In Which I Go Maha!

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I almost called this “Sympathy for RFK, Jr.” but that would be both right and not. I mean, the man is far more of a statist than I’d like, and he might have a dead worm in his brain, but he’s obviously not the devil, and is capable of allying with MAGA to get to his end of Making America Healthy Again. Also, he’s so goofy that it’s impossible not to like him at least a little. I mean, what kind of gonzo mad lad has as his secret when running for president that he once moved a dead bear cub?

Still he believes in the power of centralized up-down commands, so I’m not sure I can back him the whole way. OTOH, he hasn’t tried doing any mandates, so he might be okay.

He is absolutely right on the fact that most of our bought-food is ridiculously bad for us.

I went to a con last weekend, meaning we drove to TN all day Thursday and back on Monday. On the way back we brought some oranges and we stopped for lunch. But on the way out we left too soon for me to able to eat after my thyroid meds. This means I was looking for coffee and food at a road stop. Not only was it much harder to find just plain coffee — how many machines are designed to sell us caramel/frosting/various flavorings of corn syrup and soy with vague bits of caffeine, instead of the one coffee machine in the corner — but finding cream to put in it (as opposed to sweet, flavored soy stuff) was almost impossible. As for anything to eat, there wasn’t amid the various baked things even a glimmer of something that was “just breadlike”. No, it was all sweet cupcakes (even the ones called muffins.) And worse, the cupcake thingies were filled with super-sweet cream and crusted with sugar frosting.

WHY?

Well, I can tell you why, because I am OLD. Around the eighties, the authorities, influenced in no small amount by “Diet for a Small Planet” which combined ignorance about agriculture (lands that are good for growing cows in, don’t necessarily work for wheat, corn or even potatoes) decided that meat was evil, and fat was responsible for every health problem.

Because fat is what makes food delicious, they instead started loading things with carbs and more carbs. And because our food regulations are susceptible to lobbyists, the corn lobby insisted that all sweet should be provided by high fructose corn syrup.

Thing about sugar is the more you have the more you get desensitized to it, so to make things more palatable more and more sugar must be added.

Since we don’t eat much sugar at home, road food, even not the spectacularly restricted choices at breakfast meant that I had enough sugar in a day to dwarf the amounts I normally eat in a week and to give me a hangover.

The amazing thing is not that Americans are overweight and have high rates of diabetes. I’m shocked that all of us aren’t dying in our forties.

So, how do I feel about seed oils? I don’t know. That’s the short answer. Mostly the seed oil oils that we used was canola, and there’s reasons to not have it under “overprocessed” and “goes bad after a while.” For a while now we’ve been using coconut oil or even animal fat when we fry which is not very often. But I have a weakness for tiny fried potatoes, so maybe once every couple of weeks? And it’s not that “we don’t fry” is not because it’s unhealthy* but because it tends to make a bigger mess in our small and um…. anti-efficient kitchen.

Look, at this point I don’t know what is “healthy” and I very much doubt anyone knows.

I grew up on margarine, because butter would definitely kill us all with heart attacks. Eggs were to be longed for, but actually eating them would kill us with heart attacks, etc. etc. etc.

I’ve lived long enough to see that reversed and carbs condemned.

Is this now the universal writ?

I refuse to believe it. I have friends who are far skinnier than I am and perfectly healthy who are functionally humming birds. They live on sugar and carbs only. If I did that, I’d be 450 lbs if I hadn’t already died of screaming diabetes.

Dave Freer, who worked as a biologist for a while, and was even a zoo keeper for a time, once told me that even within species nutrition requirements were highly individual. I think the example he gave were twins (but not identical) lions, where if fed the same diet, one would be unhealthily skinny and the other unhealthily fat.

He says that’s something animal biologists know, but human biologists refuse to acknowledge.

Some day we should be able to identify people’s ideal diet from their genetics (there’s some work on this already) but until then, we definitely need to stop government interference in how we eat.

The government needs to stop not just telling people how to eat — that is as it might be — but telling people what they can and can’t sell, and what subsidized food (which shouldn’t exist) must consist of. Because that just means our collective diets (all of us need convenience foods sometime, and frankly I’m coming to the age not cooking all the time would be nice. Since there’s only two of us most of the time.) are schizophrenic and keep careening between extremes, as well as being influenced by the worst possible reasons; which lobbyists have access and money.

I hope RFKA considers that Making America Healthy Again passes through Getting Government Out of Our Food (Yes, GGOOF. It’s catchy.) Let people sell food unhampered by mandates, and let people eat the food that best suit them. And stop teaching people that plant based food is best. It works for some and perhaps some people like it or need it. But humans are a scavenger species and those eat meat when they can get it.

This whole obsession with vegetarianism (absent some rare health issues) is just more Diet For A Small Planet and the fears of a stupid philosophy that has been proven wrong.

Our planet is not small (And we can colonize others) and meat is delicious, and protein is good for you.

Eat what works for you. Ignore the government. Find your own health.

218 thoughts on “In Which I Go Maha!”

  1. I am a fativore. I seem to be able to eat fat without a problem. My go-to when hungry is cheese. Althoigh I do eat bread, I haven’t been able to keep a sourdough starter alive (a loaf every month or so, which goes bad before I finish it) and the sugar in the bowl hardens before I get to it.

    I have decided to try a seasonal diet. No specific health problems, and if I’m going to be independent for the rest of my life I need to keep it that way!

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    1. Our main sugar these days is coconut sugar. Dan IS diabetic (getting it back under control after it inexplicably exploded) and coconut has slower absorption. SUPPOSEDLY.

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      1. I would suggest allulose (the sugar in dates). Not actually absorbable by the body (different chirality) but tastes like sugar. Apparently a teaspoon or two PRIOR to any other sugar reduces the blood sugar spike considerably.

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    2. Also a fativore. However, in my youth I was addicted to Oreos and Chips Ahoy. I ba ckslid so hard.

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      1. Oreos, oh, yes. Mainly the filling, though. My main weakness at the moment is chocolate, so when I can get coconut I make Mounds bars. Butter, coconit and chocolate, nothing more. Still too sweet, as I haven’t been able to find unsweetened coconut.

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        1. In my childhood, Oreos had a TV commercial with this tagline:

          “Because a kid’ll eat the middle of an Oreo first,

          “And save the chocolate cookie outside for last.”

          We promptly changed the tagline:

          “Because a kid’ll eat the middle of an Oreo first,

          “And throw the chocolate cookie outside away.”

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        2. Although Almond Joy bars have almonds (which is always a Good Thing), I much prefer Mounds bars.

          “If you only knew the power of the Dark Chocolate side of the Force.”

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  2. Spot on!

    That con crushed my diet. Lots of snacks, very few healthy. I have plenty of “will power”. What I sometimes lack is “won’t power”. (grin) I cleaned them out of carrots and celery, then dove into tall the goodies and soda pop. Ugh. I didn’t bring enough of my own snacks to avoid theirs. That’s on me.

    Folks, when travelling, take the extra effort to bring the healthy stuff, or at least the less awful stuff. I often will use some top-shelf “energy bars” as a substitute for fast/junk food. Brining a “chill bag” of veggie snacks is even better for me.

    Once you get to the site/hotel/motel/flop, find the grocery store and stock up on good stuff, enough to get you through. Keep something with you so you can substitute, say a baggie of GORP versus the cookie tray, or some carrots and celery versus the endless bags-o-chips.

    …

    GORP = good old raisins and peanuts = trail food. High calorie, but healthy.

    My version:

    equal parts cashews, almonds, pecans, raisins, dried cranberries

    (low/no sugar fruit, low salt nuts).

    One can substitute mixed berry products for the above fruit items. Or, swap out some other ingredient to try a variation. Cut the fruit to half or quarter portions if you need lower sugar. The overall snack is fairly healthy.

