing the research, keeping up on what’s being said and shown. I know, I know. It’s difficult to impossible to stay abreast of the latest research – especially when you expand the scope beyond the most conventional sources. It’s tough for physicians to stay current on ALL the new research. It’s often fuzzy or contradictory, and much of it is still poorly conducted or biased in its funding, so even reading research can be a frustrating time expenditure. Even physicians agree that physicians regularly fall behind for various reasons. Some among them suggest more than anything “Continuing Medical Education” at the point of patient care – reports and summaries at hand of the latest thinking and evidence based findings. That sounds great. I have a more modest proposal, however.

Outside of accidents and serious genetic defects, 80-90% of conditions doctors treat are either prevented and/or cured…or at least mitigated…by lifestyle adjustments. And much of that is diet (although exercise, sleep, sun, stress control all play an added role). How about just investing in some nuts and bolts education on lifestyle interventions. Ideally, a physician would get 2-3 months of focused diet/exercise/lifestyle training in med school aimed at fixing various common health issues, rather than just relieving the symptoms.

Medicine in our country (as a culture), however, focuses on the symptoms more than the source. A stent, for example, offers relief of a symptom but doesn’t address the larger health issue or seek to remedy it. Gastric bypass isn’t a fix but a procedure that circumvents the bigger source of the problem. In some extreme cases, it might be an advisable course of action in the context of a bigger plan. Most of the time, however, psychological and lifestyle means are much safer and much more effective in the long run because they can address the root causes.

When it comes to the top selling pills, the same principle holds. Statins address the manufactured symptom of high cholesterol. When we put our faith in them, we lose sight of the real processes going on in the body – the processes we need to be addressing. The same goes for PPIs and SSRIs. Respectively speaking, heartburn is generally associated with too little acid rather than too much. Taking them might alleviate some short-term discomfort, but they’re contributing to long-term digestive issues and nutritional deficiencies. Likewise, SSRIs and other mental health meds often cover up underlying therapeutic needs for stress reduction and sleep improvement as well as physical conditions like dietary allergies/sensitivities, nutritional deficits, and drug interactions. Can we all back up for a minute and reconsider the conventional teachings and protocols?

Sure, you can’t redo your med school experience. Likewise, it’s probably not in the cards to take a leisurely sabbatical during which you get to delve into the sea of research that’s been published in the last year let alone decade. Still, you can forge your own commitment to the process of learning about lifestyle interventions, about recent findings and reviews. You can open your own mind to the less popularly cited studies, to the less front and center journal selections. Find a few that suit you, that you can believe in. Dabble for a while in the outer reaches of lifestyle research. Choose some publications that interest you. Commit to following them. Likewise, choose some less formal reading to fill in the gaps. Look for some books and blogs (I know of one.) you can feel comfortable with but that nonetheless challenge your way of thinking. Good Calories, Bad Calories or Why We Get Sick, for example, would be good places to start. They’re relatively easy and decent ways to digest a lot of info at once.

And while we’re on the subject of good resources, how about giving out the names of books and articles in lieu of many of these prescriptions? The fact is, we lean heavily on the latest pharmaceuticals rather than lifestyle measures. How often do we really exhaust the lifestyle intervention possibilities before handing out the magic pills? Can we give patients more credit? Can we challenge them more effectively to change their diets and daily regimens before getting out the prescription pad? Is it asking too much to go out on a limb and ask patients to educate themselves? Suggest accessible, engaging material on the blogs and books you see fit. Can I suggest The Primal Blueprint as one possibility? Many doctors already recommend it to their patients and – no surprise – their patients have seen the same kind of incredible results that we see here on Mark’s Daily Apple every week. If you’re an interested physician, contact me here and let’s see what we can do together.

Finally, can I just say a word about the later decades of life? You see, I have some expertise here. I’m turning sixty this week – yup, 6-0. The thing is, I don’t really fit the common image of a sixty-year-old that we’re given in our culture. Call me an outlier if you will, but the fact is I direct my lifestyle to live and feel the way I do. I don’t work as hard at it as you might imagine. I don’t train for hours a day. I eat amazing food. I play hard and sleep well. I live exactly the way I outline above. Nothing particularly special. Nonetheless, I think I demonstrate (along with some friends) that with a little effort and forethought, a modest portion of commitment and unconventionality, sixty doesn’t have to mean a life of aches, pains, prescriptions, and increasing impairment. Feel free to check out some photos of me to see what I mean.

Thank you, by the way, for reading. I appreciate your taking the time and thought to consider one humble guy’s opinion. If you’re ever up for some conversation, I’d love that. That’s where good things start. In fact, let’s make it lunch – Primal style of course.

Have a good end to the week, everybody, and share your “open letter” thoughts!

