NEW BOOKS ARE IN!

Amazon has been out of Carb Wars for some time now, thanks to a snafu at the fulfilment center. A second printing is now finished and a shipment of books went out to them last Wednesday. It should be delivered in the next day or so. However, the Carb Wars page on Amazon.com still says it takes 1 to 2 months to get a copy and warns that if you order one, it will not arrive in time for Christmas. I hope that message will disappear as soon as the back orders are filled, but there are alternatives. Any major bookstore should be able to order it for you from Ingram and The Cookbook Marketplace still has books. Better yet, they are offering a terrific discount on all their titles. Here is the sale notice from their site:

Enjoy 50% off any orders placed at our website!

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Simply visit us online at www.cookbookmarketplace.com and enter promo code Holiday when checking out to receive 50% off your entire order!

.(Excludes applicable state sales taxes and shipping. Shipping rates are $7.95 for the first book, $1 for each additional book.)

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Place your order by December 11, 2009 to guarantee shipping by Christmas.

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Be sure to tell all your friends about this great deal!! Offer good until December 31, 2009.

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Have a Delicious Day! Great Holiday Cooking Begins with Great Cookbooks!

SUPPORTING TRUTH IN SCIENCE

Laurie Cagnassola, director of the Metabolism Society (AKA the Nutrition and Metabolism Society), publishes a fantastic newsletter. The November 3rd issue features articles by Dr. John Briffa, Laura Dolson (low-carb guide for about.com), and Dr. Uff Ravnskov. Laurie's newsletters regularly include updates on the latest research, a column by Jimmy Moore, and a question and answer column by yours truly! An archive button will be added over the coming weekend so you can access the newsletters in addition to the wealth of resources on the Website at http://www.metabolismsociety.org/. Better yet, join up and the newsletters will be delivered to your inbox!

Here's Dr. Feinman's message about how you can support truth in science:
"I think you'll agree there is nothing more important than good health. Throughout the year we have been working hard on addressing the problems of obesity, diabetes & cardiovascular disease through public awareness and education, concerning the therapeutic potential of carbohydrate-restricted diets for the treatment of these diseases.

Our website now serves as a resource for over 4,000 people a week and the scientific journal of Nutrition & Metabolism that Mahmood Hussain and I introduced in 2004 now has an impressive impact factor of 3.00

I want to thank all of the people who have helped make this possible. Now that the holiday season is to nearing, I would like to ask each of you to give gift of health to future generations by supporting the Metabolism Society's work. If your membership is not current, please renew it today. If you are a current NMS member, please consider the gift of membership for your friends and family this year and talk to your employer about making a donation to the Metabolism Society.

Our non-profit organization has come a long way since it's inception in 2004. I recognize that we have a long way to go but I believe that with your support, we will bring about the nutritional paradigm shift that will create a healthier world."

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Richard Feinman, PhDFounder, Metabolism Society

Here's my column from the November newsletter:

CAN YOU AFFORD TO EAT LOW CARB? CAN YOU AFFORD NOT TO?
"I recently received a question from someone who was switching to low-carb after experiencing constant hunger on a low-fat diet. She was concerned about ”the enormous consumption of animal products and fats” that she would be eating on her new regimen, especially considering the poor quality of the products she could find at the local supermarkets. Good, free-range poultry and eggs and pasture-fed beef were not in her budget and ordering online made them even more expensive by adding shipping charges.

It is a fact of life that food costs more, just when many of us have had to tighten our belts due to the recession, and good meat, dairy, and poultry is not always easy to find at any price.

First let me point out that those of us who follow a reduced carbohydrate way of life do not eat more meat than we did before. It becomes a larger PERCENTAGE of our diet because we eat less overall. I still eat the same steak, two chops, or one hamburger that I always did. I don’t eat two or three steaks or dozens of burgers. Starch and sugar make you hungry. Fat and protein actually reduce the total number of calories needed to keep you feeling satisfied. Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, said that studies showed that those who cut down on carbs ate less, but that it was important to remember that “no one was telling them to eat less!”

It seems intuitive that if you stop eating cheap foods like bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes, you will spend more, but if you take a closer look at what most Americans are buying, you will see a very different picture. All those brand-name products are not cheap. Most of the money invested in the production of sugary breakfast cereals, frozen dinners, chips, cookies, baked goods, and convenience foods comes from advertising and packaging. The cost of their actual content is negligible.

