Healthy Fats Quotes

For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

All worries are less with wine.

DETOX your mind, body, AND your contact list.

Whatever is deeply, essentially female--the life in a woman's expression, the feel of her flesh, the shape of her breasts, the transformations after childbirth of her skin--is being reclassified as ugly, and ugliness as disease. These qualities are about an intensification of female power, which explains why they are being recast as a diminution of power. At least a third of a woman's life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition--so that women will only feel healthy if we are two thirds of the women we could be. How can an "ideal" be about women if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characteristic does not exist on the woman's body, and how much of a female life does not show on her face?

Most weight-loss books are written by smart, well-intentioned people who read a lot of other weight-loss books and write their book based on their collected 2nd hand knowledge and their personal experience. Glucose Control Eating© is different. It’s based on over 40 years of empirical testing and over 85,000 tests on the impact of foods and drinks on weight. 

We need a world that insists upon safety and dignity for all of us—not because we are beautiful, healthy, blameless, exceptional, or beyond reproach, but because we are human beings.

What if there were health food stores on every corner in the hood, instead of liquor stores!?

Hunger gives flavour to the food.

Some people when they see cheese, chocolate or cake they don't think of calories.

We can build a world that doesn’t assume fat people are failed thin people, or that thin people are categorically healthy and virtuous.

What Foods Create Blood Glucose? Blood glucose is not created just by sweets—it’s created by all foods. Proteins create glucose, fats create glucose, vegetables create glucose, fruits create glucose, fruit juices create glucose, starchy foods create glucose, and of course, sweets create glucose. So the key to losing weight is to consume less of the foods (including drinks) that create large amounts of glucose and replace them with foods and beverages that create smaller amounts of glucose and go into the bloodstream more slowly.

No that I'm fat, but since the images that society forces down our throats these days tell us that if you aren't built like stick with boobs (bee sting size), then you are not skinny, but I am a healthy kind of curvy. I've always said that I was just born in the wrong century, cause back then? I would have been the shit!

A very pleasant surprise was that items I thought were naughty but that I enjoyed immensely, like strong coffee, dark chocolate, nuts, high fat yoghurt, wine and cheese, are actually likely to be healthy for me and my microbes.

Real women are happy, fat, skinny, healthy, unhealthy, dumb, and smart.

Thinking about working out burns 0 calories, 0 percentage of fat and accomplishes 0 goals!

Your body is a Temple. You are what you eat. Do not eat processed food, junk foods, filth, or disease carrying food, animals, or rodents. Some people say of these foods, 'well, it tastes good'. Most of the foods today that statically cause sickness, cancer, and disease ALL TATSE GOOD; it's well seasoned and prepared poison. THIS IS WHY SO MANY PEOPLE ARE SICK; mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually; because of being hooked to the 'taste' of poison, instead of being hooked on the truth and to real foods that heal and provide you with good health and wellness. Respect and honor your Temple- and it will honor you.

At least a third of a woman's life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition--so that women will only feel healthy if we are two thirds of the women we could be. How can an "ideal" be about women if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characteristic does not show on her body, and how much of a female life does not show on her face?

We need to stop excusing mediocre and downright pernicious art, stop 'taking it for what it’s worth' as we take our fast foods, our overpriced cars that are no good, the overpriced houses we spend all our lives fixing, our television programs, our schools thrown up like barricades in the way of young minds, our brainless fat religions, our poisonous air, our incredible cult of sports, and our ritual of fornicating with all pretty or even horse-faced strangers. We would not put up with a debauched king, but in a democracy all of us are kings, and we praise debauchery as pluralism. This book is of course no condemnation of pluralism; but it is true that art is in one sense fascistic: it claims, on good authority, that some things are healthy for individuals and society and some things are not.

Eating was so fraught when you were fat: If you ate something unhealthy, thin people would say it was no wonder you were fat. But if you ate something healthy, they’d roll their eyes, laugh, and say, “Yeah, right.

HEALTHY EATING isn't about counting fat grams, dieting, cleanses, and antioxidants; Its about eating food untouched from the way we find it in nature in a balanced way; Whole foods give us all that we need to perfectly nourish ourselves.

Energy makes your body active but too much energy gets stored as fat and makes you inactive. It's true for all type of energies in your life. Let things go, let things come, let there be a healthy flow.

Excuses don’t kill the fat, exercises do.

Fat jokes were my bread and butter which is a shame because that kind of bread and butter is basically a shame sandwich, and shame is never part of a healthy balanced diet.

She’d heard my theory on funnel cake and celery stalker men before. Most men were either like funnel cake: delicious and interesting, but who at the end of the day just aren’t good for the heart or complexion. Or they were celery: a sensible, healthy choice that didn’t really bring much to the table but an occasional crunch. If you OD on celery, you end up bingeing on cake behind closed doors. Funnel cake, while warm and delicious, is difficult to make. But you go there because you long for it like the double-twist stomach-dropping roller coaster as soon as you arrive at the amusement park. Wet ribbons of batter crackle and pop until golden and crisp, yielding in the center. The steamy swirls of tender yellow dough absorb confectioners’ sugar like pores. When the luxurious fat melts on your tongue, you exhale. You’ve got sticky batter, dribbling down spouts, leaving rings on your clean countertops, splattering oil growing darker and beginning to smoke. Layers of paper towels and oil-draining weapons clutter your space. With funnel cake, you’ve got steps to follow. Procedures. Rules. No one makes rules about celery. It’s always around for the snacking. You choose it when you’re dieting or trying not to consume too many wings over football. Come to think of it, you don’t even bother eating it when you diet. Instead it’s a conduit for blue cheese. You use it to make stocks and stuffing. It becomes filler, pantry almost.

Large portraits of Mao on wooden boards several feet high stood at main street corners. Painted to make the old man look extremely youthful, healthy, and fat (a sign of well-being in China), these pictures provided a mocking contrast to the thin, pale-faced pedestrians walking listlessly below them.

