A nice blend of 85% ground beef, 10% ground heart, and 5% ground liver is a fantastic source of protein to add to your pet’s diet – all made from Thundering Hooves 100% grass fed beef. This is one pet food your dog or cat is going to love! (Comes in 1 lb. pkgs. – Reg. $3.50/lb.)

My roommates and I have figured out that – despite what the label says – is it perfectly fine for human consumption.  Organ meats are extremely healthy when the animal is pasture raised.  And you can’t beat the price.  The one thing we have learned is that it doesn’t taste good as burgers.  Chili or meatloaf is ideal.  No medium rare.  It tastes best at medium well.

Below is my Pet Food Meatloaf recipe that was a huge hit recently.

Photo taken in the Nortgate area of Seattle.

After reading The Selfish Gene, I was interested in reading something more recent on genetics.  The Primal Blueprint brought up the topic of epigenetics, which the science of changing gene expression by mechanisms other than DNA.  Epigenetics explores how the environment can alter our gene expression.  I’ve seen many references to the Biology of Belief, so I decided to get a copy.  However, the wait time for that book is months long at my library, so I got the author’s two subsequent books.

The Wisdom of Your Cells: How Your Beliefs Control Your Biology by Bruce H. Lipton

Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (and a Way to Get There from Here) by Bruce H. Lipton Ph.D. and Steve Bhaerman

I loved both books.  Dr. Lipton does the voice work on the first audio book and splits the voice work with his co-author on the second.  Both are passionate about the topic.  I came into the book with no knowledge of epigenetics and now I feel I have good understanding of the author’s thesis.  We are not slaves to our genes. Environment plays a huge role and how we perceive our environment can impact gene expression.  Change the environment or our perception to the environment and the cells can alter their genetic expression.

I do not have a strong science background and I know that there are people smarter than me that agree with and disagree with the author.   Some critics take aim at the belief angle of these books.  Maybe they are right.  I know that the new age spirituality folks have embraced Dr. Lipton and that does raise my skeptic flag.  However, I know belief is a powerful variable when it comes to human health.  The fact belief is not measurable does not make it immaterial.  Dr. Lipton does an outstanding job of bridging the gap between cellular biology and our perceptions.

Wisdom of Your Cells is a good place to start to understand epigenetics.  Spontaneous Evolution expanded upon the topic and added a philosophical element to society as a collection of cells.  Really cool analogies.

I highly recommend both books and hope to read the Biology of Belief once my turn is up at the library.

Con Ed by Matthew Klein is about a con man that decides to live a clean life after prison, but is pulled back into the game.  The first half of the book was lame.  I felt like I was reading the script to some TV show from the 80s.  But, I stuck with the book and it got a lot better.  By the end of the book I was really into the story.

Maybe I was conned into thinking the book was simple and predictable so I would end up liking the book in the end?

Photo taken during my December trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

A new study out of the University of Haifa shows the negative health effects from night time exposure to artificial light.  From Light at Night and Cancer:

The researchers’ hypothesis was that LAN harms production of melatonin, a hormone that is released from the pineal gland during the dark part of the 24h cycle and which is linked to the body’s cyclical night-day activity and seasonality. When this hormone is suppressed, the occurrence of cancer rises.

Cancers mentioned include breast and prostate.  The study put mice into 4 groups.

1. “Long Days” – 16 hours of light / 8 hours of darkness.
2. “Long Days” with Melatonin – same as #1 with melatonin
3. “Short Days” – 8 hours of light / 16 hours of darkness
4. “Short Days” with 30 minute light interruption

The results showed that those in the Long Days group had the most cancerous growth and those in the Short Days group had the least.  Mice that were treated with melatonin had a lower death rate and tumor size that those that weren’t.  One researcher stated:

Exposure to LAN [light at night]- disrupts our biological clock and affects the cyclical rhythm that has developed over hundreds of millions of evolutionary years that were devoid of LAN….

This study came as no surprise to me.  Back in May, I reviewed the book Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival.  It went into great detail the damage that artificial light causes to our health.   Sleep is the daily repair cycle.  When you shorten that cycle or disrupt it by sending a false signal (sleeping under lights), the body gets behind and growth gets the upper hand.  Growth includes viral infections and as this study shows, cancer.  From Lights Out:

Going to sleep with the sunset means a whole-body melatonin bath, and a sharp increase in prolactin.  Prolactin enhances the production of T cells and NK (natural killer) cells.  These are the first lines of cancer defense.

My advice is to make your sleeping environment as dark as possible with as few electronic devices as possible and go to bed earlier.  If you have a choice between waking up an hour early to run on a treadmill under florescent lights or sleeping more; choose sleep.  I have some more tips in the post Turning Down the Lights.

Let me take you on a mini tour of my kitchen to explain what I mean.

Soaking and Drying Almonds

Almonds and other nuts have anti-nutrient properties called enzyme inhibitors that can be tough on your digestive system. By soaking nuts overnight in water with a little sea salt, you can neutralize those enzyme inhibitors.  This action leads to increase in vitamin absorption.