And don’t get me started about soft drinks! A cola in a restaurant costs about two bucks. For what? Some flavored, colored water, a whopping slug of sugar, and a peppy advertising slogan. Carbonated beverages are now the number one source of calories in the standard American diet! Cut out all bottled or canned beverages and add up the savings, not just in your grocery bill or restaurant tab, but also the money you’ll save on medicine and dental and doctor bills over a lifetime. (Another bonus—when you stop drinking a sweet beverage with every meal, you will probably notice that everything tastes sweeter. You can reset your sweet meter and reduce your cravings for sugar by replacing sweetened drinks with plain water or tea.)

But I digress. Let me get back to the original question about economical and healthful protein foods. I'm dealing with the same problem as the lady who posed the question. I live in a rural area and have been meaning to see if I could find pastured beef from a local farmer, but I don't have a big freezer and can't buy a whole side unless I can find someone to share it. I do try to buy good ground beef—it's not as expensive as the better cuts, and although my local stores don't have grass-fed ground beef, they do have brands that are hormone-free, all-natural, and not treated with antibiotics. I still buy steaks at Costco, but we don't eat them that often, so I don't worry too much about it.

Another option is buffalo. Buffalo is becoming more available and it is about the same price as beef, at least around here. It is pastured and not raised on feedlots. Another good red meat is lamb. It is not raised like beef either. And since it is younger, it won't have had time to build up the toxicity. Ground lamb and lamb stew meat would be the best bargains. (I've started to order lamb when I eat out, when it is on the menu.)What they call variety meats is another way to go. Chicken livers are very healthful and very inexpensive. (Organic, free-range chickens have livers too, so they must be available somewhere!) Wild fish is also good, and frozen fish isn't as pricey as fresh. Some, like halibut is always wild and it is a cold-water fish—the tropical fish are more likely to have heavy metals and toxins. Better yet, are little fish like sardines. Even the canned ones are full of good fats. I've been trying to learn to like them. Canned tuna (not albacore) is also a pretty good deal.

And don’t forget eggs! The only good thing about the mistaken idea that cholesterol is evil is that it has kept the price of eggs down for those of us who recognize the value of one of nature’s most perfect foods.

(C) 2009, Judy Barnes Baker

SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE YOUR MIDDLE

I was probably one of the first people to pre-order the new book, The 6 Week Cure for the Middle Aged Middle, by Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades. When the publication date passed and others were already blogging and posting about it, and I still hadn't received my copy, I gave up and ordered it again. Then I had to read it, collect the necessities, and wait for a time when my husband, whom I shall hereafter refer to as “D,” would be home for 2 weeks at a stretch to start the initial 2-week phase. (I decided that wasn’t going to happen so we started anyway; he's going to miss 2 days of the second week).

I had been dropping hints for months that I thought we should try the protocol; D never responded, but then he didn’t say no either.

I knew it would be difficult to follow a special diet while I'm still testing recipes for my own book; for almost a year now, we’ve been eating whatever I needed to make. (For the last few weeks there has seldom been a time when I didn’t have at least 3 pie crusts on the kitchen counter, sometimes 6. They are low-carb, but not exactly part of the Cure.) I anticipated another problem after reading the description of the plan. For the first two weeks, we would be drinking 3 protein shakes a day plus eating one low-carb meal. That appealed to me because it sounded easy compared to cooking 3 times a day (we can’t really live on pie), but D has never been fond of meal replacement shakes. Today is day 5 of the Cure and I've been trying to "shake" things up to keep him from getting too grumpy.

So far, I’ve made Italian soda shakes (DaVinci’s syrup, cream, and carbonated water), Diet-Right Cola shakes, and chocolate-cherry, raspberry, and strawberry shakes. I’ve turned them into hot chocolate (I just heat the liquid part, in case the protein is heat sensitive) and frozen yogurt. I plan to try turning the ingredients into pudding, mixing it into yogurt, and perhaps making a gelled dessert of it.