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12 Easy Ways to Primalize Your Everyday Life

We can’t return to the paleolithic. We’re not cavemen. This isn’t about reenactment, and it never has been. We’re all here because we recognize the value in viewing our health, our food, our exercise, and our everyday behaviors through an evolutionary lens. The evolutionary angle is simply a helpful way to generate hypotheses, hypotheses that can then be tested and, if successful, integrated. At the very least, it’s interesting to think about what might be the “right” or “biologically appropriate” way to do something. We have the luxury of trying these things out to see if they improve our lives, so I think we probably should try them.

I’ve been thinking of some easy ways to Primalize everyday life. Basically, I think we can “get more” out of our days without really making any monumental changes to what we do or taking much more time to do it, simply by getting Primal with it. With a few subtle tweaks toward the ancestral, we can enhance everyday activities, foods, and drinks that we take for granted. Mundane stuff might suddenly become enriched. Let’s get to the list so you can learn my 12 easy ways to Primalize your everyday life:

1. Add a dash of sea salt and mineral drops to your drinking water.

Modern water purification processes typically remove minerals from our drinking water, particularly calcium, magnesium, iron, and manganese. Coincidentally, these are all essential to human health. Before water purification was developed, most water was “hard” – full of minerals. Bad for sudsing up your body with soap, good for overall mineral intake. That’s the water our bodies “expect,” and a large part of the magnesium deficiency epidemic, I suspect, is due to removal of magnesium from our drinking water. There’s certainly considerable evidence that the hardness of water can impact a population’s health:

Magnesium content of water is associated with lower mortality from heart attacks.
Serbian municipalities with high-magnesium drinking water have less hypertension than areas with low-magnesium water.
Magnesium content of tap water seems to be inversely correlated with cardiovascular disease mortality.
Calcium content in drinking water is associated with a reduced risk of kidney cancer.
Geographic regions with higher lithium content in drinking water have lower suicide rates.
And in a really odd one, drinking high-mineral deep sea water lowered lipid peroxidation, total, and LDL cholesterol in subjects with high cholesterol.

You could buy expensive bottled mineral water to replace the lost minerals, but I prefer adding a dash of sea salt and using trace mineral drops to remineralize my regular water. It’s cheaper that way and you have more control. Instead of adding it to each glass, it’s easier to keep a large jug with a spout in your fridge and add the mixture to the jug. For a two gallon jug of water, I add about a half teaspoon of sea salt (colored or white, your choice) and a little over a teaspoon of these trace mineral drops.

2. Take better baths.

If modern water is so different from ancestral water, doesn’t that mean we should attempt to tweak the water in which we bathe, too? See the recent post for ideas on how to Primalize bathtime.

3. Work on mobility during routine oral hygiene.

Do you really need the mirror to know what to do when you brush your teeth? I don’t, which is why I try to practice my Grok squat every time I engage in oral hygiene-related activities. Flossing, brushing, swishing – I figure I might as well work on my full squat as long as I’m just standing there. Since you (probably should) brush your teeth twice a day for a minute or two each time, that’s two to four minutes of squatting each day.

Without a reference point (like “whenever you brush your teeth”), it’s easy to forget to practice squatting. Your not likely to just spontaneously remember to squat, especially with chairs everywhere. This way, you have a “rule” that you have to follow and there’s an end in sight.

4. Camp/sleep out in the backyard.

If I could, I’d sleep outside every single night of my life. It doesn’t matter the circumstance – camping in Yosemite, falling asleep at the beach – because whenever I sleep outside, it’s the best sleep I’ve had in a long time. Is it the fresh air? The forest bathing? The natural light cycles? I don’t know. I just know it works.

Obviously, you’ll need a backyard for this, and I don’t expect you to do this every night. But – especially if you have kids or a significant other – sleeping out back can be a fun little “staycation” (told myself I’d never use that term, but it works so well for what I’m trying to convey). It’s not as good as a campsite at a national park or anything. And unless you live in a rural area, you probably won’t get much wildlife encroachment. No bears, no deer. Maybe a cat or raccoon or two. But you’re still outside, and you’re still getting fresh air and (hopefully, depending on light pollution) seeing the same stars our ancestors marveled at.

You may have missed the Great American Backyard Campout. But it’s never too late to give this a whirl.

5. If you can get to where you’re going and back in a mile or less, walk.

I love walking, and I’m constantly recommending you do it as much as possible. For some odd reason, though, it’s hard to just get up and walk for the heck of it. I have the same issue; I need a destination, like a summit, a trail, a beach, or a store. I need some external reason to walk. Maybe it’s hardwired in us. Maybe walking to get places was so standard that walking for pleasure never entered the equation. I can see that.

Why a mile? A mile roundtrip isn’t all that much to walk. A half mile there, a half mile back. That’s fifteen, twenty minutes, tops. Driving will get you there quicker, but only by ten or fifteen minutes – not a whole lot. If you can spare that much time, you can walk.

