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Melissa McEwen
This blog is about the intersection between evolutionary biology and food. But also about practical applications, sustainable agriculture, and general tasty things.
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Melissa
I've noticed a few people tweeting this new paper, titled Hunter-Gatherer Energetics and Human Obesity, but I haven't seen many blog posts about it. Some of the tweets are to the effect of "haha, total proof that eat less, move more is a farce."
The paper is open-access, but the researchers published an editorial in the New York Times
We found that despite all this physical activity, the number of calories that the Hadza burned per day was indistinguishable from that of typical adults in Europe and the United States. We ran a number of statistical tests, accounting for body mass, lean body mass, age, sex and fat mass, and still found no difference in daily energy expenditure between the Hadza and their Western counterparts.
Unfortunately, the applicability to the average dieter in the United States might be limited. Notice "typical adults in Europe and the United States." I don't know, but last time I was in Europe, it seemed like people biked and walked places a lot more than in the US. As a non-driver, when I lived in Europe I was hardly the oddity I am here. In many places in the United States it is not even possible to walk to the grocery store. One study showed that the average American takes 5,117 steps a day, whereas the average Swiss person takes 9,650 steps a day. That's another issue with the Kitavan study, in that it also compares activity levels with a non-US group of people, the Swedish.
There is also the possibility that the Hadza are not expending as much energy as expected because of nutritional stress. Whether or not certain hunter-gatherer groups are naturally small or if they are exhibiting stunting is an important question. A paper that came out last year about a similar group of hunter-gatherers, the !Kung, re-opened this debate, speculating that the !Kung are somewhat malnourished:
Given the adverse conditions of life in the Mexican refugee camp, and the similar pattern of growth of the Maya and !Kung, the most reasonable interpretation of the growth of the !Kung infants and children is that it is due to inadequate food intake, disease, or a combination of both. Small size of !Kung infants and children sets the pattern of growth for older ages, as !Kung adults remain relatively short and light throughout their lives...
People with energy deficiency, or living at a delicate energy balance, do practice an economy of effort. Some examples are studies by George B. Spurr and colleagues of marginally undernourished boys and girls, ages 6–16 years old, in the city of Cali, Colombia. These boys and girls adjust their energy expenditure according to energy intake. In one quasi-experiment (Spurr & Reina 1988), normal and undernourished boys were observed at a summer day camp. They were encouraged to increase their physical activity by playing sports and other games. The undernourished boys were not able to keep up with the normally nourished boys during the morning session. At mid-day both groups received a meal and the undernourished boys received an extra 760 kcal of food, all of which was consumed. During the afternoon play session the undernourished boys were able to keep up with the normal group for about 2 hours, which is about the time they expended the extra 760 kcal eaten at lunch.
I would like to see similar data for the Hadza. And other foraging cultures, especially those with access to higher quality game. And it's worth remembering that even if the Khosian hunter-gatherer lifestyle is of continuous antiquity, it is the tip of the iceberg in terms of foraging. There were many very diverse paleolithic foraging cultures and so few of them are represented in the tiny remnants of this lifestyle available to study today.
Some books about the paleo diet reference the impressive height of paleolithic hunter-gatherers, comparing them to stunted agriculturalists. However, the archeological record is full of shorter hunter-gatherers and almost all modern foragers would be considered tiny. The average Hadza man is only 161.3 cm tall (5.3 feet). Is this stunting or is it genetic? Either way, some see their height as a feature, not a bug, contending that shorter people have certain metabolic advantages that are protective against many diseases of civilization. Hilariously, that paper I just linked to is posted along with many others on the website Short Support, which is all about how awesome short people are. At five feet two inches tall, I approve of this site.
Furthermore, it would be interesting to explore the genetic uniqueness of the Hadza. Another recent study showed evidence for genetic adaptations to local environmental conditions. The authors of this paper note that more research in this area is needed:
And indeed, studies reporting differences in metabolic-hormone profiles between traditional and Western populations support this idea (though more work is needed).
Also it's worth noting that physical activity has many known benefits beyond just burning calories.
Furthermore, it is quite funny to see how popular this study is with people promoting a low-carb diet because one of the reasons some of them have said foraging people can tolerate starch/sugar is because of their high activity levels. Though conveniently Rosedale has recently switched to saying it's because they are short, just in time for this study. Because honestly, the Hadza diet has quite a bit of sugar in the form of honey, berries, and baobab:
Dr. Lustig should come and tell them not to eat so much sugar. That humans aren't evolved to eat so much sugar and didn't have access to it in our natural evolutionary environment. Especially the honey. It's really appalling how sugary that stuff is.
Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting paper, but grouping Europeans together and then those Europeans with the particularly sedentary Americans means we can't use this paper to say that food is the main thing that matters in determining weight.
I'm sure you have your own take on this, since the paper is open access, I recommend reading it.
