Carbohydrates & depression 1

Posted on Tue, 25 July 2006 by Mel Green

Recently I learned of a dietary theory propounded, apparently, by the Dr. Richard Heller & Dr. Rachael Heller, authors of the The 7-day Low-Carb Rescue and Recovery Plan & various titles related to their diet known as the “Carbohydrate Addict’s LifeSpan Program.” As elucidated on a discussion list by a low-carber of my acquaintance, who is a fan of their work, the Hellers’ diet is based on a research claim that each time you eat foods high in carbohydrate (e.g., grains, pastas, starchy vegetables like potatoes), your pancreas secretes more insulin for the same amount of carbohydrate than it did in earlier meals on the same day. This can lead to hyperinsulemia — that is, high blood insulin (which the Hellers have dubbed “Profactor H”) — which, of course, contributes to insulin resistance & eventually Type 2 diabetes, as well as to conversion of carbohydrate foods into body fat.

The Hellers’ dietary advice is thus to eat foods high in carbohydrate in only one meal per day. Other meals should comprise only proteins, fats, & low-starch veggies.

I don’t know if the low-carber of my acquaintance gave a faithful interpretation of the Hellers’ claims, or if the claim about a higher amount of insulin per carb in successive meals holds any water. What concerns me more is this: for me to eat my high-carb foods in only one meal per day would mean that I would be eating 100-125 grams of carb (my normal daily ration) all in one meal. The effect of that wouldn’t be good: it would cause my blood glucose to go way to high, & would probably result (when the insulin kicked in to control all the glucose) in hypoglycemia. Not something that would be very good for me: spacing my carbs out across several meals, as I do, makes much better sense.

Unless the Hellers’ “more insulin excreted in successive meals containing high-carb foods” theory is true. (But again… how much more insulin?)

My other option would be to drastically lower the amount of carbohydrate I eat each day, to no more than 20-25 grams (or, as the low-carber pointed out, double that if I were to exercise immediately after eating to burn off the excess blood glucose).

But I will never go a low-carb route. Reason: I discovered some months ago, since learning to eat as I eat, that if I go too low in the daily carbohydrate consumption, I experience problems with mood. Irritability. But worse, depression. Which is a beast I’ve had a fair number of battles with over most of my life.

Based on my reading, depression, irritability, & other such mood problems are pretty common to people who embark upon low-carb diets. Other people, however, seem to be able to do low-carb without any problems with mood. Chalk it down to differences in heredity, metabolism, life history — who knows. All I know is, even if the Hellers’ theory is true, low-carb is not safe for me. I’ve been in the black hole, & I will not willingly go back: it has the potential to kill me a lot more quickly than insulin resistance would.

I don’t think I buy the Hellers’ theory anyway. According to the low-carber of my acquaintance, eating as many carbs as I’m eating should have me storing lots more fat than I in fact am. In fact I’ve lost 14 pounds since late December, & probably even more than that in body fat (replacing it with muscle), given the fit of my clothes nowadays. Moderate-carb, as I’ve been eating for months, seems to be working just fine to control my blood glucose, hence my blood insulin.

And also supports me against the slide into the pit.

More on carbohydrates & depression to come.

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Interval training

Posted on Thu, 20 July 2006 by Mel Green

Wikipedia’s definition of interval training:

Interval training is broadly defined as repetitions of high-speed/intensity work followed by periods of rest or low activity.

Most of Wikipedia article at this writing is a discussion of interval training as used by long distance runners. But,

More generally, it can refer to any cardiovascular workout (e.g. stationary biking, running, rowing, etc.) that involves brief bouts at near-maximum exertion interspersed with periods of lower-intensity activity.

In his Turbulence Training program, Craig Ballantyne recommends cycling over running for interval training for fat loss because it’s less likely to result in injury, though on paper, he says, running on a track would probably be best. Elliptical machines take third place behind running & cycling in his book. For cycling, he recommends stationary bikes because it’s easier to make the switch from the work to recovery/rest & back again on a stationary bike.

As of this writing, Wikipedia goes on to say:

It is believed by many in the fitness industry that this method of training is more effective at inducing fat loss than simply training at a moderate intensity level for the same duration. It has been said that in some instances — like long-distance running — moderate-intensity exercise for long durations may actually preferentially burn muscle tissue as opposed to adipose. At present, however, there is no conclusive research to support any of these claims.

