Wise Effort

My yoga teacher speaks about something called "wise effort." It's that middle ground between a careless, unthinking approach to a given task and the application of sheer (and exhausting) force.

Wise effort pushes up against what she calls your "edge," that point where "sensation" which is positive, shifts over into pain, which is not.

Life and eating are very much about wise effort. It's about eating the right foods in the right amount, neither abstaining nor overindulging. The result is good sensation - as opposed to bad pain.

The history of nutrition is that we have spent little time in this fertile zone. We have pretty much experienced, and been conditioned by, either feast or famine.

But today, for many of us here in the West calories tend to be cheap, abundant, and available. When it comes to eating perhaps we have a unique historical chance to practice wise effort.

The concept of effort we might readily grasp. As for the wise part maybe that's still a stretch.

"Heart Healthy" or so They Say

Found myself in a friend's kitchen the other day and checking out her bookshelf. My eye wandered to a "heart healthy" cookbook recently published by the Cleveland Clinic, which is in the (very lucrative) business of plumbing and re-plumbing people with cardiovascular disease.

Per usual, there was the expected demonization of red meat and saturated fat. Went home and decided to order a side of grass-fed beef from my local farmer.

There's a world of difference between grass-fed, pastured beef and the stuff you buy in the supermarket. The former is, in fact, heart-healthy; the latter is not.

So why doesn't an outfit with the clout and resources of the Cleveland Clinic make any effort to make this distinction? Especially when putting people on a low fat diet will still give them heart trouble.

I guess this is the problem with healthcare in America. It's just business - as usual.

The dirty little secret about our healthcare system is how heavily subsidized it is. You know darn well that most of those people going to the Cleveland Clinic for their fancy and expensive heart work are having some third party (ultimately that's us) pay for it.

So why bother to delve into the science of the matter at the risk of seeing such a profitable gig come to a possible stop? What amounts to good economics for the Cleveland Clinic is, sadly, founded on bad science.

The Truth About Obesity

It was hot yesterday. Found myself driving home from Mass. to Maine late in the day. Stopped at a rest stop on the Maine Turnpike. Walking in, I passed an obese mother with her son - maybe 5 or 6. He was already obese. What are his chances in life.?

Walking out, I passed a morbidly obese man laboring just to walk. He looked at me with sad recognition - "I know I'm fat, and I don't know what the hell to do about it."

A smart guy I know told me years ago that "inside every fat person there's a thin person struggling to get out." I believe this.

In our culture we judge the obese because it absolves us of any responsibility. These people, we tell ourselves, are slothful and self-indulgent. All they need to do is stop eating so much and start working out.

Wrong.

The true culprits are as follows. 1.) A food industry whose chief interest is profit - hence an endless flood of cheap carbs and adulterated fats - in short a horrible diet. 2.) A government whose bogus food pyramid reinforces this horrible diet. 3.) An indifferent and greedy medical/ scientific establishment. 4.) A zombie public whose main interests are cheap food and convenience.

Some day the truth will come out. High quality fats from pastured animals and fresh vegetables from local farms is pretty much all we need to live, and thrive, on. Until then, we'll just keep sickening and killing off our people, one person at a time, one day at a time. In the meantime, we drive the country into bankruptcy and permanent second class status.

Pancakes, Wrong Move

Yesterday morning I gave in to my lesser self and had pancakes for breakfast. That was a mistake.

Once you get on a diet that features complete protein foods you can really feel the adverse effect of carbs. They raise your blood sugar, they weigh you down, and once the high wears off they bring you down.

My usual morning regimen is raw milk first thing followed by a quick omelet mid morning. That sets me up for a simple lunch (salad or soup or a little of each.)

Carbs (the simpler ones at least) normally come later in the day in the form of homemade crackers made from pre-soaked whole wheat flour.

This is how things work best for me. So for now, we'll skip those mid morning pancakes, no matter how inviting the thought my be.

A Nation of Addicts

Addiction The Hidden Epidemic by Pam Killeen is my latest read. A real eye opener. The bottom line is that most of us in America are addicted to something - be it drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping, sex, negativity, technology, and so on.

Killeen's point is simple and persuasive: addiction is not so much a psychological problem as a physical one. In other words, it has its root in biochemistry.

Because of our poor diet, sketchy lifestyles, and high-stress modes of living most of us are walking around with big deficits in the brain - specifically depleted and unbalanced neurotransmitters. As a result, we cannot think or function normally. So to get back to normal we go after external chemicals and experiences that temporarily give our brains the boost they need. This is always a losing proposition, one of diminishing returns requiring ever bigger fixes.