Melissa
I remember when I was a vegetarian and I first encountered literature on veganism that described the dairy industry. When I learned about how older cows and unwanted calves were sent to slaughter, it made sense to become a vegan. To this day, beyond people who don't like meat or who come from a vegetarian cultural tradition, vegetarianism doesn't make much sense to me. Even for people who are religious vegetarians, the dairy produced in most of the US is a far cry from that traditionally consumed in India.
Even the beef cattle from the worst farm gets to spend part of their lives, usually most of their lives, on pasture. It's a far cry from factory egg and milk production, where animals are often in a state of continuous overcrowding in filthy low-quality conditions. This is true confinement agriculture.
In confinement dairies, after cows have reached the end of their "production cycle" they are normally sent to the slaughterhouse. This was in the news recently because some animal rights activists exposed the mistreatment of a dairy cow at a slaughterhouse. The video is worth watching if you can stomach it, but the cow was a "downer" cow, meaning she was sick and was lying down. The video shows workers torturing her with electric prods. It's sickening.
Beef from dairy cows is 6 percent of all beef production in the U.S. and about 18 percent of ground beef, but the amount varies. I'd imagine that because of the drought, more and more farmers will send their cows to slaughter as feed prices continue to soar.
Typically this isn't exactly premium beef, but it doesn't have to be this way. The NPR article notes:
Veterinarian Richard Wallace, who spent 15 years at the University of Illinois before joining Pfizer Animal Health in 2010, has led the campaign. "Slaughter is not a place to dump animals," he says.He tells dairy farmers to think of their older cows differently — not as "cull animals," but as potentially valuable beef cattle. And instead of going directly from milk barn to slaughterhouse, Wallace says farmers should coddle those animals for a few weeks. After ending their milk production, the cows should just get to rest and eat. The result, Wallace says, is a healthier cow, higher-quality meat — and more profit for the farmer.
If you are buying from a local dairy this might be a great opportunity to get some decent grass-fed beef for pretty cheap. I find that a lot of people, particularly people who eat grass-fed beef for health reasons, don't care all that much about getting the very best quality. For example, my family slaughtered an older cow and the beef was a little lean and chewy. At $3 a lb, it sold out immediately, mainly to the Crossfit types. I ate it too. It was fine, and even very good in certain dishes like Chili or Ropa Vieja, which means "old clothes" so it's quite fitting.
Another great option is pastured veal. Now this isn't the kind of veal you feel bad about buying. It's from young steers that grazed with their mothers on pasture, not from confined grain-pap fed calves. It's actually really really good and I think it is going to become a trend, because the cuts are so much smaller and so easier to fit in a small freezer.
Indeed, the method of chaining and crating veal calves is a new practice, established in the years following World War II when the agricultural communities of the United States began their dramatic move from the small, intimate and self-sustaining farms they were to feed-lots and monocropping. Dairy farmers moved male offspring, who otherwise held little value, indoors to save space and costs in an era when young farmers were encouraged to “modernize.” Tradition, as is often the case, was lost under the effort to modernize the agriculture of America’s heartland. Prior to this change, veal calves were raised alongside their mothers in open pasture, under the sun and with access to clean air and fresh water before their brought to harvest at about the same time lambs are traditionally slaughtered. Thanks to the renaissance of truly traditional and sustainable farming practices – and, in a way, to the raw milk movement – humanely raised veal is increasing in availability.
I don't know anyone who eats confinement veal and it amazes me that they still produce it. The dairy farm next to me has about 20 calves in teeny tiny pens. It's not as bad as a PETA video, but I do not think it is a production method that respects the animal. This dairy farm is also a small family farm, so once again proof that this is no guarantee that such an operation is a good one.
A commenter on my last post pointed out that craigslist is a good source for finding some affordable beef, if you don't mind the animal having had some grain in its life. One of the first results for Chicago was a pastured Jersey steer for $1.40 a lb. Surprisingly big though at 1000 lbs, but I wonder what the yield on this breed is. The yield is the actual weight of the meat since there are things you obviously aren't getting in your freezer order like skin/hooves/horns/etc. It's an on-farm pickup which is great too, since you can see what the farm is like, though obviously it would be awkward if you got there and it was not to your liking. Maybe this calls for a new post on interviewing your food suppliers...
Jersey cattle in the UK from Wikimedia
Melissa
Someone asked me if I could please update my What's on the Menu page, but it's hard because I've been eating out a lot. Like way too much. Partially because of moving and partially because I still do not have my furniture delivered to my new place and can't have anyone over. I also stopped telecommuting and now have a separate office, which I felt I had to do for productivity reasons, but now I've ended up in an apartment that has an extra room. Wow, that is a sentence I never could have written in NYC. Yikes.
Anyway, I also got a lot of questions about this cocktail I posted on instagram:
It is from the amazingly talented bartenders at BellyQ on Randolph. It's a Sudachi Sochu, coconut vinegar plum infusion, and cucumber cocktail called the Serpentine. Later I had their drinking vinegar, which is so much better than it sounds and was very similar to the Som drinking vinegar from Seattle.
