rkbabang

I've mentioned Chris Masterjohn before, he's one of my favorite bloggers on health topics. Here is an excellent blog post on dietary dogmatism and an interview where he discusses it: Against Dietary Dogmatism "the third type of dietary dogmatism, when we have a success, we may feel that we've found all the answers for at least ourselves, but this may be a false sense of security ... what is optimal for us might change over time. We might spend a period of time correcting past deficiencies and imbalances, but perhaps a time will come when we are replete and it is time to tweak our diet again." My Pocast Interview With The Blogger Formerly Known As Low-Carb Hank

We won't reach other stars for a long time, but we have a whole solar system to settle first. Not only some planets (8 or 9 or more depending how you count them, but only a few rocky), but a bunch of moons and a ton of asteroids large enough to contain large settlements/cities/etc... This doesn't protect the species from the burn out of the sun (but we have time before that). And it doesn't protect us from a large nearby supernova. But it does give us protection from one large terrestrial event wiping us all out, such as an asteroid/comet impact, super volcano eruption, or governmental stupidity like nuclear/chemical/biological warfare.

That's how I feel about it as well. I've been sold on the idea of asteroid mining since when I was an avid scifi reader in my teens. I'm excited as all hell to start watching how this venture progresses. Someone is finally going to try to make space profitable, which could mean that all of humanity might not be trapped on this one little rock (with its parasitical governments) for much longer. Now that we've covered all the inhabitable land on the globe, what humanity desperately needs is a new frontier to escape to.

It isn't as simple as saying "carbs = diabetes" or "carb != diabetes". People like to take a complicated topic, set up a straw man then knock it down, so they can go on eating what they like and thinking that there is nothing they can do to improve their health. Someone on this board (I can't remember who) has an excellent quote at the bottom of their posts which says something like "first you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool". If person A consumes rice, coconuts and sweet potatoes and person B consumes white bread, coca-cola, & snickers bars you can't say "look they both ate a lot of carbs and one has diabetes and one doesn't thus carbs doesn't equal diabetes". If you consume a diet of nutrient dense whole foods and avoid most grains and highly processed/refined anything (but especially wheat, corn, soy and vegetable oils), you will likely be healthy. If you are already obese and already have diabetes or metabolic syndrome limiting all carbs will help get you back some of your health. Once you are healthy a whole foods paleo-type diet (containing fat, protein, and carbs) will keep you that way.

"A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said... "We're out there right now, talking to customers," Anderson said. "We are open for discussions with companies - aerospace companies, mining companies, prospecting companies, resource companies. We're out working in that field, to really open up the solar system for business." Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled

This group of 8 "investors" turned $40.00 into $177,300,000.00 in one day. :) http://tinyurl.com/kync8 Not repeatable or predictable, but a damn good trade none the less.

I was uncomfortable with the name change, but did not sell until after the compensation package was proposed. I also never felt comfortable with BH owning the Lion Fund while the Lion Fund's largest holding was BH. Seeing him go over the deep end like he did made me sad, because I made so much money investing with and along side Biglari over the years. I really thought I had found the next super investor right at the beginning of his career. Oh well, it didn't work out that way. So much wasted potential all because he let his early successes go to his head. Who in their right mind would sell their company to him now? Anyone that finds themselves in his crosshairs will fight tooth and nail against him. See Cracker Barrel. What he did with WEST, Friendly's, then SNS, he could have had a reputation of being a shareholder's best friend and acquired poorly run businesses with ease. Truly sad. :(

[amazonsearch]World Right Side Up: Investing Across Six Continents[/amazonsearch] I just ordered this book after reading Jeffrey Tucker's review: "It’s a New World, and America Is Not Leading It". It sounds like an interesting book on emerging markets, from someone who purports to be a "value investor" "like Benjamin Graham or Warren Buffett". You also get 3 months of his newsletter for free if you order the autographed copy from Laissez Faire Books rather than from Amazon or elsewhere, so that is what I did. Has anyone ever heard of Chris Mayer or his newsletter?

I tend to agree. You either own the company or you don't. If you own the company you should have a say. IMHO companies should keep the ownership structure simply and straightforward and concentrate their time, effort, and resources on running the business.

