Author Archives: Jeremy Zawodny

About Jeremy Zawodny

Jeremy is a software engineer for craigslist and enjoys flying and cooking in his spare time. He lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills (Groveland, California) with his wonderful wife Kathleen and five cats. He also reads far too much about nutrition, food, health, and biology.

Movie: Genetic Roulette

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I have to confession to make. While I suspected that there were Bad Things about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), especially the food we eat, I never looked into the issue in any real detail. So when I cam across the website for the movie Genetic Roulette the other day, it caught my attention.

So imagine my surprise to find that the full length movie was available on-line!

We watched it the other night and were treated to a well assembled movie showcasing the basic information about GMOs, how government regulation (at least in this country) is non-existent, and the apparent effects of high-GMO diets on both lab animals and real read-blooded humans.

Let’s just say it’s not a pretty story. But it definitely makes you think harder about the rise of inflammatory related chronic diseases, food “allergies” and immune disorders.

Unsurprisingly, the advice that you walk away with is:

  1. don’t trust the government to keep our food supply healthy
  2. don’t trust big companies to keep our food supply healthy
  3. eat organic, whole, unprocessed and unmodified foods as much as possible

There are some pretty interesting parallels between the behavior changes humans (especially children) and animals when they’re on high-GMO diets (as many unknowingly are nowadays, thanks to a lack of regulation and labeling laws).

A few places in the film felt highly speculative (lacking good scientific basis), but the speakers did not use language which tried to trick us. I’m sure some of this is due to lack of information, funding, and research. But there’s clearly an element of wishful thinking (wanting to draw connections between various observations that haven’t really been tested yet). Thankfully, the majority of the film was on pretty solid ground and was definitely informative.

I definitely recommend watching it if you’re curious about GMOs and our country’s apparent resistance to regulate them in the least.  It may also be worth buying the full DVD to support the movie and get the other bits of bonus material that come with it. It looks like it contains more of the hard science and references.

After watching this film, you’ll come away with a new-found “respect” (and by respect, I mean disgust) for Monsanto and their influence on our government policy.

Homemade vs. Store Bought

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We make the vast majority of our own food these days. I guess that makes us bad “consumers” but we’re generally trying to avoid store bought “processed” foods. When some people hear the term “processed foods” they wonder what that really means? Does it mean you can’t use machines to sort your apples and peaches? No, not really. Processed food is food that is made in a factory and includes a lot of ingredients that you’d never use in your own kitchen.

To get an easy comparison between homemade foods and their store-bought processed counterparts, check out Ingredient Overload: Store-Bought vs. Homemade. What you’ll see is that the factory-made “food” typically contains twice as many ingredients (often more). And, if you spend a few minutes and try to actually read the labels and identify the additives, you’ll realize that you don’t know what most of them are–let alone why they’re there.

Most of them are there to increase shelf-life and make food easier to transport. Some of them are there to artificially enhance the food’s flavor (either so you’ll eat more or to cover up the lack of flavor present without the additives).

Which would you prefer? Which is going to be healthier for you in the long run?

Deer Carnage, or Why You Need a Wire Fence

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Having a garden in the Sierra foothills is an interesting give and take with Mother Nature. Consider the following:

  • we have abundant sunshine and warm days but little rain, so we need a drip irrigation system
  • the hills and pine trees make our yard very scenic, however it was a challenge to find some reasonably flat land with good sunlight for our garden
  • we have tons of wildlife, so bees readily find our crops and pollinate them, but there are deer out there every night wanting to eat our plants

That last point was driven home a bit over a month ago. I ventured down to the garden while Kathleen was out of town and immediately found something wasn’t quite right.

Deer Got The Fence

Yeah, the plastic “deer resistant” fence had been broken right near a post and at least one of our “furry friends” had managed to feat upon our plants.

Deer Chowed the Peppers

What was once a bunch of nicely growing pepper plants had become mere green sticks overnight.

Deer Eaten Berry Plants

And our previously amazing tomato forrest was quite leafless and barren down low. The berry plants looked even worse!

Needless to say, I spent some time patching it up that night and we were thankful they left most of the tomatoes in place. Given sufficient time, light, and water they had a good chance of recovering and continuing to produce.

The next day I picked up Kathleen from Nevada and, after arriving home, she headed down to the graden to see the damage for herself. And wouldn’t you know it? The deer had broken in again!

Clearly we needed to take things up a notch or two. So I orded three fifty foot rolls of the tallest wire fence that we could get at Lowe’s. Kathleen picked it up that afternoon and we installed it that night.

It’s been a bit over a month now and the garden has been deer-free. Many of the plants have recovered and some are even producing new fruit. As long as the cold nights hold off long enough, we still expect to have a pretty good (though not great) harvest this season.

Lesson learned: Deer will chew through plastic fence to get to your garden. Use wire fence. There a are a few more pictures available if you’re curious.

My Latest Bood Test Results

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After more than a year of eating a lower-carb, high fat and protein diet, I got a regular blood panel as part of my annual physical. And while I’m probably not going to post the report PDF that I got via email, I will quote the summary that came in the email.

- Your blood glucose (sugar) and electrolytes are normal, and your kidney function tests are all perfect.

- Your screening test for diabetes shows that your hemoglobin A1c (a measure of average blood sugar) is in a healthy range.

- Your lipid panel (a.k.a. cholesterol) results are good. In particular, your triglyceride level is excellent; your HDL (“good cholesterol”) is superb (the higher this number, the better); and your LDL (“bad cholesterol”) is in safe territory. (Considering your low risk for coronary heart disease and stroke, we’re happy with any LDL under 160.) Based on these results, you can wait until your next physical exam before getting rechecked.

