Skyr: Something from Iceland to Try

I read a review of this and found it this morning at Whole Foods:  Skyr 

This is basically no-fat yogurt with fewer carbs and more protein than any other. Also completely ethically correct with milk from grassfed cows and vegetable rennet. I generally don't eat yogurt at all because it has so much sugar, even if no sugar is added.  And the "low carb" yogurts out there are filled with artificial stuff and don't qualify as food.  Here is the nutrition content of the orange-ginger Skyr:

(All the flavors seem about the same values.)  By contrast, StonyField Farm no-fat yogurt is the same number of calories for a whole cup of yogurt (about 250 grams), but with 33 grams of carbs and 9 grams of protein.  So I got it to try. Of course, my eating approach is that I wouldn't worry about some fat grams in there, but the company doesn't make another option.  I worried about not enough protein or fat meaning it won't "hold me" until lunch, so I added an ounce of almonds because that was quickest and handiest. It's quite tart and the kid didn't like it, but I did. We'll see how I feel about it after some time has passed.

Meat: My Heart, My Soul, and My Planet (Part Three)

The story so far:  I believe meat is a big part of a healthy diet. A grain and soy based diet is likely to lead to the "diseases of civilization" - heart disease and diabetes, among others. I have no doubts on the first point. However, current factory farming of meat is horrific and is an unethical treatment of our fellow creatures. I uneasily remain complicit in this. I try to make better choices, but often compromise.

Now, looking at the ecological consequences of eating meat, I find myself much less knowledgeable. My freshmen roommate at college was a vegetarian, inspired by Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet. I never read it, but got the gist: it takes energy to convert sun energy into plant energy and then into animal energy, and a lot is lost at every step. The planet cannot afford, on a global scale, the inefficiency of relying on animal protein to feed the world. I actually took enough advanced ecology classes later in college to work through the fairly complex math myself in a few specific cases.  Everyone agrees with the principle, that energy is lost in each stage, but the actual numbers remain subject to a great deal of dispute.

Mark Bittman, in his Food Matters, bases his advocacy for eating less meat on climate change. He asserts, with a series of top level statistics, that beef cattle are a huge source of green house gases and switching to three meatless meals a week is equivalent to more than taking an SUV off the road. I am skeptical of the statistics, but haven't worked through them myself, and he does have endnotes and a bibliography, but doesn't go through their derivation in the book itself. I haven't done any other outside reading on the topic. Here is my big difficulty with this:  Cows make methane gas? They fart a lot? Cows fed on grain fart more than cows fed on grass?  My understanding of greenhouse gases on a geological timescale for global climate change is this: it is the mining of fossil fuels that makes a permanent contribution to atmospheric CO2. Biofuels are good because its a closed cycle: grow the plants, pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere, then burn the plants, releasing it again, but grow more plants, and net-net there is no atmospheric increase.  Wouldn't it be the same with cows? They eat grass and corn, which contains CO2, they themselves contain CO2, and it's a closed cycle, yes?  I guess there is the same possible criticism that corn-based ethanol and other biofuels face: there are fossil fuel inputs into the cycle, required for the raising of corn or cows, resulting in a net increase of CO2 over the whole lifecycle.  I just can't accept how the numbers work out without more reading. I'm willing to accept the premise (that our current meat production is a net contributer to greenhouse gases), just not the magnitude, without more study (that I may or may not get around to).

Mark Bittman also predicates his "eating as if food mattered" prescription on the total planetary resources required for meat versus plant energy.  Again, I accept the concept and have never grasped the numbers.

The problem I have is his prescription for eating is heavily dependent on grains to make up the calories.  He acknowledges the bad health aspects of sugars and simple starches, and focuses on grains and beans as the alternative to meat. This just does not work for me, at least not now.  

Michael Pollan's final answer on "what to eat" is much the same:  

Eat food. 

Not too much. 

Mostly plants.