Good article thanks. "My triglyceride count lowered from 141, a "high normal," to 117" If he'd give up his pasta and bread he'd get these way further down. My triglycerides were over 140 16-months ago and after only 3 months on a lowish-carb paleo diet they were already under 100. My triglycerides were in the 60s as of my last blood test a few months ago. --Eric

I just went to download Robb Wolf's latest Podcast Episode 127 (I listen to these regularly) and noticed that the first topic is "Mycotoxins and Bulletproof Coffee". I haven't listened yet, so I don't know what his take on it is, but I'll be interested to hear it. It's funny how once you start talking about something you find it starts coming up everywhere.

Thanks for the article. Amazon.com is without a doubt my favorite company, yet I’ve never owned the stock. It just always seems so expensive. I know I’m not typical, but if my wife and I were typical I’d definitely own the stock at any cost, because Amazon.com would be by far the largest company on earth and the world would be filled with vacant malls, strip-malls, and other shopping centers. Most of which would probably be converted either to massive data-centers or Amazon.com warehouses. The only thing we don’t buy there is fresh food, and we have a (local?) company called Peapod that delivers that to us. We don’t visit brick & mortar stores of any type anymore. “Running errands” in my house consists of going to the study and turning on the computer. Amazon Prime with its free 2-day delivery (which often makes it to us overnight) makes all of this possible. And if you need it immediately add $3.99 for overnight delivery. And returns are far easier than most physical stores. Just try returning something to Target or Bestbuy without your receipt and see if you don't appreciate Amazon.com. I just wish wall street would start hating the stock for a while so I could buy it.

Interestingly I ran across a similar graph of Chinese spending. Their % spent on food has gone from 43% to 28% in only 10 years from 2000-2010. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6j21mSSMuDE/T34rTRnkuBI/AAAAAAAASpg/RWfGaGdoxN8/s1600/chinaconsumer2020c.png I found this here: Chinese discretionary spending will nearly triple by 2020 to $4.4 trillion

Bargainman, Excellent post. Let me make a few comments. This is important, which is why the "Optimal Human Diet" for all doesn't exist. But the optimal diet for you does exist and if you are not getting good results with what you are doing you need to change what you are doing. Someday I'm sure you will just put some of your DNA on a detector attachment to your handheld device and it will tell you what you should and shouldn't eat, but until there's an app for that everyone is basically conducting their own N=1 experiment. Which is what I like about the paleo diet. It is basically a general outline of quality foods you should consume and certain foods to avoid for specific reasons and you customize it for yourself from there. Some eat a lot of meat, others don't. I've even heard of vegetarian paleo. It just says avoid processed foods, most food additives, and most dairy, legumes and grains. Most people still eat butter, cream, some cheese, and white rice is making a come back into the paleo movement with some calling it a "safe starch". The argument for rice goes, if you are avoiding grains mostly because of the gut harming anti-nutrients and white rice doesn't contain these isn't it safe? Now you have to take into account the glycemic load of white rice, but if you're healthy a little rice now and again isn't going to kill you. Many eat a low-carb version of paleo because they are recovering from obesity, diabetes and/or metabolic syndrome, but others use a much higher carb version containing starchy vegetables because they are endurance athletes or something. And a moderate carb version should work just fine for any healthy person. Again this is always an N=1 experiment, you need to find what works for you and be willing to make changes when it doesn't. I find many people are just not honest with themselves and not willing to make changes even when what they are doing isn't working for them, because they have this preconceived notion (probably because they have been told this by an "authority") that what they are doing is the "correct" way to eat. How many diabetics go to the nutritional class their doctor recommends, starts eating a low fat diet containing all those "healthy" whole grains, see that their diabetes get worse and worse, yet aren't willing to try anything new? I was one of these people for a number of years, so I know how easy it is to fool yourself especially when you have what you view as an "authority" such as your doctor behind you, encouraging you on further into the abyss of bad health. What you have to realize is that when it comes to nutrition you can spend about a week of intense research and know far more than your doctor has ever learned and will ever know. Doctors know a lot about treating acute illnesses, but next to nothing about what you should eat. The attractive lady that took him out to lunch the week before gave him all kinds of info on how to treat your cholesterol with statins, so that is what he does. He won't look for a dietary way to treat you except parrot what he learned in his one nutrition class in medical school, which taught him the corporate created USDA recommendations (which he has never questioned). This should be obvious as well, but isn't to many. To a healthy person going to a party having a beer and a slice of pizza isn't going to kill you, but living on beer and pizza isn't a good idea. It is what you do the vast majority of the time that is important and the further from optimal you are the less you should go off the wagon. And again be honest with yourself. How do you feel the next day after consuming this stuff? How does your gut feel? Is your body trying to tell you something? I put these two quotes together because this is a huge problem that most don't see and the problems with both food and economics have many of the same root causes. That is government and the corporations which control it. The USDA has no incentive to say that grains or sugar are bad for you. The USDA has every incentive to believe what ADM and Monsanto want them to believe and every incentive to spin things in that direction. So this is what happens. In the same way that a government school will happily teach an economic theory (like Keynesianism" which says the government spending is not only harmless but can solve all the worlds problems all the time like magic. No government funded institution or government paid bureaucrat will ever use or approve a text book which takes a critical look at these things. So you have a situation where some of the most educated people have the most skewed (towards the corporate owned state) views. And the people who do see the problems and do look at root causes from first principles become almost fanatical about it. This is partly because they are so out numbered by the majority who never questions what they are told at any fundamental level. They feel like they are out numbered 1000 to 1 (and they are).

