Sweet Poison

The New York Times Magazine just published a lengthy write-up by Gary Taubes about the long-term toxicity of eating sugar and high fructose corn syrup. (And as a special treat for all you Robert Lustig groupies, he's prominently featured in the article.)

Taubes argues that sugar doesn't just make you fat, insulin resistant and diabetic -- it may also promote cancer growth:

As it was explained to me by Craig Thompson, who has done much of this research and is now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the cells of many human cancers come to depend on insulin to provide the fuel (blood sugar) and materials they need to grow and multiply. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor (and related growth factors) also provide the signal, in effect, to do it. The more insulin, the better they do...

“I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet and eat as little as I possibly can,” Thompson told me, “because I believe ultimately it’s something I can do to decrease my risk of cancer.” [The director of Harvard Medical School's cancer center, Lewis] Cantley put it this way: “Sugar scares me.”

Me, too.

[Source]

[Update 4/15/11: Who's been keeping the lid on the evils of sugar? The lobbyists, of course.]

Grant Achatz on Terry Gross

A few years ago -- back before we turned into big Paleo nerds -- M and I celebrated an anniversary at Alinea, a damned fine restaurant. The food was awesome in a look-ma-no-hands! molecular gastronomy kind of way, featuring unexpected twists, textures, and flavor combinations with every bite.

But just a week or so after our meal, Alinea's young chef/owner, Grant Achatz, learned that he had been stricken with cancer. And not just cancer, but cancer of the tongue. The doctors recommended that he undergo surgery to remove most of his tongue and part of his mandible, which would've rendered the then-33-year-old chef of arguably the best restaurant in North America unable to taste food ever again -- and even then, he only had a 50 percent shot to live past the grand old age of 35. It was almost Shakespearean.

Ultimately, Achatz chose an experimental treatment that preserved his tongue, but required radiation that burned and peeled off his taste buds. It wasn't clear if he'd ever taste anything again.

Today, Achatz was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air (to promote his book, cookbook, and new restaurant). His story is engrossing, harrowing, and uplifting, and foodies of all stripes should definitely give it a listen. Paleo or not, we should all share this guy's intense appreciation for flavors and food.

Double the Meat, Hold the Bun

I may have given up my pizza habit, but to compensate, my burger intake has ramped up significantly since going Paleo. Back in our pre-enlightenment days, we considered burgers to be the devil's (delicious) handiwork, and ate 'em sparingly. After all, red meat causes cancer, right? And saturated fat is always EEEE-vil, right?

Not so much. So now, we're all about burgers. (Without the buns, of course.) Recent favorites include:

The Double Farmhouse Burger (beef patties, ham, cheese, mixed greens and a fried egg -- plus extra bacon, slaw, mustard and sauerkraut) @ Prather Ranch’s stand at the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer’s Market:

Double Classic Burger (grass-fed beef patties, butter lettuce, onions, tomato, and house-made pickles, plus avocado and a fried egg) @ Roam Artisan Burgers:

Protein-Style Triple Meat Burger (three beef patties, tomato, mustard and a whole-grilled onion slice wrapped in lettuce) @ In-N-Out:

Homemade Lamb Burger (grass-fed lamb patties topped with onions, mushrooms, a fried egg and homemade guacamole) @ our house:

Bunless ShackBurger (with tomato, lettuce, onions and cheese) @ Shake Shack (the one in Madison Square Park):

Buffalo Burger (bison patty with cheddar, avocado, and a fried egg -- not pictured here) @ Burger Bar:

(A Buffalo Burger with different toppings -- Photo: A. Jackson)

Tootsie’s Burger (beef, pork & veal patty with mozzarella and caramelized onions) @ Tootsie’s:

Burger in a Bowl (beef patty, Tillamook cheddar, sautéed onions and mushrooms, roasted red peppers, egg, tomatoes and avocado) @ The Counter:

And the latest addition to the list:

Today, I treated myself to a custom double Durham Ranch elk burger at Roam, consisting of two elk patties wrapped in butter lettuce and topped with onions, tomatoes, house-made pickles and mustard. I also added avocado and bacon for good measure. By substituting the elk for beef, doubling the meat, and throwing on a bunch of extra toppings, you, too, can transform a simple $6 Roam Classic Burger into a lip-smackingly delicious $16 monstrosity. (In the alternative, order some elk patties from Durham Ranch online and concoct your own beast.)

Holy moly, this was good.

Hump Day Link Dump

Enjoy.

• Regis Philbin shirtless: Not even close to being as bad as you think.

• Foxhunting is so 2005. If you want to hang with the cool kids, hunt humans.

• The Captain Morgan workout video isn’t nearly as funny as: (1) it thinks it is, or (2) the actual P90X videos it's parodying.

• Looks like there’s a correlation between Wal-Mart store openings and people getting fat(ter).

• Speed up the earth’s rotation and you’ll get fat and uninhibited. And if you’re already fat and uninhibited, you’ll probably become more so.

• Is dietary fat at the root of breast cancer? Or sugar? Denise Minger breaks it down.

• Not a surprise to us barefoot fanatics, but orthotics may not be the solution after all.

• Don't be a smug vegan. (Be a smug caveman instead.)

