Discerning Between Food Produce & Feed Products

Continuing from my last post:

Delusion Damage revealed his strategy for finding food to eat at odd hours while on the road:

I have a few guidelines when I travel:

- when it's 2am and fast food is the only option, choose Subway above any other fast food place

- when I have to carry food with me and survive on it (ex. overnight flight where food isn't served for 8 hours but I'm awake and hungry because I'm coming from a different time zone)
choice #1 is hard rye bread
if that's not available,
choice #2 is trail mix
if that's not available,
choice #3 is granola/protein bars

I think this sort of strategy is commonplace amongst the normal person who at least understands that vending machine snack food like chips, crackers and candy bars are junk, so you have to try and make the best of the situation when hungry and faced with limited options.

Unfortunately, while these options DD lists are marginally better than say potato chips or chocolate bars...they're not much better, and will in the long run have the same effect as the kind of stuff most people readily recognize as junk food: short term satiation that leads to stronger hunger later (which could also lead to binging on even more junk food), and essentially the same bad effects on your health.

And it all gets back to the theme of DD's blog & book - nearly everything you've been told about food and diet is a lie. The most common lies that are used to misdirect people into making choices favoring feed products over food produce are: Saturated fat are cholesterol raising and bad for your heart, that too much meat (especially red meat) will cause cancer, that plant based foods are healthiest, and that fiber is absolutely vital to having a healthy digestive system. As I quoted yesterday:

The State’s primary tactic in mind control is FEAR...

...FEAR of saturated fat. FEAR of red meat. FEAR of salt. FEAR of the sun. FEAR of not getting enough “fiber” in your diet.

Some of these things I've just mentioned are based on half-truths - some plant based foods are certainly healthy for you, and some kinds of fiber are also good for your digestion...but other plant-based foods are literal poison and some forms of 'fiber' can downright destroy your digestive system. Your biggest concerns in eating a healthy diet should be to eat plenty of animal based fats and proteins, eating plenty of vegetables, some fruits (treat fruit as a dessert after having eaten a full meal of protein and fat...don't eat fruit as a meal unto itself,) and avoiding grain and flour products as much as possible.

So let's start off with what I believe is the most important factor one should realize is the biggest delusion promoted by today's feed product industry - I've come to the belief that the single most important thing anyone should do when trying to discern whether any kind of food you eat is a real food produce item or an industrially manufactured feed product, is to determine the type of fat.

The most important thing to understand here is this: the oils/fats that as healthy (especially "Heart Healthy") are not, and the oils/fats that we are all warned to avoid or minimize are the fats that are best for your health and well-being.

The most common fat found in feed products is Polyunsaturated vegetable/grain/seed oils high in linoleic acid, are typically rancid from the production process which involves very high heat and the use of industrial solvents like hexane to extract as much oil from the plant matter as possible.

Canola. Cottonseed. Sunflower. Safflower. Soybean. Corn. Peanut.

These industrially produced oils are the primary culprits for why the Standard American Diet is dramatically imbalanced in terms of Omega fatty acids. From a cellular level, your body needs a 1:1 ratio of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids to function properly. The problem is that all of these "vegetable" oils have a very high Omega 6 (n6) fatty acid content and no Omega 3 (n3) fatty acids.

In their natural state, most plant material has both n6 and n3 fatty acids in varying ratios...but n3 are fragile, and the heat and solvent extraction methods destroys the n3 fatty acids, while the n6 is not affected.

So if you look at a bag of potato chips or your bag of trail mix (or even your granola bar), you will typically find one or more of these aforementioned oils in the ingredients. This is the primary problem with most processed snack foods (but the establishment would have you believe it's the salt. It's not.)

But even worse than these n6 unbalanced, rancid oils, are the partially hydrogenated oils, aka "trans fats." The most common place you will find this literal poison is in baked goods (in which the bakers/manufacturer's substitute margarine for butter in the recipes) and deep fried foods; from fast food, to deli's to, high-end restaurants. This is because the cheapest deep frying oil that lasts the longest in the deep fat fryers without needing to be changed often is partially hydrogenated soybean ("vegetable") oil.