You wrote: "I think no one can say how the prehistoric humans lived with any degree of certainty as the modern civilizations are several thousand years old already and there isnt much recorded history before that." I wasn't saying humans and dinosaurs ate the same thing. I was trying to point out that the methods of discovering what prehistoric humans ate is the same as the methods of discovering what dinosaurs ate. I was being polite, frankly, your above sentence is incomprehensibly stupid. Especially since by definition, prehistoric humans didn't record their history. Hence the term PREHISTORIC Not only that, but you seem to implicitly accept evolution, which is mostly proven by the fossil record, yet you don't understand how we could know what humans ate before recorded history? I should of originally just said, "WTF do you not know what fossils are!?!" and left it at that. Let me also point out that hunter/gatherer societies have existed right up until modern times and have been studied. Look it up. They eat more meat than anything else and they certainly do not eat termites. We are only 7-8 million years separated from chimps, but we have evolved in slightly different directions since then.

The thing about calorie restriction is that it works at almost starvation levels. The mice in the studies had to be caged separately literally so they would not eat each other. Human beings are not going to do that to themselves. At least I'm not. Also it hasn't been proven in humans yet anyway. Intermittent fasting is an interesting idea however, I know many people in the paleo movement swear by it. After all there where certainly days where the men came back from the hunt empty handed. I've tried going a day without eating and found it fairly easy to do, but I didn't feel any different afterwards so I haven't added intermittent fasting to my routine yet.

Someone sent me a private message asking me if this is where I got it from too. I never heard of this guy before this week, but since I got the idea on the internet it could have originated with him. I think I got the idea from someone mentioning adding butter to coffee in the comment section of a blog post I read somewhere and I thought it sounded good so I tried it. He mentions blending it which I've never tried, but if it makes it more frothy like a latte then I think it would be delicious. Adding coconut oil in there as well is probably good too. This guy seems like he eats a paleo-like diet, but his ideas about sleep are a little out there. I don't use any electronic devices to shorten my sleep time. I go to bed and wake up 6-8 hours later. He definitely makes a lot of claims I don't see elsewhere, so I'm skeptical. That doesn't mean he's wrong, just that I'm skeptical that getting 4 hours of sleep every night would be a healthy thing to do, And I worry about what the long term effects of that would be. As far as his brand of coffee goes, it sounds to me like he's trying to sell his coffee, I don't think any quality coffee is going to be much different from his. I have a small local coffee roaster that I go to who buys only the highest quality beans and roasts them in tiny batches (I believe it is 40lbs at a time) for long periods of time at lower temperature than the big companies use. The coffee is incredible. Your average large coffee roaster selling mass-market beans burns the beans by roasting thousands of lbs for a very short time at a high temperature, in order to maximize their output. Anyway I digress. That's my take on that website. His dietary advise looks pretty good, he's trying to sell his own brand of coffee, and some of his other ideas are .... umm ... different.

Hasn't modern fruit been engineered to be full of nasty fructose? Yes, which is why you should stick to berries and small amounts of other fruit when you have it. I'll eat 1/4 of a banana or an apple. 2 strawberries. But I'll eat a cup of wild blueberries or blackberries. You just need to use some common sense and not consume too much sugar.

For anyone who hasn't seen this. An amazing and uplifting (admittedly anecdotal) story about one person's results from switching to a paleo type diet.

