by Sean Croxton

Long time, no blog.

I wish I could tell you all about how busy I’ve been, but to be honest I’ve just been kinda chillin’. The radio show has been on a month-long hiatus (Robb Wolf this Thursday!). The “did you know” Facebook posts have taken a break. And I finally dusted off the Tweetdeck last night.

The TV show is in production. Just yesterday, my crew and I went over to Mark Sisson’s place and filmed our third episode. So far, we’ve shot with Gary Taubes, Todd Durkin, Dr. Tom O’Bryan, and Steve Cotter. You guys are going to LOVE the show!

What else is going on in Croxton World?

Well, I think I’m going through a phase that all health bloggers go through at some point or another. It’s the point at which we ask ourselves just what the heck else can we say about food that we haven’t said before. And how do we continue the discussion without losing the average Joes and Janes who just want to eat/live well and without attracting the neurotic orthorectics who turn food into a religion?

There’s a sign on the wall at my gym that says, “You can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet”.

True, indeed. But you also can’t:

* eat your way out of late nights in front of the TV or computer

* eat your way out of a high-stress lifestyle

* eat your way out of a lack of connection with the Earth

* eat your way out of lack of sunlight

* eat your way out of a predominance of negative thoughts running through your head

* eat your way out of having no purpose in life

I was listening to the Great Health Debate call with Dr. Mercola and Dr. Gabriel Cousens. Both are highly successful doctors using completely opposite nutritional protocols with their patients. The name Harold Kristal, D.D.S., author of The Nutrition Solution, a book about Metabolic Typing, came up in the conversation. Dr. Cousens made the point several times that Kristal, a meat eater, died of cancer.

So!

This is the absurdity of the food debate. A man eats meat and he dies of cancer. The meat MUST have killed him.

Let’s forget about how stressed he may have been or lack of sleep he may have gotten. Let’s just set aside any other component of his lifestyle (or genetics) that may have contributed to his death by cancer. It just HAD TO BE the meat.

This is stupid.

Is this what we’ve come to? Has no vegan ever died of cancer? Then again, if you listen to a staunch omnivore, you would assume that no vegan ever lived a healthy, long life either.

It seems as though our movement has drifted away from holism and toward dietary tunnel vision in a poor attempt to prove ourselves right and everyone else wrong.

It just makes me wonder. I know all about the time, effort, and research it takes to become a fairly well known blogger. So, I can’t help but ask myself if the late hours we spend researching food are counteracting the good we’re doing through our diets. I wonder if the anger and resentment some of us express when, for example, Oprah has Vegan Week is worse for us than the sugars and trans fats we encourage others not to eat. It is said that anger causes cancer, too.

I read the comments after I post my YouTube videos. A lot of them have to do with viewers being so fed up with the health game that people don’t know what the hell to eat anymore.

Meat is bad. But wait, meat is good. But wait again, I read Inflammation Nation last week and the author says that egg yolks and meat are high in arachidonic acid and cause inflammation. But wait just one more time, because I interviewed Mark Sisson yesterday and he said meat and egg yolks are good.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!!

Wasn’t sugar bad for us last week? Well, today we have the Ray Peat crowd who say it’s good for us and that if we don’t have enough of it we’ll fry our adrenal glands and slow down our thyroids.

Low-carb is good. No, wait! Low-carb is bad!

Sheesh. When is enough enough?

It reminds me of a quote I came across a couple months ago. You can hand a man (or woman) a watch and ask him to describe how it works. The only catch is that he can’t take the watch apart. The man can draw you a picture and tell you a beautiful story about how he thinks the watch works. The next person will draw his own picture and will have a very different, yet equally convincing story. It goes on and on until someone finally grabs the watch, takes it apart, and actually witnesses what makes it tick.

And that’s exactly what we have, a bunch of stories. Dr. Cousens has his story, as exemplified by his ten-minute monologue of statistics regarding the consumption of meat and increased risk of various diseases. Dr. Mercola has his story. Kristal had his. The Weston A Price crowd even has a book to back their story up. The Paleo crowd has fossils, spears, and really old poop samples.

The question is whose story resonates the most with you.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun and intriguing to try to figure it all out. But none of us will ever have the opportunity to take the darn watch apart. The pictures we draw and the stories we write today will be proven dead wrong tomorrow. That’s kinda how it goes.

Yet, the underlying theme never really changes: Just Eat Real Food.

And not just that! Get to bed on time. Keep your stress levels in check. Participate in loving relationships. Have a social life. Get some exercise. Go barefoot (blog coming soon on this topic). Get some sunlight. Be happy.

In a nutshell, LIVE.

Now, if you have some kind of condition that requires specific dietary guidelines (leaky gut, celiac, gluten sensitivity, diabetes, etc.), I can understand the need for more specialized information. But in my opinion, I think the average person just looking to get healthy and fit gets turned off by what amounts to a mountain of conflicting information and silly points made about guys who happened to eat meat and died too.