Oh well, who knows what we should consider “conclusive” research to be. But what Ballantyne has learned through his research in the literature on exercise physiology is intriguing:

The best explanation for the success of [fat loss programs based on strength-training supersets & interval training] is that training with intensity results in a large metabolic disturbance in the body. That requires more calories to be burned by the body in attempt to return the body to normal.

In comparison, the effects of aerobic training are simple. You burn calories while you are doing it, but once activity ends, that’s it. No more calories burned and definitely no muscle gained! However, when you create a metabolic disturbance in the body, such as that which occurs from strength training or interval training, you will have a more potent stimulus for change in the structure of your body. That is, you should have a more potent stimulus for fat loss and muscle growth.
— Turbulence Training for Fat Loss, p. 6

The “metabolic disturbance” Ballantyne refers to is what suggested to him the name Turbulence Training. Which I predict will become a generic, uncapitalized term as more & more people begin to use it. (It’s already been in use for several years. I’m a latecomer to it.)

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Turbulence Training

Posted on Wed, 19 July 2006 by Mel Green

Turbulence TrainingToday I learned about a good intensive exercise plan for fat loss called <a href=”
http://terveys.turbulence.hop.clickbank.net/”>Turbulence Training, which combines interval training (for cardio) & weight training in workouts of about 45 minutes each, three days a week. I trust the source that recommended this plan to me (Tom Venuto, author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, through one of his email newsletters), & now that I’ve purchased the Turbulence Training stuff & read through a lot of it, I’ve made the decision to follow that workout program, perhaps using the workout plan designed specifically for women.

But… not until after the move to our new apartment, because such a major commitment needs to have my full attention.

I’ll also probably join a gym that’s near our new apartment. There’s a gym on campus that I can go to for a reasonable fee (I work at a university), but having my workout place near home seems more convenient to me. I mostly take the bus to/from work to save on gas & to get more exercise (through walking to/from bus stops), & I don’t want to have to be on campus as late as would be needed to work out there. Especially come winter, when it can get awful damn cold waiting in the dark for a bus.

But back to Turbulence Training. TT was developed by a Canadian trainer named Craig Ballantyne. Here’s how it began:

The idea that gave birth to Turbulence Training came to me when I noticed how the power sport athletes at the University had such sleek, strong, lean physiques – both men and women’ but none of them did slow long distance cardio for hours on end. Have you ever noticed how lean and muscular sprinters are compared to long distance runners?

So I came up with some training protocols based on power sports training’ adapted for regular people’ and I started testing them. The initial real world results were almost too good to be true, but as an academic type of person, I had to have concrete scientific proof to back up my theories.

Ballantyne went on do extensive literature searches on exercise physiology, traveled various places to obtain further knowledge, & seeing how things worked in his own workouts & with people he worked with as a trainer. At some point he tumbled to a couple of studies that proved out what he was seeing in the gym:

  • A study at Laval University in Quebec which found that people who did their cardio (aerobic) exercise using interval training (intensive all-out effort in the selected cardio exercise, alternated with periods of slower effort) experienced higher fat loss than those who trained using long duration, slower cardio workouts, for example, jogging around a track.
  • Another study showing that women (the study subjects) burned more calories after a strength training workout using higher weights at lower repetitions (8 reps per set) than those who used lower weights at high reps (~12 reps/set).

Thus, Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training program uses interval training for cardio & high weight/low rep for strength.

Purchasing the program means getting a big bunch of well laid-out, well-organized, printable Adobe Acrobat .pdf files containing the specifics of the program. The foundational document is called Turbulence Training: Time-efficient, Research-proven Workouts that Boost Muscle Growth & Blowtorch Fat (or Turbulence Training for Fat Loss, for short), which lays out the science & methods underlying Turbulence Training, a lifestyle review questionnaire, reasonable & intelligent nutritional guidelines, tips for maintaining one’s fat loss while traveling, & a 21-day plan for gradually improving one’s habits for better health.

Then Ballantyne gets into the meat of the program: the training guidelines & workouts. The training guidelines include instruction on how to warm up correctly before getting into the workout proper — good for me, since I’ve never been quite up to snuff about the right way to warm up — not to mention cooldowns, & an overall guidelines how to use all the workouts provided, scheduled recovery periods, etc. Then the workouts themselves: there’s a 2-week introductory level workout plan designed for sedentary individuals. This is likely what I’ll start with, because although I’ve not been sedentary these past few months, I’m not really fit either, & I think the introductory level will work me plenty hard. That’s followed up 4-week workout plans for each of the Beginner, Intermediate, & Original Turbulence Training Levels.