One married couple goes out to a restaurant twice a week for dinner. They spend $160 a month on eating out. They get fat. Another married couple invests $160 a month in their own network marketing business. They stay slim and healthy. In a few years they retire.

All of us deserve peaceful relationships with our own bodies, regardless of whether or not others perceive us as happy or healthy.

There is no dictionary in the world that includes the words ’skinny’ or ‘fat’ under the definitions of ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’. So, focus on being healthy and stop the self-criticism.

Want to age backward? Do these things right now: •   Stop eating sugar, soy, excess omega-6 fats, and refined carbs, and replace these foods with additional healthy saturated fat from grass-fed meat, pastured eggs, and energy fats.

That heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer might be caused by the kinds of carbohydrates consumed in modern diets has also been the conclusion of many doctors and researchers who observed primitive populations as they began to eat these foods.

Forest air is the epitome of healthy air. People who want to take a deep breath of fresh air or engage in physical activity in a particularly agreeable atmosphere step out into the forest. There's every reason to do so. The air truly is considerably cleaner under the trees, because the trees act as huge air filters. Their leaves and needles hang in a steady breeze, catching large and small particles as they float by. Per year and square mile this can amount to 20,000 tons of material. Trees trap so much because their canopy presents such a large surface area. In comparison with a meadow of a similar size, the surface area of the forest is hundreds of times larger, mostly because of the size difference between trees and grass. The filtered particles contain not only pollutants such as soot but also pollen and dust blown up from the ground. It is the filtered particles from human activity, however, that are particularly harmful. Acids, toxic hydrocarbons, and nitrogen compounds accumulate in the trees like fat in the filter of an exhaust fan above a kitchen stove. But not only do trees filter materials out of the air, they also pump substances into it. They exchange scent-mails and, of course, pump out phytoncides, both of which I have already mentioned.

While good science should be ruled by skepticism and self-doubt, the field of nutrition has instead been shaped by passions verging on zealotry. And the whole system by which ideas are canonized as fact seems to have failed us.

In the very same books that tell us to locate our self-worth not in how we look but in who we are and how we feel – there is a consistent, entrenched fear of fatness.

Any diet can be made healthy or at least healthier—from vegan to meat-heavy—if the high-glycemic-index carbohydrates and sugars are removed, or reduced significantly.

Food manufacturers, from Big Food to the corner bakery, came to rely upon hydrogenated oils because they’re cheaper than butter and lard

The food world is particularly prey to corruption, because so much money is made on food and so much depends on talk and especially the opinions of experts.

The main problem with all these newly developed fats and fat replacers coming out of food company laboratories is that their effects on health have barely been studied.

The practice of good science requires that when we observe something that doesn’t fit a hypothesis, these observations need to be reckoned with somehow.

It struck me that many Christians flash around their 'no trans fat' label, trying to convince everyone they are healthy and good. Yet they have no substantive or healthful elements to their faith. It's like the Laodiceans, who thought they had everything until Christ told them they were poor and wretched.

What I found, incredibly, was not only that it was a mistake to restrict fat but also that our fear of the saturated fats in animal foods—butter, eggs, and meat—has never been based in solid science.

More often than not, expecting to lose weight without first losing the diet that made the weight loss necessary is like expecting a pig to be spotless after hosing it down while it was still rolling in mud.

We proclaimed the freedom of the individual, bought and drove millions of cars to prove it, built more roads for the cars to drive on so we could go the everywhere that was nowhere. We watered our lawns, we washed our cars, we gulped plastic bottles of water to stay hydrated in our dehydrated land, we put up water parks. We built temples to our fantasies--film studios, amusement parks, crystal cathedrals, megachurches--and flocked to them. We went to the beach, rode the waves, and poured our waste into the water we said we loved. We reinvented ourselves every day, remade our culture, locked ourselves in gated communities, we ate healthy food, we gave up smoking, we lifted our faces while avoiding the sun, we had our skin peeled, our lines removed, our fat sucked away like our unwanted babies, we defied aging and death. We made gods of wealth and health. A religion of narcissism. In the end, we worshipped only ourselves. In the end, it wasn't enough.

The origin of brain disease is in many cases predominantly dietary. Although several factors play into the genesis and progression of brain disorders, to a large extent numerous neurological afflictions often reflect the mistake of consuming too many carbs and too few healthy fats.

In the end, what we believe to be true—our conventional wisdom—is really nothing more than sixty years of misconceived nutrition research. Before 1961, there were our ancestors, with their recipes. And before them, there were their ancestors, with their hunting bows or traps or livestock—but like lost languages, lost skills, and lost songs, it takes only a few generations to forget.

What a joke, coming from a woman who worked for the fashion industry. Really. Starving yourself to fit into a size zero — why did that size even exist? Zero referred to the absence of something, but what did it mean in terms of a model's measurements? Her fat? Or her presence? How much could you cut away before the person herself vanished? It was hypocritical, that's what it was. I said as much, adding, “If you're so keen on me being healthy then you should have no problem accepting me for the way I am. That's what's healthy, Mom. Not being focused on all this freaky weight-loss stuff.

This, as Joseph had pointed out on retreat, is the lie we tell ourselves our whole lives: as soon as we get the next meal, party, vacation, sexual encounter, as soon as we get married, get a promotion, get to the airport check-in, get through security and consume a bouquet of Auntie Anne’s Cinnamon Sugar Stix, we’ll feel really good. But as soon as we find ourselves in the airport gate area, having ingested 470 calories’ worth of sugar and fat before dinner, we don’t bother to examine the lie that fuels our lives. We tell ourselves we’ll sleep it off, take a run, eat a healthy breakfast, and then, finally, everything will be complete. We live so much of our lives pushed forward by these “if only” thoughts, and yet the itch remains. The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.

Make sure to get your good fat in. Fat doesn’t make you fat, sugar does. Fat

Aldous Huxley said: “Medical science has made such fantastic progress that there are barely any healthy people left.

Lifshitz found, and the worst vitamin deficiencies occurred on the lowest-fat diets, even when protein intake was adequate.

Vegetarian diets generally have not been shown to help people live longer.