I am totally on board with the general sentiment, but the "mostly plants" part for me cannot be grains and beans. It should be the kind of plants that look like plant parts:  leaves and stems and things that can be plucked, pulled and dug up. And its really hard to get enough calories, and the right nutrients, solely from those parts of plants. I remember the story that during World War II, in Norway, cabbages were grown in every available square foot of soil, served at every meal, and people were still starving to death because they could not take in enough calories. (Cabbages thrive in the short cold climate of Norway and were the most practical local food source, as all meat and fish and what limited grain they could grow were seized and sent to Germany). Back to the hunter-gatherer food sources for me: at least 60 percent animal-derived calories. But is this feasible on a global scale?

Mark Bittman asserts the humane standards are simply not scalable to replace meat in the quantities we currently enjoy.  Again, I haven't studied the issue but I suspect he is right. Factories are more efficient than handicraft markets, and it may well be we couldn't have grass fed beef and free range chickens on the scale we have cars churning out of Detroit.  There are, however, some big-ish corporations producing meat according to much more sound principals; Niman Ranch is one. 

So I worry at this, while continuing to live uneasily with choices I know are not pure. Instead, they are expedient, and serve me and and my family in the short term. I haven't delved deeply into the ethics and ecology, because I'm pretty sure where it would make me end up finally and I am not ready to go there. I struggle at every meal to add a plant-based component and decrease the meat and dairy.  But I know for my own heart health, and that of my family, it can't be white bread and white rice and pasta filling up the plate instead. I need dark green. because I won't do whole grain or soy. And that is more work, and can't supply all of what we need.

After I reach goal weight, I will experiment with more whole grains and legumes into the mix. Right now, I'd rather stay away from them almost completely. My family will resist the shift, and if I'm not going to eat them myself it is not worth the battle. So it's off to Whole Foods for me now, and maybe swinging past the farmer's market later to get some more happy meat.

(Note, I never before said or wrote "after I reach goal weight". That just came out. I'll need to think about that whole premise, that there is a goal and an after.)

Meat: My Heart, My Soul, and My Planet (Part Two)

What does eating meat do to my soul?  This question derives from wondering if it is right to kill animals - furry mammals especially - to feed me. Completely separate from the questions of health or ecology.  Simply the ethics of the situation.  Sadly, I have to do this. As my friend says, I can't "un-know" what I know.

I believe that violence and oppression are bad for the perpetrator. They do violence to and oppress the perpetrator's soul. Slavery was bad for the slave holders. They were worse human beings for their acceptance of violence as a way of life. People who abuse children or dogs are diminished by their own actions.

I see being a vegetarian as a more enlightened, more highly evolved state. There are several science fiction books, and even Star Trek episodes, where this comes across. Rational and cultured beings regress to hunting animals for food, and then turn violent towards other people. (Vulcans seem especially vulnerable to this trend.  Maybe eventually we will reach a state where there are synthetic substitutes for meat that are healthful and ecologically sound.) But right now, grain- and soy-based highly alternatives are less healthful, in my opinion, than meat, and therefore not an option.

Factory farming in America is horrific.  I have deliberately stayed away from movies such as Food, Inc., or videos by PETA. I do not need the pictures to know what is going on. Much of my understanding on a visceral level of what it means comes from Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, where he buys a calf and follows it through its short and unhappy life. He also explores a farm where cows and chickens and pigs live much more naturally, moving through pastures and forests eating foods they evolved to eat. He has an essay in this book that was the most cogent and reasoned discussion of the ethics of eating meat I have ever read. Ultimately, Pollan goes off hunting wild boar, determined if he is willing to eat meat, he needs to be willing to kill it, at least once. The daughter of my friend was defiantly a vegetarian during her teenage years, but always was willing to hunt, and prepare and eat what she killed.  I've read of the work of Temple Grandin, who has transformed the way some slaughterhouses work so as to minimize the panic and pain of food animals at the end of their lives.