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    1. You were there? Well, darn, wish I’d known.

      I was the tallish, thinnish one in blue jeans.

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    2. I do the exact opposite. Woo hoo! Road trip! Doritos and Mountain Dew for the win!

      Unfortunately, either the composition of Doritos has changed or my tastes have. I don’t really like them, these days. Although, it’s been over a year since I’ve had any; I don’t like road trips, so I avoid them.

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      1. One of my bad habits is going on a Tube binge. But one thing I learned the other night was that the cream filling in Oreos was originally made with lard. That only changed in the 1970s.

        Virtually everything that I loved as a kid has been changed – either for “health” reasons, or for cost (for instance, the massive switch to HFCS was in response to the Hawaiian sugar cartel getting too greedy).

        Very few things that I loved as a kid do I eat today; they’ve just become horrible flavors, or tasteless.

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    3. Yeah, I was diagnosed diabetic in 2019. I carry food with me because every boughten food out there is loaded with starch, sugar, or both. (Even dried fruit–marginally acceptable, although natural fructose is still sugar–is often marketed with a glaze of table sugar or corn syrup on it.) Boiled eggs, cheese, jerky (although they often sneak sugar into THAT), nuts (read carefully, flavored nuts often feature sugar).

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      1. My deepest sympathies. My mom’s diabetic and my dad’s allergic to a long list of foods – top of the list, corn – so we mostly make our own because restaurant food and store-bought are practically guaranteed to have things that one or both of them can’t eat.

        I don’t necessarily have the same problems, but diabetes runs strongly in Mom’s line, so I’m trying for preventative measures. I still eat way too much sugar, but less than I probably would otherwise.

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    4. Hubby takes sugar snacks supply when we road travel. I cannot partake. Not anymore (really couldn’t before, but now I can’t handle the results at all). Sugar highs are bad enough (seriously feel drunk without drinking? That will do it.) The crash afterwards? No thanks. I just will not eat if I can’t get something I can tolerate (learned last trip not even high protein fast food options work, McD’s is a no go). If I’ve had protein I can indulge, usually (not a given), or if the sugary snack has strong protein (No Bake Cookies – Peanut Peanut Butter, I can have two, before “dang that was a bad idea”). I thought I had a good pick on breakfast bars. No, I did not. I’m finding, for now, Keto bars with peanuts works. Oh and substitute sugars are right out. I can handle a little surclose (what is in the ICE water drink) at this time (it’ll change, always does).

      Having a CGM to see what triggers high glucose has been enlightening. Also why some foods appear to be good, but aren’t. Some rocket the glucose immediately. Some take their time. Which would be okay if there wasn’t also a insulin reaction delay. The problem is once the insulin goes “oops, late to the party”, regardless of how the high was reached the crash is not fun. Not so much crashing too low (< 70) although that happens too, but too fast. The diabetic “be < 140 in less than 2 – 4 hours” after the high? That isn’t a problem.

      All this with YMMV.

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    5. “I didn’t bring enough of my own snacks to avoid theirs. That’s on me.” My favorite road food snack is canned red salmon. Between road trips it keeps in my car very well. Only accessories needed: can opener, plastic fork.

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  3. Ah, yes – the awful, misshapen food pyramid. That and HF corn syrup have probably made people fatter in the last fifty years than anything else.

    I’m a believer in eating like your great-grandparents ate, which boils down pretty much to preferring making-from-scratch and avoiding most processed foods.

    My daughter and I discovered on several long road trips out to California, that the Pilot truck stops along our way did have plain coffee, and real dairy cream on offer. I don’t know if that chain operates in the east, though.

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    1. I used to drive from Chicago to Dallas and back on a semi-regular basis, and I saw plenty of Pilot stops along I-55 and I-44.

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    2. Pilot and Flying J are essentially the same truck stops now, since the two companies merged in 2010. And they’re all over the country and in Canada, sometimes a Flying J on one side of the interchange and a Pilot on the other.

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    3. It does. We are also starting to get those Temples of Travel, Buc-ees, though I know nothing about their coffee.

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        1. Along the I-70 corridor, services can be pretty sparse outside the KC-Columbia-STL areas.

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          1. I-80 is spotty. There’s the huge truckstop in Iowa by Bentondorf/Davenport/Moline, etc and Little America in Nebraska. I miss the old 76 truckstop in Tooele, UT. It had a good diner, since replaced with a minimart and a nearby McDonalds. (Ate a lot of breakfasts at McDs on my road trip in 2014. They had (alas, no more) some decent salads.

            Restaurants, I-80 had a good population of Perkin’s. They had food I could eat (my body is increasingly sensitive to wheat, and guessing wrong makes for 5 days of GI drama) so I didn’t have to brownbag for the last 5000 mile road trip. OTOH, no more such in the list; no more must-visit relatives back East. McDs had two good salads, but they disappeared, at least locally. [Makes note to ask the Costco Food Court lady for the ingredient book. That Caesar salad dressing is questionable.]

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      2. Coke made in Mexico is made with cane sugar, although it has less carbonation. The closest to original USA recipie is Kosher Coke, sold that I know of in the Miami area. It can be found.

        High fructose corn syrup apparently isn’t Kosher.

        (badump tisssssshhh)

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        1. I believe it’s kosher, and could even theoretically be kosher for Passover, but apparently sugar is easier than kosher-for-Passover HFCS

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      1. Cringe on the powdered milk. Can’t stand the stuff.

        No 1/2&1/2? Then no coffee. I’ve gotten so I take my own pint bottle of 1/2&1/2. We carry a cooler anyway, so why not. The last trip, didn’t need it. All the places had 1/2&1/2.

        FYI, I like my coffee “light”. Hubby always asks me if I want a little coffee with my cream. Not quite that bad. It is light. Coffee is still hot.

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      2. If you plan ahead you can buy small boxes of UHT half & half and carry those with you. IIRC you can buy powdered whole milk which doesn’t need refrigeration.

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        1. I once saw some Half&Half brand artificial creamer. Didn’t notice until after tasting the coffee.

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    7. As an aside, Pilot/Flying J offer a card for the front (car) side of the building that IIRC gets you a nickel off each gallon of gas. Free for the signup.

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    8. On the east coast, WaWa has coffee that you can add various flavored sugary liquids to, as well as half and half or plain milk or oat milk. I like the Cuban-brew coffee without, and I know this is heresy, the sugar. I love my cafecito at my local coffee house, but can’t take the sugar and you can’t have a cafecito without pastelitos. (Even at Starbucks and local coffee houses I can get fancy coffees without sugar BUT I prefer not to pay that much for something I can make at home.) Most convenience stores at gas stations have coffee BUT the flavor sometimes is what I imagine brewed roaches would taste like.

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  4. I am getting to the “I really got to do something” stage again. Not quite the “Driving all day in Cajun Country is not conducive to weight loss” stage where I first got Fat. (was a fit 170-ish from riding a bicycle to and from work 11 miles either way, and riding the repaired bikes I worked on, to a few years later weighing “Over 250” i.e. that was the last time I looked at a scale and was a LOT bigger than that)
    I’m getting tired of always being tired. I need to change some more eating habits (I now take days to do in a bag of chips or a sleeve of saltines) and it’d be nice if I caught up on my usual things done in a day by not sitting down and falling asleep.

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  5. Julia Child was once on an interview show with an ant-fat activist whose brag was that he hadn’t eaten any fat in years. She pointed out that he was very unhealthy with poor skin and hair falling out. Her answer, butter, In moderation. Funny how moderation seems to always be the answer.

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    1. When I was 16, I did cross-country at my high school. I once asked my trainer if there was any diet advice he had for us. He just said, “Eat a wide variety of stuff.” Now, thirty years later, I have learned a lot more about diet… and my advice would be a lot the same as his. “Eat a wide variety of stuff, but as little sugar as you can manage.”

