Paleo As a choice in the diet options for Olympic Athletes

Great Video on Paleo from Robb

If you want to see Robb Wolf talk about the Paleo here is great video >

In Search of the Perfect Human Diet DVD

In Search of the Perfect Human Diet is a DVD that takes us on a 2-million year evolutionary journey presenting first time revelations from the emerging field of human dietary evolution. Travel through time and around the world with host CJ Hunt as he embarks on an unprecedented global exploration to find a solution to the exploding epidemic of obesity and diet-related disease. Featuring: Loren Cordain, Gary Taubes, Michael Eades M.D., Robb Wolf, Barry Sears, Dr. Lane Sebring, Prof. Jean-Jacques Hublin, Dr. Jay Wortman, Leslie Aiello Ph.D., Andrew Weil, Boyd Eaton, David Getoff and many more. To buy here > 90 minutes - $24.95 +S&H

Emotional Eating

When I don't perform to my best and the onslaught of disappointment hits I really gravitate to cookies and cakes. These are things I got when young and have emotional memories of happiness, feeling nourished, from mom, and at family gatherings. I felt connected.

Yet with all the great knowledge I have about processed foods, when I feel depressed, I want to eat everything. So the best advise I try to follow: When you are upset - don't eat. That's when we have no connection to how full we are. There is a void that can not be filled with food.

So asking "What's eating you?" is the question more than "what you are eating?"
Where is the sweetness in your life?

Emotional eating comes from your body's most simplest way of trying to protect you from the stress; it doesn't know what to do. It thinks back in the day you were in famine or going to be eaten by a lion so it tells you to get energy and store it. But today our stresses are related to mortgage payments, late for work and this causes chemicals that sets in place the same protection mechanisms in our body.

So I want to leave you with 3 resources:
1. a recipe from a full measure of happiness > here
2. a really cool video about motivation factors > here
3. a poem : I wrote this when I was searching for my pursuit of happyness:

Our aim

To work
Donate billions
Charity
To understand
And then open up
To smile
To accumulate
CV points
To change
And be proud
Restrict the 'ifs',
Add up the bible verses
To call more often
To be good?

I once heard our aim was more simple than this list.
I once agreed, but now have forgotten that our aim was and is
Simply to connect.

Cause and Effect of the Media

I found this great video that I want to share for the girls!

FANTASTIC RESOURCE

Here is a great resource for paleo. Recipes, Action Items, How to's, Why's and all the rest:

http://www.paleoplan.com/

In Ursula's Kitchen - Desktop Screen Saver Series

Every month, I would like to offer a new desktop picture for you to download and enjoy, as the creations in my kitchen are captured. Here starts May.

Circle of Life : Way to Eat

Paleo in Netherlands with Travelling

When in transit, it really takes some planning and effort to get through on the other side with paleo in tact. Inside of hotel, I looked for a bed and breakfast with a kitchen, but the kitchen is not with easy access. It makes it seem that going to the local restaurants is just easier. At first its seems really fun; explore dutch food, not having to search for the ingredients, not having to clean up, and figure out the new kitchen set up. But soon, eating out, even if choosing paleo options wears you down. This morning I woke up with swollen glands. I know the meat I ate yesterday was perhaps at the end of the day. And I'm not sure the salad I ordered earlier was without its own hidden additives. I have also realized it is quite hard to eat the meat quantities in Holland that we can so freely enjoy in the United States. Bread, cheese and bakeries are like Starbucks corners. Even the deli meats are all with E-number something added as preservatives. And the small quantities for high euros makes it hard to afford. But then you find yourself snacking all day, because you don't eat a descent meal. Today was just enough, and I bought salad ingredients, canned tuna and smoked salmon. We do what we can! Staying on top of my water is also very important. Today was the open market on the Delft Square. I enjoyed fish and macadamias fresh from the stalls and also bought a great variety of spices that I can't wait to cook with when I get back to Seattle.

Earth Day - April 22nd (Equinox)

For Earth day, there are some great links I would like to share with you.

