Suitably Flip

I came across this great website that deals with economics and politics. "Flip" has a great post explaining the size of the stimulus package and a previous post where he graphs historical financial burdens in 2008 figures compared to the current 2009 stimulus. This is a website I think I'll link in the margin and check back with.

Jan 30 food

Brekky:  small morning smoothie.  This time I was hungry at 6:15 am.  So salad for dinner before 6 pm worked.

Snack after workout:  3 date nut pop'ems.  celery with raw almond butter.  I got an order from Dr. Fuhrman's website yesterday.  I decided to try out his date nut pop'ems and almond butter along with replenishing my vinegar and vitamins.  The date nut pop'ems are a bit too rich for my tastes I think.  They are packed with calories and sugar, so if I eat a little, I feel okay but it doesn't seem very satisfying to me; and if I eat a lot, I get a sick feeling from the richness and sugar high.   The chocolate ones are really good but I don't like the caffeine.  However I really like the raw almond butter.  That was great with celery.  So I think that will be a good morning snack.  

Lunch:  baked sweet potato (mashed with a fork), leftover pureed rutabaga and turnip and parsnips, steamed cauliflower, edamame.   How's that for a colorful dish?  As I said yesterday, the only reason the pureed rutabaga is pink is that I didn't clean out the blender after making a beet dressing.  But it's pretty!  For dessert I made baked apples stuff with date nut pop'ems (a Fuhrman recipe--core the apple, stuff 'em, bake 'em).  They were good, but I'm not sure it was worth the effort.  I think I don't like sweets as much as I used to.

Dinner:  chopped arugula and spinach topped with cashew-orange dressing and orange slices.  Wow, this was really good!   For dessert I had two date nut pop'ems.  For someone who says she doesn't like sweets and desserts, I ate a lot of date nut pop'ems today.  Well, I wanted to try them out.

John Updike and The Shack

American author, John Updike, died this week. I am not familiar with much of his writing, but I came across this article that detailed his 6 rules/guidelines for critiquing a written work. This struck me as especially helpful in light of my recent debate over the book The Shack by William Young. In particular, Updike's first rule is:

"Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt."

We Christians cry foul when unbelievers indict the Bible for it's lack of advocacy for equality or its seeming condoning of slavery or women as second-class citizens. We may respond that the Bible was not written as a social manifesto, a "how-to" book for functional theocracies, or even primarily as a history book. It is, if you will, an autobiography written by God about the life of God in and during human history.

Updikes' first rule is very applicable here as well as with The Shack. For all the "poor theology" or "undiluted heresy" that may or may not be in there, it is clear that Young was not intending to write a systematic theology, but rather a personal testimony of God's grace and work in his spiritual journey for his childrens' benefit. The fact that others resonated with it and it has taken off as a NYT's best seller is rather peripheral. What was his intent and how well did he acheive it is the issue reviewers should start their assessmement with.

But additionally helpful, and necessary, is Updike's 5th rule:

"If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?"

If, as the critics say, Young wandered so far off course, is there another work they can recommend that addresses the real faith-shattering consequences of life's hard knocks, the inadequacies of the American church, and how a man who is supposed to have his theology all figured out gropes out of the darkness of grief, fear, shame and hurt into the light of forgiveness and reconciliation, both with his enemies and his God? Where is that book? Or is the failure really the critics' who just "don't get it", or just don't want to acknowledge that many people go through such valleys of doubt and darkness (which is why the book has been so contagious)?

Again, Young's book was a poignant expression of very real experiences, emotions, and faith struggles. How this one man worked through it all is brilliantly described in The Shack. It left me hungry for more intimacy with Christ and confronted with my own personal battles with forgiveness.

Just some helpful direction from John Updike worth considering.

Seafood and Vitamin K2

In his travels around the globe, Dr. Weston Price found that the most robust groups were often those who had access to marine and freshwater foods. For example, Polynesian groups had a tooth decay prevalence as low as 0.6% of teeth. That's roughly one in 5 people with even a single cavity, in a population that doesn't brush its teeth, drink fluoridated water or go to the dentist. These individuals had broad dental arches, straight teeth, and fully erupted wisdom teeth as well.

As soon as they adopted white flour and sugar as dietary staples, the tooth decay prevalence of Polynesian groups went as high as 33.4% of teeth, or about 11 cavities per person. This represents a 5,600% increase in the prevalence of tooth decay. The next generation to be born also suffered from characteristic facial and skeletal abnormalities that are common in modern societies to varying degrees.

This leads me to ask the question, what is unique about seafood that allows it to support excellent development and maintenance of the human body? Seafood has a lot of advantages. It tends to be very rich in minerals, particularly iodine which can be lacking in land foods. It's also a good source of omega-3 fatty acids and low but adequate in linoleic acid (omega-6). This impacts development and maintenance in a number of ways, from fat mass to dental health.

As I wrote in the last post and others, I believe that one of the major determinants of proper development and continued health is the diet's content of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K2. K2 in particular is rare in the modern diet. We're also deficient in vitamin D because of our indoor lifestyles and use of sunscreen. Polynesians didn't have to worry about vitamin D because they spent much of the day outside half naked.

How about K2? Is seafood a good source? At first glance, it doesn't appear to be. Mackerel is the best source I came across on NutritionData, with one serving delivering 5.6 micrograms of vitamin K. It wasn't specified, but only a portion of that will be vitamin K2 MK-4, with the majority probably coming from K1. Most other types of fish have very low levels of vitamin K.

But we have to probe deeper. Nutrition information for fish refers to muscle tissue. Muscle is a poor source of K2 in mammals, could that be the case in fish as well? It turns out, the organs are the best source of K2 MK-4 in fish, just as they are in mammals. It's most concentrated in the liver, kidneys, heart and gonads. This loosely resembles the situation in mammals, which also retain MK-4 in their kidneys and gonads (along with pancreas, salivary glands, and brain).

I don't know how frequently traditional non-industrial cultures ate fish organs. My guess is they discarded most of them as do modern cultures, because they smell funny and putrefy rapidly. There are some exceptions, however. Certain traditional cultures ate fish livers, cod for example. Price described a dish eaten by a healthy, isolated Gaelic group in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration:

An important and highly relished article of diet has been baked cod's head stuffed with chopped cod's liver and oatmeal.

Gonads are one of the richest sources of K2 MK-4 in fish, containing 5-10 micrograms of MK-4 per kilogram of tissue in a few different species (according to this paper). Even that is not really an impressive concentration.

