Sunday, May 27

But That Will KILL You!

The low-fat crazed world is convinced that my eggs in the morning and my pork stew is going to kill me, sooner rather than later. If the official party line about health had any truth to it, I would have already expired from veins clogged solid and blood pressure in the stratospheric count.

But funny enough, even in the lowcarb world, there's a whole cornucopia of warning labels people hang out for education. And they are probably all correct. But as a friend of mine pointed out, sometimes it seems there is no end to it!

A talk came up about yummy chorizo. Which led to my pointing out it is pig lymph nodes, which are the toxin collectors of the body, and I find it too gross to eat.

So I eat Soyrizo, a substitute that is nearly indistinguishable from chorizo. But this leads to posts about the many deadly dangers of humans ingesting soy.

OK, so maybe a reader thinks, "OK then! I'll have some bacon or sausage with those eggs instead." But no, then you get to hear about all the terrible nitrites in those, or the horrible Omega-6 balance.

"Ok, ok!" our fictional lowcarber protests. "Then I'll just have a small burger patty, that's simple and quick." But wait, there'll be a whole page about how well-cooked meats are not so good for you and really we should be eating them nearly raw.

(And don't even THINK of doing serious reading about Mad Cow Syndrome or you may never eat meat again.)

"That does it!" you hear. "I'll just have a freakin protein drink already!" No babe, don'tcha know, that is PROCESSED and not really "food"?!

***

And this is on top of the fact that most anything that ever even thought about being a grain, mating with a grain, or residing in the same package as a grain, is probably doing damage to a huge chunk of the population through grain/gluten intolerance.

Oh yeah, and about a zillion people are sensitive to caseine, the protein in milk.

And if you make all those yummy foods you're using artificial sweetener. You just know that no matter how great sucralose (what's in splenda) seems today, in 10 years (if that) we'll be hearing about how it kills you.

But wait, there's more. Turns out there's plenty of suggestion that merely the sweet "taste" of something can cause insulin spikes by association.

For godssakes! So we have Pavlov's Pancreas, too. Great.

***

Recently I posted here about making processed foods in the home -- using eggs, butter, protein powder, flax seed meal, etc. etc. to create high-protein cocoa muffins, for example. I was saying, is it any worse to do that, than to have eggs fried in butter, a teaspoon of flax seeds and a protein drink? If so, why?

Here on the blog the comments were like, hey whatever keeps you on plan. On my LC journal the comments were more like, that's the wrong direction man, you should be eating real food.

But most 'real food' isn't portable in a ziplock without refrigeration for a couple of days, for instant-grab yummy munchy food that is also good numbers for my daily eating goals. And eating muffins, or mock danish as a friend of mine does (and she certainly lost weight), regularly, doesn't mean one is not also eating meat and veggies.

It might mean, though, that you stayed on-plan.

Though I guess, maybe it wasn't a very good plan. Maybe.

***

I think in a perfect world, we would all live on turkey, broccoli, pecans, avocados, and some fresh herbs and lots of water. (I'm ignoring the many things that could be warnings, even about those.)

But in the real world, I don't have a butler, so I live on what I had the time, money, and energy to make for myself. The easier something is to make, the longer something lasts, and the easier it is to eat the leftovers, the higher a rating it gets in my Worthy Foods Book.

I think the better people get at eating 'real food', the healthier they're likely to be. Then again, if food or time or money or frankly, energy to do something proactive is limited -- or appetite, or foods you're not sensitive to or don't dislike, are limited -- then you take what you've got.

You do the best you can with the options available to you, and hope to live another day to work toward that perfect-world dietary plan. Chances are, soy and chorizo and bacon and processed protein powder are not going to kill you done in moderation.

If eating protein donut holes or a mock danish every day for a year is your idea of a high protein breakfast, well, if it helped keep you on plan, got you enough protein, kept down your carbs, kept down your calories if necessary, and helped you get healthier, then I'd say it turned out to be a good thing, didn't it?

Who knows? Less weight and sufficient protein for the long term might mean more energy for more focus on whole roasted chickens in your future.