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      1. Lol.

        When on active duty, Infantry, was running 5-6 miles a day, plus riding a bike everywhere on or off base. Could eat anything and still maintain weight. Was described as two oak trees supporting a shrub.

        Then, in College 2.0, had a crappy car and was 6 miles from work and 9 miles from school. Was riding that bike 30+ miles a day, often well above 25MPH. (re-geared several times for ‘fastah’, burned up three sets of tires a year and often a chain stretched in a year or two. Ate -insane- amounts of food with no weight gain beyond legs bigger than my Infantry days. 6000+ calorie diet. Medium pan pizza was a light snack.

        Dialed it -way-back when bought a decent car. Had to give up the bike due to health issues. Alas.

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    2. One of my sisters follows a strict vegan diet and boasts about how fit she is. But she’s always sick. Was hospitalized twice with COVID. Takes protein supplements so she can win her body building contests.

      Which is cause and which effect? Who knows. But for many years she was relatively healthy. Now that she’s healthy, she’s always sick.

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      1. Body builders tend to be unhealthy. Odd on the face of it, but true. I suspect it’s because body building is the antithesis of moderation.

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        1. Body builders do not merely build muscle. They have to remove fat to allow the muscle to be shown. The natural build of someone who can eat freely and just wants muscle has a layer of fat over the muscle.

          Women probably have it worse because the fat is normally thicker for women.

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          1. The quickest demonstration of this is powerlifters vs. bodybuilders.

            Both require muscle. The bodybuilders just can’t allow anything to HIDE it. (I used to powerlift.)

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            2. Yep. I work out at a black iron gym that does strengthlifting. There’s plenty of attention to diet… but not to cutting, not like bodybuildings.

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        2. Serious sports competition often drives “extreme”. Seeking that last slight gain puts you above your rival.

          Just a bit more ripped.

          A tenth second faster.

          Another 5 pounds weight.

          Victory!

          And champions are that, because they will do what they must for that last little bit that wins Gold versus not.

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          1. OTOH, if you look at runners, for whom fat is seriously slowing, you notice that they carry less fat than powerlifters, but they would not win a body-building competition, and not only because their muscles are developed for use.

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  6. Sugar may not be the root of all evil, but it is the thing that gives people the most calories without adding any nutrition, and cutting it out of (or greatly reducing it from) your diet is usually going to produce positive health outcomes without losing any vitamins or minerals. Human metabolism varies wildly, so some people eat a lot of sugar without obvious ill effects — but even they would likely lose some weight if they just cut their sugar consumption in half without changing anything else. It’s the rare adult American who couldn’t stand to lose at least some weight. (Teenagers aside, as while there are plenty of teens who are too fat, there are also plenty of teens who need to be told that they are underweight. Not to mention the ones who need to gain weight because they’re still growing, so they need extra bone and muscle mass).

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    2. I cut sweet tea out years ago and just realized I’ve dropped cola/sodas as well. Can’t stand artificial sweeteners. Do eat chocolate and some baked goods, culminating in my beloved’s home made double chocolate muffins with bittersweet chocolate drops. And I confess, my best dessert is chocolate chip cookies, pretty much sugar incarnate.

      If I overindulge sugar, I regret it.

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      1. I dropped soda because of the salt. I am drinking a carbonated drink, but no salt, mostly natural flavorings, and little surcrlose. My problem is I cannot stand plain H2O. Not even with ice. Not even hiking or backpacking. Then I use an add-in flavoring, no carbonation. I can’t not drink water when hiking or backpacking, that would be bad.

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        1. Have you ever tried the TruLemon citrus powders? Basically freeze-dried citrus, so they have lemon, lime, and possibly orange.

          My husband was using those for a while when he couldn’t take plain water either. Or using TruLime and chili powder on homemade corn chips.

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        2. I wised up a couple years ago upon seeing a 2-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi selling for $3 in my otherwise low priced supermarket. Went to the next aisle and found a box of Celestial Seasonings fruit teabags for $3.25 with about a dozen and a half bags in assorted flavors. Each bag makes a nice quart of iced tea, so about 18¢ the quart. Nowadays, the only carbonated beverages I use are occasional cocktail mixers (I do love me some ginger beer).

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  7. When we were driving down to San Diego to see C’s dad during his last months, the motel we stayed at had what they called a continental breakfast. But all the starchy things on offer were ridiculously oversweet, to the point where the taste was unpleasant and the aftereffect slightly distressing. So we ended up walking across the street to a place where we could get something foodlike.

    That same governmental process led to eggs being denounced as heart attack food, supposedly because LBJ wanted to lower the price by reducing demand.

    We don’t use the standard seed oils. We do use sesame oil for stirfry. But our main oil is olive oil (and olive oil Pam for lubrication). C doesn’t eat butter but I use it for eggs and on baked potatoes. I believe both of those options are healthier.

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    1. We use real butter with olive oil (softens butter). Whole milk. Eat a lot of eggs. Pepper Bacon at home. I do not deep fry. Never have, never will. When we travel, so far most the continental breakfasts have been scrambled eggs, bacon, etc., buffet style. Muffins, etc., are available. I just stay away from the starch.

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  8. Ah, so many memories and thoughts to share here.

    First of all I’m old enough and raised by two farm raised kids to remember bacon AND sausage fat cooked eggs with toast and a smear of grandma’s strawberry jam, to place at the beginning of your history of breakfasts consumed.

    11B, note you left out walnuts. I found a walnut tree during survival training. I identified it from a distance from its shape. I hiked off to it and filled my BDU’s with walnuts. And praised my father for all his wood lore training. I was the only one who gained 4 pounds during that training. And yes I did share a walnut or two to the truly deserving and suffering. But only a few. They thought I was cheating.

    Also dried banana chips as most other dried fruits have lots of sugar added.

    But mainly just look at long term couples. Who eat the same. Some are same sized. Some aren’t. QED. My spouse always struggled to keep weight on until she started eating what I am eating to lose weight. My carbs go to fat and hers get burned. My fat and protein help burn fat and they put weight on for her. Go figure. Unfortunately she doesn’t like walnuts or Brazil nuts. And she loves my home made pizza dough and soft pretzels.

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    1. Trail mix is best customized to individual taste palette and calorie needs. it is endlessly variable.

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        1. I suppose it wouldn’t help to prepackage the trail mix in plastic zip locks portioned appropriately and labeled in big Trumpian Marker for date and time of use…

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          1. A friend of ours used to make fudge brownies on occasion.

            Knowing that she’d eat the whole batch in short order, she would cut the sheet into small squares, bag them individually, and stash them in the back of the freezer.

            Unfortunately, she knew where they were…

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        2. Similarly, Guild “Tavola” bulk wine – gallon jugs with the red and white tablecloth print label – is Purina Wino Chow.

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      2. Trail mix is usually intended for high-calorie activity. Design with care for others.

        (My parents went winter mountaineering and camping while they were in college. People used to fight over the bacon drippings. That many calories are needed for very few things.)

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    2. I’m tall and thin, my beloved is carrying extra. But he’s been slowly and carefully cutting portions and dropping weight for years. It may help that I don’t use a lot of “convenience food,” in cooking.

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    3. Ah yes, my parents being the prime example. They embody Jack Sprat & wife – Dad’s extremely skinny, while Mom (struggling with diabetes) has trouble dropping weight. We eat mostly home-cooked. It’s a constant juggling act in our house: what to eat so everyone gets foods they enjoy and are good for them.

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    4. My family went extreme low carb. All three lost weight. I didn’t. Mind, I didn’t gain either, and I stayed on this for twenty years, because well, Dan’s needs.
      Now we’re eating some carbs. Mostly I eat less? My only carb love is potatoes. I don’t like rice or pasta and I am meh on bread. So…. corn and potatoes.