One thing that is universally relished by traditional groups is fish eggs, which of course develop from the gonads. A number of cultures dried fish eggs, sometimes trading them far into the interior. Although they haven't been analyzed for MK-4 content in modern times, Price found fish eggs to be a rich source of K2. Speaking of vitamin K2, he said: "its presence is demonstrated readily in the butterfat of milk of mammals, the eggs of fishes and the organs and fats of animals". Unfortunately, Price's assay was not quantitative so we don't have numbers.

As mainstream medicine slowly catches up to the importance of vitamin K2 MK-4 that Price described in the 1940s, more foods are being tested. I think we'll see values for fish eggs in the near future. This will allow us to discriminate between two possibilities: 1) seafood is a good source of K2, or 2) the human requirement for K2 is not particularly high in the context of an otherwise healthy diet.

Jan. 29 food

Brekky:  morning smoothie.   I wasn't as hungry as I'd like to be (it was 6:20 am).  I guess last night's giant salad should have been a little smaller.  I'll keep adjusting my evening meal.

snack:  banana + 1 oz walnuts; carrots and celery

Lunch:  last of the black eyed peas, steamed veggies (broccoli, cauliflower and carrots), and pureed turnip/rhutabaga/parsnips.   The pureed root vegetables look purple because I didn't clean out the blender after making beet dressing.  so it's kind of pretty.   Dessert was a small juicy valencia orange.

Dinner:  salad with creamy beet dressing.   yummy yummy.  salad was just chopped lettuce, spinach and red bell pepper.   Finished dinner at 5:50 pm---hopefully early enough to digest before 6:20 am tomorrow.

But, but...We've DONE All That

Michael Ledeen has a great post at NRO reging the ongoing "debate" about what to do with Iran. In whole:

"I'll keep this short, in the interests of my impressive blood pressure. There are two "stories" about Iran/U.S. relations bubbling around. One has to do with direct talks, the other with Ahmadinejad's demand that we apologize for our many past sins.

I know this is spitting into the wind, but neither is news. There have been talks between Washington and Tehran ever since 1979 (the Revolution). EVERY president has authorized them. On the public record, there were nearly thirty such talks during the Bush years, and there are "private" channels as well. So there is nothing new in this, it is business-as-usual.

Iranian leaders have constantly demanded that we apologize, and we have. Clinton did it. Albright did it. And then, having obtained his ounce of humiliated flesh, Khamenei told them both to go to hell.Any story about talks with Iran or apologizing to Iran should
contain those historical facts. Otherwise, you can just do what most of the journalists do: Pretend the world was created fresh just before you woke up, so all that matters is how you feel about it all."

'NUF SAID! Why is it that people think Obama's approach is a "change" in our use of diplomacy? Just because there were no photo ops with our leader and theirs? The most significant line is the last one: ignoring this history is like "Pretend[ing] the world was created fresh just before you woke up, so all that matters is how you feel about it all." Was it Plato who said to not know what happened before you were born is to forever be a child? I thought Obama said it was time to put childish ways behind us. He was ushering in the age of maturity. History will bite every time. It would be good to remember it.

Jan 28 food

Brekky:  morning smoothie.  I eat this at 6:30 am so I need to eat a smaller dinner or earlier, to make sure I'm hungry.  

snack:  banana and 1 oz walnuts

Lunch:  my black eyed pea stew (from the freezer) and fruit salad.  When I stop at the store now I am drawn to the strawberries and blueberries (I stopped at the store today).  The strawberries were big, and big strawberries usually aren't as good, too much water.  But they were still good, just not fantastic.  Same with the blueberries.   Dessert:  cup of warm soymilk (freshly made).

Dinner:  Large arugula-apple salad (I used arugula, spinach and lettuce, 2 apples, and 2 Tbsp sunflower/pumpkin seeds to make it extra big).  I'm still out of D'Angou pear vinegar so I used the blood orange, which was also very good.  Snacked on carrots and celery while making it.  Dessert:  2 small valencia oranges.  I finished at 6 pm so I hope that's early enough to make me hungry tomorrow morning.

What's Wrong With America?

Bits and Pieces has a hint:

Vitamin K2 and Cranial Development

One of the things Dr. Weston Price noticed about healthy traditional cultures worldwide is their characteristically broad faces, broad dental arches and wide nostrils. Due to the breadth of their dental arches, they invariably had straight teeth and enough room for wisdom teeth. As soon as these same groups adopted white flour and sugar, the next generation to be born grew up with narrow faces, narrow dental arches, crowded teeth, pinched nostrils and a characteristic underdevelopment of the middle third of the face.

Here's an excerpt from Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, about traditional and modernized Swiss groups. Keep in mind these are Europeans we're talking about (although he found the same thing in all the races he studied):

The reader will scarcely believe it possible that such marked differences in facial form, in the shape of the dental arches, and in the health condition of the teeth as are to be noted when passing from the highly modernized lower valleys and plains country in Switzerland to the isolated high valleys can exist. Fig. 3 shows four girls with typically broad dental arches and regular arrangement of the teeth. They have been born and raised in the Loetschental Valley or other isolated valleys of Switzerland which provide the excellent nutrition that we have been reviewing.

Another change that is seen in passing from the isolated groups with their more nearly normal facial developments, to the groups of the lower valleys, is the marked irregularity of the teeth with narrowing of the arches and other facial features... While in the isolated groups not a single case of a typical mouth breather was found, many were seen among the children of the lower-plains group. The children studied were from ten to sixteen years of age.

Price attributed this physical change to a lack of minerals and the fat-soluble vitamins necessary to make good use of them: vitamin A, vitamin D and what he called "activator X"-- now known to be vitamin K2 MK-4. The healthy cultures he studied all had an adequate source of vitamin K2, but many ate very little K1 (which comes mostly from vegetables). Inhabitants of the Loetschental valley ate green vegetables only in summer, due to the valley's harsh climate. The rest of the year, the diet was limited chiefly to whole grain sourdough rye bread and pastured dairy products.

The dietary transitions Price observed were typically from mineral- and vitamin-rich whole foods to refined modern foods, predominantly white flour and sugar. The villagers of the Loetschental valley obtained their fat-soluble vitamins from pastured dairy, which is particularly rich in vitamin K2 MK-4.

In a modern society like the U.S., most people exhibit signs of poor cranial development. How many people do you know with perfectly straight teeth who never required braces? How many people do you know whose wisdom teeth erupted normally?

The archaeological record shows that our hunter-gatherer ancestors generally didn't have crooked teeth. Humans evolved to have dental arches in proportion to their tooth size, like all animals. Take a look at these chompers. That skull is from an archaeological site in the Sahara desert that predates agriculture in the region. Those beautiful teeth are typical of paleolithic humans and modern hunter-gatherers. Crooked teeth and impacted wisdom teeth are only as old as agriculture. However, Price found that with care, certain traditional cultures were able to build well-formed skulls on an agricultural diet.