The consumption of “sweets” in the Seven Countries study, as you might remember, correlated more closely with heart disease rates than did any other kind of food:

The vast majority of hydrogenated oils consumed by Americans are made from soybeans, and this has been true since the 1960s

While good science should be ruled by skepticism and self-doubt, the field of nutrition has instead been shaped by passions verging on zealotry.

Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ate three to four times more red meat than they do today.

Despite the ever-increasing responsibilities, there are no promotions in motherhood. You’ll never get an annual review followed by a fat bonus and a healthy raise.

Simply put, there were some ten million Americans of a prime age for having a heart attack at the turn of the twentieth century, but heart attacks appeared not to have been a common problem.

There was nothing wrong with any part of her. She was healthy, and happy, and fat, something which everyone who met her was quick to point out, some in tones of gleeful disgust, others in tones of shameful condemnation. Did she not know that she was fat, perhaps? Had she missed that essential fact of her own physical reality, and needed it explicitly explained to her? There was nothing wrong with her, but she was smart enough to know that everything was wrong with her, and even the fact that her parents and her doctors said that dieting would only do her harm didn’t change the fact that if she didn’t find a way to magically become thin, she would never be accepted.

No matter how hard you try to be a good parent, you always know deep down that you could do more. I feel guilty when I travel out of town to do shows. I feel guilty when I’m in town and I don’t spend every single moment with my children. I feel guilty when I’m spending time with my children and I am not doing something constructive toward their intellectual development. I feel guilty when I feed them unhealthy food they like. I feel guilty when I feed them healthy food they don’t like. I feel guilty when I drop them off at school. I feel guilty when I pick them up at school.

The beginning of the end for trans fats came not from any American scientist, since critics of trans fats in the US research community had effectively been marginalized. Instead, it came from Holland:

It was a Kafkaesque circle of reasoning. Keys’s hypothesis had evidently managed to sail over the normal hurdles of scientific proof such that the mere act of testing the diet was now considered unethical.

The AHA even rode the profit wave of refined carbohydrates from the 1990s onward by charging a hefty fee for the privilege of putting the AHA’s “Heart Healthy” check mark on products, with the label ending up on some dubious candidates, such as Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Fruity Marshmallow Krispies, and low-fat Pop-Tarts.

Can these foods [low-fat, vitamin-enriched, etc] even be called "healthy"? Perhaps we should think about it this way: If you cut a batch of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine with chai, you could say with some degree of honesty that it is "healthier," "less addictive," and "now with chai!" But would you say it's "good for you"?

Some of my most remarkable case studies involve people changing their lives and health for the better through simple brain-making edits to their dietary choices. They cut carbs and add healthy fats, especially cholesterol—a key player in brain and psychological health. I’ve watched this fundamental dietary shift single-handedly extinguish depression and all of its kissing cousins, from chronic anxiety to poor memory and even ADHD.

I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impluse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself (...)For what I have always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

Thinner people are seen as working hard to achieve their thinness, therefore as dedicated and tenacious. Fatter people are seen, consequently, as failing to put in the effort needed to become thin, or healthy and virtuous.

Ohhhhh." A lush-bodied girl in the prime of her physical beauty. In an ivory georgette-crepe sundress with a halter top that gathers her breasts up in soft undulating folds of the fabric. She's standing with bare legs apart on a New York subway grating. Her blond head is thrown rapturously back as an updraft lifts her full, flaring skirt, exposing white cotton panties. White cotton! The ivory-crepe sundress is floating and filmy as magic. The dress is magic. Without the dress the girl would be female meat, raw and exposed. She's not thinking such a thought! Not her. She's an American girl healthy and clean as a Band-Aid. She's never had a soiled or a sulky thought. She's never had a melancholy thought. She's never had a savage thought. She's never had a desperate thought. She's never had an un-American thought. In the papery-thin sundress she's a nurse with tender hands. A nurse with luscious mouth. Sturdy thighs, bountiful breasts, tiny folds of baby fat at her armpits. She's laughing and squealing like a four year-old as another updraft lifts her skirt. Dimpled knees, a dancer's strong legs. This husky healthy girl. The shoulders, arms, breasts belong to a fully mature woman but the face is a girl's face. Shivering in New York City mid-summer as subway steam lifts her skirt like a lover's quickened breath. "Oh! Ohhhhh." It's nighttime in Manhattan, Lexington Avenue at 51st Street. Yet the white-white lights exude the heat of midday. The goddess of love has been standing like this, legs apart, in spike-heeled white sandals so steep and so tight they've permanently disfigured her smallest toes, for hours. She's been squealing and laughing, her mouth aches. There's a gathering pool of darkness at the back of her head like tarry water. Her scalp and her pubis burn from the morning's peroxide applications. The Girl with No Name. The glaring-white lights focus upon her, upon her alone, blond squealing, blond laughter, blond Venus, blond insomnia, blond smooth-shaven legs apart and blond hands fluttering in a futile effort to keep her skirt from lifting to reveal white cotton American-girl panties and the shadow, just the shadow, of the bleached crotch. "Ohhhhhh." Now she's hugging herself beneath her big bountiful breasts. Her eyelids fluttering. Between the legs, you can trust she's clean. She's not a dirty girl, nothing foreign or exotic. She's an American slash in the flesh. That emptiness. Guaranteed. She's been scooped out, drained clean, no scar tissue to interfere with your pleasure, and no odor. Especially no odor. The Girl with No Name, the girl with no memory. She has not lived long and she will not live long.

When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel tle very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, to provide a few rebellious schoolboys with the longed-for ticket to Hamburg, or to stand one or two representatives of the established order on their heads. For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

the NIH held a series of workshops in the 1980s to address the fact that the early clinical trials using diets high in soybean oil showed subjects dying of cancer at alarmingly elevated rates. Gallstones were also associated with diets high in vegetable oils.

THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case. In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic." Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight. So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic. Suzy Kassem, Truth Is Crying

Indeed, for the first 250 years of American history, even the poor in the United States could afford meat or fish for every meal. The fact that the workers had so much access to meat was precisely why observers regarded the diet of the New World to be superior to that of the Old.