After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I swore off mass-produced meat. I vowed to only eat meat from happy animals. This means, as a practical manner, only farmer's market or Whole Foods meat. Whole Foods has a program with at least minimal standards - you can read about them here.  Organic certified in a pinch, though that is less certain what it means to the animals.  Eggs only "cage free", which even the Giant has these days. So I maintained my standards, only eating meat whose provenance I knew of. The food budget went up, but I felt better. I had a chat with a friend at work who keeps kosher. For all practical purposes, that means he is a vegetarian out of his house, because if he isn't sure it's ok, he just passes on meat. I decided I should be as firm in my ethical convictions as he is in religious ones.  (Apparently there is a raging controversy about the role of humane conditions in kosher meat. Some suggest it can't be kosher if it isn't humane, others claim that is irrelevant.)

Now, however, I buy food and cook for other people, using other people's money. Properly raised animals cost extra money, and I waiver between different imperatives.  And some of the family snickers at my notion of meat from happy animals.  "Yeah, right up till they die!"  Is ethically raised meat ethical enough to justify eating it?

On this point, I remain conflicted, but still committed to serve and eat meat. I pick my way through different choices, looking for the sale on grass fed beef at Whole Foods but not refraining from the occasional purchase at the Giant.  So far, I don't feel the need to pick up a gun and hunt my own.

Next up:  the ecology of eating meat.

Meat: My Heart, My Soul, and My Planet (Part One)

I eat meat. I eat a lot of meat. After all, I'm pretty much on the Atkins diet. My whole family are totally meatatarians. But I worry about it, I think about it, I am conflicted on the topic. I have to reason it out, and justify it to myself.  Life would be so much simpler if I were ignorant.  I read too much; I listen to too much NPR.   Because I know what I know, I can't just do whatever seems easiest. I have to thrash my way through it, and come to at least a temporary equilibrium.

There are at least three broad aspects to consider when deciding whether to eat meat:  its effect on my health, the morality of farming and killing animals, and the ecological burden on the earth. The first topic, health, for me is the easiest.

I know the human species evolved as hunter-gatherers.  For millions of years, we ate a meat- and plant-based diet.  Modern studies of the diets of hunter-gatherer societies that survived into the twentieth century established the majority of calories came from meat. The Inuit are close to 100% meat eaters, and the average calorie component for meat is closer to 60%. The plants we ate could be plucked, pulled, or dug up.  The technology to cook grains and starchy vegetables (pottery), the breeding of higher density grain foods, and finally true agriculture, are relatively recent inventions evolutionarily speaking. Agriculture appears to have developed in Iraq only 20,000 - 30,000 years ago. And, for our health, it doesn't appear to have done us much good as a species.  People got shorter and fatter.  Heart attacks and diabetes are diseases of civilization, and apparently the price we paid for writing and mathematics and poetry and painting.

It is clear to me that grains and potatoes aren't so good for us. Then, staying away from them negates most possibilities for a totally vegan diet, so meat becomes a more important source of food. But modern meat isn't quite like wild meat. Animals are what they eat just as much as we are. Cows evolved to eat grass, and grain fed beef is different from grass fed beef at the very molecular level. A grain based diet isn't any better for cows than for us. As a result, eating grain-fed beef is just an indirect way of getting grains back into our bodies. The fats in modern corn fed American beef are not the heart healthy omega-3 fats you find in wild meats.  Factory raised animals have to be fed massive amounts of antibiotics in order to survive the unnatural diet and crowded unsanitary conditions in which they are raised. This leads to antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.  Grocery store meat and eggs are not necessarily providing what is needed to be healthy.  "Free range" meat from the farmer's market or even Whole Foods is more likely to result in healthy food than the cheap stuff at the Giant. Sigh.

A fundamental misconception about heart health arose with the discovery of cholesterol and its role in the body. The fact is, dietary cholesterol does not translate directly into our internal blood levels of cholesterol. So even the classic Atkins in-your-face "diet" meal of steak with bearnaise sauce, is not necessarily driving up your measured cholesterol levels. Eggs benedict (poached eggs with egg-based Hollandaise on ham on an english muffin) isn't bad, except for the english muffin part. We manufacture in our own bodies the vast majority of our own cholesterol, and what fuels its manufacture is high levels of insulin in the blood, which is in turn driven by eating a starchy and sugary diet.