So, once I get started, this’ll take me through 14 weeks of planned workouts before a week of recovery & light workouts. Then I can follow it up with the three additional 4-week workout plans, using a fourth “core training” plan on off days (as each of these workout plans involves three workout days a week), for a total of 12 more weeks. Thus, the grand total for the entire Turbulence Training for Fat Loss program is 26 weeks if you, like me, start out at the introductory level (for sedentary individuals). That’s half a year! The document finished out with a description (with photos) of each exercise used.

And what then? Heh. Well, let’s stick with planning my life only half a year ahead for a start, okay? Okay, well, if you insist:

The basic package I purchase also included several bonuses:

  • A 30-day “maximum fat loss” workout plan. This seems like a follow-up rather than a “quick start precursor” to the basic TT program.
  • A 4-week summer bodyweight TT workout plan. Bodyweight means that you use the weight of your own body as the resistance you work against. An example would be pushups, where you push the weight of your body up from floor. For bodyweight exercises, you don’t need equipment, so you can do it just about anywhere.
  • A “fusion fat loss” workout plan providing a 4-week plan at intermediate level & another 4-weeks advanced. Fusion in this case means it combines exercises using weights with bodyweight exercises.
  • A nutrition plan based on the needs of a 200-pound man.
  • A nutrition plan based on the needs of a 140-pound woman. I probably don’t need this that much myself — I’ve got my nutrition plan pretty much squared away — but I’m glad it’s made available for all those women who haven’t yet learned not to eat junk out of a box.
  • An MP3 audio interview (one hour) with Craig Ballantyne going into the nuts & bolts of Turbulence Training (I haven’t listened yet.)
  • A 4-week “hardcore fat loss” workout program.

I elected to get purchase the Deluxe TT program, which in addition to the above also got me:

  • The Turbulence Training Bodyweight Manual, providing 6-months’ worth of bodyweight workouts from prep-level (for sedentary individuals) through advanced. Maybe this is something I can go through with my partner, since bodyweight exercises are something she can take with her to Seattle without having to buy a bunch of equipment. And I can take those exercises with me whenever I travel.
  • An 8-week “bodyweight athlete” workout designed especially for athletes, with their need for efficient workouts & the development of speed in mind. Not being a competitive athlete, I don’t know that
    I
    ‘ll need this, but what the hey, it was part of the package.

Ballantyne has also designed a workout program designed especially for women called, appropriately enough, Turbulence Training for Women. I haven’t purchased it, but I like how it’s advertised:

If you’re like us, you’re sick of fluffy, soup-can lifting workout programs that promise results in 5 minutes a day. You can see right through those programs.

No kidding. How stupid those photos of some trim Photoshopped woman in a pastel bodysuit staring down intensely as she curls a measly 3-pound dumbbell. I know us women don’t have the upper body strength of a fit 200-pound man, but pleeeeeaaaaaase. We’re not that wimpy.

At least I’m not. I guess I’m setting out to prove that to myself, aren’t I?

At any rate, if you want to know if this program is worth the cost, I will say, just as I did with Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, an undiluted Yes! As long as you’re willing to put the work into following it.

If only our move was over with….

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When it's real, & when it's not

Posted on Wed, 19 July 2006 by Mel Green

Sharing Your Loss
By Sally Squires
Tuesday, July 18, 2006; HE01
Washingtonpost.com

Losing 71 pounds isn’t enough for actress Kirstie Alley: She recently announced that she plans to shed another 15 pounds by November to wear a bikini on “Oprah.”

Oh boy. Can’t wait.

From here we go on into a list of other celebs who go on the air or write books to talk all about how they lost weight, or tried to lose weight, or gained weight back again, or….

Then there’s “reality” shows like “The Biggest Loser,” which I only known about (not being a big TV watcher) from having seeing an ad at Washingtonpost.com for Jillian Michaels. I put on my amateur anthropologist hat & did some research on Michaels & the show, & decided that while Michaels obviously knows her stuff (nice bod, Jillian!), she & the show were selling some really nasty quick-weight-loss strategies, all in the name of “reality show” competition.