. In its contemporary iteration, our cultural definition of health depends on thinness. “Get healthy” is used as a euphemistic shorthand for losing weight. Fat people are pressured to change our appearance out of a purported concern for our health, diagnosed solely by looking at us.

Fat people—especially very fat people, like me—are frequently met with screwed-up faces insisting on health and concern. Often, we defend ourselves by insisting that concerns about our health are wrongheaded, rooted in faulty and broad assumptions. We rattle off our test results and hospital records, citing proudly that we’ve never had a heart attack, hypertension, or diabetes. We proudly recite our gym schedules and the contents of our refrigerators. Many fat people live free from the complications popularly associated with their bodies. Many fat people don’t have diabetes, just as many fat people do have loving partners despite common depictions of us. Although we are not thin, we proudly report that we are happy and we are healthy. We insist on our goodness by relying on our health. But what we mean is that we are tired of automatically being seen as sick. We are exhausted from the work of carrying bodies that can only be seen as doomed. We are tired of being heralded as dead men walking, undead specters from someone else’s morality tale.

In other words, the best way to win the war against fat is to give up the fight. Turn over control to your body and you will settle at a healthy weight. And regardless of whether you do lose weight, your health and well-being will markedly improve. You will find that biology is much more powerful than willpower.

Astwood’s belief that those who fatten easily are fundamentally, physiologically and metabolically different from those who don’t. This implies that those of us who fatten easily can get fat on precisely the same food and even the same amount on which lean people stay lean. We can’t be told to eat like lean and healthy people eat and expect that advice to work, because we get fat eating like lean and healthy people. Indeed, we get fat and hungry eating like lean and healthy people do.

Brace yourselves, girls: Soda is liquid Satan. It is the devil. It is garbage. There is nothing in soda that should be put into your body. For starters, soda’s high levels of phosphorous can increase calcium loss from the body, as can its sodium and caffeine. [Cousens, Conscious Eating, 475] You know what this means—bone loss, which may lead to osteoporosis. And the last time we checked, sugar, found in soda by the boatload, does not make you skinny! Now don’t go patting yourself on the back if you drink diet soda. That stuff is even worse. Aspartame (an ingredient commonly found in diet sodas and other sugar-free foods) has been blamed for a slew of scary maladies, like arthritis, birth defects, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes.2 When methyl alcohol, a component of aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is toxic and carcinogenic (cancer-causing). 3 Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don’t fucking drink it. Perhaps you have a lumpy ass because you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received more complaints about aspartame than any other ingredient to date.4 Want more bad news? When aspartame is paired with carbs, it causes your brain to slow down its production of serotonin.5 A healthy level of serotonin is needed to be happy and well balanced. So drinking soda can make you fat, sick, and unhappy.

We removed one ingredient—the shortening—and had to add six to replace it.” These kinds of complex solutions, involving artificial stews of multiple ingredients, were necessary for most food product reformulations but, it must be said, they would not have been if the food industry had just been using butter, lard, or tallow all along.

More profoundly, Nihilist "simplification" may be seen in the universal prestige today accorded the lowest order of knowledge, the scientific, as well as the simplistic ideas of men like Marx, Freud, and Darwin, which underlie virtually the whole of contemporary thought and life. We say "life," for it is important to see that the Nihilist history of our century has not been something imposed from without or above, or at least has not been predominantly this; it has rather presupposed, and drawn its nourishment from, a Nihilist soil that has long been preparing in the hearts of the people. It is precisely from the Nihilism of the commonplace, from the everyday Nihilism revealed in the life and thought and aspiration of the people, that all the terrible events of our century have sprung. The world-view of Hitler is very instructive in this regard, for in him the most extreme and monstrous Nihilism rested upon the foundation of a quite unexceptional and even typical Realism. He shared the common faith in "science," "progress," and "enlightenment" (though not, of course, in "democracy"), together with a practical materialism that scorned all theology, metaphysics, and any thought or action concerned with any other world than the "here and now," priding himself on the fact that he had "the gift of reducing all problems to their simplest foundations." He had a crude worship of efficiency and utility that freely tolerated "birth control", laughed at the institution of marriage as a mere legalization of a sexual impulse that should be "free", welcomed sterilization of the unfit, despised "unproductive elements" such as monks, saw nothing in the cremation of the dead but a "practical" question and did not even hesitate to put the ashes, or the skin and fat, of the dead to "productive use." He possessed the quasi-anarchist distrust of sacred and venerable institutions, in particular the Church with its "superstitions" and all its "outmoded" laws and ceremonies. He had a naive trust in the "natural mom, the "healthy animal" who scorns the Christian virtues--virginity in particular--that impede the "natural functioning" of the body. He took a simple-minded delight in modern conveniences and machines, and especially in the automobile and the sense of speed and "freedom" it affords. There is very little of this crude Weltanschauung that is not shared, to some degree, by the multitudes today, especially among the young, who feel themselves "enlightened" and "liberated," very little that is not typically "modern.

The day the FDA rule came out, there were partially hydrogenated oils in some 42,720 packaged food products, including 100 percent of crackers, 95 percent of cookies, 85 percent of breading and croutons, 75 percent of baking mixes, 70 percent of chip-type snacks, 65 percent of margarines, and 65 percent of pie shells, frosting, and chocolate chips.

These apparent paradoxes would be vexing, except that an alternative explanation for the relative absence of heart disease on Crete had always been at hand: the near-complete absence of sugar in the Cretan diet. As Allbaugh described, the Cretans “do not serve desserts—except for fresh fruit in season. . . . Cake is seldom served, and pie almost never.