So was Price on to something, or was he just cherry picking individuals that supported his hypothesis? It turns out there's a developmental syndrome in the literature that might shed some light on this. It's called Binder's syndrome. Here's a description from a review paper about Binder's syndrome (emphasis mine):

The essential features of maxillo-nasal dysplasia were initially described by Noyes in 1939, although it was Binder who first defined it as a distinct clinical syndrome. He reported on three cases and recorded six specific characteristics:⁵

• Arhinoid face.
  
• Abnormal position of nasal bones.
  
• Inter-maxillary hypoplasia with associated malocclusion.
  
• Reduced or absent anterior nasal spine.
  
• Atrophy of nasal mucosa.
  
• Absence of frontal sinus (not obligatory).
  

Individuals with Binder's syndrome have a characteristic appearance that is easily recognizable.⁶ The mid-face profile is hypoplastic, the nose is flattened, the upper lip is convex with a broad philtrum, the nostrils are typically crescent or semi-lunar in shape due to the short collumela, and a deep fold or fossa occurs between the upper lip and the nose, resulting in an acute nasolabial angle.

Allow me to translate: in Binder's patients, the middle third of the face is underdeveloped, they have narrow dental arches and crowded teeth, small nostrils and abnormally small sinuses (sometimes resulting in mouth breathing). Sound familiar? So what causes Binder's syndrome? I'll give you a hint: it can be caused by prenatal exposure to warfarin (coumadin).

Warfarin is rat poison. It kills rats by causing them to lose their ability to form blood clots, resulting in massive hemmorhage. It does this by depleting vitamin K, which is necessary for the proper functioning of blood clotting factors. It's used (in small doses) in humans to thin the blood as a treatment for abnormal blood clots. As it turns out, Binder's syndrome can be caused by a number of things that interfere with vitamin K metabolism. The sensitive period for humans is the first trimester. I think we're getting warmer...

Another name for Binder's syndrome is "warfarin embryopathy". There happens to be a rat model of it. Dr. Bill Webster's group at the University of Sydney injected rats daily with warfarin for up to 12 weeks, beginning on the day they were born (rats have a different developmental timeline than humans). They also administered large doses of vitamin K1 along with it. This is to ensure the rats continue to clot normally, rather than hemorrhaging. Another notable property of warfarin that I've mentioned before is its ability to inhibit the conversion of vitamin K1 to vitamin K2 MK-4. Here's what they had to say about the rats:

The warfarin-treated rats developed a marked maxillonasal hypoplasia associated with a 11-13% reduction in the length of the nasal bones compared with controls... It is proposed that (1) the facial features of the human warfarin embryopathy are caused by reduced growth of the embryonic nasal septum, and (2) the septal growth retardation occurs because the warfarin-induced extrahepatic vitamin K deficiency prevents the normal formation of the vitamin K-dependent matrix gla protein in the embryo.

"Maxillonasal hypoplasia" means underdevelopment of the jaws and nasal region. Proper development of this region requires fully active matrix gla protein (MGP), which I've written about before in the context of vascular calcification. MGP requires vitamin K to activate it, and it seems to prefer K2 MK-4 to K1, at least in the vasculature. Administering K2 MK-4 along with warfarin prevents warfarin's ability to cause arterial calcification (thought to be an MGP-dependent mechanism), whereas administering K1 does not.

Here are a few quotes from a review paper by Dr. Webster's group. I have to post the whole abstract because it's a gem:

The normal vitamin K status of the human embryo appears to be close to deficiency [I would argue in most cases the embryo is actually deficient, as are most adults in industrial societies]. Maternal dietary deficiency or use of a number of therapeutic drugs during pregnancy, may result in frank vitamin K deficiency in the embryo. First trimester deficiency results in maxillonasal hypoplasia in the neonate with subsequent facial and orthodontic implications. A rat model of the vitamin K deficiency embryopathy shows that the facial dysmorphology is preceded by uncontrolled calcification in the normally uncalcified nasal septal cartilage, and decreased longitudinal growth of the cartilage, resulting in maxillonasal hypoplasia. The developing septal cartilage is normally rich in the vitamin K-dependent protein matrix gla protein (MGP). It is proposed that functional MGP is necessary to maintain growing cartilage in a non-calcified state. Developing teeth contain both MGP and a second vitamin K-dependent protein, bone gla protein (BGP). It has been postulated that these proteins have a functional role in tooth mineralization. As yet this function has not been established and abnormalities in tooth formation have not been observed under conditions where BGP and MGP should be formed in a non-functional form.

I think there's a good case to be made that most people in modern societies exhibit some degree of "Binder's syndrome" due to subclinical vitamin K2 deficiency during growth. I believe the evidence suggests that prenatal vitamin K2 MK-4 deficiency is behind narrow dental arches, crooked teeth, underdevelopment of the face and jaw, underdevelopment of the sinuses with mouth breathing in some cases, and poor tooth development resulting in a high susceptibility to dental cavities.

These symptoms are so common they are viewed as normal in industrial societies. There is no other single factor that so elegantly explains these characteristic changes in cranial form. Rickets (vitamin D deficiency during growth) also causes cranial malformations, but they are distinct from those caused by K2 deficiency.

Humans do not efficiently convert K1 into K2 MK-4 (unlike rats), so we require a ready source of K2 in the diet. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had a relatively high intake of K2 MK-4 from the organs of wild animals (particularly brain, pancreas, and marrow), insects and seafood. Our food supply today is depleted of K2, due to our avoidance of organ meats and poor animal husbandry practices. K2 MK-4 is found only in animal products. Pastured dairy is the most convenient source of K2 MK-4 in the modern diet, just as it was for the villagers of the Loetschental valley when Dr. Price visited them. Dairy from grain-fed cows contains much less K2.

Price felt that to ensure the proper development of their children, mothers should eat a diet rich in fat-soluble vitamins both before and during pregnancy. This makes sense in light of what we now know. There is a pool of vitamin K2 MK-4 in the organs that turns over very slowly, in addition to a pool in the blood that turns over rapidly. Entering pregnancy with a full store means a greater chance of having enough of the vitamin for the growing fetus. Healthy traditional cultures often fed special foods rich in fat-soluble vitamins to women of childbearing age and expectant mothers, thus ensuring beautiful and robust progeny.