Most people already have the idea that "deep fried" foods are bad for you, so I don't have to go much further on that topic, other than to say that deep frying can be a perfectly tasty and healthy food choice - if you use a healthy oil to deep fry with (coconut oil, lard or tallow).

But the real subversion is the use of margarine (partially hydrogenated soybean oil) in all baked products. Hamburger buns, hot dog buns, sandwich bread, crackers, cookies, pie crusts, pizza crusts, flour tortillas...the vast majority of these products you'll find at restaurants, food stands, convenience stores and delis. Why? Because it's cheaper, and it resists spoilage far better than real food made with natural fats. A large bag of partially-hydrogenated buns at a fast food restaurant or a hot dog stand that is vacuum sealed, can last for months without spoilage.

The truly healthy fats/oils, are the ones most demonized by the establishment - the saturated fats. Butter. Lard. Tallow. Coconut oil. I could go on and on about this, but let me just put two reference links here if any reader is interested in digging into the details - Know Your Fats and The Queen of Fats (pdf).

So why are fats the most important consideration with regards to having strategies for trying to eat healthy while traveling? Short answer: fat is the key to satiety.

Healthy fats contain vital, nourishing fat soluble vitamins such as D, A and K. These are substances your body needs to survive and thrive. This is why your body's digestive signalling system is cued to the FAT in your food. Natural fats slows down your digestion, leaves you feeling full longer, and supplies your body with needed nutrition for proper function. This is why you can eat a meal of bacon and eggs, and you can eat as much as you'd like until you feel full. At that point, you can easily stop and feel pleasantly satiated.

Industrial oils in most feed products? They don't contain any of the vital fat soluble vitamins or fatty acids, so they don't trigger your satiation signaling or that "feeling full" response properly. This is why one can sit down with a bag or box of "fat free" or "low cholesterol" chips, cookies or crackers, and eat the whole thing in a single sitting and still feel hungry - or worse, temporarily "stuffed" almost to the point of nausea...but hungry again within an hour or so. This is because your stomach is full, but your body is still starving for the nutrients that are missing from the feed products.

So, to come up with a strategy for dealing with hunger while traveling, a complete understanding of fats and how they play a role in digestion and satiation is the primary consideration in choosing your food. While composing this post, I considered just writing this next section...but I believe understanding fats is too vital to skip over.

So, given the differences in fat content and quality, what are the strategies to use when traveling?

I think we have 3 strategies here, best simplified into these concepts: the 80/20 principle, Intermittent Fasting, and Making Do.

The 80/20 Principle

This comes from Mark Sisson over at Mark's Daily Apple. The idea is that a person who eats wholesome, healthy foods 80% of the time will be able to eat the occasional splurge on junk foods without suffering much (if at all) from bad health effects. For the person who eats a healthy diet in day to day life, the occasional feast of junk food while on a short travel trip won't really hurt. This is also a good principle to follow when you have social/familial obligations that supersede being a militant diet nazi - aka screw dietary perfection when your at your sister's wedding. Just shut up and eat the cake. Or...if you're a dinner guest of someone you care about, just eat what you're served to be polite. Obviously, for someone with DD's situation of constant traveling, this approach could quickly lead to a 60/40 or 50/50 ratio of junk food, so it's not really relevant to his concerns as a long term strategy here.

Intermittent Fasting

This is my favored solution here, and it is the reason why I focused the first part of this piece so much on Fat. Because natural, healthy sources of saturated fats are so satiating over the long term, a diet rich in these fats will make fasting relatively easy. The best explanation I've found is at blogger J. Stanton at gnolls.org. His advice can be summed up in a single phrase: Eat Like A Predator, Not Like Prey:

Predators gorge and fast; prey grazes.

Rephrased for modern humans: predators eat meals, prey grazes on snacks. This means you need to eat meals which will carry you through to your next meal, but that won’t make you tired or sleepy.