I ate there on opening day and I was sufficiently impressed. They told me there are one of only two restaurants in the US that have infrared tabletop grills. The other one is in NYC and it happens to be my old favorite, Takashi. Unfortunately BellyQ, unlike Takashi, doesn't have any offal on the menu.
But I can't complain though. My rice puff and spinach salad was very good and my grilled BellyQ beef was fantastic. The space is also just amazing, with the sparse industrial naturalistic aesthetic that characterizes the neighborhood.
If you are in Chicago and you are gluten-free/paleo/whatever, another interesting development is that there is a new gluten-free restaurant called Senza. I bet you thinking "Ugh, great, so I can have sandwiches made with overpriced inferior gluten-free breads and pastas made with crap processed ingredients." Because honestly, that seems to be the gist of most gluten-free restaurants, which is frustrating since I have some friends who can't have any gluten at all and can't go to regular restaurants, but the menu seems to actually contain real food. I'll report back when I've eaten there.
Chicago also has Cassava, which makes fairly delicious gluten-free cassava puffs called Pão de Queijo. If you read Perfect Health Diet you might remember they blogged a recipe for them there, but these are nice because you can buy them frozen and have them on hand to heat up in the oven.
But my latest haunt has been Green Grocer, which is a small grocery store right down the street from me that stocks all kinds of great local stuff. They roasted a pig from Gunthrop Farms last week and that was a blast.
Also if you are in the West Loop, there is a small new cafe called Fulton Market Cafe on Racine & Fulton that seems to have some good lunch options
Melissa
I think referring to conventional feedlot cattle as "grain fed" is unfortunate. I think it's an insult on small local family farmers who raise their cows mainly on pasture, but supplement a little grain here and there. Sometimes I buy this kind of beef. It's not terribly different nutrient-wise from completely 100% grass-fed beef. And many people prefer the taste. Furthermore, it's often very affordable, as low as $2-$4 a lb if you buy in bulk.
Such cattle might also have received antibiotics, but for sicknesses, not to promote growth or to make up for unsanitary conditions like in a feedlot. If you have a sick cow and only a few cows in your herd...you are going to want to give the cow the medicine it needs.
Conventional feedlot cattle receive much more than just grains, they often receive antibiotics, hormones, antimicrobials, and nasty industrial byproducts. Just like my post on how Americans aren't eating meat, they are eating sugar-coated soybean-oil drenched garbage, industrial cows aren't eating grains, as much as they are eating crap.
The difference between these cattle and the cattle that receive a little supplemental whole grain is like the difference between someone eating a standard American diet and someone who eats a "paleo" diet and has tacos a couple of times a week.
I was reminded of this today when I saw the headline "Farmer feeds candy to cows to cope with high corn prices"
The worst drought in decades has destroyed more than half the U.S. corn crop, pushing prices to record levels and squeezing livestock owners as they struggle to feed their herds.
To cope, one Kentucky cattle farmer has turned to a child-tested way to fatten his 1,400 cows: candy...
The chocolate and other sweet stuff was rejected by retailers. It makes up 5% to 8% of the cattle's feed ration, Smith said. The rest includes roughage and distillers grain, an ethanol byproduct.
Yum? I'm not crazy about ethanol byproducts in feed either.
But it gets worse. They also feed cattle chicken waste under the euphemism "chicken litter":
Now, meat and bone meal from cows is explicitly banned from cow diets. But it ends up in chicken feed; a significant amount of it spills into bedding and ends up in poultry litter; and poultry litter gets fed back to cows.
Official numbers on just how much poultry litter ends up in bovine diets is hard to come by. But with corn and soy prices at heightened levels in recent years, feedlot operators are always looking for cheaper alternatives, and poultry litter is very much in the mix. Consumer Union's Michael Hansen claims that 2 billion pounds of chicken litter are consumed by cows each year—as much as a third of which consists of spilled feed, including bovine meat and bone meal.
So much for "grain fed" beef.
It does raise the question of what exactly should be done with America's massive amount of chicken waste? Maybe we should eat less chicken? Or as much as I hate to think about, pigs are at least better equipped biologically to eat such "food."
So if you are having a hard time affording good beef, considering buying from a local farmer that is not 100% grass-fed, but who doesn't finish on a conventional feedlot. It can be hard to find such farmers though since a lot of them tend to be older and not think of promoting their product in the many online directories that exist like Local Harvest or Local Dirt. Often such cattle are sold word of mouth to family friends and through old-fashioned social networks like churches.
But if you have a freezer, you should stock up ASAP because cattle prices are on the rise thanks to the aforementioned droughts.
Melissa
Possible too gross for some, via John Hawks, this article that mentions a most interesting experiment mentioned in an article on strange science:
yum?