The dark side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it. If your success is measured by quarterly earnings, you will optimize sales, revenue, and accounting for quarterly earnings. If your success is measured by a lower number on the scale, you will optimize for a lower number on the scale, even if that means embracing crash diets, juice cleanses, and fat-loss pills. The human mind wants to “win” whatever game is being played. This pitfall is evident in many areas of life. We focus on working long hours instead of getting meaningful work done. We care more about getting ten thousand steps than we do about being healthy. We teach for standardized tests instead of emphasizing learning, curiosity, and critical thinking. In short, we optimize for what we measure. When we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior. This is sometimes referred to as Goodhart’s Law. Named after the economist Charles Goodhart, the principle states, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

…Sugar has become an ingredient avoidable in prepared and packaged foods only by concerted and determined effort, effectively ubiquitous. Not just in the obvious sweet foods (candy bars, cookies, ice creams, chocolates, sodas, juices, sports and energy drinks, sweetened iced tea, jams, jellies, and breakfast cereals both cold and hot), but also in peanut butter, salad dressings, ketchup, BBQ sauces, canned soups, cold cuts, luncheon meats, bacon, hot dogs, pretzels, chips, roasted peanuts, spaghetti sauces, canned tomatoes, and breads. From the 1980's onward manufacturers of products advertised as uniquely healthy because they were low in fat…not to mention gluten free, no MSG, and zero grams trans fat per serving, took to replacing those fat calories with sugar to make them equally…palatable and often disguising the sugar under one or more of the fifty plus names, by which the fructose-glucose combination of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup might be found. Fat was removed from candy bars sugar added, or at least kept, so that they became health food bars. Fat was removed from yogurts and sugars added and these became heart healthy snacks, breakfasts, and lunches.

What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those disciplines. It has since resisted all attempts to correct it. As a result, the individuals involved in this research have not only wasted decades of time, and effort, and money but have done incalculable damage along the way. Their beliefs have remained imperious to an ever-growing body of evidence that refutes them while being embraced by public-health authorities and translated into precisely the wrong advice about what to eat and, more important, what not to eat if we want to maintain a healthy weight and live a long and healthy life.

Not only did the selection of chicken as the dominant meat source have no basis in the history of the Mediterranean diet, but one could reasonably question whether chicken has the same effect on health as do Cretan goats or kids or lamb. Red meat, for example, has a far greater abundance of vitamins B12 and B6, as well as the nutrients selenium, thiamine, riboflavin, and iron, than does chicken.

Westman has written poignantly about the predicament of working toward paradigm change when the existing bias is so strong: “When an unscientific fear of dietary fat pervades the culture so much that researchers who are on study sections that provide funding will not allow research into high-fat diets for fear of “harming people.’” as we’ve seen at the NIH and AHA, “this situation will not allow science to self-correct.’ A sort of scientific taboo is created because of the low likelihood of funding, and the funding agencies are off the hook because they say that researchers are not submitting requests for grants.

An artist must regulate his life. Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.7 pm. From 5 to 6.47 pm various occupations (fencing, reflection, immobility, visits, contemplation, dexterity, natation, etc.) Dinner is served at 7.16 and finished at 7.20 pm. From 8.9 to 9.59 pm symphonic readings (out loud). I go to bed regularly at 10.37 pm. Once a week (on Tuesdays) I awake with a start at 3.14 am. My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coco-nuts, chicken cooked in white water, mouldy fruit, rice, turnips, sausages in camphor, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with the juice of the Fuschia. I have a good appetite but never talk when eating for fear of strangling myself. I breathe carefully (a little at a time) and dance very rarely. When walking I hold my ribs and look steadily behind me. My expression is very serious; when I laugh it is unintentional, and I always apologise very politely. I sleep with only one eye closed, very profoundly. My bed is round with a hole in it for my head to go through. Every hour a servant takes my temperature and gives me another.

A healthy attitude to eating I am concerned about the current victimisation of food. The apparent need to divide the contents of our plates into heroes and villains. The current villains are sugar and gluten, though it used to be fat, and before that it was salt (and before that it was carbs and . . . oh, I’ve lost track). It is worth remembering that today’s devil will probably be tomorrow’s angel and vice versa. We risk having the life sucked out of our eating by allowing ourselves to be shamed over our food choices. If this escalates, historians may look back on this generation as one in which society’s decision about what to eat was driven by guilt and shame rather than by good taste or pleasure. Well, not on my watch. Yes, I eat cake, and ice cream and meat. I eat biscuits and bread and drink alcohol too. What is more, I eat it all without a shred of guilt. And yet, I like to think my eating is mindful rather than mindless. I care deeply about where my food has come from, its long-term effect on me and the planet. That said, I eat what you might call ‘just enough’ rather than too much. My rule of thumb – just don’t eat too much of any one thing.

A few months ago on a school morning, as I attempted to etch a straight midline part on the back of my wiggling daughter's soon-to-be-ponytailed blond head, I reminded her that it was chilly outside and she needed to grab a sweater. "No, mama." "Excuse me?" "No, I don't want to wear that sweater, it makes me look fat." "What?!" My comb clattered to the bathroom floor. "Fat?! What do you know about fat? You're 5 years old! You are definitely not fat. God made you just right. Now get your sweater." She scampered off, and I wearily leaned against the counter and let out a long, sad sigh. It has begun. I thought I had a few more years before my twin daughters picked up the modern day f-word. I have admittedly had my own seasons of unwarranted, psychotic Slim-Fasting and have looked erroneously to the scale to give me a measurement of myself. But these departures from my character were in my 20s, before the balancing hand of motherhood met the grounding grip of running. Once I learned what it meant to push myself, I lost all taste for depriving myself. I want to grow into more of a woman, not find ways to whittle myself down to less. The way I see it, the only way to run counter to our toxic image-centric society is to literally run by example. I can't tell my daughters that beauty is an incidental side effect of living your passion rather than an adherence to socially prescribed standards. I can't tell my son how to recognize and appreciate this kind of beauty in a woman. I have to show them, over and over again, mile after mile, until they feel the power of their own legs beneath them and catch the rhythm of their own strides. Which is why my parents wake my kids early on race-day mornings. It matters to me that my children see me out there, slogging through difficult miles. I want my girls to grow up recognizing the beauty of strength, the exuberance of endurance, and the core confidence residing in a well-tended body and spirit. I want them to be more interested in what they are doing than how they look doing it. I want them to enjoy food that is delicious, feed their bodies with wisdom and intent, and give themselves the freedom to indulge. I want them to compete in healthy ways that honor the cultivation of skill, the expenditure of effort, and the courage of the attempt. Grace and Bella, will you have any idea how lovely you are when you try? Recently we ran the Chuy's Hot to Trot Kids K together as a family in Austin, and I ran the 5-K immediately afterward. Post?race, my kids asked me where my medal was. I explained that not everyone gets a medal, so they must have run really well (all kids got a medal, shhh!). As I picked up Grace, she said, "You are so sweaty Mommy, all wet." Luke smiled and said, "Mommy's sweaty 'cause she's fast. And she looks pretty. All clean." My PRs will never garner attention or generate awards. But when I run, I am 100 percent me--my strengths and weaknesses play out like a cracked-open diary, my emotions often as raw as the chafing from my jog bra. In my ultimate moments of vulnerability, I am twice the woman I was when I thought I was meant to look pretty on the sidelines. Sweaty and smiling, breathless and beautiful: Running helps us all shine. A lesson worth passing along.