(This is a very quick and over-simplified overview. I've read extensively on this topic, and there are a bunch of books on the topic of meat and heart health.  There are other books on the topic of the badness of grains and the impact of insulin on heart health.  The ones I'm drawing from right now include Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat, and What To Do About It, both by Gary Taubes, Protein Power and related books by Michael and Mary Dan Eades, and The Paleo Diet and related books by Loren Cordain.  Of these, I recommend most Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It, which, as the title might suggest, is very straightforward and direct in its message. The others are more for fanatics like me.)

So on the health issue, I am firmly convinced a healthy diet relies on meat. There is no question (at least in my mind) the diets we evolved on - wild meat and wild plants - are the best for our bodies.I am inclined to farmer's market and fancy free range and pastured products, as delivering more of what our bodies need to thrive, and less of what we should do without.  Lucky for me I am financially and logistically able to make that choice.

What about fish? I think of it as a sub-set of "meat". More detail on fish specifics at another time.

Next:  What does eating meat do to my soul?

Actual January Results

In the weight area, anyway, I'm doing just fine on this diet. From January first to February first, six pounds down.

Of course, New Years is a particularly good point from which to measure, because it is always up from the holiday excess.  Plus, the start of this low carb style of eating always does result in water loss. (Eventually you stabilize at a lower level of water retention, often resulting in lower blood pressure.) So I'm not anticipating six additional pounds in this next month.  Still, there is a very big psychological lift from looking at the graphs.

Here's the short term trend that really looks good (horizontal grid lines are two pounds):

In context of the last year plus of weight loss, it's a bit less dramatic.  I actually lost weight at a faster rate last January. But I'm solidly back on track, losing weight faster than the last six months of last year.  (on this graph, the horizontal grid is five pounds.)

Feeling Sorry for Myself

I woke up last Sunday thinking perhaps I had a cold.  Sure enough, I had a head-cold all this week, and it threw me off stride.  It was (still is) just a head-cold, but I haven't had a real cold for quite a while - maybe not at all last year. This was the real thing: completely stuffed nose, throat too sore to swallow at times, sneezing fits and coughing fits.  But no fever - not the flu (I had my shot early this year). It could be that the added stress of three nights in the forties in my bedroom lowered my resistance to ever present cold germs, so I'll add my cold to Pepco's sins.

We are fiercely busy at work doing some very stressful stuff and so I kept on going to the office. But I wasn't up to full speed there, and the effort to pull myself together there took just about everything I had, so of course I blew off both early morning gym sessions in an attempt to get more sleep besides not having the energy to face it. I found with the extra hour's sleep, then getting up to immediate cold medicine and lots of hot coffee, my mornings in the office were relatively productive. By afternoon I was dragging, and the evenings were quite sluggish.

So I didn't have the energy to do much planning or executing good food for the diet.  Everything in my body was suggesting staying in bed with a big plate of pasta to knock me out and sleep until recovery.  In my younger days of living alone and tending to myself, I invented a "feed a cold and stuff a fever" dish that always helped me sleep it off, basically a form of spaghetti carbonara with onions instead of bacon.  (Sautee one or two sweet onions in a pan while boiling thin spaghetti; when both are done combine into the onion pan and scramble an egg into it. Smother in parmesan. and eat until your stomach is comfortably full.  Sleep for twelve hours.)

Luckily for both me and the family, we're actively eating down all the food in the big basement freezer and basement storage closet before doing any more major restocking. For dinners I was able to serve pot roast, spaghetti with meat-balls, and baked salmon with pesto.  There were main dishes I could eat every night, but we didn't have much in the way of fresh vegetables, and what we had I didn't get around to cooking.  A couple of times, at the last minute, I tossed some frozen green beans in the microwave and brought them to the table.  For breakfast and lunch, I either had big hunks of cheese from my fridge or else bought something on the fly. Lunch out can usually mean a salad, except with the cold (and the freezing rain) I craved the comfort of hot food, which is far more problematic.