6. Sweep instead of vacuuming.

To this day, I prefer sweeping to vacuuming. Now, I don’t “enjoy” sweeping, per se, but I do find it rather meditative when I have to pick something off the ground. The whisk of the broom, the physical displacement of the dust and dirt occurring before your very eyes in real time, the fact that you have to squat down to get everything into the dust pan (unless you have one of those fancy dust pans with the long handles). It all adds up to a peaceful, mobilizing experience. And yeah, vacuuming’s faster, but who likes that raging whirr of the motor? Certainly not your pets.

Besides, sweeping doesn’t take that much longer than vacuuming.

I draw the line at hand washing plates and utensils, though. Dishwasher all the way.

7. Making a sauce? Blending a smoothie? Add egg yolks.

Egg yolks really do make everything better. They are incredible emulsifiers, helping smooth out sauces and smoothies. They taste great, providing a nice creamy mouthfeel to dishes while smoothing out any bitter tastes. They’re incredibly nutrient dense, containing ample amounts of choline, folate, vitamin E, selenium, iodine, vitamin A, healthy fats, and biotin. And raw yolks are usually very safe to eat. There’s a small, small chance of salmonella, but it’s very small (did I say “small”?).

Toss them into anything that’ll have them.

8. Eat dinner on the ground, outside, and/or with your hands.

This is all about getting closer to your food, your environment, and the people for whom you care. Instead of sitting around the living room, plates on your laps, eyes trained on the TV, take your food outside. Throw down a blanket (or not) and plop down on the ground with your food and some friends. Sit around and hang out, trade stories, laugh, and share food. If you’re really adventurous (and you didn’t make soup), eat with your hands. Keep a few heads of romaine lettuce around to grab food with. It won’t take much more time than setting the table, and you’ll be able to enjoy your food and company in the (marginal) outdoors.

If you’re a bachelor(ette), call up some buddies and set up a weekly picnic-for-dinner thing. Grab a bottle of wine, pack your food, and meet up at a local park or someone’s backyard.

9. Take the stairs.

This is an easy one. Short bouts of stair walking have been shown to improve cardiovascular fitness and blood lipids in women. And these truly were short bouts. Week one, they walked up 199 stairs once per day for five days. This continued until week eight, where subjects were doing five 199-step ascents per day for five days. Each ascent took about two minutes. So, between two and ten minutes of walking up stairs per day was enough to improve their fitness.  I see no reason the same wouldn’t occur in men. The best part about this is that they’re just stairs. You can easily take the stairs wherever possible and continue your regular workout regimen without missing a beat.

As to how to take the stairs, it depends on what effect you’re after. Going two steps at a time expends more energy per stride, but going one step at a time results in an overall higher workload. Taking two steps at a time should provide more stimulus to your musculature.

Oh, and arrive to places on time, or early. That way you won’t have to take the elevator to make your appointments. Or if you are late, get to know stair sprints!

10. Crawl around your home.

Okay, maybe this one is slightly more disruptive to your regular routine than the other ideas, but c’mon. You’re indoors (no one can see you). You’re limited to distances spanning the interior of your domicile. If you have to go check the status of your bone broth simmering in the kitchen, get on all fours and crawl there.

Crawling is excellent for shoulder and hip mobility, core strength, and overall body control. You won’t just get better at crawling by crawling on a regular basis, you’ll also improve your overall athleticism and body awareness.

11. Keep a weight at your office or around your house, and carry it around with you.

This may sound silly, but it’s really good for general overall toughening up. Have a kettlebell, dumbbell, or any other easily-graspable weight that you don’t mind carrying around with you. A big heavy sandbag that you sling over your shoulder would work, I guess, if it weren’t for all the sand dust getting everywhere.

12. Use a sunrise alarm clock or black out shades timed to rise with the sun.

Anyone who camps knows how nice it is to wake up with the sun, feeling incredibly refreshed. You can’t replace the great outdoors, the sun above, and the birds in the trees with an appliance that fits on your bedside table, but you can give it a pretty good shot. The Wake-up Light from Phillips wakes you up by gradually increasing the intensity of the light it emits while playing nature sounds to make waking up a smooth, energizing experience.

Another option is to install black out shades in your bedroom timed to rise with the sun. So, you get total darkness when it matters – during sleep – but get to wake up with the natural morning light streaming into your room.

That’s it: 12 simple, basic ways to make your everyday life a little more Primal and a lot more healthful. What did I miss? How do you Primalize your daily routine?