If, in recommending that Americans avoid meat, cheese, milk, cream, butter, eggs, and the rest, it turns out that nutrition experts made a mistake, it will have been a monumental one. Measured just by death and disease, and not including the millions of lives derailed by excess weight and obesity, it’s very possible that the course of nutrition advice over the past sixty years has taken an unparalleled toll on human history. It now appears that since 1961, the entire American population has, indeed, been subjected to a mass experiment, and the results have clearly been a failure. Every reliable indicator of good health is worsened by a low-fat diet. Whereas diets high in fat have been shown, again and again, in a large body of clinical trials, to lead to improved measures for heart disease, blood pressure, and diabetes, and are better for weight loss. Moreover, it’s clear that the original case against saturated fats was based on faulty evidence and has, over the last decade, fallen apart. Despite more than two billion dollars in public money spent trying to prove that lowering saturated fat will prevent heart attacks, the diet-heart hypothesis has not held up.

There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness, for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering and on tip-toe. But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain. When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my mouldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, to provide a few rebellious schoolboys with the longed-for ticket to Hamburg, or to stand one or two representatives of the established order on their heads. For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

There are a few clear themes that emerge when we synthesize all the findings we’ve looked at so far, and those are jewels you should pluck out of this book, place in your pocket, and carry with you for as long as they serve you. Here are the biggies. Eliminate or drastically reduce your intake of refined grains, refined sugar, and high-omega-6 vegetable oils. No healthy human population has thrived on these items, and the bulk of the evidence points toward their harm. Secure a source of those precious fat-soluble vitamins—whether from shellfish, fish eggs, high-quality dairy, bone marrow, organ meats like liver, or cod liver oil.

One fact is beyond dispute: Homogenization prevents the consumer from realizing just how little fat is contained in modern processed milk, even "full fat" milk. Before homogenization, milk purchasers looked for milk that had lots of cream - that was the sign that the milk came from healthy cows, cows on pasture. Old-fashioned milk contained from 4 to 8 percent butterfat, which translated into lots of cream on the top. Modern milk is standardize at 3.5 percent, no more. Butterfat brings bigger profits to the dairy industry as butter or as an ingredient in ice cream than as a component of liquid milk. The consumer has been cheated, but with homogenization, he can't tell.

The popular media and conventional wisdom, including the medical profession's traditional approach to nutrition, have created and continue to perpetuate this problem through inadequate, outdated dietary counseling. Attempts to universalize dietary therapies so that one-diet-fits-all influences the flawed claims against meats and fats, thereby encouraging overconsumption of grains. Government-sponsored guides to healthy eating, such as the USDA's food pyramid, which advocates six to eleven servings of grains daily for everyone, lag far behind current research and continue to preach dangerously old-fashioned ideas. Because the USDA's function is largely the promotion of agriculture and agricultural products, there is a clear conflict of interest inherent in any USDA claim of healthful benefits arising from any agricultural product. Popular beliefs and politically motivated promotion, not science, continue to dictate dietary recommendations, leading to debilitating and deadly diseases that are wholly or partly preventable.

Carbohydrates are not required in a healthy human diet. Another way to say this (as proponents of carbohydrate restriction have) is that there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Nutritionists will say that 120 to 130 grams of carbohydrates are required in a healthy diet, but this is because they confuse what the brain and central nervous system will burn for fuel when diets are carbohydrate rich—120 to 130 grams daily—with what we actually have to eat. If there are no carbohydrates in the diet, the brain and central nervous system will run on molecules called “ketones.” These are synthesized in the liver from the fat we eat and from fatty acids, mobilized from the fat tissue because we’re not eating carbohydrates and insulin levels are low, and even from some amino acids. With no carbohydrates in the diet, ketones will provide roughly three-quarters of the energy that our brains use. And this is why severely carbohydrate-restricted diets are known as “ketogenic” diets. The rest of the energy required will come from glycerol, which is also being released from the fat tissue when the triglycerides are broken down into their component parts, and from glucose synthesized in the liver from the amino acids in protein. Because a diet that doesn’t include fattening carbohydrates will still include plenty of fat and protein, there will be no shortage of fuel for the brain.