The RX for addiction is amino acid therapy which rebuilds and replenishes the neurotransmitters. Where do we get amino acids? In a nutshell, from complete proteins (whole foods) and the supplements derived therein.

It's that simple. When we don't eat right we fall into addictive modes of behavior, with great pain and suffering to follow.

How an Idea Becomes Dogma

I have lately been reading a great book: How We Get Fat by Gary Taubes.

Taubes, a science writer, lays out a great case for restricting carbohydrates while eating saturated fat in order to lose weight. In fact, Taubes cites numerous studies and actual weight loss programs the world over between 1750 and 1950 which led to a similar conclusion: fat doesn't make people fat; it makes us thin.

But then a curious thing happened in the 1960's, chiefly in the United States. We decided that saturated fat was giving people heart attacks, and therefore fat intake should be restricted while carbohydrates should be increased in the diet. The science behind this assertion, however, was flawed.

We now know that adulterated fats and simple carbohydrates, common in the diet for the past 50 years, are the true culprits when it comes to coronary disease - and a whole lot of other chronic ills.

And yet the medical/ scientific community clings to this shibboleth that saturated fat is the foe, whereas in fact it is the friend. Why?

There is something moralistic here. Fat implies sloth and gluttony, and therefore it is deemed a failure of will.

But overweight is a metabolic disorder. It results, not from eating too much, but from eating the wrong foods.

But the scientific medical industrial complex has invested trillions of dollars and countless careers and reputations in fat-as-the-enemy hypothesis. So renouncing it would be far too much crow to eat.

In the meantime, our population continues to suffer. Our country continues its long, slow decline.

Science, we have always been assured by the scientific establishment, is about the search for truth. Sadly, in this very important case, I think not.

It's Diet, Not Exercise

There is a myth out there that only if we eat less and exercise more we will lose fat. Unfortunately, this is not the case, no matter what all the "experts" say.

It takes a big workout to burn off a few calories. And then once we're done in the gym we have a big appetite. And so we eat more to kill our appetite.

If you eat the right foods and stay moderately active you can take in pretty much all the calories you want.

The right foods - basically - are saturated fats and leafy green vegetables. The wrong foods are simple carbohydrates and vegetable oils.

Moderate activity is better than a hard workout in the gym because it tones the body and keeps it flexible. Keeping the body moving in a sustained way over a longer period of time is part of nature's design when it comes to imparting good health.

Modern day efforts to demonize saturated fats are puzzling because they are so integral to the body's structure and function.

Such a wrongheaded assumption can only be chalked up to ego and hubris. "Experts," invoking junk science buy into a line of thought and end up lacking sufficient humility or open-mindedness to back down from their claims.

Information, Not Fuel

The modern concept of food is that it is a form of fuel.

The traditional concept is that it is information.

Traditional cultures held their nutritional and culinary secrets dear, as they were scene as an essential part of their heritage to passed down, solemnly, from one generation to the next. In other words, this knowledge was valuable information.

Needless to say, modern America doesn't have much of a culinary "tradition" to speak of, beyond going to the supermarket all hours of the day or out to dinner on the weekend to a chain restaurant.

The notion of food as information carries over to the body as well. Our genes and cells read the information conveyed to them in the foods we eat, and respond accordingly.

When we eat nutrient dense food our cells respond by functioning well, and our genes respond by in essence re-programming themselves to construct a healthier body (this is the essence of the science of epigenetics.)

Put simply, eating good food equals clear communication, which then translates as sound performance.

Eating nutrient-deficient food results in static; confused signals sent to the organism, and resultant disease.

The SAD Truth

For the past half century a big - and deadly - fraud has been perpetrated upon the population by government and agribusiness.

This is not so much a conspiracy as simply a convergence between the profit motive and sloppy, compromised science to reinforce the status quo.

The fraud is this: Grains and vegetables should be eaten in quantity because they are good for us, while saturated fats should be strictly limited because they are deadly.

The truth is that since man first walked the earth he based his existence - and rise - upon the consumption of fat from animal sources. This is the diet that allowed our brains to grow and for us to become the planet's dominant species. This is the diet that gave us sound health and immunity.

Today, we are beset with a host of chronic ills because our diet in no way resembles that of our ancestors. We eat far too many carbohydrates and cheap fats and far too few high quality saturated fats. And it is the former, not the latter, which has wreaked havoc with our bodies.