Think about predators like Lions and Tigers. They catch some grazing ruminant, gorge themselves, than lie around, mate, sunbathe, and play...until they get hungry again - many hours later. Than it's time to go hunting again - and they are hunting hungry.

When you observe someone (or yourself) who is dependent on carbohydrates and plant foods (and most likely believe the lies regarding meat, saturated fats, fiber, etc.), and they often have to eat every two to three hours to keep their energy levels up, because their blood sugars are unstable. People who experience this, are on a roller coaster ride of dramatically fluctuating energy levels. These are the folks who couldn't conceive of taking a 6 hour plane ride without eating. The idea of fasting is terrifying. That's because they eat like grazers.

What I would do if faced with the impending 8-10 hour long plane ride? I would eat a massive meal just prior to going to the airport, full of fats and proteins. Bacon, eggs, sausage, all fried in butter. Or Steak and eggs with a baked potato smothered in butter, bacon bits and sour cream. Eating a massive meal focused primarily on proteins and fats can leave you satiated for quite a long time.

And this is not just some theoretical suggestion I'm making here. I've done it. I flew from Dublin, Ireland to Los Angeles. I did not eat the crap-in-a-box meal they served, nor did I eat the snack foods they provided on the in-flight service. I didn't go to the vending machines or food stands at the L.A. airport while waiting to connect to my Honolulu flight either. I just ate a large steak dinner in Dublin prior to going to the airport.

That was roughly an 18 hour fast for me. Of course, when I got home I was ravenous and I ate like a beast...but the point is, I didn't HAVE to break down and buy some crap from a vending machine or airport fast food joint. And as hungry as I got, I never got that "shaky" sick feeling, grazers stuck on the blood sugar roller coaster get. I didn't even start to feel hungry until about an hour into the flight back to Hawaii, and I'll admit that the food service on the L.A. to Honolulu flight was tempting...but it was not an uncontrollable hunger at that point.

I do need to state a caveat here: intermittent fasting will only be a viable option if you already eat a nutrient-dense diet of real food and are used to deriving your energy from animal meat and fat. If you are a person who starts to feel sick and "shaky" after only a couple of hours of having eaten, fasting is obviously not an option for you.


Making Do

If you must eat at a restaurant, convenience store or food stand, but you want to avoid the worst of industrially manufactured feed products than try to pick your poison.

- Order pizza and eat the toppings and not the crust.

- Order hot dogs or hamburgers and eat everything but the buns.

- Taco salads with those deep fried tortilla shells? Just don't eat the shell. Order extra meat and sour cream to help fill you up.

- When ordering meals at fast food joints, skip the value meals (you don't want to eat the fries made with hydrogenated soybean or canola oil, and you don't want to drink the high fructose corn syrup laden soda either). Better to order two bacon cheese burgers and eat them without the buns. Beef, bacon, cheese, onions, tomatoes and lettuce. Think of it as a cheeseburger salad.

- If you're eating at sit down restaurants that are a little more upscale, most offer the option to substitute steamed vegetables in the place of fries. Ask for a side of butter and smother your vegetables with it. Far more satiating, and the fat will help you absorb the nutrients from the vegetables as well. Avoid anything deep fried at a restaurant. Also, if you're not overweight or dealing with other digestive issues, don't worry about carbohydrates like rice or potatoes. Most starchy vegetable carbs are fine in combination with plenty of fat and protein.

- Nuts can be a good, satiating source of fat and protein, but most trail mix or nuts sold in packages and vending machines are fried in crap oil. Stick to roasted nuts. And definitely get the salted varieties...they taste better, and salt is not the health hazard it's been demonized to be.

- Avoid low fat and fat free dairy...most of those substitute sugar to make them palatable. Embrace full-fat cheeses, yogurts etc., with the knowledge that full fat foods are not only not bad for you, but downright good.