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The Evidence Continues to Mount Against Chronic Cardio

It’s been awhile since I did a post on chronic cardio. I had a good string of them going several years ago, and I thought I’d done a good job explaining why I was so opposed to excessive endurance training. Despite my attempts to clarify, though, I still receive a lot of questions and comments about cardio. People just have a tough time divorcing themselves from the notion that cardio – as much as you can cram into your schedule – is the key to health and fitness. I don’t blame them, really. It’s conventional wisdom, after all, and it’s what I thought for years and years. Clearly, another post is needed.

Evidence against chronic cardio continues to mount, so there’s a lot to cover. But before we get to all the research, I have a few thoughts about the heart.

Here’s the thing about the heart: being an involuntary muscle, it has no say in the matter. It pretty much feels nothing, too. It’s along for the ride. Just like the liver, kidneys, pancreas, thyroid, adrenals, etc., the heart responds to biochemical signals. It’s a demand organ. Minor changes in blood chemistry (epinephrine, cortisol, insulin, lactic acid, hemoglobin-depleted RBC’s, to name a few) cause it to respond by beating faster or slower, forcefully or not, to keep pace with the muscles’ (and other organs’) demand for oxygen and fuel. During exercise, it’s the brain that starts this whole process with a (usually) conscious decision: “I think I’ll run to that tree.” That thought prompts the muscles of the legs to start moving faster and the arms to pump. The new, increased demand for oxygen and added fuel (over and above normal resting metabolism) signals the heart to start to fulfill the demand, to pump harder and faster. It’s obliged to do so. Period. No choice. That’s also why it’s always a bit behind schedule: it takes more than a few seconds to ramp itself up once the action begins and a few seconds or minutes (or hours, in the case of an over-trainer) to ramp down, once it’s over.

The problem with chronic cardio is that we can force our brains to override some of the tiredness (no pain, no gain, pal) and discomfort in the legs – and to a certain extent even the lungs – and keep doing these hard endurance workouts incessantly day in and day out. The ostensible limiting factor is the ability to burn fat or, at the very least, the amount of glycogen still left in our muscles. That’s what eventually brings us to a halt, frequently because we have willed ourselves to keep going through the wall at all costs. But the heart is often over-worked in this scenario, just trying to keep up with that “inhuman” (and inhumane) desire to run, cycle, or swim further and faster in pursuit of…what? A medal? A ribbon? Bragging rights? It can’t say no. It attempts to do as we bid it. And because the heart feels little-to-no pain – unless, perhaps, it feels the REAL pain of a heart attack – it very often suffers silently as a result without us ever knowing. The walls of the heart start to hypertrophy over time the same way a biceps muscle does when you do curls. But do a few too many curls and your biceps will get sore quickly. Force yourself to do a few more and you could even tear something and be out of contention for a few weeks. We know when to stop before that bicep tears.

Cardiac muscle doesn’t tear that way when over-worked, but it does enlarge and thicken with chronic overuse. In some – most – people the thickening is probably not life-threatening, but in some cases, as with dozens of world class athletes I have personally known, this thickening can cause all manner of issues later in life. Atrial fibrillation has become a mild epidemic in my generation of life-long aerobicizers; several of my friends have had pacemakers or defibrillators implanted before the age of 40 to head-off those sporadic life-threatening cardiac enervation problems. A few more friends have lost significant cardiac function and a few have died.

But don’t take my word for it. The silent epidemic of heart issues among endurance athletes is getting serious attention in the research community. Let’s take a look at some of the latest research.

Cardiac Arrhythmias

Cardiac arrhythmias are abnormal electric activities of the heart. An arrhythmia can describe a heart that beats too fast, too slowly, too irregularly, or too “fluttery.” An arrhythmia doesn’t always indicate or foretell heart trouble, but it’s a common risk factor. One of the more common varieties is atrial fibrillation (AF), which describes a fast, irregular heartbeat. AF is strongly linked to stroke and cognitive decline.

Endurance athletes are at a greater risk for atrial fibrillations than the general, non-running public. One recent study of cross country skiers even found that the best athletes, the top performers, were more likely to have cardiac arrhythmias than the rest. Moderate exercisers, meanwhile, are at a lower risk for AF than the general, non-running public. A recent comprehensive study offers several potential explanations for the increased risk:

Increased fibrosis (scar tissue formation) in the heart.
Myocardial injury to the heart, as evidenced by post-training elevated cardiac biomarkers typically used to diagnose injury. Probably not a big deal so long as you recover fully from your training, but most cardio junkies can’t wait that long to log more miles.
Excessive amounts of inflammatory markers brought on by training. These markers have been linked to AF.

Endurance-related AF usually starts off infrequent. The older you get and the more miles you log, the more entrenched and regular your atrial fibrillation may get. Some studies found that around 40% of athletes with AF eventually progress to persistent AF, where it’s happening on a regular basis. That’s the troubling kind of AF that may presage serious cardiovascular problems, like stroke.