• Williams-Sonoma planting guide with cute pdf downloads >Plantagram
• US Wellness Meats has some fun ideas about Do-It-Yourself thins >DIY Ideas
• Food Day Preparations and Take Action emails to send for more fruits and veggies at schools >Center for Science in the Public Interest

What is Earth Day : Earth Day is a day early each year on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth's natural environment. Earth Day was first observed in San Francisco and other cities on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. >Wikipedia

Red Meat Scare

"Red Meat will kill you." But wait for a month and red meat (beef) will be the saving grace. "Have a glass of wine at dinner, its good for your heart." Next month- "no wine!", "damn you, you alcoholic!" The same goes for butter. Fake chemical-tasting butter is better than butter, then "eat only margarine." Now- "wait, we made a mistake, margarine is bad for you, go back to butter."

There is some real scary undertones to this. Someone is lying to you to push a belief that will earn some corporation money somehow. When studies come out, you have to look at the data sampled. Unfortunatly you can't just go with it, because funded studies never have your best interest at heart. NEVER. Only your wallets. So I hope you can think for yourself and not be sheeped into recently studies, in particular the Harvard Study of red meat!

Lets discuss further:
The studies were done on people who were already obese, smoking, diabetic, and alcoholic. At this point, no matter what, anything could kill them. Like someone having AIDS and then saying the cause of death is the common cold. Yes, because at that point, your body is so run down, a simple sneeze will kill you. Do you now post a conclusion that the common cold is deadly or never sneeze again, it may be your last breath? This is not the cause. And the studies were done in correlation.

The meat was not eaten in isolation. But the conclusions where conversed in isolation. They were also eating fried rice, burger buns, margarine, ketchup and sodas.

A Grass-fed steak would not have delivered the same headlines and yet processed Hamburgers and hotdogs are considered meat in the study.

The study was on memory -and trusting what people think they remembered eating and recording it. It has been researched (correctly) that people who have high cholesterol miss-report their food intake.

How ridiculous is this study:
To quote MARK SISSON article: Will the butter defeat the margarine in their upcoming oil-wrestling contest? Will the asparagus discover who really killed her uncle’s stepdaughter’s boyfriend’s roommate’s poodle’s groomer?

Even slick Johnny Bowden has something to say about this study:

Why it sucks has to do with the wholenature of these kinds of epidemiological studies, which are called observational studies, and are as different from real science as baseball is from thermodynamics. (Nothing against baseball, mind you, and nothing against thermodynamics. They’re just very different things.)

Robb Wolf's podcast take on this:


So the big takeaway from this stuff is that every two or three months it’s like, “Red meat will kill you.” Then when you look at the study, what these things are is they have people keep a food log and they record what they seem to remember eating. Then they do some statistical analysis on this stuff and inevitably, the people doing this statistical analysis are going in already with an axe to grind against red meat or saturated fat or whatever the soup de jure happens to be. So this is what the story was with this. This was a retrospective cohort study where they basically had people try to recall what they had eaten and the approximate amounts and they did it on like a month by month basis or something like that. 
Even saying that this is science is just at this point ridiculous. There was a food frequency questionnaire, there’s been a bunch of call to just do away with the food frequency questionnaire entirely and this thing is just the backbone of epidemiology because this stuff is cheap and it’s easy to kind of implement and it looks like you’re doing science, but it is just bullshit. I mean it is wanton one-ton bullshit.  At this point, anything like this should not be funded. We should be doing metabolic crossover designed clinical trials. We should not be dicking around with this stuff anymore. 
At this point, let’s put this stuff head to head either apply in sick populations, healthy population, whatever you want to do, but we need to quit screwing around with this stuff and actually run this stuff head to head. In the news piece, one of the most concerning features that popped up for me was that when people are looking at this study, they said, “Well, Robb, if people ate grass-fed meat, they would have a different result.” This is something that just makes me bleed from the ears. It’s like, “No, because the data that they collected is worthless. It’s like they collected data on how many birds flew over your house and that’s somehow correlated with breast, colon, prostate cancer. Even saying the correlation versus causation is spurious gives this study more weight than it deserves.
I’m kind of stumped at how to explain that more clearly. The data set that they collected is just worthless. I used in my write-up an example. There was a piece that some folks produced that basically said that increased starch intake was correlative with increased rates of breast cancer in cancer survivor. So these people had cancer once and then they were tracking via a food frequency questionnaire the amounts of protein carbohydrate and fat that the people are consuming and in the study interestingly they were being counseled to eat a vegan like plant based diet. They found some correlation between starch intake and increase cancer rates. Now, I would love to jump up and down on this thing and say, “Do the shitty science that these assholes did and say, ‘look at this, carbs cause cancer,’” but it’s the same spurious reasoning. They did a food frequency questionnaire and then when they did their data analysis, they we’re ascribing differences in cancer frequency to as little as three grams of starch per day in the different cohort.