If you like shrews, especially if you like them parboiled, you'll want to devour a 1994 study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Called Human Digestive Effects on a Micromammalian Skeleton, it explains how and why one of its authors – either Brian D Crandall or Peter W Stahl; we are not told which – ate and excreted a 90mm-long (excluding the tail, which added another 24mm) northern short-tailed shrew (Blarina brevicauda).
This was, in technical terms, "a preliminary study of human digestive effects on a small insectivore skeleton", with "a brief discussion of the results and their archaeological implications". Crandall and Stahl were anthropologists at the State University of New York in Binghamton. The shrew was a local specimen, procured via trapping at an unspecified location not far from the school. For the experiment's input, preparation was exacting. After being skinned and eviscerated, the report says, "the carcass was lightly boiled for approximately 2 minutes and swallowed without mastication in hind and fore limb, head, and body and tail portions".
Here's how Crandall and Stahl handled the output: "Faecal matter was collected for the following 3 days. Each faeces was stirred in a pan of warm water until completely disintegrated. This solution was then decanted through a quadruple-layered cheesecloth mesh. Sieved contents were rinsed with a dilute detergent solution and examined with a hand lens for bone remains." They then examined the most interesting bits with a scanning electron microscope, at magnifications ranging from 10 to 1,000 times.
A shrew has lots of bony parts. All of them entered Crandall's gullet, or maybe Stahl's. But despite extraordinary efforts to find and account for each bone at journey's end, many went missing. One of the major jawbones disappeared. So did four of the 12 molar teeth, several of the major leg and foot bones, nearly all of the toe bones, and all but one of the 31 vertebrae. And the skull, reputedly a very hard chunk of bone, emerged with what the report calls "significant damage".
The vanishing startled the scientists. Remember, they emphasise in their paper, that this meal was simply gulped down: "The shrew was ingested without chewing; any damage occurred as the remains were processed internally. Mastication undoubtedly damages bone, but the effects of this process are perhaps repeated in the acidic, churning environment of the stomach."
Chewing, they almost scream at their colleagues, is only part of the story. In each little heap of remains from ancient meals, there be mystery aplenty. Prior to this experiment, archaeologists had to, and did, make all kinds of assumptions about the animal bones they dug up, especially what those partial skeletons might indicate about the people who presumably consumed them. Crandall and Stahl, through their disciplined lack of mastication, have given their colleagues something toothsome to think about.
The human stomach was more capable at digesting bones than they expected. This isn't terribly surprising to me, as many cultures consume whole bone-in animals and there is plenty of archaeological evidence for this. Here's a bit from John Speth's book:
Well-preserved prehistoric human coprolites (feces) recovered in large numbers from dry caves throughout western North America are full of pulverized bone fragments, including pieces of broken skulls, as well as fur and feathers, indicating that rodents, rabbits, birds, lizards, snakes, and amphibians were often cooked whole, pounded in a wooden mortar or on a milling stone, and then consumed in their entirety – bones, fur, feathers, and all, including the precious DHA in the brains (Reinhard et al. 2007; Sobolik 1993; Yohe et al. 1991).
Evidence from some of these coprolites (fossilized poo) shows the entire animal was probably consumed with no butchery and some animals were consumed completely raw(PDF)
It would appear that the Desha people at Dust Devil Cave ate rabbit legs more-or-less whole, then pounded the rest of the carcass before eating it... The consumption of wood rats (Neotoma spp.), also known as pack rats, has been noted ethnographically. They were regarded as good food by the Yaqui (Spicer, 1954: 49), constituted a staple for all tribes along the lower Colorado River (Castetter & Bell, 1951: 217), and many were eaten by the Tohono O’Odham. The Cocopah set fire to their nests, clubbing the rats as they emerged, undoubtedly fragmenting some bone in the process.
In the past, there was perhaps more focus on big game hunting. And while big game bones are nice, they are harder to process than little animal bones. Primates have probably been digesting little bones for much longer than they have been breaking open larger bones for marrow. Excessive focus on big game has led to ignoring the contribution of small game to human nutrition, which has also led to the misconception that women don't hunt since some anthropologists classified small game hunting as gathering.
It would be interesting to know if other primates can also digest bone. Chimpanzees seem to degrade the bones of other primates they hunt and consume (PDF). Salad lovers might be interested to know that when chimpanzees consume a meal of meat, they consume it with leaves.
It would also be fascinating to know if humans process the same ability as some other carnivores to use animal parts as de-facto fiber and ferment it into SCFA.
At some point in human evolution, humans developed technology to extract nutrients from bones more efficient than their own stomaches, which is referred to as "grease processing" in many archaeological papers, but is close to what we do in making broths today. It is understandable why humans developed this, considering a meaty meal for a chimpanzee can take nearly the entire day to consume. Frankly, while I like a 6-hour tasting menu sometimes, I don't have time for that very often.
