Nothing for Breakfast

I haven't had breakfast -- any food before 11:30 a.m. -- for months.

Since August, I've been playing around with intermittent fasting (IF). This might sound bizarre to some of you, but as the Drs. Eades have pointed out, IF has been shown to have a number of benefits, including:

• Improving longevity;
• Reducing the risk of cancer and other diseases (ranging from heart disease to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's); and
• Improving insulin sensitivity and blood glucose regulation.

As reported last year in the L.A. Times:

During fasting, almost every system in the body is "turned down," [U.C. Berkeley endocrinology professor Mark] Hellerstein says. The body changes how it uses fuel. Certain hormone levels fall. Growth stops. Reproduction becomes impossible. "By the end of three weeks of fasting you are a completely different metabolic creature," he says. "It affects many, many processes -- but in a somewhat predictable way that takes you toward disease prevention."

Oddly enough, scientists don't yet know why IF produces these health benefits.

One theory is that the process produces just enough stress in cells to be good. "What our evidence suggests is that nerve cells in animals that are on dietary energy restriction are under mild stress," [Mark] Mattson [of the National Institute on Aging] says. "It's a mild stress that stimulates the production of proteins that protect the neurons against more severe stress."

But whatever the reasons, IF seems to work. And it has other practical benefits, too, like:

• Increasing growth hormone during fasting (which helps build and maintain muscle mass);
• Weight and body composition maintenance; and
• Not having to make breakfast.

I know: You think this is utter bullshit. After all, "breakfast is the most important meal of the day," right? We hear this a lot -- but has anyone come up with any science to back this up? Or do we get an earful about how you need to "eat lots of small meals a day -- starting with breakfast -- to fuel your metabolism"? Because that's a load of hooey. Studies have shown that eating small, frequent meals doesn't do anything. But can you work out in the morning in a fasted state? I do, and I'm doing just fine. IF doesn't impair exercise. If anything, it boosts fat loss.

Let's review: A consistent line of research (going all the way back to the 1940s) demonstrates that IF confer lots of health benefits. And science has also disproven the theory that constantly grazing on tiny portions of food throughout the day somehow improves health.

You know me: Based on what I'd learned, I had to give IF a try.

More after the jump...

Sous Vide Supreme

Looking for a new way of cook meat (and other stuff) at home?

M was. A full year after the paleo-lovin' Drs. Eades (of "Protein Power" fame) introduced the Sous Vide Supreme, and well after renowned food authors, foodies, journalists, tech blogs and gadget geeks alike gave the kitchen appliance a big thumbs up, M finally got us one.

Here's our brand-spanking new purchase, unboxed, on our counter, and ready to go:

So what is it?

The Sous Vide Supreme is the first standalone immersion circulator for home cooks. (There's a cheaper appliance called the Sous Vide Magic, but it only works in conjunction with certain rice cookers, and has its own pitfalls.)

As The New York Times explains, you can pretty much cook anything with the Sous Vide Supreme:

“My wife thought I was crazy to get this thing, but already she doesn’t want to eat anything else,” Mr. Cloninger said last week. “I even made a hamburger in it this morning.”

Sous vide combines the gentle, steady heat of poaching and an airtight seal, as in traditional methods of cooking in clay. “The food literally stews in its own juices: no air, no water, no evaporation,” said Wesley Genovart, the chef at Degustation, a restaurant in the East Village, who has experimented with sous-viding everything from carrots to crème brûlée.

Until now, home cooks wanting to try the method have had to improvise, with solutions from low-tech (a stockpot and a handful of ice cubes) to high (a chamber sealer and an immersion circulator, generating about $1,500 in start-up costs). But there seems to be an audience, however small, for an easier and cheaper way.

High-end restaurants have long been using this cooking method to create perfectly-cooked dishes with concentrated flavors. The French Laundry/Per Se's Thomas Keller penned a sous vide cookbook a couple years back, and has proselytizing about it for years.