How handy a quote that someone on a list just passed my way:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
— Philip K. Dick

In this case, maybe it’d be better to say, “which doesn’t stay away.” Given the methods of that show, I wonder how many of the contestants were able to keep off whatever pounds they lost. I betcha not many.

The theme of Sally Squires’ article is about whether making the decision to make public one’s weight loss struggle — whether one is a celebrity or a regular joe or jane, whether one is Steve “Fat Man Walking” Vaught* or a blogger — benefits or detracts from one’s weight loss efforts.

But what really struck me about this article is how nowhere did it question the basic premise of “weight loss” as a foundation for better health.

I’m not a weight loss blogger. Even in my efforts to lose fat — that’s fat, not weight — that quest is only subsidiary to my quest for better health, especially to prevent myself from becoming victim to the disease that claimed my mother. Fat loss is part, not the whole, of my health road. And I will not use methods that undermine my overall health, merely to look skinnier.

Or to fit in a bikini on Oprah’s TV show.

* Steve Vaught walked across the U.S. in order to lose weight.

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Low GI in the diet

Posted on Mon, 10 July 2006 by Mel Green

In late December I started eating low glycemically for diabetes prevention — i.e., for control of blood sugar & fat loss both (not weight loss per se — I’d like to keep & add to my lean muscle weight), as loss of fat around the waist is very important in diabetes prevention & management. But now I would say that eating low GI (which is only one change I’ve made to my lifestyle) is just basic good health sense for anyone & everyone. I simply don’t see how refined overprocessed foods & fast foods which tend to be high GI (not to mention full of unhealthy types of fats) are healthy for anyone. If not sooner, then later: overconsumption of those kinds of foods is the major cause not only of Type 2 diabetes, but also obesity, heart disease, & cancer. Especially when coupled with a sedentary lifestyle.

I don’t regard this as “a diet,” if by “diet” you mean a temporary change in how one eats in order to meet a weight loss or other goal, after which one returns to “eating normally.” It is diet in the sense of “this is my normal daily diet.” Basically, I’ve changed what is a normal diet for me. My normal diet no longer includes fast food, refined foods out of a box, white flour, white rice, white potatoes (they have become very much an exception, because of their high GI), etc. My normal diet now consists of low-GI carbs in moderate portions, along with healthy proteins, fats, & lots & lots of nonstarchy vegetables.

I think that “GI diet” type of book can be helpful to get started on a healthy permanent change in diet like mine, but I think it’s unwise for people to restrict themselves to that. On a list I’m on someone recently wrote to the effect of “just pick a diet & then stick to it”: I disagree. Most diet books are written as “one size fits all”, but one size doesn’t fit all. For example, some people can afford to eat (whole grain) pasta & basmati rice with no ill effects, & find those foods to be a healthy, nutritious part of their low GI eating plans. Others cannot because even in moderate portions those foods send their blood glucose up too high. Some people follow low-carb eating plans; I find that I cannot because if I go to low, I get badly depressed. I eat a moderate-carb diet instead.

But to me, low GI isn’t itself my diet. It’s a good principle of a healthy diet that can be combined with any number of general eating styles — e.g., the “Mediterranean diet,” low carb, moderate carb, high carb, vegetarian, vegan, etc.

The long & short of it is that no matter how good the book you start out with, the only person who can be the expert on what is best for you is you. Read books & websites, participate in discussion & support groups dealing with healthy nutrition & fat loss, & pay attention to your own body’s feedback, your own native intelligence & good sense. Some books will say “thus-n-such food is allowed” but if it makes you more tired after eating it, or gives you acid stomach (something that low GI eating cured for me), or causes your blood sugar to go sky high, or makes you hypoglycemic, then to hell with what the book says: follow what your body says. Never put any book’s or any other person’s expertise ahead of your own intelligent mindfulness about yourself & your body.

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Nutrition or training — which is more important?

Posted on Fri, 7 July 2006 by Mel Green

Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat Blog today has some fine advice in answer to the question “Nutrition or training – which is more important?” Venuto writes:

The first thing I would say is that you cannot separate nutrition and training. the two work together and regardless of your goals — bodybuilding, fat loss, athletic conditioning, whatever — you will get sub-optimal or even poor results without attention paid to both.

