sugar

Americans don't eat meat, they eat factory-farmed sugar-covered soybean oil drenched garbage
06/29/2011 - 17:18

 I finally finished The End of Overeating. It has some great sections, but overall I had trouble finishing it because of the dry writing style. A lot of the food in the book blamed for overeating is meat. But if you keep reading, it's not really meat so much as a flavorless factory-farmed protein matrix for sugar and soybean oil engineered to induce exccessive consumption. Now that I only eat homemade pastured meat (and occasionally meat at some very good restaurants that source responsibly), I never gorge on meat. But I confess that before I cleaned up my diet, I did have trouble restraining myself with things like General Tso's Chicken and fried Buffalo Wings. When I see a study that shows meat causes weight gain, I kind of want to know "what meat?". If you mean this kind of garbage, that's not meat or food at all, that's an industrial product: 

In China, dishes like orange-flavored chicken and sweet-and-sour chicken are widely available, but again, all the sugar is an American contribution. The dish we call "General Tso's Chicken" is loaded with sugar, much to the consternation of the Taiwanese chef who created it. "The dish can't be sweet," he insisted. "The taste of Hunan cuisine is not sweet."

The Orange Chicken is described on the menu as "tender, juicy chicken pieces lightly battered and fried, sauteed in a sweet and mildly spicy chili sauce with scallions." Preparation of the dish begins in the factory, where the meat is processed, battered, fried, and frozen. Like many processed meats, the dark chicken chunks contain as much as 19 percent of a water-based solution; oil and salt are added as well.
 

Boxes containing eight four-pound bags of ginger-citrus sauce, each with a refrigerated shelf life of about four months, are shipped to Chili's restaurants to accompany the chicken. The ingredients in the sauce sound relatively benign: sugar, hoisin sauce, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, chili paste, modified food starch, and orange juice concentrate. But sugar is the dominant nutrient, and salt is listed three times.

About the Boneless Shanghai Wings, he said, "Taking it off the bone is like taking the husk off the nut." That processing step reduces the need for chewing, making the food faster to consume. Those wings contain a solution of up to 25 percent water, hydrolyzed soy protein, salt, and sodium phosphate. The water is in there for several reasons. First, it bulks up the chicken-the industry calls this "reducing shrinkage." Second, water is cheaper than chicken breast, so it's less costly to produce. And finally, water makes the food softer and chewing easier. Before the chicken is shipped from the manufacturing plant, it's battered, breaded, predusted, and frozen. This creates a salty coating that becomes crispy when fried in fat. "All this stuff absorbs fat, dries out this batter and breading, and replaces water with oil. So now you've got batter and breading that is probably 40 percent fat," according to the food consultant. The crispy coating, which also contains corn-syrup solids, dried yeast, and soybean oil, may represent up to half the volume of the nuggets on the plate.
 

 

Comment?: 0
Paleo-Fascism
08/19/2010 - 09:16

For me paleo/evolutionary nutrition is a dietary philosophy rather than a diet. What's the difference? A diet implies following certain rules. And rules really just aren't my thing...

Instead, I prefer to use evolutionary science to think about food, which really does not generate rules, but ideas for us to test out on ourselves while in the pursuit of better health.

It's a little more unsettling: wouldn't it be nice just to have the ability to have a little piece of paper with ten paleo rules to follow? People keep trying to do that, but it doesn't work and it does a great disservice. People follow a rule-based paleo diet and don't do well...and they assume that the paleo diet is a bad one.

Sometimes people see me sprinkling salt on my food and ask "Is that OK on paleo? I thought rule #494494 said no salt?" I would agree that our paleolithic ancestors probably didn't eat added salt and some people have seen huge benefits eliminating it. But rapid genetic change is real, and I seem to carry a gene that predisposes me to hypotension and was a possible cause of the episode that hospitalized me last month (the article mentions how such patients often crave unusual salty foods like pickle juice. My own craving lately is Tibetan butter tea). I feel 100% better on a higher-salt diet.

Another perhaps more common genetic variant causes hemochromatosis, which leads to iron overload. A diet high in red meat would probably be problematic for someone with hemochromatosis, but does that mean they should throw out the idea of following paleo? 

If paleo is about certain foods or certain ratios, yes, but it isn't. An evolutionary paradigm combined with individualized experimentation can lead to many varied diets that fall under the umbrella of paleo. It's perhaps possible in the future that better genetic analysis will help people decide what types of food are best for them, but for now we have to experiment.

Sometimes people will furtively mention potatoes to me, as if it's a possible crime and they have to insert it into the conversation with surgical precision. Probably some Paleo Fascist told them via Twitter that potatoes are the spawn of the neolithic devils and will cause them to explode, especially when topped with a delicious mix of chives, salty bacon, and luscious sour cream.

So when you see someone on teh interwebs telling you that you must do X or you can only eat one type of Y or if you combine X and Y you will turn into a tribble...ignore it. Some people are doing all meat, others high-carb. Some eating no dairy, others eating mostly heavy cream. You can find people thriving on all these variations. It's confusing to see people do really well on a type of diet that would make you overweight and sick, but that's human variation for you.

Comment?: 20
Getting Real About Chocolate
01/24/2010 - 12:59

 

Let's get real about chocolate. First of all not paleo: it requires advanced processing and the addition of sugar to make it edible. If you found the raw fruit growing on the tree it would taste pretty gross. 

Second, it's one of the hardest foods to give up. It is admittedly tasty and has a powerful flavor. The problem is that many of us are addicted to it. I used to study alongside a bag of almond chocolate kisses and by the time my term paper was done, I had eaten ALL of them. I was ashamed, but I couldn't stop myself. 

Looking back, I had to wonder if it's the mixture of chocolate and either soy or dairy that makes it powerfully addictive. Casein, a major protein in milk, can break down into an opioid that may be addictive. Some people have shifted towards dairy-free dark chocolate bars, but almost all contain soy. 

Either way, modern technology and ingredients have made cacao into a food way more addictive than when it was originally used by the Mayans. The Mayans drank the bitter concoctions for religious purposes and it was forbidden to women and children. 

My personal experience is that it is best to phase out consumption of chocolate because of the sugar content. I personally started by only consuming "raw" chocolate, which is the least-processed edible form. It's a treat that can teach you to respect the bitter qualities of the substance, while still allowing you to enjoy its culinary virtues. 

I eat these treats occasionally:

Artisana Cacao Bliss is made with pureed coconut and just a spoon of this rich concoction satisfies! 

Fine & Raw chocolate bars are made with the highest quality full-fat cacao and fully display the complex flavors inherant in the cacao plant. 

Or make your own. I made this truffle using a Swedish recipe that is known as Ice Chocolate. Simply mix raw chocolate powder with coconut oil and honey to taste! Roll pureed berries in nuts in the chocolate coconut oil mixture to make truffles. 

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