And, of course, Bravo's "Top Chef" has introduced sous vide cooking into the vernacular of reality-show viewers everywhere.

What's so great about sous vide cooking?

[T]he selling point of the cooking method is the steady, low temperature, not the airless environment.

In sous vide, the cooking temperature is around the same as the serving temperature. For example, medium-rare steak is about 135 degrees in the center. In sous-vide cooking, the entire piece of meat is cooked at 135 degrees, for as long as it takes for the heat to slowly penetrate to the center. The whole steak, edge to edge to edge, reaches 135 degrees and cannot overcook, because the water temperature never goes any higher. (That said, meat can become overly tender if left too long in the bath.)

By traditional methods, the steak has to be blasted with heat from the outside, anywhere from 350 degrees (normal oven temperature) to 800 degrees (the grill at Peter Luger’s). As the heat transfer takes place, the meat changes: proteins coagulate, fibers contract, collagens loosen, liquid evaporates. By the time the center is a rosy 135 degrees, the surrounding flesh is dried out.

“About 45 percent of a rare beef loin cooked by normal methods is technically overcooked,” said Chris Young, the culinary research manager at Intellectual Ventures in Seattle, where Nathan Myhrvold, a founder of Microsoft, maintains a staff of 16 chefs and scientists to complete his long-awaited book on the science of gastronomy.

(Photo: Serious Eats)

Plus, as Serious Eats points out, you can sous vide cheap meat and it'll turn out just as tender and even more delicious than the pricey cuts:

The really expensive cuts of beef -- NY strip, rib eye, Porterhouse, T-bone, Filet (tenderloin) -- have historically been prized for their extreme tenderness, not particularly for their flavor. On the other hand, more flavorful cuts like hanger, blade, or flatiron steak are much more difficult to cook correctly -- even a tad over or undercooked, and you're left with a tough, stringy, chewy mess. But cooked properly, they can be every bit as tender as the more expensive cuts, and with more flavor to boot!

That's why those cuts are commonly referred to as "chef" cuts or "restaurant" cuts -- chefs love them because they are cheap, and with proper preparation, delicious.

Well, with a sous-vide cooker, anyone can properly cook those tricky chef cuts.

$7 per pound for a hanger steak that is just as tender and tastes much better than a $16 per pound strip steak? Yes please!

M and I have enjoyed the sous vide dishes we've been served at restaurants (most recently at Eleven Madison Park and Momofuku Ko), and I'd been wanting to attempt this cooking method since learning that you MacGyver it with a beer cooler, a meat thermometer and a bunch of Ziplock bags. The Sous Vide Supreme is pricier, but easier and less messy to use, so that's the route we chose. 

So after all that build-up, how did our first foray into sous vide cooking turn out?

Dunno yet. I took so long to clear off counter space for the Sous Vide Supreme that we ended up running out of time to make dinner with the damned thing. We'll try to give it a shot in the next day or two.

But if the results are even halfway decent, I'm pretty sure we're going to be having fun with this new toy for quite some time.

(By the way, if you're in the market for one, M bought ours from Amazon. But if you get the full-on package deal from the Sous Vide Supreme website, for $20 more, they throw in a vacuum sealer and a cookbook. We already have a FoodSaver -- which I bought to future-proof my homemade jerky -- otherwise, we probably would have gone for it.)

Check It Out: Robb Wolf's "The Paleo Solution"

I'm an unabashed fan of Robb Wolf's. Robb is, among other things, a former research biochemist, Loren Cordain disciple, powerlifting champ, unfairly excommunicated CrossFit affiliate owner, and a current owner of one of Men's Health's top 30 gyms in the country -- and in just a few years' time, he's become one of the paleo movement's biggest names and greatest assets.

For months, I've been soaking up everything I can from Cordain, Sisson, the Eades, et al., but Robb's weekly "Paleolithic Solution" podcast has been my go-to resource for all things paleo. It's incredibly informative and entertaining, with Robb (and co-host Andy Deas) answering questions from the peanut gallery.