I remember there was a study maybe four years ago where they were describing all these negative attributes to processed meat. One of the things that was in the process meat category was “pizza.” So the fact that sausage and pepperoni were on the pizza, when they got in and they did their data analysis on the whole thing, the total caloric content of that pizza was ascribed to meat. 
So this is the type of shit that passes off as science from our research institutions. I get that not everybody has a scientific background and stuff like that, but being an informed citizen, you should be at a point of being able to say, “Okay, what type of study was this thing? Was it a epidemiological food frequency questionnaire kind of gig or was this a metabolic ward clinical trial where every bit of food that people were eating was analyzed? Every bit of poop and urine that they created was analyzed? That starts getting into the gold standard when we’ve got some sort of metabolic ward crossover clinical trial thing. This other stuff is not worth lining a bird cage.


There’s definitely a need for the common person to be a bit more discerning. I think the most stunning part of these types of things is the level of irresponsibility I see from these guys. Not so much even doing really, really poorly structured studies, but drawing the conclusions that they do and then making them public. That to me, is the absolutely incredible part. How you can pull that off in what is considered to be like the gold standard of research publishing, peer reviewed studies all this bullshit it looks like if your peers can’t even tell you that that study is a complete waste of time. I don’t know what to do other than say, “You better read the whole thing and use a little bit of reason before you draw conclusions like that.”
This is where a ton of our research money goes into stuff like this. I had a back and forth with some folks who are in epidemiology and they were kind of defending this point and I’m pretty inflexible on this. Like the time for research like this is done. We should never fund another food frequency questionnaire study. All of that money should go into clinical trials, metabolic ward quality. 
They’re very expensive, they’re complex to run and that doesn’t matter if we want some answers other than your own personal experience which I tend to ascribe a lot of value to, but if you want some more global answers to these questions, that’s what we need to fund. We need to step up to the plate, do the big kid science and quit dicking around with this stuff. That’s kind of the long and the short of it. If this puts a bunch of poorly trained scientist out of work, I’m sorry. 

Raw Food Chef - Matthew Kenney

I would love to share my food as a gourmet chef, and open a paleo restaurant. Here is a chef who has gone the raw food way, and I love the way he is talking about food as a health solution. Watch this:

Oxtail Potjie for this South African eating Paleo

A Potjie is a cast iron black kettle. But it is more typical with the 3 legs that rests in the fire. Potjies are a South African tradition because of the great outdoor climate that calls for any reason to have a braai (bbq) or potjie, where fire, food and little time with beverages is a great combination.
So I'm in Seattle and warm fire-making climates don't come as quickly but I still got a potjie going. Finally bought one from EZ-Gas and got the oxtail and ingredients from the farmer's market. Here goes the making of the indoor 'paleo' potjie:

Figuring out the flame height and heat. My gas stove heat the pot really good!

Starting to saute the onions and garlic in olive oil.

Adding the oxtail. The oxtail was first put in a mix of spices like coriander and then browned.

Root veggies were added. More typical to South Africa would have been potatoes, but with these beautiful beets, Jerusalem artichokes, radishes and sweet potatoes I got, I could miss the chance to color the pot!

Now I added the vegetable stock and parsley with a little sage.

