Growing up in Marietta, Georgia, I played outside quite a bit, but while our neighborhood had some nice creeks and forests, it did not have any sidewalks. When you went somewhere, you got there in a car, even if it was less than a mile away. I remember driving to Eastside Baptist Church, which Google Maps says is .07 miles away from my childhood home. Walking was for the mall. 

While there are certainly unhealthy and evolutionary inappropriate aspects of cities, at least many of them allow humans to walk. The ability to walk upright was one of the most important milestones in human evolution and it's estimated that the average hunter-gatherer San woman walks an average of 6.56 km a day. It's frightening how most of the United States has been built up in a way that privileges driving over walking. The result is that people in the United States don't walk very much. Slate put out a great series of walking recently, which discusses why Americans don't walk and what we can do about it.

My maternal grandmother, who is in her nineties and is in great health, gets asked often why she is so health for her age. One reasons she gives is that she walks a lot and has for her entire life. Much of that adult life was spent in NYC, but now she lives in central Illinois, where most people don't walk very much. My grandmother has made a great effort to keep up her walking habit, but sadly her town is built so it's not easy to actually walk anywhere useful. This is a growing obstacle for her since she says she no longer feels very comfortable driving at her age. In her town and in many other towns across the US, that makes her a second-class citizen with little access to amenities.

The choice to not drive is a difficult choice to make in the US. I know because I made it, quite unintentionally, when I was 16. I was never very coordinated and when my driving instructor died of a heart attack, I ended up with a string of rather mean and bad driving instructors that culminated in me failing my driving test and just giving up. My college town, Champaign-Urbana, is pretty decent in terms of public transportation and walking infrastructure, so I didn't feel much pressure to drive. There are some areas there that are pedestrian unfriendly, to say the least, and I the climate there is rather extreme. I got used to being scorched and frozen. With all the thermal hacking buzz in the health and fitness blogosphere, I'm thinking that perhaps it was good for me.

Then I moved to Uppsala, Sweden, which is a non-driver's paradise. Not only are there sidewalks everywhere, there are SAFE separate bike paths that wind through gorgeous forests. They are so unlike most of the so-called bike paths in the US, painted on the road, placing you next to trucks that could (and do) crush people at any moment. Even in the cold dark winter, people would bike since the city would put gravel on the paths to prevent ice issues. And not just young hip people, but mothers with babies, grandfathers, children...people biked everywhere. And the average bike on the market is built for that in mind. The average bike I see on Craigslist here in Chicago is a mountain bike that puts you in a rather bad position for anything but racing. Bikes in Sweden were built to carry stuff. And I did carry lots of stuff all the time. Even if I didn't make it to the gym, daily tasks kept me in pretty damn good shape. The best part about Sweden was that it was pretty easy to get around even in low-density rural areas. I could bike to farms or take the bus if they were really far away. Try doing that in Illinois. You basically can't. 

But when I made the decision to move back to the US, I knew that there were only a handful of places I could live as a non-driver. I chose to move to NYC, which is probably the walking capital of the United States. I didn't bike in NYC, but just being a pedestrian was pretty extreme exercise, particularly since the housing I could afford was often a bit out of the way. And lots of subway stations have lots of stairs. That's one of the reasons I started wearing minimalist shoes every day, since it's not exactly easy to sprint for the bus or tackle the stairs to make a subway transfer if you are wearing heels. You haven't understood what it's like to be a hunter-gatherer unless you've trekked 2 miles with a giant bag of meat on your back. I realized that even though I wasn't doing much in the way of the gym or sports in NYC, that I was definitely not sedentary in the real sense of the term. 

Chicago is a bit less pedestrian friendly, but I still manage here without a car. I'm planning on getting my license soon since it's unseemly and weird to not have one here and I'd like to actually be able to go to my family's farm and to Chicago's edges without always having to mooch a ride. But I can't imagine going back to the way of life that I was accustomed to as a child, the one in which traffic and driving are such a huge part of life. Walking changes you. I feel more creative and adventurous when I walk more. Nassim Taleb actually has an excellent essay on the subject of walking and the evolutionary lifestyle. I think more and more young people feel this way, which has kept rental prices quite high in urban core areas, as young people flock to them out of college and increasingly stay in them even as they "settle" down and have children.

Unfortunately, I wonder how much the infrastructure can keep up in a recession? Increased numbers of riders combined service cuts was one of most annoying things about living in NYC. One of the good things though was that NYC was increasingly making changes to very-pedestrian unfriendly intersections like Grand Army Plaza. Chicago is riddled with intersections that are basically pedestrian death traps. And pedestrians do die in the US at unacceptably high rates. This is going to have to change if we are to encourage people to live healthy active lifestyles that are evolutionarily appropriate for humans as a species. 