In fact, I like to look at this in three parts — weight training, cardio training and nutrition — with each part like a leg of a three legged stool. pull ANY one of the legs off the stool, and guess what happens? (emphasis added)

Venuto doesn’t directly answer that question, but I lived it one version of it in the past couple of months: Because I had pulled the “weight training leg” of the stool off (except for the incidental resistance training inherent in pushing bike pedals or walking up a hill), I ended up on a weight loss plateau. This was despite increasing my overall exercise dramatically as a result of my participation in my workplace’s Start Walking program, but that was mostly on the cardio level.

Again, the difference between weight loss & fat loss: I think I did continue to lose some fat, & gain some muscle (thanks to the incidental resistance training), but not I think at the levels that having a structured weight training component would have had me at. Just doing the level of weights I’m at now began to make a difference within a day or two of starting back up with it.

But back to Venuto’s blog: Venuto believes that while overall all three components are necessary parts of a good program for fat loss or general fitness or bodybuilding, different components can be more important at different times.

For example, someone who has very poor nutrition can stand to benefit almost immediately from improving their diet. In my case, my switchover in late December from refined & other high glycemic carbohydrates to low glycemic carbohydrates had the immediate effect of making my acid reflux go away. I also lost ten pounds in just a few weeks, even while continuing to tinker with my diet by starting to eat five small meals a day & learning to match my carbs with protein, healthy fats, & nonstarchy vegetables.

Meanwhile, I had a fairly basic exercise program going — for cardio, mostly dancing for a minimum of 30 minutes on most days to a playlist on my iPod; for weights, a basic routine that didn’t change much over time, except for an increase in weight. Venuto writes,

The muscular and nervous systems of a beginner are unaccustomed to exercise. Therefore, just about any training program can cause muscle growth and strength development to occur because it’s all a “shock” to the untrained body.

And so it was for me. Until things began to slow down a bit.

My diet has been pretty consistent since about mid-February. The big changes since then were: falling away from the weight training in mid-March, greatly increasing my walking & biking in early May, & then picking up the weights again early last week.

Once you’ve got the nutritional basics in place, Venuto says, then additional twiddling with your diet might still help but won’t have as great an impact as the original major improvements. But tweaking your exercise program probably will. Now, I thought I was doing that by joining in with the Start Walking program, & there’s no doubt that I’ve had improvements in my general & my cardio fitness from that participation, but it was only with resuming weight training that I began to experience weight loss — what I believe to be increased fat loss — again.

[Y]ou can continue to pump up the intensity of your training and improve the efficiency of your workouts almost without limit. In fact, the more advanced you become, the more crucial training progression and variation becomes because the well-trained body adapts so quickly.

Now, I wouldn’t say that my body is “the well-trained body” quite yet. But point well taken: my diet’s in place, my cardio’s in place — now time to pay attention not just to the weights themselves, but to progression & variation. Remember that in mid-March, before I stopped the weights, I had already landed on the weight loss (possibly fat loss) plateau, & I believe that happened because I hadn’t been varying my workouts. A little progression, yes, but no variation.

Strength coach Ian King says that unless you’re a beginner, you’ll adapt to any training routine within 3-4 weeks. Coach Charles Poliquin says that you’ll adapt within 5-6 workouts.

I’m paying a great deal of attention to this now.

So, to answer your question, while nutrition is ALWAYS critically important, it’s more important to emphasize for the beginner (or the person whose diet is a “mess”), while training is more important for the advanced person (in my opinion).

An opinion which matches my experience thus far.

Once you’ve mastered nutrition and the proper diet is in place, it’s all about keeping that nutrition consistent and progressively increasing the efficiency and intensity of your workouts, and mastering the art of planned workout variation, which is also known as “periodization.”

That’s my focus now.

Venuto’s entire blog entry is well worth a read. And of course so is his online ebook, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, which has been critical to my plan for making myself fit & healthy since I came across it at the tail end of January. (See my review of it on 2 Feb 2006.)

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High carb, low carb, or moderate carb?

Posted on Fri, 7 July 2006 by Mel Green

The good folks at the Glycemic Index Newsletter have been engaged in some argument with low-carb proponents about whether low-carb diets are good for you. The GI people say “Slow carb not low carb”, but a fellow named James Krieger, a 20/20 Lifestyles Research Associate with PRO Club and editor or the Journal of Pure Power, disputes some of the GI Newsletter’s statements on low-carb. Read about it here.

Here’s my own weigh-in on it (originally written as a comment to the GI Newsletter story):

I am obviously not up on all the science re: low carb or re: GI, but on a personal level I’ll say that a combination of those approaches work best for me: low GI carbs, moderate intake (100-125 grams/day).