As for portable foods that you can pack for yourself - again, focus on the proteins and fats. Beef jerky, string cheese, roasted nuts (make your own trail mix), hard boiled eggs. Another option is preserved meats like pepperoni and salami. Now meats preserved with nitrates/nitrites are somewhat controversial...I've seen arguments going both ways. I used to try and avoid any meats with nitrates or nitrites listed on the ingredients. But I was referred to the following pubmed abstract from Dr. Michael Eades blog: Food sources of nitrates and nitrites: the physiologic context for potential health benefits.

Apparently many vegetables and some fruits are rich in nitrates and nitrites, so I'm not longer concerned about this preservative. I buy sausages, bacon and other processed meats - as long as they don't contain other additives like MSG, corn syrups (dextrose, maltodextrin, etc.) and other such garbage.

In summary, the important thing to take away from all this, is to understand which foods provide long term satiation and nourishment, and which feed products actually don't do, and leave your body still starving for nutrition.

Food Delusions

Excellent blogger Delusion Damage commented on my last post regarding my "special diet" and my n=1 experience in noting that my skin's tolerance to sun exposure has improved dramatically since I quit eating the S.A.D. (Standard American Diet).

I don't consider my diet a "special diet" but rather learning to recognize and differentiate between real food and food products. I eat real food and avoid or limit the food products of corporate agriculture and industrialized mass production as much as possible.

My response to DD was the following: "I'm surprised that a guy like you who's blogged extensively about recognizing the lies of society designed to mislead us all hasn't taken note with regards to food"

Delusion Damage responded with the following:

I travel light. I can't cart around much real (that is, perishable) food. I have to eat at whatever fast food joint is open at 1 a.m. at the airport. I can't cook a healthy meal in a hotel room where the equipment consists of two plastic cups and a single-serving packet of instant coffee (which I don't drink). I can't even peel a fruit because the TSA takes away all my knives.

I don't write about food because I don't know much about food. I don't know much about food because I focus on learning about things I can do something about.

I hope I can help Delusion Damage here and focus on one of the things he most certainly can do something about.

It's true that no individual can change the big picture of our current unnatural food production system...but you can certainly control what you ingest and understand the differences and how they affect you. The issues surrounding food is the primary delusion damage inflicted on the citizenry of our Brave New World Order.

Delusion Damage recently wrote a great post that hit on a similar theme to the blog posting I've written about in the past: Farming People

People are farm animals. They are being farmed. From breeding to raising to milking to slaughter and packaging for consumption, every step of the human-farming process is streamlined to yield maximum profits to the farm.

Oh yes, DD. And one of the primary ways in which our current farm operates, is to ensure that the Sheeple are ON FEED. As I commented over at Richard Nikoley's:

The State’s primary tactic in mind control is FEAR. And the worst fear they’ve instilled in we the sheeple, is the fear of not having the State around to protect us.

This fear leaves most utterly incapable of recognizing that the greatest threat to their health and well being is in fact the very same State they are so afraid of even contemplating the idea of living without.

FEAR of saturated fat. FEAR of red meat. FEAR of salt. FEAR of the sun. FEAR of not getting enough “fiber” in your diet.

Is this not what this entire “primal/paleo” living is all about? Discovering that the fears of these things are nothing more than lies promulgated by the financial interests in the government, media, establishment and corporations who want everyone to buy and eat PRODUCTS, not PRODUCE. And after a lifetime of eating PRODUCTS, your sickness will than turn you into a revenue stream for the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance complex to keep you drugged up and unhealthy until your money runs out and you die.

Primal living is about emulating the wild animals who live free. The State is all about herding us and domesticating us into collective herds and keeping us ON FEED so that we can be harvested of as much value as possible before we die.

Our current society is a metaphorical feedlot, with the managers of this lot giving us feed, medication and keeping us confined so as to fatten us all for slaughter. There primary means of confinement is not literal barbed wire or fencing…but fear in our minds, inculcated by a culture shaped through mass media propaganda and educational indoctrination curriculum.

The fear of anarchy, is the fear of feedlot cattle afraid of life on the open range.