That's going to cook now for 3 hours.

In the meantime, some snacking happened. Yes Bovril, which is like Marmite, (veggimite) and carrot sticks. It's really good!

At the end of the 2.5 hours, my potjie looked like this, and I thought its ready to go.

This is how it was presented and enjoyed! It has a really rich flavor of a stew consistency slow cooked with a slight tomato and saffron hint. The oxtail was soft that it simply flaked off the bone. The beets made the dish light when compared to just using potatoes and the richness of the gravy added to a bed of greens brought out the best in all textures satisfying the entire palette.

Paleo Registry

On Robb Wolf and Greg Everett's podcast episode 120 there are some really cool links. One that I would encourage anyone whI has been doing Paleo is the ancestral health registry. Some med students got together to try and collect better nutritional data. Listen to the show!

Food Propaganda Posters

Somewhere, some'one' company decided to change the way we think about food. Somehow there were messages sent to our brains that made us believe wheat, corn and potatoes (these things especially make you very fat) are foods you need to eat a lot of and that it is healthy for you. When behind the scenes, farmers had excess amount of the stuff and needed to make money off, so lets lie to you about the health aspect to make you buy it. Now we have an obesity problem, because people don't exercise enough. People are exercising more now than in the 50's but were much thinner back then, eating less wheat, corn and potatoes.

As a graphic designer, I enjoy seeing the persuasion techniques to make you believe and buy something you don't need. I remember in my forth year at university we had a lecturer who touched on this topic. He said we as designers should be taking a hypocrite oath, because we have as much effect on people as doctor do who operate, for what you hope both has the best intention for you and are going to make you better. (I was told, hope is not an option).

Here are some of the posters I found:

A poster from 1918 by Lloyd Harrison for the US Food Administration

What to eat when you don't have bread with that:

I look a series of photos of what my meals consist of during the day, in and around training and more elaborate dinners. However, nothing takes me more than 20min to make, maybe the time in the oven is an hour, but I'm not 'doing' anything. So its super easy and 'quick'.
Disclaimers: Yes you do need to have access to a kitchen. Yes you do need to go buy fresh ingredients. But you would have to get food somewhere. As an athlete, time is winning. So time spent preparing the best food is like spending hours training to perform at my best.

(Cooked Salad) Spinach, Egg, Leeks, Dill & Rosemary

Roasted Biological Beef and Paprika Pepper

(Quick breakfast before training) Hammer Nutrition choc whey protein powder and mashed banana

(Lunch) Bio-Beef with onions, garlic and kale saute

Cauliflower spiced with turmeric, cumin and dill

In the roasting pan - all in the oven ready for breakfast

(Breakfast) Grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, pear with 2 eggs and smoked salmon

(Kale Salad) Kale, eggs, red onions, olives, tomatoes, zucchini

(Grill pan ready to go) Bio beef, Zucchini, white asparagus, leeks, celery

Chicken and Kale scramble with beets, tomatoes and white asparagus spiced with turmeric 

Roast chicken topped with olive oil and paprika, brussel sprouts, mushrooms and paprika pepper

Hamburger with caramelized red onions, mustard and cut up apple.

Open call for The BIG Idea: A visual exploration of contemporary culture & obesity

Being able to combine my background in the Arts with a new journey passion of food lifestyle, I was excited to submit a piece of work for this competition. 


"Artists are asked to respond to issues ranging from the cyborg, the medicalization of the body, the obesogenic environment, the psychological complexity of obesity, body and boundaries or obesity and space, to positions on consumption and consumerism, or the “super-sized”. Artists are encouraged to bring perspectives to the subject that challenge, support, and ultimately broaden the dialogue surrounding obesity. Artists should also consider (but not be restricted by) the mission of the Canadian Obesity Network".