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  9. In addition to the processed food lobby, I think a lot of blame lies with the food stamp program. After several decades of people not shopping around the edge of the grocery store, we now have a government purchased obesity epidemic. Of course, shopping the edge of the store gives you mostly basic ingredients and you have to know what to do with those. Most people don’t.

    Eating on the road is difficult, or even eating out. My wife and I now split entrees. The portions are just ridiculous.

    The con last week was a lot of fun! I am an introvert and am still drained. It was great to have met Sarah (and others) and she tossed a small plastic goldfish at me. I think it was supposed to be a carp.

    On another topic, does anyone have problems with Safari and WordPress? I had a well thought out comment that disappeared and I just can’t be bothered to try and recreate it in full. WP let me log in, but tried to take me to the ATH control panel?

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      1. I have finally figured out the cause of WP deleting whole paragraphs. It’s a “feature” that they added, where if you press Shift+Backspace, it deletes a whole block of content (usually a paragraph).

        Which means that if you’re holding down Shift to type a parenthesis or a capital letter, then hit Backspace by reflex because you hit the wrong key, poof goes your paragraph. In the programming world, this kind of thing is known as a “misfeature”. A misfeature is something that the programmers put in on purpose, but that functions as a bug otherwise: the users don’t want it and wish it had never been put in in the first place.

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        1. I’ve run into that too oft. Thankfully it seems that CONTROL-Z undoes it. Usually. Just checked Yep, SHIFT-BACKSPACE zorches the paragraph, but CONTROL-Z brings it back. For me, anyway.

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        2. It happens all the frelling time on this iPad, when no screen-keyboard shift key is pressed. So it may be a feature but it’s broken. WPDE.

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          1. Ah, hang on, insight just hit me as I hit send – the screen-shift key on iPads screen keyboard automagically pushes itself to auto-capitalize the first letter in a new sentence when one types (period)(space), so if one hits (period)(space)(backspace)… hmmm.

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        3. Yes. The same thing happens when writing. it’s SO ANNOYING. I mean, when writing posts. I kept wondering how I was deleting whole blocks of text. Now I know.

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    3. I grew up with “if it is on your plate you have to eat it”. Took a long time to get over it. If have the option, take a little, go back for seconds if needed, rarely needed. If I’m not in control of the portion, I use the push the plate away method. We rarely take home a doggy bag (if we do it is leftover meat, For The Dog). Note, have been noticing detectable smaller portions on some of our standard eating out fare. Still often too much.

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        1. “suspect my question would NOT have been welcome: “Even the poison?”“

          –

          No.

          Even food I won’t touch now. Seems there is a reason I never liked certain things. Some is child palette (cream cheese, sour cream). Others? Mild allergies?

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  10. I’ve been leaning more and more away from refined sugar. I’m starting to think I might be sensitive to seed oils.

    As a kid growing up I only remember heart burn after eating my Grandmas fried sour, which I adored. She fried it in Crisco at least once I became aware. Then as a young adult I spent two years in Scotland and everything was fried in lard. But I don’t remember heartburn being a thing.

    Once I got back to the US heartburn was more of a thing, and Canola oil was suddenly the Healthy oil. Then I started cooking with pure Olive Oil and heartburn was occasional and triggered by donuts, but otherwise not a thing.

    Once I married heartburn became a very big deal. My wife switched us to canola oil.

    Now we are switching to avocado oil, coconut oil, and olive oil. Things seem a bit better. But eating fast food can trigger heartburn very easily.

    Ive started to wonder if the heartburn is really a low level allergy or sensitivity that makes my stomach react… But it’s so hard to know for sure.

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    1. For frying/wokking, I use olive oil, unless the taste is wrong for the food, then I use peanut oil.

      I have used olive oil for pancakes in a pinch. Decidedly odd taste. Peanut oil works better.

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      1. I have been using avocado oil except for popcorn, where I have a bottle of corn oil. And for pan frying I have a jar of bacon grease in the fridge. The coconut oil I have has just been sitting there for a bit.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. Ok I just did stove top popcorn with a heaped soup spoon of coconut oil and half a cup of popcorn in a covered pan. One it popped I finely ground some salt and 1/4 cup of melted butter.

            It all disappeared pretty fast so I guess my family liked it.

            Liked by 1 person

        1. Olive Oil ranges from Extra Virgin (strong taste) to late press (Neutral taste). You may need to choose accordingly.

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      3. For high heat cooking use Butter/Ghee, Coconut Oil, Peanut or Sesame Oil (strong taste so more for some Asian dishes) or the animal fats (Beef, Chicken, Lamb Tallow or Duck Fat)

        Low heat is Butter and Olive Oil

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    2. I ate a lot of artificial sweetener (mostly coffee and such) when the guys were low carb. I found five years ago that I process artificial sweeteners as… sugar. As in myi nsuline response is the same. So now either unsweetened, or a teaspoon of coconut sugar in my coffee.

      Liked by 1 person

        2. Yeah, I refuse to touch them. And occasionally I hear little odd tid-bits that make me think my approach is the correct one.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. My own personal opinion is that trying to fool your body either doesn’t, or breaks things. So I’m in favor of The Real Thing (in moderation.)

        Mind you, while I’m above my ideal weight (said ideal is definitely above society’s Ideal Weight because BMI is a crock of lies and bad design), it’s mostly because something broke in my body about 7-8 years back, and my GP was not particularly interested in tracking it down. (To be fair, metabolism shift is also age-related, but since we tracked down PART of the problem, I don’t think that’s the whole story. And I had to push hard to get that part of the problem diagnosed.)

        The main annoyance about my waist gain is that after decades, I’d finally figured out how to dress myself flatteringly. And now I don’t know again. Arrgh.

        Liked by 2 people

  11. I worked the night shift at Dunkin Donuts the summer after my first year of college. I didn’t have any family near to feed me and I was very poor, so I ate the day old donuts for free. This cured me of an attraction for sweet things, ever.

    Sarah’s description of the pastries at the gas station was so vivid it made my stomach turn. Ech. Sugary crusted sugar. Run away!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I never “got” the appeal of Krispy Kreme.. I like sweet plenty, but a donut with seeming multiple coatings of sugar? There is such a thing as Too Dan[g] Much.

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      1. Being a proud and only partially reconstructed Southerner, I have to take Krispy Kreme’s side in any donut war. But I do agree that they’re too sweet. There are some (like the chocolate non-filled ones I think) that go a bit easier on the glazing but still. Besides, I’m a type 2 diabetic so it’s not like I’m running around eating KK donuts anyway. :)

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      2. It’s the fat content, I think. Hot Krispy Kreme donuts seem to just melt in your mouth, and they spoiled me for other donuts which are a lot more bread-like with less fat in the dough. And since I can’t get Krispy Kreme donuts in the town where I live, that has resulted in a lot healthier breakfast choices for me, which is all to the good. :-)

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        1. Just to say I had done it, I bought a ballpark cheeseburger that used KK donuts for the bun. I even ate it.

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        2. Yeah, I’ve heard that they’re *great* when fresh and hot, which I’ve never had.

          Which makes it all the more strange that my supermarket sells boxes of them.

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          1. Krispy kremes cam be freshened in the microwave but it’s tricky.

            Dampen a paper towel and crumple into a ball. Set in microwave.

            put doughnut on a saucer next to it.

            cover them (so wet towel is close bit not touching doughnut.

            Heat for ten seconds.

            soft, warm doughnut!

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          2. This. I always thought that was the APPEAL of KK, that the doughnuts were fresh and hot off the line. At the closest one (fifty miles as the crow flies), you could watch the pastries bobbing in the vat of oil before being dipped out, drained, and frosted/sold.

            And at the grocery store, THOSE doughnuts had been cooked hours if not days before and sat around getting cold and stale.