Atherosclerosis

It’s totally counterintuitive to think that endurance athletes are at risk for arterial plaque. “You mean to tell me that the wispy greybeard whizzing past my house in short shorts every evening could have clogged arteries? No way.” Maybe, just maybe.

A 2011 study found evidence of carotid and peripheral atherosclerosis in a group of marathoners. Although there was no control group of non-runners in that study, another study compared the arteries of marathon runners to a control group of sedentary non-marathoners. Marathoners had more calcified plaque in their coronary arteries, which has been linked to stroke and dementia. The tricky thing about these cases is that endurance athletes with atherosclerosis don’t evince the regular signs. Whereas your typical sedentary guy with extensive atherosclerosis will probably have all the hallmarks (metabolic syndrome, abdominal obesity, hypertension, etc.), marathon runners with atherosclerosis don’t fit the traditional cardiovascular risk profile.

It might be time to add “trains for endurance athletics” to the list of risk factors.

Oxidative Stress/Overtraining

It’s no secret that endurance training induces oxidative stress on the athlete. That’s how we get better – by encountering a stressor, being broken down a bit, and then recovering stronger than before so that the next time we encounter the stressor, we’ll be better than the last time. Whether we’re talking strength training, marathon running, cycling, gymnastics, martial arts, or even studying for a trigonometry class, we have to challenge our physiology to get better, and challenges to the physiology mean oxidative stress. Problems arise when we don’t let up, when we keep the intensity elevated and the days off few and far between. We’re constantly in that post-workout state, and it starts to look like chronic oxidative stress for all intents and purposes. Even if our times are improving, we’re not truly recovering. It’s a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing.

So. Those are just a few of the reasons I am no fan of chronic cardio (and don’t get me started on the bad backs, osteoarthritis, hip and knee replacements and chronic tendonitis among my former elite endurance peers). A strong will can be a great thing for survival, for business and for relationships, but it can also get you in trouble if you don’t pay attention to your training load.

Having said all that, I am still a big fan of weights, of brief, intermittent interval training and I am all for doing a fair amount of mixed low-level cardio, the kind that doesn’t overstress the heart or involve so much repetitive joint motion that it causes chronic injury. That makes sense in an ancestral context. You’re expending energy at a high rate, but you’re not going long enough that it becomes a liability. Or, if you’re going long, you’re taking it easy enough that you have the energy to make it back home, possibly carrying food.

I’m not even against a long training run or ride once in a while, provided you are trained, rested and allow enough recovery afterwards. I’m even OK with running marathons occasionally or jumping into a short triathlon now and then. As a species, we obviously have the capacity to go long and relatively hard every now and again. It’s the chronic, day-in, day-out long, hard stuff that is counter-productive. If you did that twenty thousand years ago, when your next meal – and that of your entire family/tribe – was on the line, when calories were somewhat precious, when you didn’t have an air-conditioned caravan of trainers, massage therapists, and coolers filled with electrolyte drinks following along after you, you’d be foolish. You simply wouldn’t do it.

That we can run marathons (and do other stupid things) and know that we’ll get out alive is a luxury of modern living. There are so many other less damaging ways to achieve what I would call high-level adaptive fitness by using a variety of training methods, all of which can be cardio-protective and joint strengthening when done the right way in at the appropriate times. Heck, when it comes to hypertension, blood lipids, and type 2 diabetes, walking is just as effective as running - without the potential downsides. Everyone can walk. Everyone thinks they can run, but running is a skill that must be learned. To run with poor form is to welcome injury, doubly so if you’re running an excessive amount. And all this will be addressed in detail in my forthcoming book, Primal Endurance. For now, use your brain and listen to your body.

My point, of course, is that the human organism is made for short, intense bursts of activity laid atop a foundation of frequent slow moving. We aren’t “supposed” to run as hard as we can for two or three hours. We’re not supposed to run with the express purpose of “burning calories.” We can certainly choose to do those activities, and we’ll become adapted (or perhaps inured) to them, and they may even make us “fit,” but they’re not the healthiest, most efficient path to fitness. Chronic cardio is the meandering, roundabout trail that will get you there with a ton of bruises, scratches, a tick or two, and a sprained ankle. Oh, and you might get eaten by a bear along the way.

Your choice.

Thanks for reading, folks. I’d love to hear your thoughts on cardio, both chronic and otherwise. Let me know in the comment section!

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Dear Mark: Reader Issues, Chocolate Toxins, Chipotle’s Revelations, plus Red Meat and Diabetes Redux

[image error]I’m covering a smattering of issues in today’s edition of Dear Mark. First, I help a reader with some issues. It’s a somewhat typical story with any lifestyle change – the stall. Why might it be occurring? What can she do to figure things out? After that, I answer a quick two-parter about dark chocolate. Then, I discuss the recent revelation of GMO products at Chipotle, along with my reasoning for not worrying too much about it. Finally, I briefly cover the latest red-meat-will-give-you-diabetes study. “Briefly,” because not only does this study retread old epidemiological ground, it’s using the very same inaccurate data sets we’ve seen a dozen times before.