Source: The Nourishing Gourmet – Soaking Nuts

The almonds are drying in a food dehydrator and will be ready tomorrow morning.  That is when I’ll be doing pecans!

Kombucha – Continuous Brewer

Kombucha is a fermented tea with a trace amount of alcohol.   Besides being a refreshing beverage it is believed to have health benefits including probiotics.

Can you see the SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast)?

Kimchi

I’ve been making kimchi for months.  I love it.  I’m currently on the last day of my latest fermentation.  I ran out of Korean dried chili flakes, so I tried some Thai chili peppers in this one.

Sprouting Garbanzo Beans

Beans are loaded with anti-nutrients.  Too much for this post, but the way to prepare beans is to get the beans to lower their plant defenses so the nutrients can be absorbed.  Primitive cultures have figured out that soaking and sprouting beans accomplishes this.  I am going to make some hummus tomorrow.  I expect these garbanzo beans will be sprouting by then.

(UPDATE 9/4/2010) Warning:  kidney and soy beans are toxic when sprouted.

Waking Up My Kefir Grains

Frequent commenter DHammy recently sent me some kefir grains.  My first batch was a little thin.  My second batch was better.  Later today I will start batch number 3.  Third time is a charm, right?  Kefir is a fermented milk drink that is loaded with many strains of healthy bacteria.  I’ve heard of people that have had amazing health benefits after adding kefir to their diet.  Kefir is the extreme version of yogurt.

Why?

Our food is too dead and too processed.  Learning how to prepare foods in a traditional manner and how to restore positive gut flora will help your health.  Two books that will help you on this journey are Nourishing Traditions and Wild Fermentation.

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith is a good book from a 20 year vegan that returned to meat.  The author writes in a highly respectful and caring voice to those readers that may be following a vegetarian diet.  The book covers environmental issues, nutrition, mental health and the politics of big agriculture. It is not preachy at all.  It is written in a conversational yet informative manner.

This book is not perfect.  For some reason there is no index in the back of the book.  I’ll never understand why an editor to a non-fiction book would exclude an index.  If I want to revisit the pages on serotonin and tryptophan, I have to thumb through each page hoping those words catch my eye.  I would hope that if there is a second edition that an index is added.   I also didn’t like the last chapter.  Instead of being a concise summary, it was just a rambling incoherent dialog with feminist opinions that seems completely out of place in a book on food.  If you read this book, skip the last chapter.

Despite the last chapter, I think this is a very good resource for someone that is considering or having doubts about their vegetarian diet.  This book is your second opinion.  Because our diet can be our identity, we tend to seek out information that confirms instead of challenging our choices.  This is called confirmation bias.  It can be dangerous not to test your assumptions, especially if your early ones are incorrect.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. – Mark Twain

If you don’t have the time to read this book, let me point you to two podcast interviews the author did about the Vegetarian Myth.

Primal Body, Primal Mind Podcast – Scroll down to May 5, 2010.

Former 20-Year Vegan Lierre Keith Now Advocates Omnivorism (Episode 334) – Interview with Jimmy Moore.

Not respecting someones dietary choice, even if it is highly unhealthy, does not open a dialog about alternate nutritional strategies.   I also believe that slow minor changes can lead to permanent lasting health benefits.  So attacking someone about their diet is not only disrespectful, it is not necessary.

Elvis Recipe: Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich

Diet is a lot like politics.  Everyone thinks they are right and the other side is clueless.  After after all the yelling and debating, nobody changes their opinion.  They walk away angry and more firmly entrenched in their opinion than when they started.  By respecting someone for making a conscious decision to improve their health via diet – even if I disagree with that choice – means I can have conversations and not debates.

Long days tell the brain that it is summer.  Summer is the season where carbohydrates are most plentiful.  Our evolutionary design is similar to other mammals.  For survival purposes we gain fat before winter comes, because once winter arrives there will be less daylight and fewer sources of carbohydrates.

Summertime in Sequim, WA

The book Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival helped me understand the role seasons play on the hormones and how that effects the body.   Because winter brings the possibility of famine, during the summer we all have an instinctive carbohydrate craving to store fat for hibernation and scarcity.

Modern vanity is the exact opposite of our evolutionary past.  We allow ourselves to get fat from holiday parties, comforted in the fact that we can hide our winter weight underneath coats and sweaters.  Then at the first sign of spring, the modern man decides it is time to get lean.  Only at this point, the brain gets the signal that the days are longer and it is time to eat more carbohydrates.  And every year we get a little bit heavier.

Since we now have an endless supply of food and there really isn’t a need to fatten up before winter, what should we do?  My solution this summer has been to double my weight lifting, eat the occasional ice cream and take a break from intermittent fasting.   In other words, I am not fighting it.  I will use the growth signal and direct it towards muscle gain.

If you were successful dieting this summer – congrats.  If not, don’t fret it.  Your body was designed to gain fat during the summer.  The time to get lean is approaching.