I’ve also deconstructed them—the authors included the option of putting a raw egg in one of the shakes if you wanted to add some good, undamaged cholesterol to the diet, so I thought it would be acceptable to eat the egg, lightly cooked so the yolk is still liquid, with our morning shake so it would feel more like a real breakfast. They also suggested that you could add ½ cup of berries, so I put fresh raspberries in a bowl with a little of the cream that would normally have gone in the glass to serve along with the noontime shake. Then at about 4:00 PM we have our one meal of the day, which holds us nicely until the third shake that serves as an evening snack.

When I went to the store today, I looked for powdered flavorings that could be put into baggies with pre-measured shake mix and packed in a plastic shaker bottle to send along with D in his suitcase while he’s traveling. I didn’t find much, since most of them are made with aspartame, but I’m going to try using some sugar-free cocoa mix and unsweetened Cool Aid. If the hotel supplies coffee, they may have those little cream packets that don’t need to be refrigerated that he can stir in.

You can probably tell that I’m the motivated one here, but hey, I do what I can.

BTW, I’m using MRM, All Natural Whey Protein Powder because Dr. Eades said in one of his blogs that it is the one they use. I order it from http://www.bodybuilding.com/ at an incredibly good price. It is about half the list price and they have been running a 3-for-the-price-of-2 special. Their shipping is the fastest I’ve ever seen. I get an e-mail from them almost as soon as the order goes in, saying, “your order has shipped.” They have a warehouse in Idaho, only one state over from me, and the package is on my doorstep the next day. (I think I’m now required to tell you that I have not received any free products or special perks in return for mentioning this company or recommending their product.)

PS
I don't know what I was thinking--my husband said there was no way he would try getting on a plane with a plastic bag full of white powder! Unless I can find prepackaged protein powder in individual packets, he'll have to make do with low carb bars when he flies.

© 2009 Judy Barnes Baker

LOOKING FOR CARB WARS?

Due to an inventory mistake at the fulfillment center, Carb Wars is temporarily sold out. A second printing is underway and more books should be available soon. Amazon does not have any books in stock, but will continue to take orders. (My Amazon page now says, "usually ships in one to two months," but it shouldn't take nearly that long.) Regular bookstores may still be able to get copies from Ingram by special order. The Cookbook Marketplace, www.cookbookparketplace.com, also has a few left and they are having a Fall sale on all their titles until the end of October. They are offering a 30% discount if you use the following code when placing an order: OCT09-30.

To all of you who purchased books and came back to buy more for your friends and family, and to all of you reviewed Carb Wars, mentioned it on your blogs, or recommended it to others, THANK YOU!

(C) 2009, Judy Barnes Baker

IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT HUMAN DIET

I recently had the opportunity to see a confidential, 22-minute completion fundraising preview of C. J. Hunt’s documentary, In Search of the Perfect Human Diet, and I can tell you that this is going to make waves. He's done a fantastic piece of investigative journalism that leaves no doubt about which diet is the best match for the human genome. This is the scientific evidence that the world, especially the media, needs to see in order to find solutions for the epidemic of obesity and chronic diseases that threaten our well-being and our very survival, both individually and as a society.

C. J. is hoping to get his 4-part documentary edited and on HBO, the Discovery Channel, or PBS by January 2010. (He still needs corporate sponsors for the film. If you know anyone who might be interested, contact him through his Website at: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102739921369&s=0&e=001B9bbkQXkwqDABQSznzqB5KPtWoQXr4RDj8uTfxDIJGsGJtEw45zwKViDwm580MSdxn4k5WfKrbfG98SHpIC3RBlIKtGaATUN0ABb--fWcLmkVWkoWnv_liFzVwSr4uw5.) A video about the mission and scope of the project is on the website and the new blog

In Search of the Perfect Human Diet reminded me of something I have puzzled over since 2004 when my husband was working on a project that took us to Greece. The first picture at the top of this post shows me with our Greek friend and host at the entrance to a beehive tomb in Mycenae. The hill behind us is really a huge stone dome built without interior supports. Notice the size of the stones in the entry walls, with the largest stones at the bottom, becoming smaller toward the top. The second picture, with my husband standing in the same spot, gives you a better idea of the scale of one of the stones. The 2nd Century Roman geographer, Pausanias, described the walls as being made of stones, “so big that a pair of mules could not move the smallest from its place in the slightest degree.” The Greeks called them Cyclopean walls, because they thought they could only have been built by giants. (Cyclops were a mythological race of one-eyed giants.) Some modern writers cite them as proof that the Earth has been visited by aliens. Similar walls are found in other places in Greece and Italy and at Machu Picchu and other pre-Columbian sites in the New World.