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      3. Krispy Kremes are the most overrated and overpriced donuts ever. (Change my mind). I miss Mr. Donut donuts, I used to eat them occasionally back in the 80s when they still had lots of franchises in the U.S. The ONLY Mr. Donut franchise left in North America, by the way, is in Godfrey, Illinois, a little NE of St. Louis. There are still lots of them in Asia, however.

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        1. In my yout out here we had Winchell’s Donuts, which were a treat on random Sundays after mass when my Mom felt flush enough. Searching the web they still exist, though the closest to Silicon Valley is a bit of a drive south in Salinas, and then more down around LA.

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          1. El Dorado AR, where both sides of my family lived, had a mini chain called Spud-Nut, whose claim to fame was that the doughnuts were made with potato flour.

            Liked by 1 person

          3. Winchell’s was a popular franchise once upon a time. Then back in the late 70s or early 80s (I can’t remember which), the company bought out all of the franchisees. They installed managers to run the shops, but a manager doesn’t have the same interest in the welfare of the shop as a franchise owner does. Reportedly as a result, the quality suffered, and Winchell’s rapidly became a much less popular brand.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Dunkin’ Donuts must have done something similar. Some of the old shops are still donuts but not the national brand. Same building and even building profile, different names, “Bob’s Donuts”, “Donuts & Bakery”, etc.

              Liked by 1 person

    2. Thing is what I bought called itself an orange muffin, and I wanted that orange taste. There was none. I only tasted sugar.
      In winter I sometimes crave muffins. I’ve made them from jovial flour, sugar is like a tablespoon for the whole thing, but they go bad faster than we eat them. Maybe some day there will be a half dozen grandkids (I CAN dream.) Then having muffins around every few months will be a plus.

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      1. It was almost certainly orange colored, right? So no false labeling there!

        And does that mean you are saying “Orange Muffin Bad?”

        Liked by 1 person

          1. You were searching for an orange muffin, which makes the muffin a MacGuffin. Orange MacGuffin bad?

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      2. I couldn’t eat a whole batch of double chocolate chip muffins fast enough, so there’s a bag in the freezer.

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      3. I haven’t eaten store-bought muffins in years, not after connecting the dots that Bad Things Happened when I did. And yes, it’s specifically store-bought muffins, not homemade ones.

        The other weird one is cereal and milk together. Cereal by itself, fine. Milk by itself, fine. Two together, Bad Things. And recently there have been a couple of other dairy combinations that have gone poorly, including a lovely soup so homemade that I made the danged chicken stock myself, so I do not know what is up with that.

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      4. Muffins freeze well. We bake a dozen at a time, but only two people in the household eat them. So, frozen. (These are old-fashioned muffins with a TINY bit of sugar in the quickbread batter. Then you stud them with naturally-sweet fruit.)

        Is “jovial flour” a brand name or a typo?

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    3. Anyway, this is where prepared foods being not sugar with sugar would be helpful. Or having a decent not crazy bakery nearby. Because I could buy A muffin the one day a month I crave it.

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        1. We had a German bakery near the house in downtown colorado springs (where the boys grew up) …. It was my main form of bribery when they were teens. We also got cakes there for birthdays/holidays.

          Liked by 1 person

  12. High Fructose corn syrup was first created in 1957, and commercialized around 1970. My parents remember health food types promoting it as better for you than ordinary sugar (I remember the same thing happening with stevia, which was the secret South American super sweetener that ‘they’ didn’t want you to know about…until it got approved for use in the US, after which, of course, it was toxic poison).

    One of the influences on corn syrup becoming an economical sweetener is the tariff on imported sugar, in place since FDR. Not to re-litigate tariff discussions, but markets do have a tendency to route around policy in surprising ways (Jones Act being one of my favorite examples).

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    1. That – according to my Dad – was one of Reagan’s mis-steps. The sugar quota went away for a while for some reason, and Reagan reinstated them.

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  13. “Well, I can tell you why, because I am OLD.”

    Yeah, me too. I’ve seen -many- food fads and diet crazes spring up, flower for a time, then shrivel and crumble away. Sometimes they even come back. Keto Diet used to be Stone Age Diet, which used to be Pritiken, and etc.

    Lately there’s been a lot of diet stuff in my YouTube algo. I’m struck by both the sincerity of the spokesmen and the really shaky scientific support most of these things have.

    Fat used to be bad, then it was good, then it was bad, then it was good again… pick a lane, guys.

    Or coffee. That seems to be either Death!!! or the miracle drug that’s going to save us all, and it changes about every week.

    But, over 68 years, something has certainly changed. Once upon a time, a few people were fat. And not that fat either, by 2025 standards. We’re talking 50lbs overweight, the really -super- fat ones might run 275lbs, maaaybe 300lbs if they were tall, strong, fat men.

    But now, -everybody- is fat. 300lbs is very common. Immense people 450lbs+++, you see them all the time.

    Meaning, essentially, ALL the food advice and diets and fads have been in vain, or possibly counter productive. Anything that was working got buried under all the stuff that wasn’t working, if I may paint with a broad brush. Societaly, we’re fat. USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, all the same. Lots of other places too, not just Western nations.

    So, Old Phantom Guy, what’s the one thing that has only ever increased in 68 years, all over the world?

    Government Control Of Food, or as I’m going to shorten it, food socialism. That’s the single unifying factor across all populations and nations.

    They’re pretending they want to feed the world, but what they’re really doing is getting filthy, stinking rich making everybody fat while famines still kill people in the Third World. I don’t know it they’re doing it deliberately or if that’s just an unintended outcome of food socialism, but that’s the result they’re getting. Given 68 years, I’m calling shenanigans.

    When DOGE gets it’s claws into the Department of Agriculture, I do believe we are going to see some serious sh1t. Nobody can be this stupid for this long, accidentally.

    Also, I’m sorry but RFK is a socialist nutjob, IMHO. Just because he’s right about some things does not mean he’s sane and trustworthy. On the other hand, a dedicated nutjob is exactly who you want when faced with a monolithic corrupt institution. Give the man a chainsaw and let the chips fly where they may.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I believe that the Food Has Changed. Since we HAVE actual records of what people ate and how much. We have bread pans, muffin tins, etc., from the nineteenth century, so portion creep is not the ENTIRE story. And in the nineteenth century, a lot of people lived on starch and scrapings, without ballooning up to huge proportions.

      I think that perhaps the main change was in wheat. I’d love to see research on it, but I dunno if pure non-hybridized strains of heritage wheat even survive. (Wind-pollinated, right? Arrgh.)

      Liked by 2 people

      1. And in the nineteenth century, a lot of people lived on starch and scrapings, without ballooning up to huge proportions.

        Which omits the simple fact that most of life for those people was muscle powered. It isn’t JUST food intake; it’s also energy output.

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        1. Yep. See 11B-Mailclerk’s reply to me upthread about how when he was active-duty infantry, running 5-6 miles a day and biking everywhere, he used to eat 6,000 calories a day and not gain weight. If we assume that the government’s 2,000 calories per day recommendation is remotely accurate, and that the “3,500 extra calories = 1 pound of weight gain” rule of thumb is accurate, then an average adult eating 6,000 calories a day would be gaining one pound of weight per day.

          The amount of hard, physical work you do in a day has a LOT to do with whether your daily food consumption goes into powering your muscles, or whether your body says “Oh goody, extra food that I can store away for lean times” and sticks it in fat cells.

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          1. …and when the existing fat cells are full, they multiply. And keep multiplying. Diet and exercise can empty them out, but all those extra fat cells are still there, like little fat bombs just waiting to blow up again.

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            1. Once I learned that fact, I understood two things for the first time: 1) why so many people, once resuming normal food consumption after a diet, tend to go right back to the weight they were before starting diet and plateau there. And 2) why liposuction surgeries actually make sense for some people, and aren’t just a way to suck (heh) money out of your wallet, because if you have a lot fewer fat cells in your body then you might be able to keep weight off better this time. (Not that all liposuctions are useful — I’m sure there are some unethical surgeons making megabucks doing lipos that don’t actually help patients. I’m just saying that that used to be my assumption about all liposuction surgeries, but it’s no longer my automatic reflex assumption every time).