I guess there’s something to this way of eating, huh? :-)

And what is “this way of eating” about? Well, I’m not as strict as many people, but I do avoid processed foods as much as possible (including most wheat products) and try to eat locally grown/raised whole foods as much as possible. I skip the sugar and sweet stuff as much as possible (the only exception being fresh fruits).

Of course, feel free to poke around our site and read more about it.

And, in case you forgot, Kathleen had good news on her blood tests too.

More Garden Production

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While Kathleen is out of town this week (more on that later), I wandered down to the graden to see how things are doing…

Wel, the tomatoes are getting even taller (some are 8 feet now!), some strawberries were ready, a second eggplant is coming along, and our berries are starting to ripen.

Japanese Eggplant

 

Strawberries to Pick

The next 4-6 weeks should be quite a bounty of food!

More Mainstream Paleo Coverage…

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It’s always reassuring to see some more mainstream news coverage of our way of eating. KCTV5 in Kansas City did a special report recently on The Paleo Diet. There’s a video embedded on their site that’s fairly show but showcases some good success stories and endorsements.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

“You realize how much you enjoy eating fresh, natural, well-cooked food,” Fletcher said. “It’s been great!”

And:

“If you want to thrive without taking a bunch of medication and going to psychiatrist, you have to do what our ancient ancestors did. Eat that way, exercise that way and sleep that way,” he said.

For O’Keefe, the most important component of the Paleo diet is the elimination of all wheat products.

“The enemy is really processed carbs like grains,” he said.

Well said.

I suspect we’ll be seeing more and more of this as people spread their own success stories through word of mouth and on-line. Eventually maybe even the government’s “experts” will catch on.

When food doesn’t decompose, it’s not food…

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Sometimes a picture is worth 1,000 words. And when you string enough pictures together you get a video that tells the story. In this case, it’s the story of a McDonald’s hamburger and fries left out to rot for 180 days.

It never really got to the point where it started rotting.

If the bugs and bacteria don’t want to eat it, why should anyone else?

A Calorie is NOT Just A Calorie, according to new study

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It’s good to see more mainstream research coming out to reinforce what many of us already know…

Boston, Mass. – A new study published today in the Journal of American Medical Association challenges the notion that “a calorie is a calorie.” The study, led by Cara Ebbeling, PhD, associate director and David Ludwig, MD, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center Boston Children’s Hospital, finds diets that reduce the surge in blood sugar after a meal–either low-glycemic index or very-low carbohydrate–may be preferable to a low-fat diet for those trying to achieve lasting weight loss. Furthermore, the study finds that the low-glycemic index diet had similar metabolic benefits to the very low-carb diet without negative effects of stress and inflammation as seen by participants consuming the very low-carb diet.

And, surprise, surprise, they’re finding just what I’d have expected.

The study suggests that a low-glycemic load diet is more effective than conventional approaches at burning calories (and keeping energy expenditure) at a higher rate after weight loss. “We’ve found that, contrary to nutritional dogma, all calories are not created equal,” says Ludwig, also director of the Optimal Weight for Life Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Total calories burned plummeted by 300 calories on the low fat diet compared to the low carbohydrate diet, which would equal the number of calories typically burned in an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity,” he says.

Read the full news release from Boston Children’s Hospital.

What Confuses Our Sleep?

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Summer is great. We get so much daylight that it’s a great time to grow your own food and there’s ample time to enjoy outdoor activities. And, since I rarely use an alarm clock, Summer is a time that I find myself being quite productive because I get up so early in the morning. By 6:00am the Sun is starting to poke into the bedroom window, and before I’m awake and feeling refreshed (assuming I went to bed early enough the night before).

In my pre-7am reading, I came across a Ted Talk by Charles Czeisler that discusses what influences our sleep cycles and how they’ve changed over time. While the whole (short) video is worth watching, I’ll spoil it for you: artificial light and caffeine are the two things he implicates in our national “sleep epidemic.”

Kathleen wrote about this Getting Good Quality Sleep, but it’s worth reiterating. Sleep really matters, and it’s really easy to fall into poor sleep habits–especially with all the distractions available in our modern world.

Better Paleo Pizza Crust Recipe

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A few weeks ago we experimented with a Paleo Pizza Crust Recipe that used a fair amount of coconut flour as the base. While the result was good, we wanted to explore a few more options. We used Making a Gluten Free Pizza Crust as a base and made something that came out quite well. This recipe is a bit unusual, since it involved mixing 2 cups of cheese into the crust before baking it. But that addresses one of the only things we didn’t like about the first recipe–a lack of elasticity in the crust. It was a little crumbly.

The recipe we used was:

  • 2 cups shredded whole milk organic mozzarella cheese
  • 3 large organic eggs (not 2 as suggested in the original version)
  • 2 tablespoons flaxseed meal
  • 2 tablespoons coconut flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

From there it was just a matter of following the original recipe. We added all the ingredients to a large mixing bowl and mixed until they formed a nice sticky wet dough (that’s why I added the 3rd egg–it wasn’t nearly “sticky” with just 2).

We pre-heated the oven to 350 and cut a piece parchment paper to fit in the bottom of the cast iron skillet. Then we spread the dough evenly across the paper and we baked it for 15 minutes, removed it from the oven, and flipped it onto a second piece of parchment paper.

Then we baked it another 15 minutes before removing it from the oven to add some of our favorite toppings (including more cheese).

With the toppings on, put it back in the oven under the broiler and cook for 2-4 minutes (until the cheese starts to brown and bubble).

Since drafting this posting, we made the pizza a second time–with a twist. We added some fresh herbs (oregano and rosemary) to the crust mix. That punched the flavor up another notch. It’s safe to say this is one of our favorites, and we’ll probably be making it every week or so.

Enjoy!