I have seen mood stabilization, reduced or eliminated depression, reduced or eliminated anxiety, improved cognitive functioning, greatly enhanced and evened-out energy levels, cessation of seizures, improved overall neurological stability, cessation of migraines, improved sleep, improvement in autistic symptoms, improvements with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), improved gastrointestinal functioning, healthy weight loss, cancer remissions and tumor shrinkage, much better management of underlying previous health issues, improved symptoms and quality of life in those struggling with various forms of autoimmunity (including many with type 1 and 1.5 diabetes), fewer colds and flus, total reversal of chronic fatigue, improved memory, sharpened cognitive functioning, and significantly stabilized temperament. And there is quality evidence to support the beneficial impact of a fat-based ketogenic approach in all these types of issues. – Nora Gedgaudas

You Are What You Eat Take food for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself - as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gerard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer.How does a plate of sheep brain's sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That's revolting. Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig's shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin', but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what's their rationale? And what about all the expectations? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff 'em in an intestine, and you've got yourself respectable sausage or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years aqo by an advertising hired to sell more bacon, and the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, not ketchup. Think it's rational to be grossed out by eating bugs? Think again. A hundred grams of dehydrated cricket contains 1,550 milligrams of iron, 340 milligrams of calcium, and 25 milligrams of zinc - three minerals often missing in the diets of the chronic poor. Insects are richer in minerals and healthy fats than beef or pork. Freaked out by the exoskeleton, antennae, and the way too many legs? Then stick to the Turf and forget the Surf because shrimps, crabs, and lobsters are all anthropods, just like grasshoppers. And they eat the nastiest of what sinks to the bottom of the ocean, so don't talk about bugs' disgusting diets. Anyway, you may have bug parts stuck between your teeth right now. The Food and Drug Administration tells its inspectors to ignore insect parts in black pepper unless they find more than 475 of them per 50 grams, on average. A fact sheet from Ohio State University estimates that Americans unknowingly eat an average of between one and two pounds of insects per year. An Italian professor recently published Ecological Implications of Mini-livestock: Potential of Insects, Rodents, Frogs and Snails. (Minicowpokes sold separately.) Writing in Slate.com, William Saletan tells us about a company by the name of Sunrise Land Shrimp. The company's logo: "Mmm. That's good Land Shrimp!" Three guesses what Land Shrimp is. (20-21)

Are you adopted?” Jason asked. “No,” Neil said. “Your parents are elves?” “Of course they are,” Neil said. “What are you getting at?” “Is your milkman a human?” “What in the world are you talking about?” Neil asked. “I’m just wondering why you aren’t an elf,” Jason said. “I am an elf.” “You’re an elf?” Annoyed, Neil brushed back his hair to reveal a tapered ear. “Wow,” Jason said, not hiding his surprise. “Why would you think I’m a human?” Neil asked. “Well, it’s just… look. Elves are a slender bunch. Except for Lucian Lamprey, who is probably on some kind of magical roids, but that’s beside the point. For a human, your proportions are completely healthy. For an elf, though, you’re bit of a chunker.” “Excuse me?” “You know, an extra bit of heft. Too much time at the sandwich shop. An overenthusiastic between-meal-snacker.” “Are you saying I’m fat?” “I’m not saying you’re fat,” Jason assured him. “I don’t think that’s even possible for essence users. I’m saying you look fat. For an elf.” “This is how you try and recruit someone?” Neil asked incredulously.

Benefits of the Master Cleanse Detox Diet and How to Conserve a Healthy Cleansing The Master Detox in 14 days , also referred to as lemonade diet regime, is not new and has been known for decades. It demands drinking only lemonade made from fresh squeezed lemons and normal water, maple syrup, along with cayenne pepper. So there is no strong food during the detoxification course of action. Typically, any lemonade diet regime will last for 10 to 14 times and is known to be very efffective regarding colon cleansing. It's good in dissolving built-up wastes in our intestinal tracts. Besides colon detox, master cleanse diet plan can also be used for rapid weight loss. In 2007, the gifted singer/actress Beyonce Knowles used soda and pop diet pertaining to 14 days and lost Twenty-two lb or 9 kilograms. She made it happen for her part in the video Dreamgirls. As a result, this diet plan received huge advertising attention. Remember that weight loss utilizing master cleanse detox diet is not a long term remedy. After the clean, you should return to a healthy as well as well-balanced diet which consists of plenty of fruits and also fresh vegetables and occasional in included fats as well as sweets. That is how you have a long-lasting and healthful detox. Hence the key to long-term wholesome detoxification is always to focus on receiving plenty of exercise and having a well-balanced eating habits high in fruit and vegetables and low throughout added fatty acids and sugars. Some of the great things about Master Cleanse Detoxification Diet are usually: - Waste food, plague and phlegm that developed and caught up in our digestive tract tracts might be expelled. : Can result in weight loss but should followed healthy way of life after detox otherwise you're sure to gain it back in time.

Freddy and his brother Tesoro have not seen each other in five years, and they sit at the kitchen table in Freddy's house and have a jalapeno contest. A large bowl of big green and orange jalapeno peppers sit between the two brothers. A saltshaker and two small glasses of beer accompany this feast. When Tesoro nods his head, the two men begin to eat the raw jalapenos. The contest is to see which man can eat more peppers. It is a ritual from their father, but the two brothers tried it only once, years ago. Both quit after two peppers and laughed it off. This time, things are different. They are older and have to prove a point. Freddy eats his first one more slowly than Tesoro, who takes to bites to finish his and is now on his second. Neither says anything, though a close study of each man's face would tell you the sudden burst of jalapeno energy does not waste time in changing the eater's perception of reality. Freddy works on his second as Tesoro rips into his fourth. Freddy is already sweating from his head and is surprised to see that Tesoro's fat face has not shanged its steady, consuming look. Tesoro's long, black hair is neatly combed, and not one bead of sweat has popped out. He is the first to sip from the beer before hitting his fifth jalapeno. Freddy leans back as the table begins to sway in his damp vision. He coughs, and a sharp pain rips through his chest. Tesoro attempts to laugh at his brother, but Freddy sees it is something else. As Freddy finishes his third jalapeno, Tesoro begins to breathe faster upon swallowing his sixth. The contest momentarily stops as both brothers shift in their seats and the sweat pours down their faces. Freddy clutches his stomach as he reaches for his fourth delight. Tesor has not taken his seventh, and it is clear to Freddy that his brother is suffering big-time. There is a bright blue bird sitting on Tesoro's head, and Tesoro is struggling to laugh because Freddy has a huge red spider crawling on top of his head. Freddy wipes the sweat from his eyes and finishes his fourth pepper. Tesoro sips more beer, sprinkles salt on the tip of his jalapeno, and bites it down to the stem. Freddy, who has not touched his beer, stares in amazement as two Tesoros sit in front of him. They both rise hastily, their beer guts pushing the table against Freddy, who leans back as the two Tesoros waver in the kitchen light. Freddy hears a tremendous fart erupt from his brother, who sits down again. Freddy holds his fifth jalapeno and can't breathe. Tesoro's face is purple, but the blue bird has been replaced by a burning flame of light that weaves over Tesoro's shiny head. Freddy is convinced that he is having a heart attack as he watches his brother fight for breath. Freddy bites into his fifth as Tesoro flips his eighth jalapeno into his mouth, stem and all. This is it. Freddy goes into convulsions and drops to the floor as he tries to reach for his glass of beer. He shakes on the dirty floor as the huge animal that is Tesoro pitches forward and throws up millions of jalapeno seeds all over the table. The last thing Freddy sees before he passes out is his brother's body levitating above the table as an angel, dressed in green jalapeno robes, floats into the room, extends a hand to Tesoro, and floats away with him. When Freddy wakes up minutes later, he gets up and makes it to the bathroom before his body lets go through his pants. As he reaches the bathroom door, he turns and gazes upon the jalapeno plants growing healthy and large on the kitchen table, thick peppers hanging under their leaves, their branches immersed in the largest pile of jalapeno seeds Freddy has ever seen.