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          2. Output is the key. Modern USA society is highly sedentary. Folks go couch potato, and get fat on 1800-2000 calories, because they don’t grow muscle working the remote, keyboard, and game controller. And fat cells (and resultant mass) don’t really ever go away, they just kindof deflate.

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            1. THIS for sure. People spend WAY more time sitting behind computer desks, sitting behind the steering wheel of a car, or sitting on the couch than they used to. (I know I do, and it’s killing my hip and leg muscles) And don’t even get me started on how kids aren’t allowed to roam the streets and backyards like they once did. If the only “allowable” forms of recreation a child has are either rigidly scheduled gym times or sports practices (assuming their parents can even afford to enroll them in such) or playing video games at home, no wonder so many are obese.

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      2. the truly bizarre thing is I lose weight when I go to Portugal. And I eat enough there — revisiting childhood favorites — I feel like a goose being stuffed. and we rarely walk at all there, much less do anything more strenuous. It’s inexplicable.

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          1. restaurants parents go to tend to be “village farmer also opened a place where they cook for locals”. It’s very…. free form, and food is cooked in large quantities but not industrial, if that makes sense.

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        2. “It’s inexplicable.” I think there is a fundamental difference between the food available in Portugal vs. the food available for you at home. Either that, or you become fiendishly active when visiting Portugal and very sedentary back home. Or maybe, speaking & thinking in Portuguese burns a lot more calories than English does.

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        3. Not particularly inexplicable.

          Europe has very strong regulation on foods, from farm to table. From the sorts of fertilisers/herbicides/biocides used on farm to how food is processed to how it is labelled. Especially the labelling laws, where *everything* has to be listed, which encourages a very minimalist approach to processing.

          Just look at the list of ingredients in McDonalds French Fries. In Europe, basically potatoes, the oil it’s cooked in and salt. In the good ol’ USA, it’s a LIST!

          When you boil it down to nuts and bolts, it’s about the supply chain, beginning to end.

          The USA has built up a very industrial food chain, and all sorts of industrial chemicals leach into the chain (at levels below FDA reporting requirements but not necessarily below that which affects us).

          Even worse, those industrial crops, industrially processed and cheap, give us things like seed oils and HFCS, which are metabolically diabolical ( I used to have a handy Youtube URL of a cellular biology symposium which detailed the metabolic pathway seed oils take inside your body.. and getting fat is the guaranteed minimum undesired outcome). Most of the “corrections” to human nutrition are coming from the cellular biologists, “Nutritionists” are the orthodoxy that hands out the received wisdom.

          Love or hate his politics, RFK taking a chainsaw to the FDA is necessary, but the big change is going to have to be from the very beginning of the food supply chain to the very end, moving it toward something like that in Europe.

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          1. Except if it’s a change in the food when she goes there, then Europe would not be having the same weight increase problem– even though they don’t have nearly as many of the genetic ancestries known to all else being equal have a higher BMI, they still have a high rate of obesity.

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      3. They do. Check out Sunrise Flour Mill. They have flour and wheatberries that you can plant.

        … I’m not sure whether all of their wheat is certified disease-free though.

        Some of the wheat my parents tried to plant was infected with smut, so uh… don’t plant it if you’re next to someone’s wheat farm.

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    3. I’m in favor of the Paleo/Keto type diets. Most people probably would be better of with more veggies, more meat, and fewer carbs (and as the person who’s eaten a pound of challah in an afternoon, I’m certainly including me).

      But for the love of God, do not tell me that humans evolved to eat broccoli. Humans evolved wild mustard so we could have broccoli to eat.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. My mother used to make challah bread with golden raisins baked in, and I STILL miss it. Keto is really good for me personally, but I do allow myself the occasional Bread Moment.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. It’s pretty clear to me that bread and beer were the two main bribes used to bed nomadic hunter gatherers to first settle in cities and help work the fields.

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    4. What’s weird about obesity is that there are two factors that cannot be explained by diet, exercise, or both.

      The first is that lab rats, with the most detailed dietary logs in the world, have been gaining weight.

      The second is that the biggest predictor of obesity is position on the watershed. The further you are from the headwaters, the higher your chance is of excessive weight. This holds true around the world. So for example, New Orleans is not doing so well, while San Francisco (which gets its water piped directly from the Sierras), is sitting pretty well.

      In regards to that second data point, I saw an article which postulated that the problem with figuring out what’s causing obesity is that it’s a LOT of things, happening all at once. For instance, mental health medications have a known side effect of weight gain (to the point where over half of Americans don’t want to take them because they will gain weight.) Turns out that our clean-water processing doesn’t remove all the bits that cause that. There’s also spikes in weight around places with natural lithium. Or hey, artificial hormones such as in birth control. They mess with the metabolism too.

      Pesticides? Probably. Plastics? Yeah.

      So the upshot is that it is likely minor metabolic disruptions, building up into the point where you really have to work to offset it.

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      1. Some scientists need to have their science cards revoked, because you can *guarantee* that lab rat food has changed in the same ways that human food has changed over the last 50 years *unless* it has an explicitly different and dedicated solely to rats, beginning to end supply chain. (extremely unlikely)

        And a GOOD scientist should be damn certain of any changes to the food supply, right down to the micro-nutrient level.

        Ditto for water supply. If that’s a factor, it should be obvious in the lab rats too. Either the lab guys have isolated the differences and have found something too controversial to publish, or they haven’t looked.

        Liked by 1 person

  15. On weekdays, I get up far too early for my natural sleep cycle. I have a very small bowl of kids’ cereal (generic fruit loops, cinnamon toast crunch, etc…) for first breakfast so coffee doesn’t make my stomach unhappy. For second breakfast, I have a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, which I’m eating right now, which is why I’m reading this blog instead of working.

    I’ve been doing that for years. My minor, but aesthetically displeasing, weight issue is entirely due to beer, not the farmer’s breakfast or a couple of ounces of sugar-bomb cereal. Lack of exercise may play a part :)

    My grandparents lived into their 90s. I try to emulate their farm diet, not the fad of the day.

    Speaking of a farm diet, it’s about time to get seeds started!

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  16. I have found that the one thing that makes the most sense is to limit sugar, I use honey instead, lots of meat and veggies too. Remember be active, I am doing those resistance band things seems to work for me, somehow though you have to move, don’t have to run marathons, but you can do something and find something that fits you. When you do, do that, don’t worry about what everyone says. The advice they give is because they care, although some just do it to be social butterflies. you knew that about them already. Most of all enjoy life, that’s what really pisses them off. So the occasional doughnut or Krispy Kreme is fine, My self I prefer an good crispy Apple Fritter, an addiction I can’t resist as a reward but it is a reward not a dietary stable. I should walk up and get one, about a mile, nope the muse is calling. Now to get my hero out of the box I’ve written them into while I dream of apple fritters.

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  17. First rule of US road trip eating: Bring your own food. Or as much as you possibly can. (Or fly to Europe and eat real food in moderation.)

    As for on the road purchases, figure out ahead of time what items you can eat from where that do the least amount of damage. Good thing is that is that food fried in beef tallow is making a come back.

    Most prepared food in the US is bad since most food available in the US is bad. Big Ag and Big Food has helped Big Pharma, Big Health and Big Gov destroy health in this country.

    Experts? You have to be your own health expert and do the research and find what works for you. Just like you have to be your own financial, computer, political, whatever expert…

    Read all labels, all the time. Get tested for food sensitivities. Eat clean for months and check your reactions when you re-introduce items. Try clean Keto or Carnivore if you can. (If it’s preprocessed and says Keto, it’s probably not clean Keto.) And prep and cook every possible meal you can.