I can't follow the 6-week plan

I think I develop eating disorders when I try to diet or follow diet plans.  I wanted to follow Dr. Fuhrman's 6-week Eat to Live plan because I would like to become a "Certified Eat for Health Counselor."  I figured if I'm going to advise people, I should be able to follow the plan myself.  My plan was to start Jan. 1.  So I over-indulged before that, mostly on healthy stuff, but still, it was more than I normally care to eat (as my posts at the time show).  Then I did pretty well for a few weeks, but I occasionally overindulged on nuts.  And I've been tempted by things I never really cared for in the past, like baked goods.  Why did I not care for them in the past?  Because I felt kind of yucky after eating them.  I mean, I would eat some occasionally but I didn't crave them.  So I'm tired of trying to follow a plan, as it's too much mental work.   I'm just going to go back to my way of eating, which, ironically, is the Eat to Live plan, but with more nuts and seeds and fruits and dried fruits if I want them, since I don't need to lose weight.  It's just weird psychology that I can't diet or follow a plan, but if I don't follow it, then I can follow it.  When I was about 18 years old I started dieting, because I noticed I was gaining weight, and over the next few years I gained about 20 lbs.  I would say I had something of an eating disorder, along with most other women in my college dormitory--we would eat a bag of Oreo cookies and say, tomorrow I will start my diet!   Then my senior year I got tired of it and didn't care about my weight and I lost 20 lbs and stayed a healthy weight until my late 3os when I started gaining a couple of lbs a year like everyone else from the Standard American Diet (SAD).  

So I seem to be in a similar situation, though I have no desire to eat a bag of Oreo cookies, fortunately.  But I didn't like how I would eat too many nuts and say, okay tomorrow I'll start over, and then I would eat more than I even wanted, like it's my last meal.  I don't want to waste mental energy on this silliness anymore.  I'm not starting over with anything and I'm not going to deny myself anything.  As a vegan, I don't feel like I'm denying myself meat.  I just don't want it.   I'll just have to tell my clients that I can't follow a plan myself, but I still manage to eat healthy as if I am following a plan.  I'm sure that will make perfect sense to them, haha.

jan 27 food

Brekky:  small morning smoothie.  

Snack (after exercise):  apple, carrot, clementine.  The smoothie only has 185 calories so I don't think that's enough to get me through until lunch.

Lunch:  Last of the lentil soup from Sunday over steamed broccoli and cauliflower.  Fruit salad for dessert.  yum!   Just strawberies, blueberries and sliced banana.

Dinner:  snacked on carrots, celery, arugula and 2 clementines while making cabbage & apple dish.  I added beets to it since I have a lot.  And I forgot the onions.  It still tasted good.  I realized I didn't have any nuts/seeds with dinner and I considered making a banana walnut pudding (ripe banana+walnuts+blender) for dessert, but I was no longer hungry after ingesting the large quantities of food.  So I ate a few walnuts, oh, and a small valencia orange.  Maybe I'll try the pudding after my yoga class tomorrow morning.  I have nicely ripe bananas.

Standards vs. Compassion

Dennis Prager discusses this contrast regularly and there is no better, nor sadder, example than what has recently happened at Covenant School, a Christian high school in Texas. In short, the girls basketball team won a game against Dallas Academy 100-0.

In light of such a shocking blowout, the school board posted an apology on its website, reading in part:

The school and its representatives in no way support or condone the running up of a score against any team in any sport for any reason. The school’s board members, Head of School Kyle Queal and Athletic Director Brice Helton have acted to ensure that such an unfortunate incident can never happen again.... [Covenant School officials] wish to extend their highest praise to each member of the Dallas Academy Varsity Girls Basketball team for their strength, composure and fortitude in a game in which they clearly emerged the winner. Accordingly, The Covenant School has contacted TAPPS and is submitting a formal request to forfeit the game recognizing that a victory without honor is a great loss.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. The coach of the girls' team was fired when he refused to apologize! According to the AP article, the coach responded in an email to the school leadership's apology, saying:

"In response to the statement posted on The Covenant School Web site, I do not agree with the apology or the notion that the Covenant School girls basketball team should feel embarrassed or ashamed," Grimes wrote in the e-mail, according to the newspaper. "We played the game as it was meant to be played. My values and my beliefs would not allow me to run up the score on any opponent, and it will not allow me to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity."

I am not advocating embarrassing anyone, or humiliating others intentionally. But the idea of a competition, and sports specifically, are such that you bring your best to the game. You do your best and never quit until the competition is over. Should a runner let up because he is so far ahead of other runners? Absolutely not.

But we have come to believe that being kind is the only rule to use in all of life. Yes, we should be kind. But this does not override all standards. Scoring competitions are valuable life lessons. To coddle a child by hiding the score, or apologize for winning by such a huge margin, is almost upside down thinking. THAT is what is truly shameful in this whole story.

Jan. 26 food

Brekky:  morning smoothie.  I was not hungry but thought it would give me more energy than if I didn't eat.  I think I should have waited because I was feeling pretty bloated in exercise class and yoga.  I definitely need to eat Sunday dinner earlier because I tend to eat more on Sunday.

Lunch:  Leftover soup from yesterday over an entire bunch of steamed kale.  The soup was better than yesterday. I think the spices got a chance to meld into the soup more overnight.  I like it.  Unfortunately, housemate doesn't like the aftertaste.  I'm thinking it's the fennel seeds.  I like them.  also had a raw carrot, 2 clementines.

Dinner:  oatmeal.  People keep wondering why I don't eat more grains so I decided to eat some oatmeal tonight.  What is so great about grains anyway?    They are cheap, yes, I agree.  When food gets unaffordable for me, I'll start eating more.  But for now, I can still afford the expensive produce from all over the world--I figure I may as well enjoy that before the party ends.   Grains have no flavor on their own so you have to add stuff to flavor them.  I'd just as soon eat the stuff you flavor them with.   My oatmeal was good because I added an apple, a banana, some walnuts, and spinach (got the spinach idea from Howard's blog--it's good).  It's filling but so is fruit and nuts and beans.  Beans are good for you and very filling.  I think I'll continue with my produce binge and save the grains for the future world economic collapse, or I lose my job.  I also had a few carrots (I'm addicted to Wisconsin carrots), and celery and 2 small valencia oranges (much better than the clementines).    I was thinking I eat like a rabbit with my love of carrots and then I wondered what the rabbits eat in the winter.  I googled it and the answer is moss, twigs, bark, and leaves.  So maybe I don't eat like a rabbit.  

Jan 25 food

Brekky:   morning smoothie

Lunch:  baked sweet potato, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, 1 raw carrot, 2 clementines.  Housemate cooked this for me while I was out and about (after prep from me).