For as long as I've been listening, Robb's been working on a book about paleo nutrition and fitness. As soon as it was available for pre-order on Amazon, I bought it. But even though the book was finally -- FINALLY -- released last Tuesday, my copy wasn't delivered until the end of last week. (With most other book purchases, I wouldn't have given a crap. But I found myself actually getting pissed every day I came home to find that "The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet" hadn't yet arrived. That's how much I was looking forward to reading Robb's book.)

I'm still reading it (and sharing with M, who's also digging it), but "The Paleo Solution" has already become my favorite book about the science behind and implementation of a paleo lifestyle. It's reader-friendly (unlike Gary Taubes' excellent but dense "Good Calories, Bad Calories"), but not too Reader's Digest-y (a quibble I have with Mark Sisson's "The Primal Blueprint," which is narratively compelling but skips over a lot of the science underpinning the paleo/primal approach).



I'll try to post a more comprehensive review once I actually finish the book, but in the meantime (if you haven't already jumped on the bandwagon), you can read an excerpt of Robb's book yourself over at Tim Ferriss' blog.

Check It Out: Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss, author of the bestselling self-help book, The 4-Hour Workweek, is full of himself -- a trait I don't appreciate in most people (besides myself), but for some reason, it totally works for Ferriss. Yes, he brags a lot (check out his book for self-glorifying anecdotes about his phenomenal successes in business, martial arts, ballroom dancing, learning Japanese, etc.), but unlike some people, he's not all talk -- he's the real deal. Here are some snippets from his Wikipedia entry:

Ferriss founded BrainQUICKEN, a San Jose-based online company that sells sports nutrition supplements. He sold the company in January 2009 to an unnamed private equity firm. He is now a full-time angel investor and has invested in the following companies: Twitter, Posterous, DailyBurn (formerly Gyminee), Reputation Defender, Foodzie, Badongo, Rescue Time, and SimpleGeo. He also acts as an advisor to StumbleUpon and Shopify, which he has alluded to in interviews with Kevin Rose are in exchange for equity.

He holds the Guinness Book of World Records' record for the most consecutive tango-spins in one minute. Ferriss and his dance partner Alicia Monti set the record live on the show Live with Regis and Kelly. Prior to his writing career, Ferriss served as an advisor to professional athletes and Olympians and was a National Chinese Kickboxing Champion, a title he won through a process of shoving opponents out of the ring for which he was nicknamed "sumo." In 2008, he won Wired Magazine's "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time" prize and was named one of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Business People of 2007." Ferriss has also spoken at the EG Conference.

His show "Trial By Fire" aired on the History Channel in December 2008. In the show, Ferriss had one week to attempt to learn a skill normally learned over the course of many years and in the pilot episode he practiced the Japanese art of horseback archery, Yabusame. 

And the guy's only 33. God, I'm a slacker.

I picked up Ferriss' book some time ago and have been slowly adopting some of his productivity tips (using Evernote to organize my cluttered life, for example). But I only recently started checking out his blog, which contains some useful information about personal fitness and nutrition. For example:

• Preeminent kettlement guru Pavel Tsatsouline posted a guest article on Ferriss' blog about maximizing gains and efficiency in powerlifting:

• Ferriss has also invited Dr. Michael Eades to discuss why calorie-counting is a pseudo-science, and how counting carbs is the key. (One of the reasons I'm a fan of Ferriss is that he's solidly in the Gary Taubes low-carb camp.)

• I'm a terrible swimmer, so it was eye-opening to read about how Ferriss quickly (in ten days!) became a strong swimmer after a lifetime of being afraid of the water.

• Ferriss shares how he gained 34 pounds of muscle in 4 weeks using something he calls "Four-Hour Fitness."

• He writes about how to figure out what the labeling on meat products really mean.

• Ferriss is into Vibram FiveFingers.

• And most importantly, he describes how to properly "peel" a hard-boiled egg: