Home Depot Center: Y U No Serve Decent Food?

The consensus among just about everyone with whom I spoke at the CrossFit Games: The food options at the Home Depot Center were sorely lacking. If you looked hard, you could find the In-N-Out truck tucked away in the ass end of Tent City, and you could load up on the snacks sold by a couple of Paleo food booths (including Steve's Original, purveyors of my favorite Paleo crack in the world -- a.k.a. PaleoKrunch). The Wahoo's stand served up a special rice-free (though not bean-free) Protein Bowl that was pretty satisfying, too -- especially after I drowned it in hot sauce. But for the most part, the vendors at the stadium were hawking stuff that didn't appeal to this particular crowd of insanely fit, food-quality-obsessed people. (Seriously: CINNABON?)

My disappointment was exacerbated by the fact that I had dinner the night before the Games at my brother- and sister-in-law's place. 

Over the past couple of years, they've cultivated an amazing vegetable garden in their backyard; it's teeming with fresh produce: tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes, corn, lemon cucumbers, peppers, wine grapes, blueberries, watermelons -- you name it.

You think my wife's obsessed with food? My brother-in-law makes his own wine, brews his own beer, smokes and cures his own meats, and makes his own sausages. And my sister-in-law is a professional chef. (Now you know why I feel totally inadequate in the kitchen.)

To steal a page from Nom Nom Paleo's book, here's all the homemade, homegrown stuff I ate at their house:

A suggestion for next year's Games: Grilled meats and vegetables. They'll sell like hotcakes grilled meats and vegetables.

Now that I've gotten the food porn out of the way, I guess I'll start posting photos from the actual Games. Stay tuned -- same Bat time, same Bat channel.

"Healthy" Happy Meals?

McDonald's announced today that it's making changes to Happy Meals by: (1) adding a serving of fruit or vegetables, and (2) subtracting 1.3 ounces of French fries from the existing portion size. By next spring, all 14,000 McDonald's restaurants in the U.S. will feature the new "healthier" Happy Meals.

The fast food chain will continue to serve apple slices (minus the caramel sauce that currently accompanies them in Happy Meals), but plans to include carrots, raisins, pineapple slices and mandarin oranges in the rotation.

As for the fries, why not cut them out entirely? Because "children and parents rebelled."

"People come to McDonald's and, first of all, they want the choice and the control to be theirs, but their expectation of a Happy Meal does include a fry," said Jan Fields, president of McDonald's USA. "When we did it without fries, there was a huge disappointment factor."

"Experts" have declared that McDonald's is moving in the right direction:

Geeta Maker-Clark, a family physician at NorthShore University HealthSystem, described the changes as "really good steps."

"I applaud any move toward including more whole food into a heavily processed meal," she said. "Bringing a whole food into it shifts the pendulum toward something more healthy, and I applaud the decreased portion sizes."

My prediction? These changes won't make a dent in childhood obesity.

Kids'll continue to gobble up the McNuggets they fish out of their Happy Meals. They won't miss the 1.3 ounces of fries that McDonald's is taking out 'cause they'll just grab more from their parents' large order of fries. Then, they'll suck down the Coke that came with their Happy Meal, play with the crappy little toy that came with their food, and THROW AWAY THE TINY PACKET OF CARROTS.

Let's get real: People who regularly feed their kids at McDonald's aren't the type of parents who are super-concerned about making sure their offspring finish a few carrot sticks. Don't believe me? McDonald's has been offering apple slices with their Happy Meals since 2006, but "only 11% of kids meals are ordered with apples." And of those 11 percent, I wonder how many packages of apple slices are left untouched.

If fighting childhood obesity was truly McDonald's aim, it'd get rid of the sodas. But that's not what the chain is after. As the L.A. Times put it, "[t]he business strategy for McDonald's is to make parents feel less guilty about feeding fast food to their children, so they'll become more frequent customers." And viewed through that lens, this move is likely to be a rousing success -- for McDonald's.

[Source]

Broccoli & Cheetos

Almost Paleo. Almost. (The broccoli part, anyway.)



Recipe here. But please don't try this at home.

[Thanks, @lawyerhands!]

I'm Gonna Eat the Chard Right Out Your Yard

I like vegetables.



[Source]

We Are Not Cows

Except maybe these people.

At some point, you've probably come across the claim that vegetarian diets are better for you because "meat humans can't digest meat -- it just rots in your colon and causes colon cancer." Humans, the argument goes, are natural herbivores.

But science says otherwise. Even in studies dating back almost a hundred years, it's been consistently shown that meat doesn't rot in your colon. Beans, grains and vegetables do.

It turns out that pepsin, trypsin, chymotrypsin, and our other proteases do a fine job of breaking down meat protein, and bile salts and lipase do a fine job of breaking down animal fat. In other words, meat is digested by enzymes produced by our own bodies. The primary reason we need our gut bacteria is to digest the sugars, starches, and fiber -- found in grains, beans, and vegetables -- that our digestive enzymes can’t break down.

The digestion of sugars, starches and fiber also make you fart more. (Between you and me, since going Paleo over a year ago, I've noticed a drastic reduction in my personal methane emission levels. Who says I'm not doing my part for the environment?)

Humans aren't herbivores. We're omnivores -- though we're "primarily carnivorous":

[W]e have a limited ability to digest some plant matter (starches and disaccharides) in order to get through bad times, but we cannot extract meaningful amounts of energy from the cellulose that forms the majority of edible plant matter, as true herbivores can. We can only eat fruits, nuts, tubers, and seeds (which we call ‘grains’ and ‘beans’) -- and seeds are only edible to us after laborious grinding, soaking, and cooking, because unlike the birds and rodents adapted to eat them, they’re poisonous to humans in their natural state.

You can demonstrate the purpose and limits of human digestion with a simple experiment: eat a steak with some whole corn kernels, and see what comes out the other end. It won’t be the steak.

In fact, meat-eating made us human.

Fun activity: Google "meat rots in your colon" and count the number of articles arguing this point were written by PETA. Incidentally, my favorite PETA moment is when it produced a comic book for children, telling them that their non-vegetarian mommies are in fact evil murderers:

How would you feel if someone took away your kitten or puppy, stomped on their head, and ripped their skin off their bodies? It would make you feel sad, wouldn’t it? Why would someone be so mean? But there are truly terrible people who cause our furry friends to die that way every day. And guess what? One of those terrible people is your mommy.

(Source: Gnolls)

Fruit? Veggies? Whatever.

Author and obesity researcher Zoe Harcombe: Fruits and vegetables are pretty much nutritionally useless. (And the fructose in fruit is worse than useless.)

I hadn't heard of Harcombe until she popped up on Jimmy Moore's podcast last month (I live in a cave, okay?), but she makes a lot of sense to me.

In fact, Harcombe's article puts me in the mood for a 100% meat salad.



Beats this, right?

(Source: Epic Meal Time)

Paleo Eats @ San Francisco's Ferry Building

The Ferry Building Marketplace on the San Francisco waterfront is one of the city's premiere gourmet destinations, crammed with restaurants and shops catering to food tourists, business lunchers, urban hipsters and culinary aesthetes. It's like New York's Chelsea Market, but on steroids. And on Tuesdays, Thursdays and especially Saturdays, the place explodes with even more activity, when the Ferry Building hosts a bustling farmer's market.

Pre-Paleo, I'd frequently head over to the Ferry Building for a lunchtime meal of burger and fries at Taylor's (now Gott's), a meatball bánh mì at Out the Door, a porchetta sandwich at Roli Roti, or a big ass bowl of white rice topped with Kobe beef, ginger, and shredded egg at Delica.

But these days, finding Paleo-friendly options at the Ferry Building takes a bit of extra work. Thankfully, with such an overabundance of tasty grub in one spot, there's plenty for a modern caveman/woman to enjoy.

Some examples:

Farmhouse Burger @ Prather Ranch Grill -- a burger topped with ham and a fried egg. (I get it with extra greens and without the bun.)

Buffalo Burger @ Prather Ranch Grill -- hold the bun. (Diane Sanfilippo at Balanced Bites favors the bunless Slaw Burger, but I haven't tried it yet.)

Jerky @ The Golden Gate Meat Company -- no sugar! (Except the sweet & spicy variety.)

Spicy Italian Sausage-on-a-Stick @ The Golden Gate Meat Company -- Two bucks. Get it with mustard. I couldn't even wait to take a picture before wolfing down half the damned thing.

Mixed Salumi Cone @ Boccalone -- it's meat in a cone. Enough said.

Pork Stew & Greens @ Il Cane Rosso -- This was supposed to be served over a big creamy bowl of polenta, but I wasn't going there. But Il Cane Rosso graciously offered to serve the stew alongside a simple salad. It totally hit the spot.

Cobb Salad @ Gott's -- I love Cobb salads, and Gott's version has gotten better over the years. And before you scream at me about the cheese, kindly step off. I'm lacto-Paleo.

Seasonal Vegetable Salad @ Cowgirl Creamery Sidekick -- way too expensive for a tiny little salad, but delicious nonetheless.

The next time you're in town and decide to head over to the Ferry Building, don't get put off by the all the high-end chocolatiers, gelaterias and bread-bakers. You can stay Paleo and still have some awesome food.

Clean as a Whistle

Judith Newman has a funny piece in today's New York Times about her half-assed attempt to go on a juice cleanse to eliminate the so-called "toxins" from her body. As you probably already know, this fine bit of quackery typically involves imbibing various vegetable or fruit juices for days on end and occasionally shooting water into your butthole.