The Egyptian Sphinx presents a similar riddle. Many scholars believe it was built, perhaps as much as 8,000 years ago, by people who predated the pyramid builders. An inscription found in 1857 on an “inventory stele,” said that Khufu (2589 to 2566 B.C.E), the pharaoh who built the first pyramid at Giza, excavated and restored the Sphinx. It was already old in his time. The head was altered by one of the early pharaohs to depict his own image, but the body was constructed of massive stones, many times the size of the ones used to build the later pyramids. (The stones in Khufu’s own pyramid, all 2,300,000 of them, averaged 2.5 tons each.)

If you go back even further, 15 to 30 thousand years ago, you find the beautifully rendered paintings of animals on cave walls, such as the ones at Lascaux. They are so realistic, so detailed, so beautiful that when Picasso saw them, he exclaimed, “They’ve invented everything!”

How did these primitive people, on the cusp of the change from hunter-gatherer to an agricultural lifestyle, accomplish such feats? Writing had not yet been invented, or at least not to our knowledge, so we don’t know. But scientists and anthropologists can tell us what they ate and the affect that a radical change in diet had on future generations.

We tend to view history as a one-way street of progress with ourselves at the pinnacle of human achievement. Perhaps these early people were really much smarter than we give them credit for. Perhaps they were also stronger, healthier, and better looking than we are. I wonder what we could have accomplished by now if we had not traded our birthright for bread and sugar.

© 2009, Judy Barnes Baker

FAT IMPROVES PERFORMANCE FOR PILOTS

A military-funded study conducted by researchers at the University of North Dakota discovered that pilots who ate the most fatty foods, such as butter or gravy, had the quickest response times in mental tests and made fewer mistakes when flying in tricky conditions. Forty-five student pilots were tracked to test their performance on flight simulators while eating four different diets: high-fat, high-carbohydrate, high-protein, and a control diet.

Psychology professor Tom Petros, who conducted and reviewed the tests, said, “We wound up analyzing the data every which way but upside down. It came out consistent every time.” (As usual, they kept looking for some way to make the findings fit what they already “knew” to be true. If the study had shown the fat-eaters to be mentally less capable, with slowed reflexes, I dare say, they wouldn’t have given it a second thought.)

The researchers concluded that high-carbohydrate diets were much better than high-protein diets and high-fat was slightly better than high-carbohydrate, but you have to see how they defined the diets to understand the results. The menus on all four diets were similar so the participants wouldn’t know which plan they were following. A typical meal consisted of a thin-crust pizza with extra meat and cheese for the fat diet; a thin-crust chicken supreme pizza for the carbohydrate diet; and a grilled chicken breast with mixed salad greens, fat-free dressing, and fat-free shredded cheese for the protein diet. Another meal included brownies for all groups but some had smaller ones and some didn’t have frosting. So the high-fat plan was also high in carbs (what low-carb diet would have pizza and brownies?) and the high-protein diet was really a low-carb, low-fat diet. A low-carb, high-fat, adequate protein diet, which would have trumped them all, was not included.

Even so, the improvement made by the extra fat was obvious to the students. One of them was quoted as saying, “I could tell the difference on how well I was doing on the different diets.” He added, “I think a lot of people felt they did better when they got the lobster and the good stuff.” Well said, young man! Perhaps eventually, the researchers will see what has been staring them in the face all along and realize that fat is not the evil, villainous stuff they have been led to believe it is.

According to the article, National Transportation Safety Board statistics show that 80% of civil and military accidents are caused by human error. Next time you get on a plane, you might want to take along some butter and cheese for the pilot.

Read the Associated Press article here: http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/10/06/hold_the_mayo_not_when_it_comes_to_astute_pilots/

(C) 2009, Judy Barnes Baker

WHEN DOES 16 X 0.49 = ZERO?

In the past I put my trust in food labels to figure the nutrition counts for my recipes. Apparently, it was misplaced.