But today, could many humans handle bone? With dietary and medical factors like widespread use of proton pump inhibitors reducing acidity of the digestive tract, are we losing this capability?
For the record, I have never eaten a whole rodent bones and all, though I have eaten many small whole bony fish. There is some indication that humans degrade fish bones more completely, leading to their relative scarcity in coprolites and underestimation of their importance in diet.
Perhaps whole rat eating is becoming trendy again though, a posh rat dinner was featured in the New York Times recently.
Melissa
I found this excellent little place called Wisma at the French Market near my office. They caught my eye because their salad dressings are made with olive oil and they have grass-fed free range meat.
The problem? Their salads. And I find this is a common problem at many restaurants. Because by the logic of these restaurants, if you want salad, it must mean you are into "health food." And if you are into "health food" you must be watching the fat content and definitely you don't want any evil red meat or anything.
The result is I often look at the sandwich menus at restaurants and my mouth waters, but the salads are kind of blah. At Wisma you can get a salad with meat, but it's skinless boneless chicken breast. It's not bad, especially since the dressing is so good and it comes with parmesan cheese, but I have to buy extra dressing.
Meanwhile in sandwich land, there is Q7 Ranch roast beef and blue cheese. Wouldn't that be awesome on a salad?
Also, wouldn't it be awesome if they could expand their range of gluten-free entrees by using corn tortillas instead of flour tortillas? I think anyone who is into Mexican food would agree corn tortillas are better anyway and there are many excellent local places in Chicago that hand-make them.
But the good thing about frequenting local businesses is that regular customers often do have an influence, so I definitely plan on asking them about whether they can offer salads for people who like to eat, a group I was informed I am part of when I was at Au Cheval and I ordered two types of liver pate.
then maybe a salad would make me this happy
Speaking of Chicago, I definitely recommend checking out this blog called From Belly to Bacon no matter where you live. It contains recipes for pork skin noodles and pickled nasturtium buds.
Melissa
Wait, based on some news articles I've read lately, I thought non-celiac wheat sensitives were a bunch of wilting prima donnas intent on eating an annoying hipster diet that excludes wheat, an important nutrient that people have been eating for a really long time or something like that. And since their diet excludes sandwiches and pizza, they must be UnAmerican.
But in the medical research community, there is growing recognition that non-celiac wheat sensitivity is a real thing that affects quality of life and even mortality risk when it leads to intestinal inflammation. Stephan Guyenet posted about the last promising study.
This new study is very interesting, but highlights some limitations in dealing with problems like this. This study was on patients who already had been through the wringer test-wise and all had
- IBS-like symptoms (Rome II criteria)
- Negative serum anti-transglutaminase (anti-tTG) and anti-endomysium (EmA) IgA antibodies (the common blood tests for celiac)
- Negative duodenal histology (absence of intestinal villous atrophy)- requires a biopsy
- Negative IgE-mediated immuno-allergy tests to wheat (skin prick tests and serum-specii c IgE — RASTs).
- Resolution of the symptoms on gluten-free diet and their reappearance on double-blind placebo controlled wheat challenge, which means neither the person nor the patient knew whether or not they were giving or receiving a placebo
Um, how many people here with IBS have ever been offered this standard of care? Anyone had a doctor who offered to supervise a double-blind placebo controlled wheat challenge? Maybe things are different in Italy.
Once they were in this study, these patients got more tests including biopsies of the duodenum and colon, HLA genotyping, as well as skin-prick and blood tests. Then these people had to eat a minimum quantity of wheat daily as they were observed. Then they did a regular elimination diet that excluded wheat, cow's milk, eggs, tomato, and chocolate. Then they got to do a fun exciting double-blind placebo controlled wheat challenge again.
Wheat challenge was performed administering a daily dose 13 g of flour, equal to about 20 g of bread. A total of 12 capsules daily were given subdivided in three times daily, away from meals. DBPC for cow’s milk was performed by administering capsules coded as A or B containing milk proteins (casein from bovine milk, lactoalbumin, lactoglobulin – daily dose 6 g, equal to about 200 ml of cow’s milk) or xylose, respectively. A total of 6 capsules daily were given subdivided in three times daily, away from meals.
Patients used a survey to track their symptoms. They used celiac disease and IBS patients without wheat sensitivities as controls.
Among those who were wheat sensitive, a high number of them tested positive on the cytomteric basophil activation test, and many also tested positive for serum IgG and IgA AGA tests. Many of these patients suffered from anemia and weight-loss. Biopsies showed eosinophil infiltration of the duodenal and colon mucosa.
, despite not having the type of villous atrophy damage associated with celiac.
There seemed to be two groups of IBS wheat-sensitive patients- those with wheat sensitivity alone and those with wheat sensitivity AND multiple other sensitivities to cow's milk and other foods. The later group was also more likely to also have other types of allergies (non-food allergies, skin allergies, etc.) and a family history of allergies.