Let’s go.

I have been paleo for the past year and a half. Initially with great success, lost weight, saw improvement in skin, PMS, energy. I worked out 3 times a week at local CrossFit gig, slept 7-8 hrs a night, stress pretty low.

I was getting lean, but not as lean as I wanted to be, so I decided to cut out starchy veggies (sweet potatoes, squash).

But instead of leaning out further, my energy dipped, I gained 7 pounds out of nowhere, started experiencing sleep disturbance. My workouts suck, and recovery is very slow.

My TSH went from 0.6 to 1.76 in 6 months.

What gives? I thought I was being fat adopted at this point. I feel like I’m back to square one.

So does it turn out that we need carbs after all, or am I an exception?

Sincerely,

Olesya

A few thoughts here: This sounds like a few things. First, are you eating enough calories? If you just drop starchy veggies and make no other changes, that’s an overall drop in calories – dangerous, or at least counterproductive, when you’re doing something like CrossFit. It’s far better (and safer and more sustainable) to moderate a drop in calories; remember, exercise increases caloric needs.

Second, carbs. I’ve made no bones about the fact that CrossFit (metcons, lifts for time, full body explosive movements done in a truncated period) necessarily hits the glycolytic pathway. That is, it burns glycogen, and the best way to replenish glycogen is carbs. This is partly why I don’t recommend a lot of intense exercise all the time – it requires eating a lot of carbs all the time. But if you’re going to exercise like that, you will benefit from starchy carbs.

Third, the body will start to seek its ideal body composition when the macronutrient ratio is appropriate and calories are adequate. That means most people who are not metabolically damaged from years of insulin and leptin resistance, or compromised micronutrition (through gut compromises), etc., will lose body fat and retain muscle mass for a while. But at some point, the body, which has no idea what the cover of Victoria Secret catalog or SI Swimsuit Edition look like, says “this is a great weight. I’ve reduced fat, I have energy in balance, I don’t get sick much if ever, and I’ll probably live a long time at this weight.” So, many people get frustrated because they think they will arrive at 10% body fat linearly, but many plateau at a “healthy” (or “ideal”) 20 %. Another problem is, men and women are different hormonally and at even more so at different ages. There’s lots going on in the experiment of one. A ton of variables.

So, if you are metconning a lot and depleting glycogen stores, that’s probably good for your insulin and leptin sensitivity issues, but might manifest itself in adrenal abuse (too much cortisol) if you go to the well (workout without glycogen) too much. This affects the H/P/A axis. I’d recommend experimenting with topping off glycogen (which takes as little as 150 grams of carbs at dinner the night before) and avoid taking up residence in the well.

As with all these experiments of one, consider all the variables in your experiment. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you working out too hard, too often? Not intensely enough for too long? Are you really fat-adapted yet? And so on. Then record the changes; when you eat, what you eat, how you felt the next day, intensity of the workout, any bloodwork changes, etc. The 90-day Journal was designed to take you through this whole process, so that might be helpful. The answer is usually there, you just need to identify the necessary changes to make.

Finally, this is always, first and foremost, about reclaiming health. LGN (looking good naked) is a nice side effect for a lot of people, but not everyone. Give yourself credit for the weight lost so far, for getting off the meds, for feeling better, for your skin clearing up or whatever great stuff you have done already. It may take a bit more work from here to get to whatever your “next level” is, but you CAN make progress with the right inputs.

Mark,

I continue to enjoy your posts and books. Thank you! As a fan of chocolate, I had two questions on the post you did a while back:

The 5 Best Dark Chocolate Bars in the World

1. Much has been made about mycotoxins in foods, particularly chocolate. Do you have any experience or insights as to the brand that is least likely to have mycotoxins?

2. I understand that the Dutch Process (e.g. alkalizing) takes away  much of the benefits from cocoa. Keeping (1) in mind, any updates as to a bar that is not alkalized and is 85% (preferably 90% or higher) and organic?

Jeffrey

1. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with mycotoxins. I do know that the guy who’s responsible for bringing the mycotoxin issue to the forefront of the community and claims to have an extreme sensitivity to mycotoxins in food, Dave Asprey, says that Lindt is the brand that’s most consistently free of mycotoxins. While that’s not exactly based on peer review research, the guy does seem to know the subjective effects of eating mycotoxins better than anyone else.

Europe seems to have the stiffest regulations on mycotoxins in food, allowing just 0.5-2 parts per billion in their chocolate products. If you’re really worried about this, you might try sticking to brands manufactured in Europe. That should give you the best shot at getting a safe piece of dark chocolate.