    As for me?

    I avoid carbs especially any grain or seed as much as possible. Carbs turn to fat and mess up blood sugars. Grains are overly processed and combined with seed oils and sugar to make crap. (Plus half my family is still on the farm and I know how many chemicals are used in crops and storage, let alone consumer processing. As a kid, we literally bathed in Roundup doing weed control during summers.)

    So there are freezers full of meat bought on sale and tins of meat in storage. Also full of homemade soup. Butter and meat fats. Supplemented with selected veggies and such. It’s working so far according to blood tests and the scale for the spouse and I.

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    1. I cannot tolerate meat fats, or lard. I cannot tolerate fried foods. Which is why I do not cook them.

      As for travel eating we try to stop at diners. Eggs and bacon. Problem is with Sheri’s and Denny’s going away, and the small town similar type we pass through central Oregon are closed on Sundays. Or why we ate at McD’s in Burns. Bad, bad, idea.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. In the unlikely event that there’s one nearby, I recommend Metro Diner. They are what Cracker Barrel thinks it is, and the locations I’ve visited have all been chef’s-kiss TASTY.

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        1. Bear Diner Bend Oregon.

          Works when coming home as a stop before the last pitch. But heading out, too early. We try to stop in Burns heading out, but surprise, it was closed.

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    1. Tell that to the guy who has arms longer than his inseam, you can not find shirt sleeves long enough. Okay I am part gibbon, who knew. I can’t grow a beard or they call me Sasquatch.

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      2. My father is part orangutan. It is impossible for me to find women’s shirts with long enough sleeves, so I either roll them up to hide how short they are, or buy men’s shirts. Around our house the saying is: One size doesn’t fit any.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. Now me, I have arms that are shorter than normal. Three-quarters sleeves instead of long. . . .

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            1. Mine is somewhere in between. 3/4 sleeves are still past the elbow, but not to wrists (I do not like 3/4 sleeves). But regular sleeves are always too long. Not that I mind the latter.

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          1. My shoes are somewhere between a 7 wide and a 9 wide, depending on the shoe. I also have these muscles on the sides and top of my feet that make it even more complicated. I dread the day I can’t find a shoe store locally, because if I try to buy anything clothing related online I spend more time returning it than it’s worth.

            I also can’t wear boots. The only boots that will fit over my calves are a mens size 11, and not because they’re fat.

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            1. Have you tried New Balance shoes? I have odd feet and they make all sorts that fit me.

              Ariat Ropers (pull on Western, low heel) might fit. I have a similar problem. they also fit the “odd feet” issue for me.

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      3. Once I let my beard and hair grow very long. On two separate occasions in 2 different parts of town total strangers walked up to me and gave me $3 to buy a bowl of chili. I wasn’t begging or carrying a sign saying “Please help” After the 2nd occasion, I cut off my beard and had my hair cut very short.

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  19. Okay, this is now the second time today I’ve clicked on my accordingtohoyt bookmark, seen the title, and misread it as “In Which I Go Mwahahaha!”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Nothing helps. When I make progress on weight loss, my thyroid decides it’s a good time to go nuts.
      The only thing I can tell you is that my weight gain correlates less with what I eat/do and more with autoimmune attacks. No idea why.

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      1. Energy Balance/Metabolism changes as immune system does its thing. My BIL has numerous AI issues as well as a chronic blood malignancy. His weight zig zags with rashes and blood counts.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. One autoimmune disease, Grave’s disease, features a autoimmune component where the body produces an antibody which acts exactly like natural Thyroid Stimulating Hormone aka TSH. Blood tests show a very low TSH and a very high level of thyroid hormone. Only real cure is surgical removal of the thyroid followed by life long thyroid supplements. Autoimmune diseases tend to be like that, body produces something aberrant which then affects normal processes, screwing them up, healthy cells get killed, healthy processes are interfered with. Nobody knows what happens to that offending antibody in Graves disease patients after thyroidectomy. If they don’t have complications related to the surgery, they do pretty well.
        By extension the process of assimilation and processing of food, storage and burning of fat tissue, is immensely complicated, a great many hormones and internal body chemistry is involved. The epidemic of obesity worldwide is probably partly due to autoimmune disease. The GLP-1 drugs so popular now act directly on some of the hormones in this chain. Other chemicals can also trigger autoimmune disease. Consider all the new chemicals in the world developed since 1850.

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    2. For my Lenten fast I decided to try something challenging but still doable: eat either breakfast OR lunch every weekday, but not both, and no eating for 12 hours after supper. It’s only been 3 days but it seems to be going OK. I had a substantial breakfast yesterday and skipped lunch with no issues. Today I skipped breakfast because I had a fasting blood test to take this morning (will be interesting to see the numbers since I’ve been taking metformin for about 8-9 months).

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      1. “I’ve been taking metformin for about 8-9 months” I started Metformin in 2021 when my fasting blood sugar went up from <99mg/dl to 108 for the first time in my life. That made me “pre-diabetic”. I started on 2000 mg a day. Noticed an immediate decreased appetite and urge to move around a lot more. Within 4 months I had lost 20 lb without dieting. At that point my appetite returned and I gained all the weight I had lost. My metformin dose stayed the same. My physician told me that kind of weight loss happens in about 20% of new users of Metformin. At around the same time my sister, who is 5 years old than me, started taking 2000 mg metformin a day for Type II diabetes. By then she was in Assisted Living, no longer at home. She almost completely lost her appetite for months, and lost 40 lb. We were worried she had an internal malignancy. Not so! Her internist halved her Metformin dose. Her appetite suddenly returned to her baseline, and she gained all of the weight she had lost over the next 6 months or so. Now years later she is in a Memory Care unit. When she moved in there she was still on the 1000 mg Metformin a day. She became much more sedentary due to balance problems. Her weight was going up gradually probably due to inactivity. In the last month she was found to have lost 10 lb. Caretakers noted she is eating very little. I am one of her two healthcare power-of-attorneys. So I am able to examine her facility records and refuse certain types of care. I looked into her record and found that somehow someone had increased her Metformin dose to 1500 mg a day. I told the nurse I was refusing the extra 500 mg Metformin on my sister’s behalf but the 1000 mg was fine to continue. Within a couple days her appetite got better.

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  21. The best thing I ever did for my health was go to a Functional Medicine specialist and she had me tested for food sensitivities.

    It was very eye opening. I was able to clear up digestive issues that I had been told were “just how you are” since childhood and eliminate 75% of my MS symptoms (all the really bad ones) just by eliminating the foods that were causing inflammation. Fixing my gut biome has dramatically changed my life for the better.

    I had gotten to a very bad state by following dietary advice from my doctors, who, as it turns out, don’t really have any training and only regurgitate the current guidelines from various government and pharmaceutical organizations.

    I think RFKjr. is kind of a nut, but, the last 20 years of dealing with the medical profession has lead me to think I’d be safer listening to advice from a nut than a credentialed professional in thrall to big pharma.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. insurance doesn’t know about them. However some of the standard blood work etc she orders is paid for by insurance. Some is not. The food sensitivity testing was not. Her appointments are not. But she doesn’t charge $1500.00 an appointment like a neurologist charges my insurance company either.

        So, it is money put of pocket. Which is bad, BUT, the MS medications my neurologist wanted to put me on had a $4000.00 Co-pay and vicious side effects. So I come out ahead by avoiding that.

        I found my specialist doing a Google search. She is Wahls trained and Terry Wahls is a big name in Functional Medicine, especially in regards to MS.

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        1. Foe reasons known only to WordPress, I was not allowed to finish my comment. Grrr.

          Functional Medicine specialists will generally do at least the first phone consultation free and you can mutually decide if they will be a good fit for you before you spend any money.