Dinner:  LiLo's spicy red lentil soup with Indian spices from the Fuhrman forums.  This was good but I think I undercooked the spices.  You are supposed to toast them and I burned the first batch and then only had enough for one more batch and I probably undercooked them.  I think the fennel seeds left an after taste.  I snacked on 2-3 raw carrots while cooking.  Oh, and a nice bowl of fruit salad with strawberries, blueberries and banana---the blueberries were particularly good, as was the banana, strawberries not quite ripe but not bad.  I drank some warm cashew milk that I made for the soup (1 cup cashews, 4 dates, 4 cups of water blended until smooth--super easy to make in a vita-mix).  I ate two bowls of soup.  Orange for dessert.   So I was plenty full after all that.  I probably won't be hungry for a smoothie at 6:30 am tomorrow.  That's okay, I can have it after exercise.  

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: The Final Word

Over the course of the last month, I've outlined some of the major findings of the Tokelau Island Migrant study. It's one of the most comprehensive studies I've found of a traditional culture transitioning to a modern diet and lifestyle. It traces the health of the inhabitants of the Pacific island Tokelau over time, as well as the health of Tokelauan migrants to New Zealand.

Unfortunately, the study began after the introduction of modern foods. We will never know for sure what Tokelauan health was like when their diet was completely traditional. To get some idea, we have to look at other traditional Pacific islanders such as the Kitavans.

What we can say is that an increase in the consumption of modern foods on Tokelau, chiefly white wheat flour and refined sugar, correlated with an increase in several non-communicable disorders, including overweight, diabetes and severe tooth decay. Further modernization as Tokelauans migrated to New Zealand corresponded with an increase in nearly every disorder measured, including heart disease, weight gain, diabetes, asthma and gout. These are all "diseases of civilization", which are not observed in hunter-gatherers and certain non-industrial populations throughout the world.

One of the most interesting things about Tokelauans is their extreme saturated fat intake, 40- 50% of calories. That's more than any other population I'm aware of. Yet Tokelauans appear to have a low incidence of heart attacks, lower than their New Zealand- dwelling relatives who eat half as much saturated fat. This should not be buried in the scientific literature; it should be common knowledge.

Overall, I believe the Tokelau Island Migrant study (among others) shows us that partially replacing nourishing traditional foods with modern foods such as processed wheat and sugar, is enough to cause a broad range of disorders not seen in hunter-gatherers but typical of modern societies. Changes in vitamin D status between Tokelau and New Zealand may have also played a role, due to the more indoor lifestyle of migrants.

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Background and Overview
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Dental Health
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Cholesterol and Cardiovascular Health
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Weight Gain
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Diabetes
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Asthma
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Gout

Online Coloring Book

Here is a great resource for kids.  You pick a picture, use your mouse to select colors and then fill in the picture.  You can save it, print it, or even email it when they are done.  Check it out.

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Gout

Gout is a disorder in which uric acid crystals form in the joints, causing intense pain. The body forms uric acid as a by-product of purine metabolism. Purines are a building block of DNA, among other things. Uric acid is normally excreted into the urine, hence the name.

On Tokelau between 1971 and 1982, gout prevalence fell slightly. In migrants to New Zealand, gout prevalence began at the same level as on Tokelau but increased rapidly over the same time period. Here are the prevalence data for men, from Migration and Health in a Small Society: the Case of Tokelau (I don't have data for women):

This paper found that the age-standardized risk of developing gout was 9 times higher in New Zealand than on Tokelau for men, and 2.7 times higher for women.

Gout is usually treated by taking drugs and avoiding purine-rich foods. According to Wikipedia's entry on purines, these include:

sweetbreads [calf thymus or pancreas], anchovies, sardines, liver, beef kidneys, brains, meat extracts (e.g Oxo, Bovril), herring, mackerel, scallops, game meats, and gravy. A moderate amount of purine is also contained in beef, pork, poultry, fish and seafood, asparagus, cauliflower, spinach, mushrooms, green peas, lentils, dried peas, beans, oatmeal, wheat bran and wheat germ.

Those include some of the most nutritious foods available! The idea that the human body would not have evolved to tolerate most of the foods listed above is beyond comprehension, given our species' carnivorous tendencies. As a matter of fact, the only controlled trial I found suggests that a diet high in purines from animal protein has no effect on the uric acid concentration in the blood, because the body simply excretes any excess. In any case, like cholesterol, the majority of purines in the body are synthesized on-site, rather than coming from the diet. The only thing I found in support of the purine-gout hypothesis was a prospective study from 2004 that found an association between dietary purines and gout. I think we need to consider other possibilities.

Is there anything else that elevates uric acid in humans? Ah, sugar, one of my favorite punching bags. You never let me down, old friend. Refined sugar (sucrose) increases serum uric acid under controlled conditions, as does fructose when compared to starch. This has never been demonstrated for purine-rich foods that I could find.

Another clue comes from a disorder called "hereditary fructose intolerance". These patients are missing an enzyme required for metabolizing fructose, and must avoid it or risk becoming very ill. Some of the relatives of these patients are "heterozygous" for the mutation, meaning they have one mutated copy of the gene and one normal copy. They can metabolize fructose, but at a slower rate than someone with two functional copies. And they also have a very high incidence of gout.

Tokelauan migrants to New Zealand consumed significantly more sugar than Tokelauans on Tokelau during this study period (13 vs. 8 percent of calories in 1982). This explanation makes much more sense to me than the idea that gout is caused by the very foods that have sustained us as long as our species has existed.

There is one piece that doesn't fit, however. If sugar is causing gout, then why didn't gout incidence increase on Tokelau as their sugar consumption increased? I don't know. Perhaps there is another factor involved as well. Any thoughts?

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Background and Overview
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Dental Health
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Cholesterol and Cardiovascular Health
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Weight Gain
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Diabetes
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Asthma

tahini sauce

This is similar to my tahini-cashew sauce but I didn't have any cashews.  I am getting to like plain tahini more and more.  It's an acquired taste I guess, like many things.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup raw unhulled sesame seeds.

juice of 1 lemon.  It was a juicy lemon so at least 3 Tbsp, which I believe is 1/4 cup.

1 clove garlic

2-4 dried apricots or 1-2 dates (optional)

small zucchini (optional)

or banana instead of zucchini and apricots/dates (optional)

1/2-1 cup soy milk or water

1 Tbsp veggiezest (optional--I didn't add it)

Rinse the sesame seeds and add them and soy milk and garlic and lemon juice to the vita-mix and let it blend up and get warm and cook the garlic a bit.  That takes maybe 5 minutes?  Add liquid as needed for desired consistency--today I'm using it as a sauce for a bunch of kale so think I used 1 cup of liquid.  Then kind of experiment.  see if 1 apricot added tastes better or worse.  if better, maybe add another.  I added 4 but actually thought it tasted fine without any.   I added a small zucchini (peeled) to make the sauce go a little farther (and because I had one left in my almost empty refrigerator)--I thought this worked well.  I considered adding a banana instead of the zucchini and apricot.   I don't know if it'd be good or not but it would dull the strong taste of the sesame seeds, extend the sauce and add some sweetener.