Further studies will have to look more into the mechanism in which wheat causes damage in these patients. The researches propose one mechanism in their conclusion
Obviously, other hypotheses must be considered; experimental models have demonstrated that gluten sensitization of DQ8 mice increases acetylcholine release by the myenteric plexus and this can lead to consequent in vivo dysmotility ( 27 ). In this model, gluten did not cause villous atrophy, but there was evidence that coexistent triggers, e.g., intestine-damaging drugs or dysbacteriosis, can lead to a more severe intestinal impairment ( 28 ). Clearly, wheat antigens may also act in a similar manner.
Acetylcholine is responsible for ahem, moving things along, so it might explain why wheat causes diarrhea in some people.
Also, it is notable that this study used wheat rather than gluten, so it might be other components of wheat like fructans that are responsible for the symptoms.
The researchers say
the very high frequency of self-reported wheat intolerance, which we observed in our patients, should induce clinicians to pay full attention to patient suggestions
I wonder how long it will take the average doctor to catch on?
Melissa
While it seems like every other blogger was at the Ancestral Health Symposium, I was moving boxes and crappy furniture to my new apartment. That wasn't much fun, but I try to think of moving as an opportunity to reevaluate what you own. One of the things I owned was a pair of nice velvet ballet flats. I'd had them since high school, but since my feet seem to have shrunk I haven't worn them very much because they only fit with thick socks and if it's thick sock season I probably need to be wearing boots. Unfortunately I recently was invited to attend an event where my regular warmer weather shoes, which are sandals or my badly worn out wonder gloves (next time I'll get black or hope they make some darker colors), are just not appropriate.
Why the hell do I care so much about shoes anyway? Well, when you have a standing desk and walk 1-3 miles every single day, shoes really make a difference. Unfortunately, in the past, it was thought that people who were active needed a lot of "support" from tank-like padded shoes. So many shoe options for active women (and men) are frankly ugly and not very healthy for building strong feet.
So when I saw a sale on these foldable Yosi Samra flats on Myhabit, which is one of those deal sites, I took a chance and bought them. I sized up after reading reviews on Amazon and they fit really quite well. They look nice and are comfortable, but I suspect they aren't very durable at all. Lately it's been raining a lot and when I wear them I wear my Shuellas, which are a lightweight rainboot cover, over them. Unfortunately, I don't find the Shuellas that comfortable and they sort of start to fall off sometimes because they seem to be made for pointy high heels.
I also think the non-sale price is a little expensive for something like this, but even if you don't chose this brand, I notice that a lot of sites are now selling "foldable flats" or "commuter flats" that are similar. They tend to be zero drop, have flexible soles, non-stiff toe boxes, and they fold which is cool for packing!
I really wanted the reptile and dinosaur print ones. It's cool those prints are fashionable now, because I really like them. But I also thought they would be also really not very versatile. I mean, I get away with wearing a lot of crazy things because I'm a techie, but now that I'm doing more business stuff, I have to look a little bit more "normal", which is sad.
Either way, I took the old non-fitting flats to the local thrift store, where they gave me $10 for them. I then looked at the shoe rack there and found some great totally-flat flexible non-toe-oppressive boots for $15. They are made by Blowfish and unfortunately they are discontinued, but it seems this brand has a bunch of great options. I always overlooked it because it seemed like they were made for people who live in places with nicer weather than Chicago or NYC, but since I have my excellent water-resistant breathable Vivo Barefoot and flexible water-resistant Cushe heavy winter boots that have held up well from previous years, I figure I could add a medium-weight boot to my closet, especially since I really like the style of these and they will go well with my steampunky/Victorian-ish closet.
Sadly there were some shoes that didn't make it through the move. I couldn't really take my Footskins that I reviewed here before to the thrift store even because they were so beat up. They took a beating because I frequently wore them running and at Crossfit. I wonder if they would have lasted longer with some better moccasin oiling, but in the end they had holes on them and I had repaired them so many times that they didn't stitch together very well. Oh well, they lasted around two years, which isn't too bad for a shoe that is worn so much and for heavy activity.
Well, my new apartment is pretty great. It's really the first non-significantly flawed dwelling I've lived in many years. It has more than one room. It has windows that get some sunlight in. No roaches. A kitchen that fits more than one person in it! Nothing is falling apart! These are luxuries to me. The main flaw this time is me- I am too short to reach probably about 50% of the cabinets here. Maybe I'll get a roommate...a tall roommate. But in the meantime, I look forward to cooking a lot more and having people over to eat, which was impossible in my last apartment since it only had one room and no table. Also I am developing better sleep habits, but more on that later.
Melissa
The internet is full of vegetarian and vegan websites claiming meat is bad because it "rots" in your colon. This is actually a very old idea, tracing back in the United States to neo-puritan vegetarian movements obsessed with the uncleanliness of the colon. According to folks like John Harvey Kellogg, the colon, like the genitalia, was a source of uncleanliness, so it must be bombarded by as much harsh fiber as possible and regular enemas to keep it "clean."