These refined and processed foods comprise the bulk of the Standard American Diet (SAD) - which, as the acronym rightly suggests, is the source of our current chagrin.

Confront the Fear

Aversion and avoidance are a big part of human behavior. When something discomfits us we typically go out of our way to steer clear of it. Soon enough such a response turns into habit.

But confronting those things we fear or dislike is the only way to demystify, conquer, and ultimately understand them.

Diet is no different. We are told that such things as saturated fat and cholesterol are to be avoided, lest they kill us. There is some truth to that. Saturated fats from factory-farmed animals are not good for you. Oxidized cholesterol scars the arteries.

On the other hand, saturated fats from pastured animals are essential to good nutrition just as cholesterol is key to proper metabolism.

When we look squarely at those things we'd rather avoid we gain understanding. When understanding is the goal strength is the outcome. We diminish fear and ignorance.

March - Back to Basics - Part Two

Last Friday's earthquake and tsunami in Japan put a lot of things in perspective, most notably the fragility of life and the power of nature.

The latter returned parts of the country, which has the third largest economy in the world, to a state equal to where it was at the end of World War II.

One hallmark of the modern day is our separation from nature, which in certain instances has become extreme. It's like the rift that builds along a fault line until the tension becomes so great that things must shift violently back towards equilibrium.

This is now happening all over the world. In the Mideast its the separation between authority and the basic human yearning for freedom. In the United States and Europe its the yawning gap between crushing debt and the imperative of fiscal sanity.

You see it, too, in our food system, which produces a lot of cheap food and ships it thousands of miles to cavernous supermarkets that stay open round the clock. And what is the outcome? An increasingly unhealthy population and national expenditures on healthcare that now total 17.5% of GDP.

Something has to give here. In fact, it already is. Our sick population and our woeful finances are evidence of the building tension.

A violent yet healthy correction from this sorry state of affairs is inevitable. It will realign us with nature and will take the form of more local farms producing more healthy local foods for larger, and healthier, local populations.

March - Back to Basics

March is one of those edge months, which makes it a challenge. Last night it rained two inches on top of three feet of existing snow.

This morning my wife and I were out in the slop, trying to channel the water away from the house and down the hill. We both got soaked, and we both agreed it was a lot of fun.

As a homeowner of a number of houses over the years, I have come to realize that the bulk of money and effort invested in a house goes into those things you don't always see: drainage, roofs, foundation work, and the like.

It would have been nice to have spent more of our funds on those things you can see - and show off. But this was not to be.

We've had to tend to the basics. Soggy March reminds us of that. It's a grounding process, a refocusing on the fundamentals.

It's not unlike nutrition. Renewing one's focus on the diet, on the whole foods that really shore up and sustain the body, is, like moving water in March, worth the effort.

Happy Eggs

At the farmers' market in Lausanne, Switzerland you can buy eggs that are labeled "les oeufs de poulets heureuses."

Translated linguistically, that means: "Eggs from happy chickens."

Translated nutritionally, that means: "Eggs from pastured chickens."

A pastured chicken is free to roam the barnyard, feasting upon whatever it encounters - bugs, grubs, grass, seeds, and so forth. The net, and very healthy, result is an egg which, more or less, has its Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats in balance, or a ratio of 1:1.

By contrast, an egg from a chicken raised under factory conditions, can have as much as 19 times more Omega 6's than Omega 3's.

One significant factor in cardiovascular disease is the unduly high proportion of Omega 6's which occur in the modern industrial diet.

One significant factor in protecting against cardiovascular disease is the consumption of Omega 3's in proportion to Omega 6's. Pastured eggs, raw milk, cheese and butter from raw milk, meat from pastured animals, and wild caught seafood are foods that have the proper balance of Omega 3's and 6's because they were grown in nature, not under factory conditions.

Eat naturally and you will be well - not to mention happy.

Eat Raw Cheese, Scale High Peaks

This young man is eating local cheese made from raw milk at about 7,500 feet above sea level in the Swiss Alps.

It is foods like this, whole, fresh, and local, that give him the strength to scale these mountains. It's too bad that so many people are being fed a diet deficient in so many vital nutrients by the modern food industry.

The result is a creeping epidemic of sickness, not to mention flabbiness, that precludes so many young people from even imagining climbing this mountain and enjoying a sun-splashed picnic.

It should be noted that the photographer, more than twice the age of his subject, has a similar diet, and thus was able to match him step for step on this climb.

It should also be noted that the yogis tell us that middle age - the summertime of life - only begins at 55. Eating the right foods turns such possibility into reality.