I know people who won’t even hang out with their friends anymore because they’re afraid of being put in a position that may lead to “bad eating”.

Really? Is it that serious?

Is the stress some people feel about making the wrong food decisions better or worse than just letting loose and making poor choices every once in a while?

And do we really need to feel a sense of pride when Paul Chek says he’s eating meat again?

I love being a blogger. I love studying health. But I have to admit that some of this stuff is downright silly.

Eat real food. Listen to your body. Live a great life. And do what works for you.

Man, I forgot how fun this blogging thing can be!

Sean

I love my life!

If you’ve been reading my blog the past few months, you know that I’m a huge fan of the book Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Foods by Dr. Cate and Luke Shanahan.

I liked it so much that the Shanahans came all the way to San Diego to hang out and show me how to make Brown Beef Stock.

The stock is loaded with glycosaminoglycans, which are phenomenal for healing and building up collagen. If you have aches and pains, you gotta prepare this recipe!

I had Luke send over a list of the ingredients, as well as the instructions. Check them out below and watch the step-by-step video we put together.

Let us know how yours turns out!



Ingredients:

* grass fed soup bones and a joint bone (knee or other joint) w/ some meat on them (2-3 lbs)
* 2 12 oz. cans of tomato puree
* 1 small can tomato puree
* celery, 6 stalks
* onions, 2-3
* carrots, 5 medium-large
* fresh parsley
* bay leaves
* fresh thyme
* black peppercorns
* 2 or 3 cloves
* red wine, nothing labeled “cooking wine,” inexpensive but drinkable
* sea salt
* olive oil
* flour, 1 tbsp
* cold, filtered water, about 3 gal

Directions:

Step 1) Lightly coat bones and meat trimmings with olive oil. Then rub tablespoon of tomato paste mixed with one tablespoon flour onto bones and roast alone in a large roasting pan for 30-40 mins at 400 f., or an hour at 350 f.

Step 2) Add lightly (olive) oiled mirepoix (rough cut onions, carrots, and celery) and continue roasting for another half hour (check color; caramelize, but don’t burn).

Step 4) Add the bones only to a large stock pot. Put the roasted vegetables aside and refrigerate. Add a cup of red wine, half a can of the tomato puree and enough cold water to cover bones plus one inch.

Step 5) Deglaze the hot roasting pan by pouring in some red wine or water to remove the nice caramelized drippings. (If you have the kind of pot you can put on the stovetop, you can get it a little hotter this way to aid deglazing.) Add this rich liquid (called “fond”) to the stock pot. That’s extra flavor!

Step 5) Heat stock at medium heat, stirring every few minutes and watching closely. Bring to a low, low simmer–but NEVER BOIL with the bones in the stock (as this extracts bitter proteins and clouds the finished stock).

Step 6) Low boil or steep at around 200 f. (just short of making boiling bubbles) for 12-24 hours, no more, no less. You can leave uncovered or partially covered. But never cover (as in seal, with no way for steam to escape) your stock when hot as doing so “sours” the stock. Every once in a while, use a slotted spoon to remove any scum that forms at the top of the liquid. That scum can make the stock bitter, so remove it every half an hour for the first few hours.

Step 7) For the last hour (or two) of low simmer, add those roasted veggies you put in the refrigerator. Throw the bay leaves and cloves in when you add the veggies. If your a fan of tomato (as I am), add another 12 ounce. can of tomato puree at this time if you’d like.

Step 8. For the last half an hour of the low simmer, toss in the fresh parsley (plenty, as in the full bunch) thyme (half as much as the parsley) and a flat tablespoon of peppercorns. (If you only have dry spices, you can steep them in the stock using one of those big tea balls, dangling it from the side of the pot by the chain a full hour before you take the stock off the heat.)

Step 9) Remove the dry herbs tea ball, if that’s what you used. Let the stock cool for a while on a cooling rack, until it’s cool enough to handle and strain. Strain through a fine wife mesh strainer into another big pot. (The bones are big and heavy, so you might want to remove those with big tongs or a solid slotted spoon before straining.) You can also use cheesecloth to strain, as Sean did so expertly when straining his chicken stock.

Step 10) Once the stock’s in the other pot, chill in an ice bath in the sink. Stir both the stock and the ice water to cool quickly. Once it’s at room temperature, put the stock into the refrigerator to chill.

Step 11) After it chills overnight, you’ll notice that the stock has formed a cap of fat on top. This can be as much as an inch thick. Remove this by cutting into quadrants with a knife and gently lifting it off of the gelatinous stock.

Step 12) If you like, reduce the stock by up to a half. Season with a little sea salt, but keep in mind that the more you further reduce, the saltier it will get–so under-season! You can always add more salt later. Now warm the stock for a couple minutes on the stove to make it easier to pour, and pour into little plastic or glass containers and store in the freezer for up to several months. I use painter’s tape to label the date of the stock, and the type of stock. Just remember to leave a little room to allow the freezing liquid to expand. Enjoy!