JUMBO GINGERBREAD NUT MUFFINS Once you try these jumbo-size, nut- and oil-rich muffins, you will appreciate how filling they are. They are made with eggs, coconut oil, almonds, and other nuts and seeds, so they are also very healthy. You can also add a schmear of cream cheese or a bit of unsweetened fruit butter for extra flavor. To fill out a lunch, add a chunk of cheese, some fresh berries or sliced fruit, or an avocado. While walnuts and pumpkin seeds are called for in the recipe to add crunch, you can substitute your choice of nut or seed, such as pecans, pistachios, or sunflower seeds. A jumbo muffin pan is used in this recipe, but a smaller muffin pan can be substituted. If a smaller pan is used, reduce baking time by about 5 minutes, though always assess doneness by inserting a wooden pick into the center of a muffin and making sure it comes out clean. If you make the smaller size, pack 2 muffins for lunch. Makes 6 4 cups almond meal/flour 1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut ½ cup chopped walnuts ½ cup pumpkin seeds Sweetener equivalent to ¾ cup sugar 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 tablespoon ground ginger 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg ½ teaspoon ground cloves 1 teaspoon sea salt 3 eggs ½ cup coconut oil, melted 1 teaspoon vanilla extract ½ cup water Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place paper liners in a 6-cup jumbo muffin pan or grease the cups with coconut or other oil. In a large bowl, combine the almond meal/flour, coconut, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sweetener, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. Mix well. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs. Stir in the coconut oil, vanilla, and water. Pour the egg mixture into the almond meal mixture and combine thoroughly. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Per serving (1 muffin): 893 calories, 25 g protein, 26 g carbohydrates, 82 g total fat, 30 g saturated fat, 12 g fiber, 333 mg sodium BRATWURST WITH BELL PEPPERS AND SAUERKRAUT Living in Milwaukee has turned me on to the flavors of German-style bratwurst, but any spicy sausage (such as Italian, chorizo, or andouille) will do just fine in this recipe. The quality of the brat or sausage makes the dish, so choose your favorite. The spices used in various sausages will vary, so I kept the spices and flavors of the sauerkraut mixture light. However, this makes the choice of bratwurst or sausage the crucial component of this dish. You can also add ground coriander, nutmeg, and

The Company We Keep So now we have seen that our cells are in relationship with our thoughts, feelings, and each other. How do they factor into our relationships with others? Listening and communicating clearly play an important part in healthy relationships. Can relationships play an essential role in our own health? More than fifty years ago there was a seminal finding when the social and health habits of more than 4,500 men and women were followed for a period of ten years. This epidemiological study led researchers to a groundbreaking discovery: people who had few or no social contacts died earlier than those who lived richer social lives. Social connections, we learned, had a profound influence on physical health.9 Further evidence for this fascinating finding came from the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Epidemiologists were interested in Roseto because of its extremely low rate of coronary artery disease and death caused by heart disease compared to the rest of the United States. What were the town’s residents doing differently that protected them from the number one killer in the United States? On close examination, it seemed to defy common sense: health nuts, these townspeople were not. They didn’t get much exercise, many were overweight, they smoked, and they relished high-fat diets. They had all the risk factors for heart disease. Their health secret, effective despite questionable lifestyle choices, turned out to be strong communal, cultural, and familial ties. A few years later, as the younger generation started leaving town, they faced a rude awakening. Even when they had improved their health behaviors—stopped smoking, started exercising, changed their diets—their rate of heart disease rose dramatically. Why? Because they had lost the extraordinarily close connection they enjoyed with neighbors and family.10 From studies such as these, we learn that social isolation is almost as great a precursor of heart disease as elevated cholesterol or smoking. People connection is as important as cellular connections. Since the initial large population studies, scientists in the field of psychoneuroimmunology have demonstrated that having a support system helps in recovery from illness, prevention of viral infections, and maintaining healthier hearts.11 For example, in the 1990s researchers began laboratory studies with healthy volunteers to uncover biological links to social and psychological behavior. Infected experimentally with cold viruses, volunteers were kept in isolation and monitored for symptoms and evidence of infection. All showed immunological evidence of a viral infection, yet only some developed symptoms of a cold. Guess which ones got sick: those who reported the most stress and the fewest social interactions in their “real life” outside the lab setting.12 We Share the Single Cell’s Fate Community is part of our healing network, all the way down to the level of our cells. A single cell left alone in a petri dish will not survive. In fact, cells actually program themselves to die if they are isolated! Neurons in the developing brain that fail to connect to other cells also program themselves to die—more evidence of the life-saving need for connection; no cell thrives alone. What we see in the microcosm is reflected in the larger organism: just as our cells need to stay connected to stay alive, we, too, need regular contact with family, friends, and community. Personal relationships nourish our cells,