2. Green and Black’s 85% is non-alkalized and very good. For future reference, just check the ingredients list. Dutch process chocolate should contain something like “cocoa processed with alkali.”

Hi Mark, I know Chipotle is the Paleo “go-to” for fast food/on the road. Wondering if you were gonna comment on this?

Chipotle GMO information added to website: Addition earns mixed reviews

Chris

You know, I’ve never been a big fan of Chipotle, probably because I live near some of the greatest Mexican food joints in the United States (Southern California), and the bastardized versions found in Chipotle simply pale in comparison. But this GMO stuff doesn’t concern me too much.

Reason? All the GMO-containing foods are already problematic for other reasons. The biggest GMO offender is the soybean oil that’s found in just about everything on the menu. I don’t know about you, but when I see empty cartons of soybean oil outside the back of restaurants and shudder to myself, I shudder not because the soy used to make the oil was genetically modified. I shudder because soybean oil is one of the best (read: worst) sources of linoleic acid in the American diet, a fatty acid that already skews our collective omega-3:omega-6 ratios an unprecedented amount. That’s the real reason you should be wary of Chipotle. There’s also GMO corn in the tortillas – which serve to spoon soybean oil-cooked meat into your maw – and chips – which are fried in even more soybean oil.

Go ahead and eat Chipotle. You can certainly do a lot worse. Plus, you can be smart and pick around the problematic stuff to get a decent meal. The carnitas, for example, is free of soybean oil, though it does contain some rice bran and sunflower oil, which aren’t terribly better. Their guacamole is good slathered on the aforementioned carnitas.

I’d just be more worried about the seed oils for their fatty acid composition than for their GMO status.

Hi Mark,

I’ve been paleo/primal for the past year and half, converting from a fairly strict vegan diet. My partner is following a similar path and has added meat back into his diet during the last four months.

I just read an article on NPR’s the Salt about the high correlation between type 2 diabetes and red meat consumption. (The article seems to imply causation, but I could only see a correlation.)

Granted, we are not big hot dog eaters (what’s in those things anyway?), but bacon and steak are staples in our house! Red meat is an almost daily occurrence. Is this article just more “conventional wisdom” in the works? I’d love your thoughts.

Thanks

Liz

Thank you for your question, Liz, but sweet fancy Moses am I bored to death of these types of correlational studies “linking” red meat to diabetes, death, cancer, and heart disease using food frequency questionnaires. I really am. I mean, let’s unpack this a little bit. A food frequency questionnaire is a survey that expects you to remember what you ate for the past (in this instance) four years, and how often you ate it. So, yeah, go ahead and do that for me. Right now, tell me how often you ate chicken, or leafy vegetables, or ice cream, over the last four years. Make sure it’s accurate, because I’ll be making some sweeping conclusions about the effect of certain foods on human health based on what you tell me. Also, the largest media outlets will be doing some serious fear-mongering based on what I conclude from what you tell me. And then, in turn, the people who read those media outlets will be making some big changes to their own diets based on what they write based on what you said to me. So, yeah: do a good job remembering what you ate every day for the past four years!

Let’s hope you’re a little more accurate than the actual people surveyed in some of these data sets, who notoriously underestimate the amount of animal products they eat and overestimate the amount of fruits, vegetables, and fish they eat.

See what I mean? That’s why I refuse to go line by line and discuss why this study doesn’t mean much in the long run. It’s been done before, here on these very pages, oftentimes responding to studies using the very same datasets as this most recent one! Check it out:

Does Eating Red Meat Increase Type 2 Diabetes Risk? – Here, I discussed an eerily similar study that was conducted by the same people, used the exact same data, and examined almost the exact same issue. Read through that post, because the arguments raised would be the same arguments I raise here.

I don’t blame you for worrying about this stuff, because they do a really good job of making it sound scary. But please don’t worry any more. Worry if you start getting symptoms of type 2 diabetes (it doesn’t just appear, after all). Worry if you start getting insulin resistant and if you start gaining abdominal fat. Worry if your fasting glucose begins rising. If you’ve been doing this for over a year, it’s probably because you’ve made some health improvements. Maybe you’re putting on lean mass. Maybe you’re performing better (in the gym, in bed, in your brain). Maybe you’ve lost fat. Maybe some nagging health issues have finally cleared up. Whatever it is, you’re eating this way for a reason: it’s working. Don’t worry if it’s working.

That’s it for today, folks. Thanks for reading this edition of Dear Mark. See you next time!

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Weekend Link Love

On May 20th, a tornado nearly wiped the town of Moore, OK off the map. Enter Lift Up Moore, an event spanning 60+ CrossFit gyms across the nation to raise money to help the rebuilding effort. Check out the official page to learn more and get involved!

Research of the Week

In one recent study, neither dehydration nor electrolyte loss could explain exercise induced muscle cramps.