Like many folks who start to gain weight and get out of shape as we get older, I came across the low-carb movement on teh interwebz, and discovered that yes, indeed, low carb dieting resolved my expanding waistline issues quite nicely.

But it was the "paleo" blogosphere and the Weston A. Price foundation who really got me to change my personal dietary paradigm and begin to change my focus on the foods I eat and the foods I try my hardest to avoid. In short, I learned the truth about our industrial mono-crop agriculture system and the endless array of products they produce that are designed to appeal to our tastebuds and have near indefinite shelf life so as to extract maximum profitability and realize economies of scale through mass production manufacturing.

These feed products are not real food. They do not nourish and strengthen the body. They merely delude the body into thinking you're eating real food, when in fact it just damages your body. To learn the difference, you're first step is to learn to differentiate between PRODUCTS and PRODUCE.

My next post (when I can get to it...got a lot on my plate at the present,) will cover strategies to specifically address DD's dilemma - how to avoid Feed Products while on the road.

For You, Oh Glittering Sun

'Ia 'oe e ka la, e alohi nei...

...Mana welelau a o ka honua

For you, oh glittering sun...

...there, on the summit of the world

A Farewell to the Summer Sun

Some of you may be wondering what the hell this posting is about.

It's about one of my newly acquired, favorite past times - the best way to dose up on your vitamin D.

Nude sunbathing.

It seems to me that our species is the only terrestrial species for which many actively avoids the mid-day sun, or if they do go out in it, most cover up or slather on all sorts of chemical concoctions to "protect" the skin from the sun.

Every morning, here in Hawaii, whenever the local TV newscast starts off it's weather segment predicting a sun drenched day, it's always accompanied with an admonishment to "put on the sun block, it's gonna be a hot one today!"

Yet, if you listen to the array of advice put forth in the mainstream mass media, you get conflicting messages regarding vitamin D and it's role in cancer, and the role of sun exposure and Vitamin D levels, and the never ending sales pitch to use sunscreen whenever you head outdoors.

The standard advice is that if at all possible, cover up with clothes and sunglasses, wide brim hats, and above all else, avoid the sun between 10:00am - 4:00pm - the time of day when the sun is directly overhead and at it's most intense exposure. Look at the very first suggestion from the American Cancer Society's page on Skin Cancer Prevention Activities:

Limit the amount of time spent in direct sun when the sun’s rays are most intense, generally from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Ah well, we all know the conventional wisdom promulgated by the likes of the American Cancer Society is nothing more than lies designed to get us to become unhealthy so we can than become revenue streams for the medical/pharmaceutical/insurance complex, right? I mean, think about it....Vitamin D deficiency is related to a whole host of illnesses, including nearly all forms of cancer - but the American Cancer Society advises everyone to get out of the sun from 10am - 4pm daily - the only time of day in which the sun is at the right angle so you you can actually get enough UVB rays for your skin to produce your badly needed vitamin D!

Gee...you think the American Cancer Society has a vested interest in making sure cancer is a problem that is never solved so that they will have a perpetual reason to exist?

Nah....couldn't be.

Look at all the pictures of all the animals above...all are sunbathing in the mid-day sun. Think they intuitively or instinctively know something many of us do not?

To put this all simply: Vitamin D is one of the most important substances your body needs.

You only produce it when your skin is exposed to UVB sunlight rays. The sun generally emits two spectrum of ultraviolet light - UVA and UVB. UVB only reaches those in it's direct line of exposure - mid-day, that 10am-4pm window. UVA is ambient, penetrates cloudcover, and is the UV responsible for causing sun burns. You're exposed to UVA anytime you're outdoors and the sun is in the sky, though early dawn and late dusk, it is minimal. UVA is why you can get sunburned on a cloudy day, or if you're wearing a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses, and your face still gets burned when your on the water or snow. UVA can be reflected and still burn you from long time exposure to it.