Jan. 24 food

Brekky:   A giant bowl of oatmeal.  Giant.  I used 1 cup of dry oats which makes 2 cups cooked. Then I decided to add some berries. I thought it was a half bag because it was opened, but I had combined a half bag of raspberries and blueberries into one.  So it was 9 oz of berries.  And the raspberries were too strong.  I also wanted a banana so sliced a banana, and 1 oz walnuts into the mix, and 1 Tbsp ground flaxseed, and some soy milk.  So like I said, giant 2 bowls of oatmeal.  It was a late breakfast and I ate the whole thing.

Smaller late lunch:  small apple, small banana, small orange, a bowl of arugula.  

Dinner:  Kale and a lemon-tahini sauce.  

another baked beet dressing

I'm continuing my experiment with baked beet dressings.   

Ingredients:

4 small baked beets (throw in the oven as is at 350 F for 1.5 hours)

1/2 cup soy milk

2 dried apricots (optional)

1 Tbsp flavored vinegar (I tried black fig today)

I added the apricots for no good reason, just thought it might add something.  But the beets are so good, I think I should have left off the apricots to see if it needed something else.   But it was still good with the apricots.  Anyway, I soaked the apricots in the soy milk for a few hours.  You could probably just microwave it for 30 seconds and soak for 5 minutes.  or not even bother soaking.   After the beets cool, peel the skins and eat them, as they are good for you.  Then blend everything in the blender.  I ate this over lettuce, arugula and chopped red pepper.   It was great.  Oh, and you don't have to be stingy with this dressing.  Think of it as a big plate of beet dressing with some salad in it.  Okay, I actually had a huge plate of salad too, but I ate all the dressing.   

Jan. 23 food

Brekky:  morning smoothie

snack after exercise and biking:  cup of warm soy milk.  then, uh-oh, decided to nibble on some dried fruit I bought a few months ago.  Ate way too many pieces of dried apple, mango, and pineapple.  I was taste-testing them and decided I didn't really like the mango and pineapple, but definitely liked the apple.

Lunch:  baked sweet potato (mashed) and cabbage salad.  For house mate I was going to make mashed potato but decided to puree it like I did the rutabaga and turnips.  Well, it's not the same!   It has a weird syrupy consistency.  Mashed is definitely better with white potatoes.  Interesting though, I like pureed turnips and rutabaga better and it's healthier.  I never would have expected that!

Dinner:  apple, salad with another baked beet dressing, which was good.  2 small oranges for dessert.

snack:  oops, at a gathering with friends I ate 2 vegan chocolate chip cookies and some more dried fruit!   They had apples, and spicy mango.  Both were good.  I definitely felt the effects from the cookies--the flour and sugar gives me a sugar buzz and makes me kind of ADHD.  Now I have a wee bit of  a tummy ache which is probably the combination of overeating all the dried fruit and the cookies today.  And a weird feeling in my heart.  interesting.  

What should I make this weekend?  Well, I know what I will make tomorrow,  kale with some kind of sauce on it.  But I need to make something on Sunday that will last a few days into next week--a soup or main dish.  

Jan 22 food

Breakfast:  morning smoothie  + 1 cup warm soymilk.  I decided I've been dissing the soymilk too much lately.  Soymilk is cheap and easy to make in my SoyQuick maker and it's healthy and good.  I had a cup of warm soymilk after making it.   I didn't add anything to it because I'm out of dates.  It was good as is, just soybeans and water.  When you drink it, it's good to think of it more as a broth than a milk; i.e., it is beans so if you are expecting it to taste like beans and not cow's milk, it's good.

Lunch:  Lightly steamed dipping veggies and black bean hummus.  This was soooooooo goooooood.  The dipping veggies were carrots, beets, broccoli and cauliflower.  Also celery but I didn't steam that.  This picture is a bit washed out because there was steam rising from the veggies.  I should have put a fork in for scale.  That was a big bowl of vegetables!

The black bean hummus was from the Fuhrman forum website.  That has cooked black beans (I soaked 1 cup dry beans over night, and cooked it this morning--or you can buy a can), fresh lemon juice, vegizest or other no salt seasoning, raw tahini (I ground up raw sesame seeds in the coffee grinder), small amount of low sodium soy sauce, cumin, garlic, cayenne pepper, and I forgot the paprika for garnish.  To make the garlic less potent, I put it in the oven for 10 minutes at 400 F in a metal measuring cup.  That cooked it just enough.  It was soooo yummmy.   We ate the whole thing.  I think I ate quite a bit more than housemate because she is tentative with the dipping and doesn't want to get her hands dirty.  I had a tiny little apple for dessert.  The local apples are starting to get more bad spots on them, but the good spots are still crispy and fresh tasting.  But it's clear the end of local apple season is approaching.  

Dinner:  pureed turnip.  This was soooooo goooood.  yes, I say that a lot.  I made the soy milk for this purpose.  I soaked a few dried apricots in soymilk during the day, steamed a large cut-up turnip and a very small local onion.  Then blended the turnip, onion, apricots and soymilk in the vita-mix.  It was yummy yummy.  Also had cabbage salad, and 2 oranges.  I was very full.  The lunch was still with me so I did eat too much at lunch. 

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Asthma

Asthma is another disease of civilization. Between 1980 and 2001, its prevalence more than doubled in American children 17 years and younger. The trend is showing no sign of slowing down (CDC NHANES surveys).



The age-standardized asthma prevalence in Tokelauan migrants to New Zealand age 15 and older, was 2 - 6 times higher than in non-migrants from 1976 to 1982, depending on gender and year. The highest prevalence was in New Zealand migrant women in 1976, at 6.8%. The lowest was in Tokelauan men in 1976 at 1.1%.

A skeptic might suggest it's because these adults grew up around certain types of pollen or other antigens, and were exposed to new ones later in life. However, even migrant children in the 0-4 age group, who were most likely born in NZ, had more asthma than on Tokelau.

What could contribute to the increased asthma prevalence upon modernization? I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the mechanisms of asthma, but it seems likely to involve a chronic over-activation of the immune system ("inflammation"). In the case of Tokelauans, this could result from wheat gluten, an excessive sugar intake, and/or insufficient vitamin D. All three are potential culprits in my opinion. Stress may also play a role.

Anecdotally, many people report freedom from asthma and allergies after adopting a "paleolithic"-style or low-carbohydrate diet. I feel that's consistent with the effects of a good diet on inflammation. If you reduce or eliminate the chief offenders-- wheat, sugar, industrial vegetable oil and other processed food-- you will most likely reduce your level of chronic inflammation, which seems to be tied to many modern disorders.