My submitted work showed images of my contemporary combination of calories in versus calories out and thus the work is called kCalories in vs kCalories out. That is the way we measure our food, in kilocalories not calories as marketed. The significance of kilo being 1000 more than what we are told is significant. Through collected snapshots I reveal my failings in weak will and pleasure seeking with trying to achieve the Barbie body. The images are bloated over a thin line drawing of a girl. ‘We are wired for pleasure’ neuroscientist Candice Pert wrote in Molecules of Emotion: 1999. So you get trapped in a obsessive cycle of guilt. Obesity used to be termed a malnutrition (under eating) disorder that needed a doctor. But somehow along the lines, judgement tones of sloth and gluttony cast guilt on such individuals and they need to see a psychologist for weak minds and indulging (over eating).

Training at the Olympic level, in a weight restricted sport of rowing, the absolute focus on the perfect body is a constant struggle I battle every day. I wade through the seas of opinions from public perception and incorrect research preached generating self-doubt in the ego and skin. I read the self-help, diet books and mental trainings, to have nothing but intrusive thoughts of food still persisting. In 186 images I portray my visual imprint of this necessary fuel, that both ‘crowns and crucifies me’ -The Prophet, Khalil Gibran: 1923).

The printed image stands at 64 inches, (5 feet 4”) which according to Wikepedia is the average height of a woman. The width of this image measures at 35 inches. If any width of women’s body reaches that measurement, says the NIH, she is calculated as obese. The work is printed on paper that is tiled and assembled together, instead of one large printed image. This represents the inches of matter added on the body in the weight gain process. In accordance to the well known BMI calculations, if your values of height and weight reach 30+ you are calculated as obese. This corresponds to the 30+ tiles needed to put this image together in full.

The flood of media, with TV, print ads, newsprint discounts and flashing billboards bombard us with what to eat and to make decisions about food all day long. Thus the artwork is intensive in images. Hungry is irrelevant, but rather buying, eating, consuming and rewarding yourself with food is. Most of these food-like imitations, terrible for you, wrought in additives and added sugar forcing a natural craving in us. I was born in South Africa, and come with influences from the San people who wondered the Kalahari deserts. In the Paleolithic way, before processed, they would come across something so sweet like a tablespoon of sugar, in the form honey and would want to consume large amounts, for they were not going to get that source of fast-fuel burning carbohydrate for a long time. Now a tablespoon of sugar is put in everything, in the form of a synthetic corn-syrup. A very natural craving is turned against us for commercialism. We are blamed for having weak minds or will power for wanting another cookie. Advertising says low fat, and then adds more sugar. Fruits and vegetables say nothing at all, but go for more in dollar than a box of Cheerios which contains very little nutrients other than sugar. (In Defense of Food, Michael Pollen: 2010) Exercise more, but eat less. But when you exercise you build up appetite. When you restrict the body of food, it becomes less active to compensate. ‘Tension resulting from trying to hold two incompatible beliefs simultaneously’ as Gary Taubes writes, is the energy balance effect. Energy can not be created or destroyed, only transferred from one form to another. In the time it took me to create this artwork, I did not eat. But as soon as I stopped, I consumed 2 eggs, butternut squash and protein powder, left over salad and shrimp cooked in coconut oil, ginger and garlic and thought about the fudge in the fridge.

‘doesn’t get fat because it overeats, it overeats because it gets fat’ - Gary Taubes (Why We Get Fat : 2011)

SOUL BRANDING

I have recently been accepted as a NOW Ambassador and the best thing about this, is the opportunity to connect to better buying practises.  When I think of my own performance as being the best I can be, it comes with a lot of awareness. Its so intimate; its with the heart and soul. So how rightly that the term SOUL BRANDING can be used to apply to other practices I do such as what I buy and spend my dollars on. The book called "The better world shopping guide" by Ellis Jones really made an impact on me. I have come to realize the intense change we can make with our purchasing power. I get very discouraged when the profit margins of the big corporations override soul branding or better business practices. With tacit knowledge they really have things in their products that will kill you, but because its so slowly over time, it can be hidden or lobbied away. (I'm series, when I say KILL YOU). But we do have the same fight. If there is no demand, then there can be no supply.