I don't eat much cheese anymore, I try to stay away from dairy other than butter and maybe some heavy cream. But I will have some cheese once in a awhile. It is very low-carb, but after reading Loren Cordain's chapter on dairy and what is in it in "The Paleo Answer" cheese just isn't as appetizing to me anymore. Butter is the exception, because it is almost pure fat, so it doesn't contain the more harmful chemicals and hormones naturally found in cows milk. As far as eggs go, my usual breakfast is 6 whole eggs (the yolk being healthier part if you are going to separate your eggs throw the white part away not the yolk) with some kind of vegetable and/or fruit and some kind of meat on the side. (liver, steak, pork, chicken, or sometimes non-cured bacon). I do a huge breakfast then I don't eat again until dinner, where I have some kind of meat/fish with a vegetable. Some times a snack of wild blueberries and nuts before bed. When I first started the diet I was eating 3 large meals per day. Sort of like the above menu with a big lunch added and another snack in between. I still lost weight like crazy doing it. I don't eat lunch now, simply because I am not hungry anymore at noon. At some point a few months ago I realized that I was only eating lunch by force of habit and I really wasn't hungry. Now I only eat when I'm hungry. The fact that you put "yolks?" down I'm assuming you are worried about the cholesterol. Look up the info on Chris Masterjohn in my last post above this one.

The short answer is yes, it is based on hard science, but not enough hard science. The problem is that none of the nutritional advice given to you by the ADA, AHA, FDA, and probably your doctor is backed by hard science at all. The problem with nutrition studies in general is the poor design of almost all of them. It's been said that nothing in biology makes any sense except in the context of evolution. The no grains, paleo-type diets are based on that as a starting point. Ask yourself: What did humans eat for 99% of our existence here on earth? Whatever it was is what our bodies have evolved to need. And that diet contained no grains. If you are really interested to dig down into this subject I can give you a list of things to read. If you are just casually interested I'll give you some blogs and podcasts to listen to. Books: "Good Calories, Bad Calories", by Gary Taubes. "The Paleo Answer" by Loren Cordain. "The Paleo Solution", by Robb Wolf. "Why we get fat and what to do about it" by Gary Taubes. Also I hear that "Wheat Belly" is really good, but I haven't read it. Podcasts: Robb Wolf's podcast is really good and goes into the science behind this quite often: Paleo Solution Podcast. I just found a podcast by someone called "Jimmy Moore" that I've been listening to for a few weeks. He interviews tons of people in the paleo/low-carb community (Doctors, researchers, etc). His show is kind-of cheesy sometimes, but he does some really good interviews. This interview with the Doctor William Davis who wrote "Wheat Belly" is excellent and will answer many of the questions you asked about whole grains ‘Healthy Whole Grains?’ | Dr. William Davis Some Blogs that are really good are Chris Masterjohn's blogs: "The Daily Lipid" (Listen to some of his interviews that he posts the links to as well as reading his blog), Mother Nature Obeyed and his site Cholesterol and health. Also good is Mark's Daily Apple As far as "what you replace" whole grains with? What do they do for you other than cause gut problems, weight gain, small dense LDL particles in your blood, type 2 diabetes (and maybe type 1 as well) and a whole host of autoimmunity issues? When you stop eating grains, sugar, and processed foods, you eat mainly meat & vegetables, with a small amount of fruit and nuts. --Eric

That's been on my "to read list" since it came out. I've been doing a low-carb paleo type diet for about 16 months now which is already a grain-free diet so I don't envision that reading it will change my mind on anything or change the way I am eating. There are definitely foods which are worse for you than others, contain more/worse anti-nutrients than others even within the category of grains. In my opinion wheat is probably the worst of the lot. Gluten is a poison for anyone, not just people who's doctor has told them that they are "gluten sensitive". Anyone and everyone who eats wheat would benefit to one extent or another from going wheat free, even if they made no other change to their eating. You basically have to stop eating processed foods to do this, because as you said there is gluten in all kinds of things. A close #2 on my list of foods to cut would be soy. This is another food that is in almost everything packaged or processed in anyway. Even "low-carb" processed junk like Atkins brand products contain soy. Yes, and what is comical (or rather sad) is the food industries answer to gluten-free products - Rice. For example, take pasta. Rice pasta is even worse on the glycemic index than regular pasta. So you are getting your gluten-free fix of pasta through a greater sacrifice of your overall health. I agree. Most of the stuff in the "gluten-free" isle at the store is not good for you. But again, food is complicated. White rice is basically a pure starch devoid of all of the harmful anti-nutrients which are found in the bran. So someone who is in perfect shape, works out constantly and has 10% body fat and was never overweight can probably consume white rice without any problems. Where someone like me who is a former obese type-2 diabetic should probably stay away from anything high on the glycemic index which may spike my insulin. Although I'm at the point now after 16 months on paleo that my blood sugar remains normal even after a meal containing a little sweet potato. Even 6 months ago this wasn't the case. Insulin resistance takes a long time to reverse and in some people it will never fully reverse. The best thing to do is test, test, test. When you try a new food, test at 1/2 hour, again at an hour, and again at 2 hours. When I ate something starchy 16 months ago my blood sugar would be over 250 on my meter at half an hour. Now at a half hour after sweet potatoes I'm still under 100. I haven't tried eating rice yet, I think it is a good idea for me to stay away from anything like that for now (maybe forever). Even sweet potatoes I will not have often and in small amounts when I do. BTW. I highly recommend Loren Cordain's new book "The Paleo Answer" it goes over the issue of anti-nutrients in food extensively and why you should stay away from all grains (especially whole grains containing the bran), stay away from white potatoes (not only because it is high on the glycemic index but also because of the Alkaloids), stay away from dairy (with the exception of grass fed butter/heavy cream because they are all fat and contain much less of the anti-nutrients), as well as AGEs (Advanced Glycation End-products) and a lot of other stuff as well. There is a lot of info packed into a short, well footnoted, book.