I’ve cautiously come to agree that sometimes, for some people, low-carb diets are helpful. Even more specifically: high carb diets, even when the carbs are low GI, are disastrous for Type 2 diabetics, at least based on anectodal evidence from the people I’m talking with.

I talk a lot with people who are diabetic who have benefitted extraordinarily from following the advice of Dr. Richard Bernstein (Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution), which differs in some notable ways from Atkins’ low carb approach. The problem I have with Bernstein is that he generalizes from his own experience as a Type 1 diabetic & what works for him to an insistence that everyone must be as tightly controlled in their carb intake. He flatly states that his readers should ignore GI, a stance with which I very much disagree.

I’m dealing with prediabetes (& hence diabetes prevention), but I also have a history with depression. Right now I’m eating about 100 to 125 grams of carb per day, which I regard not as “low carb” but as “moderate carb.” I find that if I go over that, my blood glucose goes a little too high, even though I’m eating low GI; if I go under that, I have problems with depression. My intake has some room for change depending on my level of physical activity.

From conversations with other members of the discussion list lowglycemiceating@yahoogroups.com, I’d say there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence to support moderate carb for people with Type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance, even when eating low GI. Many members report having to watch portion sizes (i.e., glycemic load) as much as GI, & some absolutely avoid any kind of rice or pasta — even basmati rice or whole grain pasta.

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Organic hot dogs!

Posted on Fri, 7 July 2006 by Mel Green

Happy day! Hot dogs from animals not only raised organically, but in pasture — health grass-fed animals instead of the grain-fed, feel lot, antibiotic-filled animals that most people still eat.

For Natural Dogs, a Growing Appetite
By KIM SEVERSON
New York Times
July 5, 2006

In the past four years sales of packaged organic hot dogs have increased sharply. Although organic dogs have been around for at least a decade, the new models on the market taste better, have healthier fat profiles and are made from animals that spend their lives eating nothing but pasture.

The key is that the curing code has recently been cracked. Instead of relying on sodium nitrates or the more common sodium nitrites for color, texture and shelf life, hot dog makers have found a magic solution of celery juice, lactic acid and sea salt that rescues the organic dog from its tough brown reputation and rockets it to pink juiciness. It also addresses the concern among some consumers and scientists that nitrites and nitrates might contribute to cancer.

No nitrites or nitrates either? Those are the main reason I avoid hot dogs nowadays, because nitrites & nitrates have also been implicated in diabetes & other health issues.

Where can I get ’em? I miss hot dogs sooooooo much.

Stephen McDonnell, who founded the natural meat company Applegate Farms in 1987 and remains its chief executive, argues that the hot dog revolution should center on beef from animals that eat only pasture rather than the standard diet of grain. Beef from cattle raised on grass is leaner and has a healthier dose of omega-3 fatty acids, the kind found in fish like salmon and mackerel. As a result, he said, the dogs are healthier.

Exactly. Grass-fed is better — better for the animal, in terms of it having a better & more healthy life before slaughter, & better for the humans who consume its meat.

I might add at this point that I have no ethical issues with the web of life that leads different species to eat each other (whether plant or animal): this is how life & death are set up in this universe. But I have plenty of ethical issues with the feedlot methods of animal “production,” in which animals are kept in miserable, unhealthy conditions, are fed diets unnatural to them, & must be continually dosed with antibiotics because of the diseases they’re prone to as a result of the unhealth of their conditions. I will, & do, pay extra for eggs from free range chickens (not just “cage-free” but “free range,” & I’m willing to do so for organic, free-range beef & bison too.

After working for a decade on the formula, Mr. McDonnell this month introduced low-priced nitrate-free hot dogs made with grass-fed beef from Uruguay.

It’s just too bad that it has to come all the way from Uruguay. As the article later goes on to discuss, locally grown food, whether from plant or animal sources, is preferable because it doesn’t use up so many resources, especially petroleum products, just to get it to market. From what the article says, there’s a lot of that kind of hot dog available in New York City & environs, but hey, I live in Alaska… & already most of my food supply comes from elsewhere. But when I can, I do eat locally produced food.

Sold under the name the Great Organic Hot Dog, they look just like those plump, salty, chemically pink dogs served on buns at sporting events and from street carts….