Wait, don't tell me. That stuff will KILL me, because . . .


9 comments:

PJ said...

This blog post was special thanks to Sara, my whole roasted chicken hero. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Hi PJ,

Great post - I love it! And you're so right about 'whatever works' to keep you on plan.

I'm making turkey/chorizo burgers for my BBQ tomorrow. Just for you :)Oh, and I had a big glass of Diet Coke - pavlov's pancreas be darned.

Vegan.Bohemian said...

PJ,
Have I told you how much I LOVE reading your blog???

:)

LOVE IT!!!

Calianna said...

I've been so distracted lately that I don't know if I posted anything about this on your blog, or your journal, or whether I even said anything or not...

Nevertheless, my 2 cents is to just go for whatever keeps you on plan.

Sheesh, talk about artificial sweeteners, I use *saccharin* in a lot of things, fer cryin' out loud! And used it almost exclusively back in the 70's when I did a high protein/low carb diet, because there weren't really any other artificial sweeteners out there. And they said that would kill you too... but for some reason, I'm still hanging around.

I may not have bacon on a regular basis (maybe about 4-6 times in the last year or two), but I will eat it - and yes, that's bacon *with* the nitrates, because there's a local company that makes excellent cured and smoked meats. (Their ham and even their hot dogs are lovely too, although I can't handle the swelling from all the sodium in these things, so they're all just an occasional thing)

Pork, eggs, butter, beef... wheat, milk, nuts... Spinach, green onions, lettuce, cider... Gah. If a person cut out every single thing that's been named as a possible allergen, every single source of "too much fat and cholesterol" (*rolls eyes*), and every single source of possible food poisoning, we'd be eating pretty much nothing, sort of like my anorexic kid. (I still don't know how much of her problem is a deep seated body image/diet obsession problem, and how much is from a plethora of food warnings)

There just has to be some common sense to all this - and you've got it right: Eat what you need to eat to stay on plan, and enjoy it. Nothing you can eat that will keep you on plan can be as bad for you as being morbidly obese, either now or 30 years from now - assuming the morbidly obese person even survives long enough to acquire any of the problems associated with "bad for you" foods.

Anonymous said...

I say if everything's gonna kill me, I might as well die eating things I like. Next week they'll find out none of it is as bad as they thought, anyway.

. said...

Hehe I'm a bit like that in some ways (I try to avoid a lot of the crap like food additives etc) but every one is different, some people can't tolerate wheat and some people can etc

But that said, you know what I had for lunch most days when I was losing my weight? Low Carb Cheesecake!

I would make a big unbaked cheesecake choco full of fat so it was filling, when my chocolate cravings became bad it turned into a big 85% lindt cheesecake with an almond/coconut crust ;)

Once set I would cut it into slices and allocated myself one slice for lunch each day. The thing is this totally killed my cravings, I didn't feel the need to cheat and whenever I felt bad (cravings) I would just remind myself that I have another slice of yummy cheesecake to look forward to tommorrow. And that was it, it kept me strong and taught me not to binge.

Anonymous said...

You wrote that in 10 years we will be hearing how splenda kills. Well, it won't take that long. The manufacturer of Splenda has already registered many domain names such as splendakills and victimsofsplenda.

It also will not take 10 years because many scientists, labs, etc. have already been warming about the effects of splenda. It's just another nasty chemical that is aimed to replace aspartame now that people prefer not to ingest that.

Check out http://splenda.worldwidewarning.net for more.

Daron said...

Didn't know that about chorizo... love the stuff. Eat it about once a week.... but, I like it enough to keep eating it... Might give the soy version a try just to see how it compares....

Unknown said...

Another vote for "whatever works" here. I think we can all agree that fresh, whole foods are ideal, and the less processing generally the better. But realistically, for people with busy lives, protein shakes and pre-made snacks keep you on plan. I'm also a big believer in the importance of treats, like LC cheesecake or the cocoa muffins, purely from a psychological standpoint. They do satisfy the craving for somethin sweet, and stop you feeling totally deprived and diety.