You know, it's kind of amazing to realize that you can get pretty good craft beer at nearly any convenience store in a city. You can even get it at a random mediocre bar your friend dragged you to for a birthday party or something. It's pretty much everywhere at this point. I wasn't allowed to drink when I was 5, but I hear that twenty years ago it definitely wasn't that way. I've often mused about what it would be like if you could get good grass-fed meat so easily.

But imagine if you went to a good bar and you asked what was on tap and they said "craft beer." You've heard good things about it. You ask what kind and they are like "well, it's artisan and it's certified craft beer." You order a pint and it's really really bitter. You decide to order a Corona next time. 

Unfortunately that's kind of where grass-fed meat is now. It's a premium product, people are interested in buying it, but it's stuck in some kind of commodity purgatory. I'm often torn between thinking that it's great that some jerky in the store says "grass-fed" on the label and that there are "grass-fed" burger bars across Chicago, and kind of disappointed in them. Most of the time if you contact the companies that make those products or talk to the burger bar owners, they won't even tell you what farms the animals are from. 

This is bad. I recall a conversion I had a few months ago with a guy at the gym. I told him I mainly buy grass-fed meat from local farmers and he said "yeah, I tried that, but it tasted so awful that I don't think I'll buy it again." I asked him where it came from and he had no idea. 

Honestly, I've bought some positively awful grass-fed meat. It sucks to spend that kind of money on something that you end up having to drown in spices. Luckily I know that not all meat is the same. "Grass-fed" is a minimum premium standard that has nothing to do with taste quality. Taste is affected by diet, breed, age of animal, and butchering skill, among many other things. Yes, consumers buying these products often need to learn a few basic cooking skills, but that won't save them from meat that's just not very good (a meat tenderizer, added fat, tons of spices can sometimes save mediocre meat). 

So the whole commodity attitude damages the product's reputation. I also think it stifles producer innovation (of course there are tons of things doing that, like regulation, this is just one of them). I was drinking some excellent Rockmill beer this weekend and I thought, what if niche meat were more like craft beer? What if people knew of certain producers and knew their product tasted different? What if stores stocked meat from multiple producers and labeled it as such? 

I'm happy to say there are already some places in Chicago I know of that treat meat like this. The Butcher and the Burger is one of them. If you have been to the other burger bars in Chicago and didn't like them, definitely try this place. My main complaint is that they don't always get my order right (medium when I said rare) and they use peanut oil in the fryer, but the meat itself is very good and some of it is even from one of the owner's own farms. There are some exceptions on the menu, so I'd stick with the meat from specific farms, such as the Q7 beef, which is very silky and has a good amount of fat, and the La Pryor pork. 

The good butcher shops I've been to are also pretty good about this. In NYC you have The Meat Hook and Dickson's Farmstand. In Chicago you have The Butcher & The Larder and Publican Quality Meats. Of course farmer's markets seem like a good option, but few allow consumers to taste before buying, which is an obstacle because why should I buy extremely expensive meat if I don't know what it tastes like? With craft beers, tastings are common. I had Mint Creek Farms lamb at a restaurant before, so that's how I started buying from them. With Meatshare I often worked with farmers new to selling to urban markets and they offered their meat at lower prices or offered tastings in order to gain a foothold. The cool thing about that is I can tell you exactly what their products tasted like. And they all tasted different. The pork from Spring Lake Farm, for example, had a high percentage of hay in the diet, giving the pork a delicious almost-beefy savory flavor. B&Y farms, a producer that later moved on to the farmer's market after working with us, produced Tunis lamb that had these fatty wonderful tails that braised up very nicely. The goat I would buy from Glynwood was the best goat I've ever had, not too fatty and not too lean.* 

I've followed Carrie Oliver on Twitter for awhile and she does some events with beef tasting that seem like a promising model. I think we definitely need more of this- more emphasis on meat as a diverse producer-oriented product.

*that's the problem I have with Whole Food's lamb. The NZ stuff is grass-fed, but often is so terribly lean and gamey. The US lamb is usually too fatty and a little flavorless. I like balance. 

Just last week a guy named Joe contacted me on Facebook to tell me about his Kickstarter project- a paleo food cart! I didn't get around to blogging about it until today and in the meantime it was fully funded! 

I totally understand why. A food cart fills an important niche in the food landscape. When I worked in a Midtown Office building, they were not only a quick meal option, but there were always new interesting trucks and carts randomly showing up. It was like being a kid and waiting for the ice cream truck. Unfortunately, most didn't exactly serve healthy food, but I hope the paleo project can show it is possible. In NYC you can actually get a pretty good rice and meat bowl with TONS of pickled vegetables at Korilla. 

Unfortunately, I now live in a city where the Illinois Restaurant Association has managed to quash the food truck scene. Ever heard of rent-seeking? What a perfect example. The Illinois Restaurant Association is using the government's laws and police force to protect their own businesses from competition. That's not only an abuse of government power, but it's stupid. 