• I prefer this subway video to this subway video.

• Shocking: The L.A. Times reports that Cocoa Krispies aren't actually healthy for your kids.

• Remember the baby-swingers? Here’s an interview with one.

Doing Stupid Things Faster, With More Energy

I'm not exactly a coffee fiend, but I do enjoy a cup or two a day. (You know how much I like cold-brewed coffee.)

And although I tried quitting a while back, it didn't take. So now, I'm on a mission to justify my daily caffeine intake.

So here's a non-exhaustive list of the benefits of caffeine:

• It eases asthma symptoms.
• It may protect against dementia.
• It's associated with lowered risk of Parkinson's.
• It may reduce the risk of certain cancers and diabetes.
• It boosts short-term recall.
• It's tasty.
• It keeps you awake.
• And most importantly for athletic performance: It's ergogenic, it soothes the pain of intense exercise, and taken post-workout, it can enhance subsequent physical performance.

The drawbacks?

Well, among other things, it can make you kill people. (Allegedly.)

Don't overdo it and murder your spouse, but some reasonable coffee consumption appears to be A-OK (though my two favorite Paleo gurus, Robb Wolf and Mat Lalonde, seem to be at odds on this point).

No Shortage of Obese Binge-Drinking Women in the U.S.

According to news reports, American women are in a state of "unsatisfactory" health.

More women are binge drinking, saying they downed five or more drinks at a single occasion in the past month, and fewer are being screened for cervical cancer. Over all, more women are obese, diabetic and hypertensive than just a few years ago, and more are testing positive for chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease linked to infertility.

In other words, women are getting to be just as drunk, fat, and STD-ridden as men.

(Source: New York Times, Gawker)

The Diseases of Civilization

I enjoyed this essay by Kevin Patterson in Maisonneuve, which lends support to Paleo/Primal approaches to nutrition, and also echoes points raised in Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories." (Taubes, by the way, has a new book out next month -- "Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It" -- his long-awaited follow-up for laymen that focuses less on the science of metabolic pathways and more on practical approaches to weight maintenance.)

The gist of Taubes' argument, which Patterson reinforces: Pre-agricultural societies -- even those that subsisted primarily on dietary fat -- didn't develop diseases of metabolic derangement like diabetes, obesity and cancer until they were introduced to all the crap (read: sugar, refined carbohydrates, etc.) offered by Western civilization.

[W]e talked about diabetes among the Pacific Islanders. I told him that the world’s highest prevalence was in Nauru, west of Samoa. Essentially one huge guano deposit, the island has been strip-mined until every vestige of the traditional fishing and taro economy vanished beneath seacans full of Spam, pornography, beer and television sets. Fifty percent of adults have frank diabetes. Among the oldest, an incredible 78 percent. This in a people who, prior to World War II, were lithe fishermen and farmers among whom the disease was unknown. Rule number one: don’t sell your island out from underneath your own feet.

The same process is underway across the Pacific, where the most acculturated islands have the highest rates of obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes. In 2001 I worked in Saipan, which is American soil in the Northern Marianas. The indigenous Chamorro, numbering just over sixty-two thousand, were in an awful state. The dialysis population, all of whose kidneys had failed due to diabetes, was growing at 18 percent per year—doubling every three and half years. The miracle of compound interest would have half the population on dialysis within a generation or two. (The other half, presumably, would find thriving careers as nephrologists.) 

These are the same people Spaniards described as swimming through the ocean like seals to meet their ships, climbing aboard glistening and smiling. Here, and in narratives by other European Pacific explorers, we see a people defined by their incredible capacity for movement—in this instance, through the sea.

Not anymore.

(Image: Melissa Gruntkosky)

Link Dump

Peruse at your leisure:

Kids should go barefoot. Big, stiff, cushioned shoes can damage the development of their feet.

What sort of damage? Research published in podiatry journal The Foot in 2007 suggests that structural and functional changes can result from the foot having to conform to the shape and constriction of a shoe, rather than being allowed to develop naturally. And the younger the foot, the greater the potential for damage.

I may not have convinced you to give paleo eating a try, but would you be more open to it if an awesome world-class athlete did it?

Although fitness DVD sales are still going strong, free exercise programs are disappearing from the boob tube:

"Too many of the exercise shows became too similar," says Frank Nunez of Chicago's UNICUS Fitness, which is headquartered at the Fitness Lair at Michigan and Wacker. "It was always the same kind of thing, where the exercising was done to music or some kind of eight-count beat. All studies show that the only people that this appealed to were people who were already going to work out."

It's what we all suspected: Mark Sisson's WOWs look a hell of a lot like CrossFit WODs. (The differences, if any, are superficial; for example, instead of saying "as many rounds as possible in 12 minutes," he says "maximum cycles in 12 minutes.")

Eating meat made humans smarter:

Meat is packed with lots of calories and fat. [When our prehistoric ancestors started eating meat, o]ur brain -- which uses about 20 times as much energy as the equivalent amount of muscle -- piped up and said, "Please, sir, I want some more."

Cancer cells heart fructose.

How did Tony Horton escape getting profiled on Click On Detroit's list of the "5 Most Annoying TV Workout People"?

Are you gymorexic? (I might be.)