Another important factor to consider is that sunscreen and sunblock may prevent you from getting burned from long exposure to the sun...but it also blocks your skins ability to produce Vitamin D from UVB exposure.

So what was that advice again? Avoid sun exposure between the hours of 10am to 4pm, but if you must go out during that time, make sure you cover up and slather on sunscreen.

Follow this advice religiously, and you too can become a beneficiary of the cancer industries services when you're older!

Some people have jokingly said that whatever Doctor's and conventional wisdom recommends, you should do the exact opposite, and rest assured, you'll be better off for it. In terms of sun "safety" I think this advice may have merit.

Prior to this summer, I had been taking liquid Vitamin D3 capsules on a daily basis. After exhausting another bottle, while I was at the store contemplating another $20 bottle of D3, I thought to myself "Why am I paying for this when I live in Hawaii, where the latitude means I can get it for free year round? So I passed on the bottle of D3 and resolved to begin a sun bathing regimen.

Here's my "Vitamin D-for-free" strategy:

- At the beginning of this summer (around May), I began to deliberately sun bathe around 12 noon without any sun screen or clothing, for about 15 minutes front and back. It helps that I live in a rural area and do not have neighbors who can see my yard...but if you're an exhibitionist, than go for it!

- After a couple of sun bathing sessions, I gradually increased the time I stay out in the sun - from 15 minutes, I began to stay out for 20, than 25, so on and so forth. I can currently sun bathe for about 2 hours in the mid-day sun without sunscreen and not get burned. Tolerance to the sun takes time to build up, but if you do it right, you'll develop a nice tan and not get burned at all. I get comments on my tan from people all the time now.

- If I do have to spend a long time in the sun (like when I pick up some extra blue collar side work, or go to an all day event at the beach), I will cover up with clothes and a wide brimmed hat and sun glasses for the majority of the day - but if I'm able to, I'll take off the hat, sunglasses and shirt around noon and expose my skin to the sun while working for about an hour and than cover it all up again for the rest of the day. My co-workers think I'm crazy, as they're slathering on the sunscreen and keeping covered all day long.

- If I'm at the beach for say a picnic or barbecue with family and friends, I'll stay covered and in the shade, and only venture out into the sun to jump in the water for a swim or play a game, than head right back for the shade when I'm done with the activity.

- If I'm going surfing or diving or some other activity that has me in the water for hours, I'll usually either go at dawn or dusk (in other words, actually follow the conventional wisdom and avoid the 10-4 window). That way I don't need to use sunscreen and still avoid getting burned. I can honestly say that this is the first time in my entire life living in Hawaii in which I did not get sunburned or had peeling skin during the summer months, and I have yet to even use a single dab of sunscreen.

- Diet plays a huge role in developing sun tolerance as well. Prior to cutting glutenous grains and industrial vegetable oils out of my diet and dramatically reducing my sugar intake while increasing the saturated fats, I would get sunburned within 15 - 20 minutes of of mid day sun exposure. Now, even if I do happen to stay out in the sun a little too long, I may turn red...but within 12 hours, the redness fades and my tan is darker, and I don't have the pain of a sunburn, nor does my skin peel. When I used to eat SAD, redness meant days of pain and eventual peeling for sure.

- One of the things I've always wanted to acquire, was a hot tub. I'm frequently sore and bruised all over my body from my martial arts training regimen. I've often longingly thought of sinking into a hot tub to relax my sore muscles many a night after my classes. I have noticed lately though that about an hour after sun bathing, my previously sore muscles feel relaxed and rejuvenated...as if I had been in a hot tub, or I just had a deep-tissue massage. So I googled the other day...sure enough, Vitamin D levels and muscle soreness, injury recovery, cramping and body building definitely appear to be related!

Dang. Seems like all the other terrestrial species on the planet who sunbathe at mid day may be on to something...why waste money on things like sunscreen, massages and such, when all you need to do is sunbathe on a regular basis? In these tough economic times, the Sun is one of the best ways to cut your healthcare costs!

I still want a hot tub though.