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Background and Overview
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Dental Health
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Cholesterol and Cardiovascular Health
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Weight Gain
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Diabetes

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study data in this post come from the book Migration and Health in a Small Society: The Case of Tokelau.

Thanks to the EPA and Wikipedia for the graph image (public domain).

Life

Here is a great commercial:

Jan 21 food

Brekkie:  small morning smoothie

Lunch:  baked sweet potato and cabbage salad.   This sweet potato was particularly good.  I just peel off the skin and mash it with a fork, no need for anything else.  Now I'm looking forward to my next one.  I ate a lot of the cabbage salad, probably too much, though I have to say I'm glad now because I'm still on campus at 6 pm, and will get home late.

Dinner (planned):  salad with banana walnut dressing.  I have ripe bananas and I've been eye-ing this recipe from the Fuhrman site for a while.  It has bananas, walnuts, raisins, and riesling raisin vinegar.  Sounds really weird but got good reviews.   But if I get home really late, maybe I'll just have cabbage salad and save this until tomorrow.  Edited later:  okay I did get home pretty late, but still made the banana walnut dressing.  It was a bit too sweet, would probably try it without raisins next time.  But it was still enjoyable, like having dessert on my salad.  Finished off with 2 small oranges.  This batch of oranges is not nearly as good as usual.   oh well, it will go fast and then I can hope for better.   The bananas are now a little past ripe so I froze the rest for smoothies (peel, break into pieces, put in individual plastic bags).

Love the Jimmy

Today I had the joy of taking my nephew on a field trip, which was very fun for both of us. We started the day at Krispy Kreme learning how they make the donuts, and enjoying the free samples, of course.















We then had a great lunch at the most appropriate restaurant: Jimmy John's!















Jimmy enjoyed seeing his name written all over everything. Click on the picture below to see all the examples.












Then we went over to the IMAX Theater to see two movies: one about Stomp, and one about Dinosaurs. They were both very good. I must say 3-D movies have come a long way!

Jan. 20 food

Brekky:  small morning smoothie

Lunch:  steamed veggies--broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, edamame--topped with Russian fig dressing.  I microwaved the dressing for a couple of minutes to cook it a bit and that made the garlic/onion less strong.  Hmm, maybe I should modify the recipe.  It was a very good lunch.  I had my usual raw carrot while fixing it, and orange for dessert.

Dinner:  Last of the garlic-greens soup, and arugula-apple salad (with pumpkin seeds instead of sunflower seeds; and Riesling Raisin Vinegar instead of D'Angou Pear--all good); and my usual raw carrot and celery while fixing it and orange for dessert.  The celery was good today.  Lately it hasn't been so good.  I made the soup a few days ago because housemate had a cold.  She made the fastest recovery from a cold I've ever seen, knock on wood.  She's still a little snively but not bad.  I've been feeling tired and wonder if I'm fighting it too.  I hope my body wins.  hmm, my throat does seem a bit sore.  oh no...

President Obama's Inaugural Address

I had the unexpected opportunity to watch some of today's events on a theater screen while I was waiting for an IMAX movie to start. I was definitely in a crowd that was very partisan and tried to ignore the chants and boos in various places throughout the events. I have heard some reviews, and came across this commentary, of the speech. My own thoughts were similar, so I will just reference this review. A downer in many respects. Well, here is one comment related to a portion of the President's speech. Read the whole review for a broader sense of how it was received.

"The most problematic parts of the speech, for me, had to do with the theme that always bothers me at such occasions: the dismissal of political differences as insignificant and petty products of irresponsibility, rather than of serious and meaningful disagreements about how our country should govern itself. What possible sense could be made of this passage in the speech?

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

Is everything that preceded the coming of Obama in our politics childish and petty? Every president calls for replacing partisanship with responsibility—Obama’s call on this front can be found almost verbatim in Bush’s 2000 campaign speeches. But maybe the reason it never works is that partisanship very often is responsible, and our disagreements are not childish things but serious substantive debates about important subjects, given form by some profound differences in worldview.

Speeches have the power to encourage, and rhetoric can inspire. But our speech (and corresponding actions) reflects beliefs that must be engaged. This is what the Hoover quotes I recently posted discussed, as well. Bad ideas have consequences, as well as good ideas. And our ideas are articulated via soaring speeches and partisan rhetoric. It just seemed to me that this speech was in poor taste, focused on the negative, and underwhelming. The one thing the President is known for is his speaking ability. It may be that his eloquence overshadows his subject matter/content for many, especially after 8 years of a man who had such poor public speaking skills. But serious times require serious men. I want serious statements that engage ideas seriously, not just attractively.

Jonah Goldberg also had some good thoughts on the speech. In particular,

But the line that grated on me most came from the bit about service and sacrifice. He said:

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

No, “they” didn’t. Slaves certainly didn’t endure the lash of the of the whip out of a sense of service and sacrifice for us. That is one of the reasons slavery is so evil; it isn't voluntary. Suffice it to say that if that line had come out of a different man’s mouth it would not be nearly so well-received. Nor did those immigrants make their sacrifices for “us.” They made them for themselves, for their own pursuit of happiness, for their families.

This is not to say we do not benefit from the sweat of their brows and the shedding of their blood, but Obama’s rhetorical ambition seems broader than that insight. He wants to forge a new sense of collective identity. There are aspects of that effort that are admirable or defensible, to be sure. Don't we conservatives lament a lost sense of citizenship and the erosion of a common culture? But too often he comes across as wanting to take that collective vision and drape it over individualism and enterprise like a wet blanket. The pursuit of individual prosperity is not selfish and the effort to defend it is neither a tired dogma nor a childish thing. I often get the sense that President Obama doesn't see it that way, never more so than today.

Say Thanks to President Bush

Here is your chance if you wish.  He will be remembered for keeping us safe for 7 years, and should get credit for this, if nothing else. 

Presidential Approval Ratings

Here is a great resource charting the ups and downs of Presidential approval. The general trend is for approval to be lower at the end than at the beginning of a term (even for Kennedy). This concurs with my observations as I visited several Presidential Museums last summer. The only one that seems to have ended higher than when he started is President Clinton's, which surprises me. Additionally, contrary to what you hear in the MSM, both Truman and Nixon, and even Carter, had lower approval ratings than "W" up until this last year.



If you click on the links on the left of the main page you will see various events correlated to the ups and downs. It is interesting to see the end and start at the transition points. The disparity between Truman and Eisenhower, between Carter and Reagan reflect world events and a populous looking for a "change of course". The almost continuity between Reagan and Bush 42 makes sense. But the continuity between Bush 42 and Clinton, and then Clinton and "W" is odd.

jan 19 food

Late Breakfast:  banana, apple, carrot.  full from last night.