Here are some excerpts from the book. Companies and Products were ranked according to their public, private and non-profit sources. Appropriate weights to the data are assigned based on reliability, scope which calculates the social and environmental responsibility.

www.betterworldshopper.org

Top 10 Things to Change

1. Bank

2. Gasoline

3. Supermarket

4. Retail Store

5. Car

6. Seafood

7. Chocolate

8. Coffee / Tea

9. Credit Card

10. Cleaning Product

Banks & Credit Cards

A - ShoreBank

C - American Express, ING, Mastercard, VISA

D - Discover, Capital One, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo

F - Citibank, Bank of America

Coffee

A - Equal Exchange, AlterEco

B - Peet's, Starbucks

C - Millstone

F - CoffeeMate

Gas

B - Sunoco, Hess

C - Costco, Circle K, 7-Eleven

D - BP, Arco, Shell

F - Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, Union 76

Car

B - Toyota, Lexus, Scion, Honda, Acura, Subaru

C - Porsche, BMW, Land Rover

D - Nissan

F - Chrysler, GE, Jeep, Ford, Dodge, Hummer

Supermarkets

A - Food co-ops, Farmers Markets

B - Trader Joe's, Wegmans

C- Safeway, Tom Thumb

D - Target, Walgreens, Thriftway, Albertson's, Costco

F - Walmart, QFC, Fred Meyer

Retail Stores

Green Hero: Patagonia & Ikea

A - REI

B - Timberland, Eddie Baue, Nordstrom, Ace Hardware

C - Best Buy, Ross, Bed Bath & Beyond

D - Target, Lowes, JC Penney, Marshalls, Costco, Home Depot

F - Walmart, Sam's Club, Sears, Land's End

Soap

Green Hero: Dr. Bronner's

A - Method, Kiss My Face

B - HUGO, Irish Spring, Aveeno, Purell

C - St. Ive's, Burt's Bees

D - Nivea, Dove

F - Ivory, Olay, Old Spice, Gillette

Corporate Villain :  Dial

Vitamins

Green Hero: NOW & New Chapter Organics, Nordic Naturals

Centrum gets a F

Toys & Games

A - Eco Toy Town, Wild Planet

B - Sony, Mattel

C - Toys R Us, Crayola

D- Nintendo

F-Microsoft, Play-Doh, Disney

Villains: Hasbro (sweatshop)

Ice-cream

Green Hero: Ben & Jerry's

A - Purely Decadent, Stonyfield Farm, Green & Blacks, Humboldt Creamery

B - Newman's Own, Starbucks

C - Godiva, Hershey's, Haagen Dazs, Ciao Bella

D- Dole, Klondike, Healthy Choice

F-Nestle, Eskimo Pie

Villains: Dreyer's

YES LIST:

Seventh Generation, Biokleen, Organic Valley, Dansko, Muir Glen, Seeds of Change, Kettle Foods, Amy's

Although no listed in this book, from my own research, I would add to your yes list: HUDSON Boatworks, HAMMER Nutrition, Living Tree Community

NO MORE ON YOUR DOLLAR:

Pam (ConAgra), Nestle, Pfizer, Oscar Mayer, Tyson, Clorox, Tide, Downy, Bounce, Kool-Aid, Libby's, Minute Maid, Kraft

Ambassadors for your Mitochondria

This was shared with my from Abby, who's family shares a dad in wheelchair who has the goal to walk again. Possible? I think so.

LUC Winter Lecture Series

I will be presenting a brief talk on nutrition values  on Wednesday, December 28th at 7pm at Lake Union Crew Boathouse located on 11 E Allison Street, Seattle.  I'm excited to share my experience with paleo nutrition.

Topics covered will focus on the integration of your well-being from nutrition into your lifestyle. I'm tired of always feeling like I need to be on a diet. So I'm delving into what I can do, to be optimally as strong, lean and mentally aligned as I can be. I call it iEAT REAL FOOD! That's what I want to share with you!

Free to all.
Would be great if you could RSVP to me here > Nutrition Talk.

But if you don't no worries, just come !


©omic courtesy from my mentor Amy Kubal