The Subject is Diet - The USDA is Half Right

Recently the USDA put out new guidelines on diet. And once again the agency is half right. It placed an emphasis on people eating less food, more fish, and more vegetables. So far so good.

It then went on to recommend that people eat less fat, with an emphasis on low fat and non fat foods. The problem is that there is no distinguishing here between good and bad fats. And that is a crucial distinction that should be made.

Numerous hunter-gatherer cultures, which never suffered from heart disease, have eaten as much fat as they could get their hands on. Look at the Eskimos subsisting on seal blubber, salmon, caribou, and little else.

These whole foods contain the vital fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K - in much larger quantities than today's processed fats. The human brain is made up of 50 percent fat. By stripping these fats out of the diet we are not only starving our bodies - ironic when you consider the obesity epidemic - but we are denying our brains their most basic fuel.

No wonder we - and the USDA - can't think clearly.

Who is Weston Price?

Virtually no one has ever heard of Weston Price, yet he wrote the most important book of the 20th century on the subject of nutrition.

That book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, was published in 1939. Based on Price's travels over a decade, it documents the diets of 14 traditional cultures from the North Pole to the South Seas. These native groups had yet to be touched by modern, industrial culture. Hence they offered, collectively, a window into what people had been eating - naturally - for millennia. (Put another way, it demonstrated what people ate to best insure their survival.)

Price found two common factors in these populations: robust good health and diets largely based on animal foods sourced from the wild. (The latter, in fact, were considered sacred by all these groups and became the objects of ritual and lore.)

Today, western societies exhibit the precise opposite of what Price observed - namely poor health and diets notably lacking in high quality animal fats. So, it is no wonder that we suffer from a range of diseases - cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, immune system dysfunction - that were scarcely known, even in urban populations, a century ago.

In 25 years Weston Price will be much better known than he is today because the collective conscious is aware of one thing at its base - its own survival. As we continue to diminish the quality of our lives and kill ourselves prematurely by eating a low quality diet the survival instinct will slowly kick in; self interest will take over.

At that point, more people will know who Weston Price is and appreciate his contribution to the subject of nutrition. They, too, will understand that what he saw, documented, and championed will make perfect sense.

Buying "Health Insurance"

When I moved to Maine I had to buy individual health insurance as I am self-employed. The monthly premium was $250. The annual deductible...$15,000.

This means that, short of a serious medical emergency, the healthcare bill is on me. That's okay. I accept it - grudgingly. After all, I'm in pretty good shape, and I go out of my way to not use the healthcare system.

My diet and my lifestyle comprise my real health insurance. The fake kind, that which I purchased, is really asset protection. If I get run over by a bus it would be nice not to end up having to sell my house.

Meanwhile, my outrageous deductible, in essence, goes towards subsidizing others who are using the system, abusing their bodies, and not paying the true cost of their healthcare.

This is a simple fact. This is why our healthcare system needs reform. This is why Obamacare just makes things worse. This is why Obamacare needs to be scrapped in favor of a system that makes personal responsibility and fiscal accountability its most urgent - and only - priorities.

The Cost of Breakfast

Most people assume that eating good food is more expensive than eating lousy food. This is not always true.

Lousy food is highly processed, often travels great distances to market, and requires a lot of advertising to sell it. These are all costs.

I buy good food from small, local producers. In doing so I spend about 60% of what I used to spend when I shopped at the supermarket.

Here, for example, is what my breakfast - a raw milk smoothie - costs:

one cup raw milk, 35 cents, one banana 15 cents, one raw egg 21 cents, one tsp. coconut oil, one tsp. lecithin, two tsp. nutritional yeast, two tsp. cod liver oil, two tablets dry liver approx. 60 cents.

A cup of coffee costs me about 30 cents, so for about a buck and a half I'm done. I've had a nutritious that will stay with me til lunch.

Happy New Year

With each new year millions of Americans resolve to lose weight. But losing weight is really less about resolve, or will, and more about awareness. If you are conscious of the foods you eat, their make up, how you eat them, and their effect on your body then you should have no problem keeping trim.

Overweight in America is really about lack of awareness. Of food. Of self.

It's easy to count calories - and thus easy to sell a diet to the desperate and unsuspecting. It's easy to demonize fats because, on the face of it, they equal, well, fat.

But they don't.

Fats, the right ones, are integral to good health and weight control. The number of calories you eat matter less; the quality more.

So here's to a new year and greater awareness about food and self. Eat fat to lose fat.