But his philosophy, which seems quite dysfunctional today, was a reaction to another idea that was popular during this time: that the colon was a useless vestigial remnant used to store garbage before clearance. Taken to its extreme, it led to a brief fancy by surgeons like Sir William Arbuthnot Lane to simply just remove the colons of people who suffered from constipation, believing it was nearly useless anyway. Colon removals are still performed today, but mainly in truly serious cases of damage such as severe inflammatory bowel disease.
Kellogg also believed it was a garbage dispenser, but he thought it was very important to keep it as clear and clean as possible, ideally eliminating after every single meal.
The truth is that the colon is not a garbage dispenser, it is a rich and biodiverse ecosystem in which much of the intestinal microbiota resides. And nature abhors a waste, so if a food makes it into the colon, there will probably be something eager to eat it. I suppose "rot" could be an uncharitable way to view it, as these remnants are degraded by bacteria, producing a variety of harmful, harmless, and beneficial byproducts that can play important roles in human health. If we are going to view things in such a negative light, it's worth thinking about how when you die and your immune system flat-lines forever, this bacteria will be on the front lines for rotting you. But for now, it's our very own internal composting system.
our colon is more like a composting bin than a trash can
Being a rich, full ecosystem, some bacteria in the colon even feed primarily on the byproducts of other bacteria in the colon, which is known as cross-feeding.
These bacteria will consume basically anything that the small intestine does not absorb. In humans compared to other primates, the small intestine is enlarged and the colon is diminished, indicating that humans evolved to consume more foods that are readily absorbed by the small intestine. In other primates, like the gorilla for example, the small intestine is much smaller and the colon is much much larger. Gorillas, who eat a diet of mainly rough leaves and pith that the small intestine would not be able to absorb, get most of their energy (around 60%) from bacterial degradation to short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) in the colon.
Humans can also get energy from SCFA, probably as much as 9%, though this data suffers from the fact that most of it comes from Western populations. Recent studies on more diverse populations shows that other groups of people have very different gut bacterial populations, which might allow them to extract more energy from colonic fermentation. Overall, in humans SCFA are less important as an energy source, but retain an important role in controlling inflammation and gut integrity.
In the opposite circles of the "meat will rot in your colon" crowd, there is the idea that if you remove carbohydrates, particularly complex carbohydrates, from the diet you can avoid some of the more noxious types of fermentation in the colon that may produce flatulence and diarrhea.
This works for some people, but fails for others, particularly over time. This is a testament to the plucky nature of our microbiome. There are plenty of bacteria in the colon more than eager to chomp on excess dietary iron and amino acids, among many other things which are present on low-carb diets as well.
This problem can be exacerbated when the small intestine is damaged, allowing nutrients that should be absorbed mainly by the small intestine into the colon. This seems to be a reason that iron supplementation sometimes fails to improve anemia and instead causes gastrointestinal problems. It is also perhaps the mechanism in which heme iron could lead to inflammation that is connected with colon cancer.
Small intestine dysfunction can also be caused by the overgrowth of bacteria that really belong in the large intestine and colon, known as Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO).
On the other side, there is a worry that low-carb will lead to inflammation due to lowered SCFA production. Lucas Tafur has written that perhaps these studies did not last long enough for the ecosystem to adjust and cross-feed in order to produce SCFA.
There is also a need for more studies on different people from different cultures in order to fully capture the full capacities of the human microbiome. For example, some people have cellulose-degrading bacteria, others do not. In the future, perhaps a scan of individual gut biomes could help people figure out what diet is best for them.
So yeah, lots of things "rot" in your colon. And that's not a bad thing at all. That's exactly how the colon is supposed to work. It's not supposed to be squeaky clean and scoured with wheat bran, it's supposed to be a jungle. It's controlling the "bad" bacteria and their byproducts, as well as selecting for good bacteria and maintaining the integrity of the gut lining and the "gut brain" (our second brain) that really matters.
If you enjoyed this post, you'd probably like my series on the colon.
Melissa
A new free-full text paper by Ian Spreadbury has been making the rounds lately. "Comparison with ancestral diets suggests dense acellular carbohydrates promote an inflammatory microbiota, and may be the primary dietary cause of leptin resistance and obesity" is interesting because it is written through a distinctly Ancestral Health lens to provide a new framework for thinking about possible causes of Western disease.
For some time, many people in the Ancestral Health movement have blamed carbohydrates for various diseases of civilization, but over time, this idea has lost its hold and many writers in the movement now reject it. We perhaps have our own paradox- the "Kitavan paradox," which was probably the source for much of this questioning, particularly since so many paleo diet books in the past cited the Kitavan study and then told readers to restrict carbohydrates. This paper looks for reasons why
Despite food abundance and a clear overlap of macronutrients and glycemic index with Western diets, Kitavans are reported to possess leptin levels, fasting insulin, and blood glucose levels dramatically lower than those in Western populations deemed healthy, and appear to have a virtual absence of overweight, diabetes, and atherosclerotic disease.