          My first office vist was 3hours long and she took a very detailed history. It was $200.00. That was a while ago, probably more now. I always know exactly how much a visit will cost before I go. No hidden fees. And she works well with my Oncologist nurse practitioner. ( I have a very complicated medical situation)

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  23. Absolutely right that people’s diets need to be right for them. I eat a pretty healthy diet as long as I can keep away from refined sugar for desert. I get enough sugar from eating lots of fruit. Living in SoCal is great for an abundance of fruit. My wife, the chemist, had a theory about sugar cravings. Her theory was our bodies evolved to expect certain vitamins and minerals to come along with certain foods, and when those weren’t there (as in the case of ‘refined’ foods) our bodies signaled us to eat more. We went to using Sucanat (high mineral, unrefined sugar) and found it didn’t give us cravings. I don’t bake now, so I’ve learned to live with slightly sour blueberries, rather than adding sugar.

    As a chemist, my wife also refused to allow so-called trans fats (formerly known as partially hydrogenated vegetable oil) into our diets. She knew the tricks chemists played to make such things. She was also a milk drinker, but it took years for her to realize she should drink whole milk instead of ‘low fat’ milk.

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  24. I tend to be a ‘moderation in all things’ type, but canola oil is pretty gross and I try to avoid it as much as possible. As an added bonus, that cuts out a lot of over processed expensive garbage. It’s a testament to the power of good marketing that a name change is all it got to get everyone eating chemically processed boat grease.

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    1. And here I thought that Ivy League academics prostituting themselves for lucre was a recent thing. Live and learn… 😒

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  26. I dimly remember an ad from back in the day bragging about how the product in question had cut the saturated fats. Knowing what I know now, I suspect they were replaced with trans fats, which we’re now told are super unhealthy. And that saturated fats really aren’t so bad.

    On another note…

    The body knows what it needs, even if we don’t. Fror m what I’ve heard, if you have an odd craving (and it doesn’t involve something with lots of sugar), it’s likely your body’s way of letting you know that you need something in that food.

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    2. Hence all the weird pregnancy cravings women have. Listen to the body people. Sometimes it yells, sometimes it’s a whisper.

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  28. Migraines drove me to reading a lot about health. (Heal Your Headaches by David Buchholz FTW).

    Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz was a real eye opener. She traces the history and flawed studies and logic behind the demonization of animal fats, and shows the correlation between our increased intake of seed oils and our increase in heart disease and weight. Suffice to say I threw out all the canola and crisco and now cook with butter, olive oil, tallow, and lard. I wish I’d known this all sooner.

    I try to eat pretty paleo, except for Sunday dessert and special occasions. What’s been super helpful for me is intermittent fasting to induce autophagy and weight loss. Dr. Jason Fung wrote a couple books on it (The Diabetes Code) and explains how he uses fasting to reverse Type 2 diabetes. Basically, and I hope I say this all correctly, back in the old days when we ate our 3 meals and didn’t snack, our insulin would spike after each meal. Insulin would tell the body to store the glucose from our food. Then insulin would go down and if we were in a calorie deficit, our bodies would burn fat. Eating a little something every couple hours (which I did) would keep your insulin up.

    This matters because if your insulin is up, your body can’t burn fat, even if it’s in a calorie deficit. So, with all our constant munching our baseline insulin gradually creeps higher.

    However, if you avoid calories for long enough, your insulin can drop and your body will burn fat IF it’s in a calorie deficit. I spent weeks expanding the time between dinner and breakfast. No snacking while watching TV. Eating dinner earlier. It was hard but doable.

    I read Leslie Taylor’s Fastwell substack, which explains so much so clearly about this. Now I have no calories between 7 p.m. and 11 the next morning. If I’m hungry I drink water. I don’t eat sugar or other refined carbs (except on Sunday). What’s miraculous about me not eating for 16 hours every day is that I was always someone who thought that hunger gave me headaches. It doesn’t. And, I finally moved off my mid-life weight increase.

    I see I’ve gone on way too long, so won’t wax rhapsodic about the other health benefits of autophagy, but they’re worth exploring, too.

    Also, intermittent fasting sounds awful, but perhaps a better way to think of it is “no snacking.”

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    1. IIRC, “intermittent fasting” is similar, with the idea being that you skip breakfast in order to lengthen out the amount of time between dinner and your next meal, and get your body to go into a fat burning state. But it’s “intermittent” – meaning that you don’t do it every day – in order to avoid your body getting into a state in which it expects that gap between dinner and the next meal.

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      1. Intermittent fasting is every day. This lets your insulin drop and your body burn fat to make up for the calorie deficit. What some people do is alternate day fasting, or one day fasting, where they go without food or caloric liquids for 24 hours or more. I admire them, but can’t do that.

        For a long time for me, exercising was enough. Then it wasn’t. Then eating paleo and exercise was enough. Then it wasn’t. Intermittent fasting and paleo and exercise are work for now.

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    2. You wrote: ” if we were in a calorie deficit, our bodies would burn fat.” For short term calorie deficits, the body tends to “burn” protein, such as your muscle tissue. This is absolutely necessary for your heart and brain tissue, which need a constant adequate level of blood sugar. A few seconds of zero blood sugar means losing consciousness. Someone who eats only 3 reasonably sized meals a day with no caloric intake otherwise will first burn muscle tissue between meals and then some of their fat tissue. When I first studied nutrition back in my college years, I started to notice the smell of ketones on my own breath, a physical sign that I was burning fat between meals. I even used ketone urine test strips & could see the ketones regularly appear in my urine after I went several hours with no calories coming in, and the ketone reaction would disappear again shortly after every meal. Burning your own internal fat is a more involved process. Eating continually during one’s waking hours, which has gotten very common these last 50 years essentially results in never burning any of your fat tissues.

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  29. People who value a centralized government have a hard time seeing us as individuals with unique needs – it makes their ability to rule over us effectively too difficult, so they’d rather deny reality and make all fit one size. They can’t even acknowledge that men and women are different, and that’s more obvious than our other individual quirks.

    Thanx for the post!

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  30. Pingback: Not a rant | Dio's Workshop

  31. Someone or other may have already said this, but I eat a plant based diet by proxy. Cow, pig, chicken, etc. eats plant, I eat the cow, pig, chicken, etc. Seems like a win/win to me. Animals have been turning plants into meat for a long time. Why mess with a good thing?

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  32. I’ve been a lifelong car camper. My road trip supplies always include several 7.5 oz cans of wild caught red salmon. A single can has zero carbs, healthy fats and is nearly pure protein. It is a full meal and keeps me going for 8-10 hours afterward. On the road it is far better for you than anything you are likely to find in a roadside eatery. It keeps well for months under the seat of my vehicles along with the necessary can opener. For more than one passenger with you, just buy bigger cans. I also carry a gallon of drinking water, a small propane camper stove, a pot, utensils, a coffee cone filter holder, coffee filters and enough ground coffee for several days. This doesn’t weigh much and can be left in your car for your next trip. More than once I have stopped on the side of the road, set up my little stove and brewed a small amount of decent coffee when I couldn’t find drinkable coffee anywhere. This takes very little time to do. If you want real cream or half & half creamers, you can buy a boxful of UHT preserved unit servinfs and carry them along with the other items. If you don’t want to buy a boxful, you can simply pocket identical items at restaurants and build up a small supply for future use. A small ice chest is nice, but not necessary for this level of road food.

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  33. whats that saying, everything in moderation,

    obviously a lot of processed stuff isnt that good for us, and unless flour etc is organic it will definitely have glyphosate in it or worse,

    a good balanced diet heavy on the locally grown and organic vs mcdonalds every day is a no brainer but theres a lot o grey areas and people are busy, i cant always cook up a good healthy dinner, sometimes i just want to stuff some breaded chicken nuggets from Costco in the oven or fish sticks, honestly feel its like anything else, balance

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