"Put A Little South On Your Mouth"

I present to you Paula Deen's butter-flavored lip balm.

That is all.

[Source]

What About Dairy?

"OH MY GAWD -- YOU STILL EAT DAIRY?!? WTF?!? HOW DARE YOU CALL YOURSELVES "PALEO"! CAVEMEN DIDN'T DRINK COW'S MILK, YOU BLASPHEMERS! [*HYSTERICAL SOBBING*]"

I'm exaggerating (a little). But we've gotten a couple of testy emails from hyper-orthodox Paleo readers who check out M's site and freak out over the trace amounts of dairy that remain in our diets. To them, I have this to say:

Please chill out.

It's been a long time since I last wrote at length about milk. And in that time, our dairy consumption has dramatically decreased. Cutting out grains and added sugar already meant getting rid of many of our favorite dairy-delivery vehicles, like breakfast cereals, pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, frozen yogurt and ice cream. We stopped buying big tubs of fresh mozzerella di bufala, and I no longer devour huge plates of cheese. I don't drink milk (and haven't since I was a kid), and I take my coffee black. And M managed to abstain from dairy altogether during her month on the Whole30.

But we do still eat a small amount of dairy from time to time, including pastured butter, ghee, and a bit of cheese and full-fat Greek yogurt. Frankly, this is a personal choice. We're not saying that you ought to follow our example, or that cow juice is super-awesome for you. We're continuing to learn from others about the physiological effects of the stuff, and it's very possible that one day, we'll decide to eliminate all dairy from our diet. But given that we continue to receive questions about why bovine dairy still pops up in M's recipes, I thought I'd explain our current thinking behind the decision not to go cold-turkey.

In a nutshell:

• We don't care that cavepeople didn't drink cow's milk.
• There are proposed mechanisms that suggest that cow dairy is bad for you.
• But there's still a lack of consensus -- even within Paleo circles -- about whether full-fat dairy actually poses health risks to folks without leaky gut or other autoimmune issues.
• Plus, on the whole, there may actually be a net benefit to eating some high-quality, full-fat dairy.
• Still, to be on the safe side, we've cut out most dairy -- but we've made room for certain exceptions.

Let's take these one by one (after the jump)...

Link Dump: Thanksgiving Edition

It's been a long time since I served up a bunch of links -- so here goes:

• Cooking with butter this Thanksgiving? Wondering if it’s Paleo-approved? The Whole 9 folks weigh in.

• We still eat butter, by the way. We get the grassfed stuff -- KerryGold – from Trader Joe’s. Also: organic ghee from Purity Farms.

• You know your pain-in-the-butt relatives are going to ask you over Thanksgiving dinner why you’re risking your health by eating saturated fats instead of lowfat items like bread and rice. Point them to this meta-analysis, which examined 21 studies involving more than a third of a million subjects. It concluded that there is no link between saturated fat intake and increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

• These researchers also pointed out that replacing saturated fat in your diet with carbs causes the formation of small, dense LDL particles – bad news! Thus, “dietary efforts to improve the increasing burden of [cardiovascular disease] risk associated with atherogenic dyslipidemia should primarily emphasize the limitation of refined carbohydrate intakes and a reduction in excess adiposity."

• Really. Throw around terms like “atherogenic dyslipidemia” at the dinner table. It’ll shut everyone up.

• And if some crazy uncle asks, tell him that contrary to reports, saturated fat won't mess up your sperm count. (Especially if you’re female.)

• Do watch your sugar and carb intake, though. According to the Healthy Skeptic, “normal” fasting blood sugar isn’t what your doctor says it is.

• But frankly, “[y]our post-meal blood sugars and A1c levels are more important” than your fasting blood sugar level. So try not to eat a doughnut-stuffed turkey, brined in Dunkin’ Donuts coolattas and served with coffee gravy and mashed hash browns.

• Another question you might be asked between bites of ham by your God-fearing family and friends: How can a good Christian go Paleo? Jimmy Moore surveyed the big names in caveman eating -- take a look and see which answer resonates best with you. (My two cents? You’re not going to fry in hell for eating Paleo. There are other, much better reasons to cast you into eternal damnation, like the fact that you secretly watched that porn clip of Maren from P90X.)

Cavemen for Christ?

• Speaking of Jimmy, he recently posted an interview with Mat Lelonde, hero to all science-minded low-carb Paleo eaters. Listen to it here.

• Try to enjoy yourself this Thanksgiving, and don’t spend the long weekend severely restricting your caloric intake and exercising like a maniac. Really – it's not good for you.

• Finally, when you're ready to work off Thursday's dinner, check out this old but super-awesome interview with Starting Strength’s Mark Rippetoe about the best way to get in shape. It’s only ten minutes long, but it’s chock-full of great fitness advice, such as: “Learn how to squat. It works more muscles than any other exercise, it’s harder, it’s a longer range of motion, and it will make more difference in your appearance over a shorter period of time than any single thing you can do. You have to learn how to squat correctly. Correctly is below parallel.”

Listen to it here:

(Photo: Tammy Green)