….The new dogs will be the first completely grass-fed wienies in the country to be sold at mainstream markets like Publix and Safeway.

Wow… does that mean we might get them here, at Carrs? (Which is just Safeway by another name.)

There are also organic hot dogs from Organic Valley that come from Midwestern cattle whose diet is at least 85 percent grass.

I’m gonna be on the lookout for these. I really really really miss hot dogs.

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Coffee & diabetes prevention

Posted on Tue, 27 June 2006 by Mel Green

Coffee Could Help Keep Diabetes Away
06.26.06, 12:00 AM ET

MONDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) — Drinking lots of coffee cut women’s risk of developing diabetes in an 11-year study, researchers report. But it was the antioxidants, not caffeine, in the brew that probably did the trick.

In fact, diabetes risk was reduced most in participants who preferred decaffeinated coffee, the researchers said.

This article reports on a study by Mark A. Pereira, et al., at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study was based on data on risk factors for diabetes & food/beverage consumption gathered from ~29,000 older women.

Adjusting for those risk factors, the researchers found that women who drank more than six cups a day of any type of coffee were 22 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, the kind that occurs in adult life, compared to those who avoided coffee.

But diabetes risk dropped even more — by 33 percent — for those who drank more than six cups a day of decaf, the study authors found.

Seeing that decaf had more benefit than regular coffee, the researchers don’t think it’s the caffeine that does the trick. The coffee bean, it seems, is a very complex little bean, & has a lot of powerful antioxidants like those found in berries or the grapes used in red wine. It could be that the antioxidants in the coffee bean help to protect the beta cells in the pancreas, which produce insulin, from oxidant damage. Of course there are a lot of other areas on the body that benefit from antioxidant activity too, which are probably a factor in diabetes risk.

Previous studies had also reported on coffee’s protective effects, including one in the Netherlands in 2002 & later studies from the Harvard School of Public Health. Rob van Dam at Harvard, who was part of the study in the Netherlands, points at chlorogenic acid, a component of coffee which seemingly lowers blood-sugar levels. Chlorogenic acid is also found in red wine & chocolate.

But naturally, more studies need to be done.

I don’t drink as much coffee as I used to, myself. In the past few years, most of my coffee consumption has been in the form of lattés at cafés that I went to write at on weekends. But since I changed my diet in late December, I’ve not been drinking many lattés because of the blood sugar boosters in them. When I get a little further along with my fat loss & overall increase in health, I’ll treat myself to lattés again now & then; but in the meantime I’ve been drinking tea. Green teas are supposed to also have a lot of good antioxidant effects. (Though I’ve been drinking black teas like my favorite, Earl Grey, too.)

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Fine-tuning, part 2: Diet

Posted on Mon, 26 June 2006 by Mel Green

I wrote in my Start Walking blog about wanting to fine-tune my fitness activities; but I also feel need to tune-up my diet. (“Diet” as in “the way I eat” — not as in “I’m going on a diet.”) I learned one helluva lot in the first three or four months of this year about how to eat more healthily, & I’m well-pleased with the results — how I feel, & how I’ve integrated it into my life. But still I think I want to dive back in & check what I’m doing against the various founts of knowledge I have available to me.

For one thing, I’ve wanted to get Mary Enig’s book on fats, Know Your Fats, for several months, for comparison with Udo Erasmus’ book Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, as there are apparently a couple of points of disagreement in spite of both writers having an attitude toward dietary fats greatly at variance with popular low fat wisdom (wisdom which is gradually beginning to unravel). Enig wrote something on some website I came across, or perhaps it was in an interview, to the effect that Erasmus was inaccurate about a couple of things in his book, so I want to check on that.

I want also to learn more even more about indigenous edible plants as well as edible weeds (some of which I’m already eating — dandelion, lamb’s quarter, chickweed, common plantain). I want to know more about what kinds of health benefits these plants have, & also just to know more about what they look like, where to find them, when their seasonable & when not. I want to continue our forays to the local farmers’ market & get more of our produce there while it’s running. My food commitment is not only to eating more healthily for myself, but also more healthily for the planet — leaving a smaller footprint, as it were, in the resources I use up. How much petroleum does it take, after all, to get fresh produce to market in Anchorage, Alaska? Especially in the wintertime.

But not to lose that important first focus of consciousness about my diet: what is good for me, what increases my health, what prevents health problems like diabetes.

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