I know that sometimes they are just wrong. For example, I have 2 different brands of powdered erythritol that list the weight as being the same as that for granular erythritol. However, when I weigh it, it weighs twice as much. I assume that the manufacturer, who is required to provide the information, took the numbers from some approved chart that only listed the weight for one form, so that is what they used. I can relate; I’m having a similar problem finding accurate nutrition information when the numbers on the databases that I must use are rounded and generic. I know the rules and they are far from precise:

-Any food that contains less than 0.5 grams of carbohydrate can legally say it contains none.

-Any food that contains 0.56 grams will say “1 gram,” or “<1” (less than one).

When the serving size is very small, such as it is for something like cream, what do you do? The labels for organic cream say, “zero carbs,” for a serving of one tablespoon, while the labels on non-organic cream, which usually include milk, thickeners, and stabilizers, say “1” or “<1” gram per tablespoon. I assumed then, that as long as the label listed just cream as an ingredient, it really had no sugar. I use cream by the cupful, and a cup is 16 tablespoons, therefore 16 x 0 = 0. Right? Wrong.

Most of the nutrition databases use either the most common numbers or a generic average of all the different brands rather than specifying a brand or saying whether it is organic or not. Regular whole milk contains 11 or 12 grams of carbs per cup. At 1 gram per tablespoon, cream would have 16 carbs per cup—or MORE than milk, which is ridiculous. In the past, I opted to use the label as my guide and to stipulate only organic cream, since any product labeled as organic is legally required to contain no added ingredients. (See a previous post for another reason why you should never use anything but organic dairy products: http://carbwars.blogspot.com/2008/08/blog-fodder-fat-saves-world-and-other.html)

Relying on the label numbers has probably been adequate for me in the past, but when I started to calculate the counts for the new book, I decided to see if I could track down more accurate information, especially since this book is targeted for those with diabetes as well as those who need to lose weight and improve their health.

I contacted the makers of Organic Valley, a widely available brand of organic cream, to ask if they could tell me what is really in their cartons. At least I got a straight answer, if not the one I had hoped for. Their cream has 0.37 grams of carbs per tablespoon. So that means 5.92 grams of carbs per cup. Less than milk, but far from zero. I plan to talk to some other companies to see if they all say the same thing.

Aged cheese is another product frequently labeled as having no carbohydrate, but most databases give the count as 1 gram per ounce. At least one ounce is a realistic serving size, but every carb counts when your target total is low. (The database that I am currently using puts Parmesan at a whopping 4 grams per ounce, when the nutrition panels on the actual packages all call it zero.)

I contacted the National Dairy Council to see if they could provide more detailed information. The first person I spoke to said she was formerly employed by a major cheese manufacturer, and that she knew personally that their aged or hard cheeses had no sugar. (The sugar is in the whey, she said, which has been removed from hard cheese.) She referred me to another person who provided lots of links to more info, but her advice was that to be safe, I should go with 1 carb per ounce. When I followed her link to the USDA’s database, this is some of what I found:

-1 tablespoon of grated Parmesan is listed as 0.1 grams of sugar and 0.2 grams of carbohydrate (what is the 0.1 grams that is not sugar? It doesn’t say.) So that’s 0.8 carbs per quarter cup.

-Processed American cheese is listed as having 0.4 grams of carbs, but only 0.1 of sugar. It doesn’t explain what the extra 0.3 grams of carbs are (fiber and starch are not given).

- ¼ cup of part-skim ricotta has 2.8 grams of carbs, but only 0.2 grams of sugar. Again, what is the 2.6 grams of carbs that are not sugar? It doesn’t say.

-It gets even more weird: 2% milk has 11 grams of total carbs, but 12.8 grams of sugar! So what are the 1.8 grams of sugar that are not carbohydrate? In fact, the 3 different listings for white milk on the chart all show more sugar than carbs. You can have more carbs than sugar because fiber, starch, and ash are carbs, but how could you have more sugar than carbs when sugar IS carbohydrate?
From the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Release 21 (2008): www.ars.usda.gov/nutrientdata:

I really want to get the nutrition counts right, but it is not going to be easy. I’ll keep looking for the facts, but I’m going to have to wait a while; this is making my head hurt.

© 2009, Judy Barnes Baker