A low-carb, ad libitum diet beats out a low-cal, low-fat diet in diabetics, according to a recent study. Low-carb eaters had better weight loss and HbA1c.

This is why I live close to the ocean.

Interesting Blog Posts

Dr. Loren Cordain makes a strong rebuttal to the media’s misguided, preliminary contention that a diet of grass seeds characterized the early human diet.

Dr. Emily Deans discusses zoo animals (and zoo humans).

Media, Schmedia

Why kids should drink whole milk, not skim. (Hint: it’s the scary saturated animal fat!)

Should boys (or girls) be penalized for not being able to sit still in school? Is it a problem – or a feature – of childhood?

Everything Else

Is expert wine tasting junk science?

The science and practical usefulness of meditation.

Sorry, Catholics who happen to be celiac: your rice flour wafer is spiritually damaging.

How drug companies hide clinical data, and why this might (hopefully) be changing (to big pharma’s great consternation).

5 crucial brain nutrients you can’t find in plants.

Recipe Corner

Since it’s the tail end of cherry season – and because it’s always pork season – you should try making these pork loin steaks with morello cherry sauce.
Lend her your ears and she’ll slow cook you a tongue. Surprisingly easy to pass off as shredded brisket to the squeamish among us.

Time Capsule

One year ago (July 7 – July 13)

Dear Mark: How Much Protein Can You Absorb and Use From One Meal? – Are we wasting most of that big ass steak we ate for dinner or what?
12 Health and Fitness Blogs You Should Be Reading – Because as awesome as this blog is, you still need other stuff to read.

Comment of the Week

This isn’t very profound, but a trick taught to me by a writer friend has helped me cut down my computer time quite dramatically. It happens to be very low tech. Turn off your computer. Get a paper and a pen. Put them next to your computer. Every time you think, “I’ll just Google that,” jot it down. Eventually when you allow yourself some computer time, Google away. Not only do you not need to look everything up instantly, it really isn’t good for your brain or your stress or your time management. It’s a step towards taking control, not letting technology control you.

- On the contrary, that was extremely profound.

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Mussels with Mexican Chorizo

Mussels with Mexican Chorizo is a blend of steamed mussels, boldly seasoned ground pork and fresh, juicy tomatoes. It all comes together quickly in one pot, a delicious swirl of spicy meat and tender mussels in a rich and flavorful broth.

Pork and mussels is not a typical surf and turf combination but it’s right up there with all the great meat and seafood pairings. The salty and slightly sweet flavor of pork with the briny and slightly sweet flavor of mussels is a match made in heaven. If you don’t totally love the flavor of mussels, you’re likely to still enjoy this dish. The flavor of the seasoned pork is what really stands out in this dish.

The seasoning blend for Mexican chorizo in this recipe is a quick and easy version – but still delicious. If you have a little more time then try this version with whole, dried chiles, for more complex flavor. Mexican chorizo is smoky, sweet and can be spicy but doesn’t have to be. It depends on how spicy your chile powder is. If you cook up your pot of chorizo and mussels and it’s not as smokin’ hot as you want it to be, that’s a problem easy to fix. Simply serve sliced jalapeños or hot sauce on the side.

Servings: 4

Time in the Kitchen: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

2 to 2 1/2 pounds of mussels, cleaned (see below) (900 to 1130 g)
1 tablespoon Ancho chile powder (or other type of chile powder) (15 ml)
1 teaspoon dried oregano (5 ml)
2 teaspoons fresh thyme (10 ml)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin (2.5 ml)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (a pinch)
3/4 teaspoon salt (2.5 ml)
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (15 ml)
1/2 pound ground pork (230 g)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter (30 g)
2 shallots, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 pound tomatoes, roughly chopped (reserve the juice) (450 g)
Fresh cilantro or parsley to garnish

Instructions:

To clean the mussels, swirl them around in a large bowl of clean water then rinse each mussel individually under running water. Try to rub off anything clinging to the shell. If a stringy beard (that looks like a little piece of seaweed) is still hanging outside of any shells, firmly yank it off with a side-to-side motion. Discard any mussels that are cracked or open.

In a small bowl, combine chile powder, oregano, thyme, cumin, cinnamon and salt.

In a medium bowl, pour half the vinegar and half the spice mixture over the ground pork. Mix really well then add the rest of the vinegar and spices and mix again to make sure all of the meat is evenly seasoned.

In a wide pot over medium heat melt the butter and then sauté the shallots until they start to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté 20 to 30 seconds more.

Raise the heat to medium-high and add the pork. Cook the pork for only 5 minutes, breaking the meat up into small pieces as it cooks.

Add the tomatoes. Boil for 10 minutes then reduce the heat down to medium again.

Add the mussels and cover the pot. Simmer until the mussels open, about 3 minutes.

Garnish with finely chopped parsley or cilantro.

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