Lunch:  cooked apple & cabbage (yummy!).   then pigged out on almonds (while making Russian fig dressing), and some dates & walnuts.  you put a walnut in a date (in place of the pit) and warm it in the microwave for a few seconds.  It's soooo good, and sooo addictive.  So I was a bad, bad veganbarbie.

Dinner:  carrot (I love Wisconsin-grown raw carrots) dipped in that Russian fig dressing (yum!), 2 oranges, a bowl of garlic & greens soup.  I was making housemate a salad and nibbled on some lettuce and red pepper dipped in the dressing.  I was totally full from this modest meal, due to my earlier pigfest on the nuts.  

I seem to go in well-behaved modes of eating, and then splurge modes.  not sure why...

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Diabetes

This post will be short and sweet. Diabetes is a disease of civilization. As Tokelauans adopted Western industrial foods, their diabetes prevalence increased. At any given time point, age-standardized diabetes prevalence was higher in migrants to New Zealand than those who remained on Tokelau:


This is not a difference in diagnosis. Tokelauans were examined for diabetes by the same group of physicians, using the same criteria. It's also not a difference in average age, sice the numbers are age-standardized. On Tokelau, diabetes prevalence doubled in a decade. Migrants to New Zealand in 1981 had roughly three times the prevalence of diabetes that Tokelauans did in 1971. I can only imagine the prevalence is even higher in 2008.

We don't know what the prevalence was in Tokelauans when their diet was completely traditional, but I would expect it to be low like other traditional Pacific island societies. I'm looking at a table right now of age-standardized diabetes prevalence on 11 different Pacific islands. There is quite a bit of variation, but the pattern is clear: the more modernized, the higher the diabetes rate. In several cases, the table has placed two values side-by-side: one value for rural inhabitants of an island, and another for urban inhabitants of the same island. In every case, the prevalence of diabetes is higher in the urban group. In some cases, the difference is as large as four-fold.

The lowest value goes to the New Caledonians of Touho, who are also considered the least modernized on the table (although even their diet is not completely traditional). Men have an age-standardized diabetes prevalence of 1.8%, women 1.4%. At the other extreme are the Micronesians of Nauru, affluent due to phosphate resources, who have a prevalence of 33.4% for men and 32.1% for women. They subsist mostly on imported food and are extremely obese.

The same patterns can be seen in Africa, the Arctic and probably everywhere that has adopted processed Western foods. White rice alone (compared with the combination of wheat flour and sugar) does not seem to have this effect.

The data in this post are from the book Migration and Health in a Small Society: the Case of Tokelau.

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Background and Overview
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Dental Health
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Cholesterol and Cardiovascular Health
The Tokelau Island Migrant Study: Weight Gain

russian fig dressing

I got the idea for this dressing from Dr. Fuhrman's recipe site but my version is pretty different and I want to remember it so I'm writing it down here.  The reason I changed it is that I use canned tomatoes from our garden in place of all other tomato concoctions (e.g., tomato paste, tomato sauce, tomato juice); and I use nuts instead of nut butter.  The original recipe is here if you prefer that.  And there's a similar one here.  Oh, I didn't think to use veggiezest.  I'll try that next time.

Ingredients:

1 16 oz can tomatoes (mine are from the garden--if you don't have canned tomatoes you can use tomato sauce if you want).

1 garlic clove

a little bit of onion (1/8 cup?)

1/3 cup raw almonds

1-2 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's black fig vinegar (or other mild flavored vinegar)

1 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's veggiezest or other powdered veggie broth (optional)

Optional:  Pour the canned tomatoes and almonds in a bowl and let the almonds soak up the juice for several hours.  Throw everything in a blender and blend until nice and smooth.  This has a peppery taste from the raw garlic and onion.  If it's a little strong, just microwave it for a few minutes to cook the onion and garlic a bit.  Then refrigerate if you are going to have it over salad.   

pureed rutabaga and/or turnips

I learned this one from Picks Over Peas:

Ingredients: 

1 rutabaga and/or some turnips

parsnips (optional)

part of an onion (optional)

1/2-1 cup nut or soy milk OR  

1/4 - 1/3 cup raw cashews and 1/2-1 cup water

(the amount depends on the size of your rutabaga--start small and add more as needed)

1-2 dates or dried apricots (optional)

Peel the rutabaga/turnips/parsnips, cut up and steam along with onion for 20 minutes.  You can microwave the milk for 30 seconds to warm it up.  Blend the rutabaga with the nut milk (or nuts and water) and dates.   It's delicious!  Now, I used the dates because I was fearful of rutabaga.  Picks Over Peas didn't use dates.  I thought I didn't like rutabaga but I really like this, so don't let your fear of rutabaga stop you--you can ease into it with the dates like I did.  I've tried this with rutabaga, turnips, and rutabaga/turnips/parsnips.  It's all good!  Today I had this with steamed carrots, peas and corn.  Super easy meal that tastes great.  And it's healthier than mashed potatoes!   We still get local all these root vegetables from our co-op.    Note in the picture, my pureed rutabaga is a little brownish in color--that's from the color of my nut milk made from a bunch of different nuts and seeds.  If I'd used cashews or almonds or soymilk, it would be whiter.

Jan 18 food

Brekky:  small morning smoothie.  banana & 1 oz walnuts.  Every breakfast this week has been on-the-go so this is a great breakfast for that.  If I'd been able to have a leisure breakfast this morning I probably would have had cabbage & apples.  I think I'll have it for dinner this week--not lunch because housemate claims to not like cabbage and I make lunch for both of us.   

Lunch:  a carrot and leftover Gorgeous garlic greens soup.  This will last a few days.  2 oranges for dessert.   I'm into raw carrots before my meal and oranges afterwards, not sure why, besides it's easy and good!  

Dinner:  pureed rutabaga and peas & carrots & corn.  I thought I didn't like rhutabaga but this was wonderful!  and so easy.  I got the idea from Picks Over Peas.   She also gives a little lesson on cruciferous vegetables too.   This is much healthier than mashed potatoes and I think it's even better!  It was also super easy to make.   Dessert:  orange.   Then I blew it.  I was making mine and housemate's smoothies and started eating some brazil nuts and didn't stop.  Dammit.  Now I'm going to mess up tomorrow because I won't be hungry at 6:30 am.  I also gave up swearing as a New Year's resolution and I just broke that too.  of course, I could delete what I wrote but then you wouldn't see my emotional state.  Okay, I'll get back on the horse now.