What if it were something about grains per-se rather than carbohydrates? The paper describes how endotoxemia in the gut, particularly Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), can lead to systematic inflammation related to many elements of metabolic syndrome like leptin resistance. Endotoxins are part of the cell-wall in gram-negative bacteria such as E.Coli and Salmonella and they provoke an inflammatory response in many contexts. The idea here is that Western diets perhaps might increase endotoxemia by promoting growth of pathogenic bacteria and adding fuel to the fire by increasing intestinal permeability, allowing endotoxins to ply their inflammation across the entire body. He also mentions the fact that science is showing that this process occurs in the mouth as well, where modern diets promote "leaky teeth" aka gingivitis, which has convincing ties to metabolic syndrome (which pilot studies show a paleo diet might treat).
Unfortunately, we then develop another paradox because most of the studies on LPS in humans show that absorption is promoted by a high-fat diet. And as the paper notes, foraging peoples with higher fat diets do not seem impaired.
Maybe their microbiota protects them and as I've written before, carbohydrate consumption can affect the composition and function of gut bacteria.
Spreadbury lays out a hypothesis that carbohydrates can be divided into two groups. Cellular carbohydrates, which are:
Tubers, fruits, or functional plant parts such as leaves and stems store their carbohydrates in organelles as part of fiber-walled living cells. These are thought to remain largely intact during cooking, which instead mostly breaks cell-to-cell adhesion. This cellular storage appears to mandate a maximum density of around 23% non-fibrous carbohydrate by mass, the bulk of the cellular weight being made up of water.
Then there are the acellular carbohydrates:
The acellular carbohydrates of flour,94 sugar and processed plant-starch products are considerably more dense. Grains themselves are also highly dense, dry stores of starch designed for rapid macroscopic enzymic mobilization during germination.95 Whereas foods with living cells will have their low carbohydrate density “locked in” until their cell walls are breached by digestive processes, the chyme produced after consumption of acellular flour and sugar-based foods is thus suggested to have a higher carbohydrate concentration than almost anything the microbiota of the upper GI tract from mouth to small bowel would have encountered during our coevolution.
And here we have another problem. Because archeologists continue to find earlier and earlier evidence of what was once considered advanced food processing, from pottery to grind stones. The foods that are characterized as "acellular"...well, how long have they been in the human diet? The paper mentions some of these finds, but says they were likely a small part of ancient diets, but that is far from a sure thing. We also have an ethnographical gap here in this chart:
Because you can see modern processed foods there, but nothing on indigenous "processed" foods. No chicha or poi or any of the variety of ground/fermented/pounded foods that many of these cultures consume. This is partially because there is very little data on these foods, which is unfortunate.
My prediction is that better accounting of indigenous diets will show that they consume more of the acellular carbohydrates than initially predicted by some. We also need ethnographical data that records everything consumed, even things that seem incidental like teas.
But I think we need to look further into the types of these consumed and other compounds they contain. Same for fatty foods.
An interesting thing here (thanks Stabby the Raccoon) is that studies show that orange juice, a accellular carbohydrate, reduces endotoxin load. Orange juice is one of those things you probably thought was healthy and then you realized it had sugar and it was "bad" and now people are rediscovering it again. But I think the sugar here is incidental, what is probably more interesting is the ability of antioxidants to suppress endotoxins. Wine and olive oil may have similar properties.
I was browsing The Human Food Project's website and came across a letter written by anthropologist Jeff Leach on low-carb diets:
In a series of elegant studies, Cani and colleagues ( 2-4) have shown that holding calories constant and varying macro levels of fat can induce low-grade metabolic endotoxemia which can lead to complications associated with cardiovascular health. As fat intake, so do serum levels of LPS and associated biomarkers. However, in high-fat diets with prebiotic oligosaccharides added (derived from chicory roots), serum levels of LPS drop, as do the metabolic markers of inflammation.
So it is also possible that prebiotics in indigenous diets also have a protective effect. So we shouldn't look so much perhaps at dividing carbohydrates into two categories, but tracing each type of carbohydrate to the type of bacterial environment it promotes.
Now n=1 time here, but I had gingivitis before I started eating better and it went away. And all the sudden it came back. And it was incredibly frustrating. Frustrating to the point that I even thought the problem might have been caused by the cavity-ridden guy I had started dating when my gums got bad again for giving me his lame mouth bacteria. I started supplementing a few things, notably K2, D3, and switched back to the flax oil that I had been using when my gums were better. The problem resolved and has not come back and my gums even survived the breakup with bad-teeth guy despite the fact I was eating mainly ice cream. So I don't know if for me, it was more about nutrients I needed to get rather than too much simple sugar.
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