They say that food trucks are "unfair" to restaurant owners. Yes, the restaurant owners in NYC are really suffering. That's why NYC has some of the greatest restaurants in the United States and a vibrant eating-out culture? Even the real competition to food trucks, mediocre Midtown delis and fast food lunch places, seem to be doing more than fine in NYC. 

I was excited to see that The Institute for Justice has taken up the food truck cause in Chicago. On Saturday they are having a free symposium and meetup that I'm going to. I might have to use my Official Guide to Eating Badly, especially since the law here prohibits cooking on the truck, which means food can't be made to order. They are also trying to make it so that food trucks can't sell food near restaurants, which means they would pretty much be banned everywhere:

Also, a random tagged on rant: I am really tired of meeting ex-New Yorkers in Chicago who say how "behind" we are in food, but who have never even bothered to eat at the city's most innovative restaurants (like El Ideas or Schwa) because they stay in their mediocre Lincoln Park/Gold Coast neighborhood. Don't get me wrong, there are restaurants and food things I miss in NYC, but Chicago has it's own very cool (and very different) food scene. 

 A few years ago, when I was in college, I was on a volunteer trip in the North of Wisconsin and I was invited to an Ojibwe sweatlodge. I had never had an experience like that before. It was incredibly powerful, like being reborn inside a volcano. But it also tested the very limits of my heat endurance, particularly since Christian missionaries influenced the tribe enough that women have to wear thick long skirts while men go into the lodge shirtless. I never did a sweat lodge again, but when I moved to Sweden I discovered sauna culture, which has many of the same benefits, but is usually much more casual and less extreme (except for a few stupid isolated incidences like the guy last year who died in a "sauna contest."). In Scandinavia saunas are often paired with swimming in cold water, which is probably why that region, along with Russia (which has a Banya culture), produces some of the world's top cold-water swimmers (many of whom are women, who have an advantage thanks to higher body fat). I'll write more about that later, particularly since I hope to interview some swimmers when I go to Stockholm next month. I'm also planning to write some more on sauna and the studies done on that subject. Fire adaptation isn't just a joke.

But lately I've thought of sweat lodges because of the whole "cold adaptation" thing that's caught on a bit. Richard Nikoley posted a pro-Dr. Kruse anti-intellectual screed. The gist of it seemed to be: well, I benefited from cold water, so Dr. Kruse must be onto something and I like him anyway. Ok. Dr. Kurt Harris and Dr. Emily Deans tried to talk some sense into him. Thankfully Ray Cronise, who happens to be an expert on the subject, showed up and finally Nikoley listened to a voice of reason. If you are interested in doing some thermal hacking with cold, I strongly recommend that you follow Ray's sane science-based recommendations. 

Water temperature less than 60F/15.5C and air temperature less than 32F/0C are great lines of WARNING. in temperatures lower than this there is a chance of hypothermia. Walking hypothermia* can be very serious (google it) and so it stands to reason when you go below these thresholds it’s 1) at your own risk and 2) should be done with caution.
 

Contrast that with Dr. Kruse's recommendations, which involve ice water and he dismisses the significance of numbness, saying "My entire torso has been numb for 8 months now." Yikes. 

Sweat lodges were touted for similar health-related benefits, as well as used for quasi-Native American new age rituals, often to the chagrin of actual Native American tribes. Unfortunately, in 2009 several people died in a New Age sweat lodge ceremony. The Lakota Nation filed a lawsuit against the guru responsible for the faux-sweat lodge ceremony that pushed so many people into the danger zone. The Lakota were concerned about their traditions being used irresponsibly. 

Either way, you'd all have more fun and probably get more benefits by heading to your local Banya or Korean sauna and doing a normal sauna session and then a dip in the cold pool. Maybe have some good offal-rich soup that most of those traditional sauna places serve. When I lived in NYC I often went to Coney Island Banya, but I've heard good things about Castle Spa, a Korean place in Flushing. However, none can compare to the Finnish saunas. Nothing like a sauna next to a ice-filled lake. And grilling some sausages on the coals. And total co-ed nudity (actually less sexy than you would imagine). Or the Austrian sauna I went to in the mountains where we ran outside into the snow. 

Sauna + cold pool = fun

Numbness = bad, and not fun

I find that the more regularly I do sauna, the better I am at dealing with cold. And that's important, since I don't drive and I've lived in cold climates for the past decade. And I like wearing miniskirts even in the dead of the Chicago winter. And being able to forget my gloves. I wasn't always this way. When I first moved from Georgia to Illinois I remember having to sleep under two comforters and an electric blanket. 

And the Game of Thrones scene that I always think of when I read people from the South talking about cold adaptation: 

* you might want to look up afterdrop too. Also I find it interesting that other neurosurgeons have done controversial cold therapy.