You should read the whole thing, but here are my favorite lines from Newman's article:

• "A month ago I went on a juice cleanse. You know what it cleans out of you best? The will to live."

• "Celebrities as varied as Beyoncé, Jared Leto and the Moore/Kutchers (Demi and Ashton were tweeting about it this week) swear by [the Master Cleanse's] energizing and weight loss effects, weight loss being not all that surprising, when you consider that you are essentially sucking lemons and a few teaspoons of sugar for 10 days."

• "At the beginning and the end of the three-day program, the BPC [BluePrintCleanse] people highly recommend a colonic. A colonic is better known as many gallons of water shot into your rectum through a tube, only to pass out of you again, this time with the contents of your intestines."

• "Here’s the thing. That green juice? It was like drinking everything bad that ever happened to me in high school."

• "[W]hile I was walking down Bleecker Street trying to choke down my second bottle of malignancy, the reek so sickened me I had to stop and steady myself on a parked car."

• "The next three days could be summed up thus: 1. I need food. 2. Hey, this isn’t bad! 3. Kill me now."

Heh. Here's the rub:

[Author and internist] Dr. [David] Colbert said: “You have to ask yourself this question: With a juice cleanse, what are you really cleaning? Really, nothing. The bowel self-cleans. It’s evolved over millions of years to do this.”

If you’re going to have liquids, said Dr. Colbert, a staunch believer in unprocessed foods, there is certainly good to be had from eating fresh vegetables and fruits and nuts pulverized into liquid. “But most people aren’t Einsteins,” he added. “Often their idea of a juice fast is having nothing but orange juice or apple juice for a week. In which case, you might as well call it the Toblerone diet, because that’s how much sugar you’re pouring into your system.”

This is pretty much what I did. And it’s dumb. “Many people are undiagnosed diabetics, and these cleanses can cause spikes and crashes in blood sugar levels that could be quite dangerous,” said Nancy Kalish, a certified health coach in Brooklyn who advises clients against juice cleanses.

Hear, hear.

Still, I have to wonder if non-Paleo eaters consider my nutritional approach to be just as (if not more) bizarre as "cleansing" with juices and colonics.

Eat Your Damned Vegetables

According to the New York Times, Americans refuse to eat vegetables.

Despite two decades of public health initiatives, stricter government dietary guidelines, record growth of farmers’ markets and the ease of products like salad in a bag, Americans still aren’t eating enough vegetables.

This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a comprehensive nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption. Only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded. (And no, that does not include French fries.)

It does, however, include "lettuce on a hamburger." But even with such rock-bottom standards, large swaths of our population simply refuse to eat anything leafy or green. And why?

Melissa MacBride, a busy Manhattan resident who works for a pharmaceuticals company, would eat more vegetables if they weren’t, in her words, “a pain.” “An apple you can just grab,” she said. “But what am I going to do, put a piece of kale in my purse?”

Another vegetable-hater -- a nurse, no less -- "openly acknowledges that vegetables make her gag." Yet another person -- someone in the food service industry -- says the prospect of preparing vegetables is off-putting. “Part of it is just that vegetables are a little intimidating. I’m not afraid of zucchinis, but I just don’t know how to cook them.”

Excuses, excuses. Preparing vegetables isn't any more difficult than preparing meat. Both grill and roast nicely. Blanched vegetables are easy to make, and taste a lot better than boiled meat. And here's a news flash: Lots of veggies can be eaten raw. (Ever heard of baby carrots? They come in a bag, you know. Some are even resealable.) Plus, vegetables are actually available in places other than high-end farmer's markets: McDonald's serves salads, and Wal-Mart has a huge produce selection (including organic fruits and vegetables). Also?You can, in fact, put a piece of kale in your purse.

Face it: Vegetables aren't any more a "pain" than having to give yourself insulin shots when you become diabetic after years of mainlining Snackwells and Cinnabons.

But frankly, I don't care what people eat. I'm just sick of people whining about how hard it is to find and eat vegetables. Call me cranky (which I am tonight), but people need to just own up to the fact that they're addicted to sitting in front of a computer and/or television screen, eating lab-engineered sugary-salty-fatty concoctions out of colorful cardboard boxes and crinkly, shiny bags.

(Photo: Corey Harmon)

P90X Day 86: Core Synergistics

Certain things just don't mix well: oil and water, nails and tires, Pop Rocks and Coke, Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson, topless women and Disney cartoons, etc.

Also? Early morning Core Synergistics and alcohol consumption the night before.

Thankfully, it's Monday, which means we get our weekly "gourmet vegetarian dinner" from the aging hippies at the local macrobiotic society. It's no cure for a hangover, but at least I don't feel like I'm eating crap.

[UPDATED: I didn't know it at the time, but I was eating crap. Macrobiotic eating isn't for me. I've since gone paleo.]