That's been on my "to read list" since it came out. I've been doing a low-carb paleo type diet for about 16 months now which is already a grain-free diet so I don't envision that reading it will change my mind on anything or change the way I am eating. There are definitely foods which are worse for you than others, contain more/worse anti-nutrients than others even within the category of grains. In my opinion wheat is probably the worst of the lot. Gluten is a poison for anyone, not just people who's doctor has told them that they are "gluten sensitive". Anyone and everyone who eats wheat would benefit to one extent or another from going wheat free, even if they made no other change to their eating. You basically have to stop eating processed foods to do this, because as you said there is gluten in all kinds of things. A close #2 on my list of foods to cut would be soy. This is another food that is in almost everything packaged or processed in anyway. Even "low-carb" processed junk like Atkins brand products contain soy.

I've always wondered if humans carry around beneficial viruses with us as some other animals and especially insects do. After all we have beneficial bacteria in our guts that we couldn't live without. It stands to reason that somewhere along the evolutionary path some virus would have developed a mutually beneficial relationship with us. Unfortunately there has been almost no research in this area to find these (if they exist). I certainly wouldn't be first in line to sign up for the human trials of this drug unless I already had something that was going to kill me for sure. Interesting stuff though, hopefully it ends up working and not having any serious side effects. It'd be nice to just pop a pill whenever you felt like you were coming down with something and never have a cold, flu or stomach virus again! As far as computer viruses they can be controlled by a little common sense. Don't open the attachment your mom sends you with the message "Open this. It is the most amazing thing I've ever seen!" and use some antivirus software and a firewall. We won't get rid of computer viruses, because we can't get rid of what causes them (humans). They are a fact of life we just have to live with. It's like saying we need to get rid of theft. As long as there are humans in any large number communicating with programmable devices there will be theft, fraud, and malicious viral code. Remember that all complex systems contain parasites.

I agree staying active is important, its something I have a hard time with. I sit at a desk all day. I do what I can, but I never feel that it is enough. As far as Calories are concerned. Calories do count to a point, but it is far more complicated than calories in = calories out. When your body is running the way it should its response to excess calories in will be to speed up your metabolism (which will make you energetic and want to move), increase your body temperature, or make you sweat to try to burn off excess calories. Therefore you will need to overdo it by a mile for it to matter. When you are a sugar burner with metabolic syndrome (most Americans I think) you have the opposite problem. Your body wants to store any excess energy as fat and protect its fat stores at all costs. So when you consume fewer calories your metabolism slows down, you get cold, you get tired, you will get tremendously hungry (so much it can hurt you can have tremors) and if all else fails your body will burn muscle as fuel instead of dipping into its fat stores (and remember your heart is a muscle). This is why high-carb starvation diets don't work and also why someone who's metabolism is in bad shape will not see any advantage to exercise and can actually weaken their heart. You need to get your diet fixed first, then start to exercise. Yes calories matter, but calories consumed is just one tiny variable in a large complex multivariate process containing many interdependent internal control systems. And it isn't even one of the more important variables. Gary Tuabes is simplifying things a little bit when he says calories don't matter at all, but he is correct when he says that what you eat is vastly more important than how much you eat. Maybe if you are in great shape already and want to optimize further, or you are competitive athlete and you want to fine tune every variable to the max, calories can be important to get every last bit of optimization in your body composition or performance. But for the average person, especially the average American, calories are the last thing they should worry about.