I found overall that "coasting" on this Atkins way of food choices means not eating enough carbs by the diet's rules, and certainly not enough fresh vegetables. What is easy to do is get a meat meal, and ignore the carb sides that usually are offered. I wasn't hungry afterwards, but even Atkins would say I was not eating a healthy diet.  I did have almonds for a snack in my office desk drawer, so I wasn't carb free, but it wasn't anything fresh. I did have an evening appetizer (while fixing dinner) of celery with almond butter.  I did take my vitamins, and picked up a container of blueberries along the way for an evening treat, so I got some vitamin C, at least.  But getting my leafy greens and other fiber-rich vegetables into my diet takes planning, shopping, and working ahead - all efforts I wasn't prepared to make last week. I didn't actually track my food at the time, either, and it's possible that my "treats" piled up on top of each other, eroding the insulin control.

The other thing that kind of frustrated me is the inability to eat sandwiches.  There is a reason they are so popular - they can be so very convenient. When I need to grab something in the cafeteria to take back to my office and talk to folks while I eat (something I had to do more than once in our crazy busy week), a sandwich is the portable and neat and convenient form. I didn't do it, but a salad or hot dish that requires a plate in front of you, a knife and fork, both hands and a napkin involved is way more an obstacle than a sandwich held in one hand off to the side.

Thinking about convenient hand food turned me to my cookbook shelf. Sure enough, I found in one of my low carb books a suggestion for lettuce packages, inspired by Vietnamese cuisine. Basically, to make the lettuce pliable enough to wrap the contents, you have to blanch whole romaine leaves briefly in boiling water, then immediately transfer to an ice water bath. The leaves should be big enough to wrap the meat contents completely. Not something to be slapped together at the last minute, and not something likely that can be frozen and thawed, but never-the-less something to try to see if it is portable and handy as finger food to eat in the office or while out and about.  Leftover taco meat, for example, or pieces of chicken or turkey with a really good mustard or mayonnaise based sauce. Or even tuna salad - something I'm trying to not eat more than once a week, per Consumer Reports.

As a result of all the slugdom and minimal eating, weight loss is going fine but strength and overall health is not up to snuff.  I went to the gym Saturday morning for the first time in a week, and was totally exhausted at the end. The rest of my Saturday was totally inactive. Now, on Sunday, I'm sore in that muscle way after working out, more than usual.  I have yard work to do today. I have some dinner plans for the coming week, and that should result in some leftovers for lunches. I am lacking in the breakfast department, and I don't want to default to eggs and sausage in the company cafeteria.  (It's not actually that bad from an overall Atkins viewpoint, but I know for a fact they use factory farmed eggs and pork, and I bet they use the nastiest fats possible for cooking.) I've got a bunch of spinach, and maybe I can sautee in olive oil with some onions and pecans and call it breakfast. Re-nuke briefly each morning and eat with a fork, maybe with some parmesan cheese.

So here's where I am after the month of Atkins: I'm definitely losing weight, and I'm definitely doing ok with the concept of the diet, and I'm generally eating about 1500 calories or more when I'm tracking.  I need to focus on adding more vegetables to the diet. I am at the stages where the book says to add back fruits, still no starches. I'd like to track more carefully, and get a handle on what I'm actually doing. But vegetables need to be my focus, and they remain hard to incorporate.  Meat from home warmed up and put on a salad at work is a very successful and fulfilling lunch option, so I need to try to incorporate that into my dinner planning.

And back to the gym this coming week!

Shopping in my closet

I found a pair of herring bone wool trousers in the very back of my closet this week. They fit perfectly. I only have the vaguest memory of buying them, and then not wearing them because they didn't fit well. Serendipity strikes!




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