Sean
www.undergroundwellness.com

Listening to last week’s Great Health Debate, I realized that there is so much stuff that I don’t know. Hearing guys like David Wolfe talk about the benefits of wild foods and herbs like medicinal mushrooms (reishi, shitake, chaga, mitake), nettles, and horsetail was pretty cool and actually quite inspiring. I wanted to get on Amazon right then and start buying books about the healing powers of food. But at the same time, I’m becoming more and more aware of the fact that I have a minor addiction to buying books online. Have you seen my living room?

The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.

Anyway, enough about my Amazon.com dependency. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the whole Paleo thing. I agree that we should eat like our ancestors, that our genes are hardwired for specific traditional foods that we have consumed for thousands of generations. But I also wonder why the Paleo crowd makes little, if any, mention of fermented foods, bone broths, and organ meats. Yeah, I understand that my Paleo friends aren’t trying to exactly mimic the diet of caveman and cavewoman. That wouldn’t be practical for most folks. I always say that the best diet to stick to is one that you can stick to.

I’m even guilty of leaving out these highly beneficial foods. My bad.

But that’s about to change RIGHT NOW!

We’re about to Get Cultured.

Jennifer McGruther of Nourished Kitchen is in the house today to show us how to make sauerkraut. You know, that stuff that tastes really good on your organic hot dogs. I won’t even begin to act like I know a whole lot about fermentation or sauerkraut. So, we’ll just have to ask the expert. Be sure to check out the video above to get the scoop.

What I can say, based on my limited knowledge, was that when Jenny sent over the ingredients, I was wondering if she forgot an ingredient or two. All I needed were cabbage and salt. That’s it? No starter culture? I heard that sauerkraut is loaded with beneficial bacteria. That’s why it’s great to eat if you’re having a hard time going poop.

But, where does it come from if we don’t use a starter?

Peep the video and find out! And learn more about Jenny’s Get Cultured e-course by clicking the link below!

I’m out! See you tomorrow on UW Radio!

Sean Croxton
Gettin’ Cultured
www.undergroundwellness.com

“99.99% of our genes were formed before the development of agriculture.” – Dr. S. Boyd Eaton, MD, Medical Anthropologist

Grains suck.

It’s really that simple. There is zero human dietary requirement for grains. Most (if not all) people would be better off without them. It was their introduction into the human diet by way of the Agricultural Revolution that shifted us away from the healthful animal-based diet that we survived and thrived on for 99.99% of our history. With this change came reductions in stature and brain size, chronic degenerative diseases, and much longer work days. Many anthropologists agree that the advent of agriculture was one of the worst events in human history. Despite the evidence of such agriculturally-induced human decline, we continue to perpetuate this event with our USDA dietary recommendations and our errant fears of animal fats.

Let’s set aside the whole “are grains fit for human consumption?” debate and just focus on the nuts and bolts of what they do within the human body. First of all, grains are living organisms. And like all living organisms, they have defense mechanisms to discourage predators from eating them. One such mechanism is called phytic acid, which binds to the important minerals in the grain such as calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc. So even though the label on the loaf of bread says that it is loaded with these minerals, you’re not really absorbing them. In addition, phytic acid can leach minerals from your body, causing mineral deficiencies. Not good.

You can eliminate or significantly reduce the phytic acid by way of soaking, sprouting, or fermenting the grain. This is cool and all, but it doesn’t take care of the fact that grains are 70-80% starch, which eventually converts to sugar and cranks up your blood glucose and insulin. Last night, I read in Primal Body-Primal Mind that one bagel or two slices of bread contain 5 times more sugar than your bloodstream requires. Any sugar that your bloodstream does not need gets stored away as either glycogen or fat. Imagine how much fat you store when you’re eating multiple servings of the stuff because the USDA told you to. You can’t burn fat when your pancreas is always cranking out insulin to counter your almost hourly grain binges!

Next up, we have goitrogens. These guys are also in grains. They work by suppressing thyroid function. Definitely a no-no. You don’t wanna eff with your metabolism!

If you follow my radio shows, you’re familiar with the damage that gluten can do. Most grains contain gluten, which can not only be damaging to the intestinal tract, but also to almost every other organ, tissue, or gland in your body. According to Dr. Thomas O’Bryan, by next year, autoimmunity will be the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the industrialized world. One of the predominant triggers for autoimmunity is gluten. Ouch!

But what about the gluten-free grains like corn, rice, or quinoa (not really a grain, but close enough)? Well, they have their own problems. All grains contain lectins, which are proteins that are extremely hard to digest. These lectins like to stick to your intestinal lining and sneak their way into your bloodstream. This causes inflammation and destruction to the intestinal wall. This destruction can lead to a hyper-permeable gut that literally can no longer tell the difference between the good and bad guys. In other words, the gate is wide open for all kinds of bacteria, fungus, toxins, undigested food particles, and poop to cross over into the bloodstream, the last place they should be. The immune system sees lectins (and all of the other crap I just mentioned) as invaders and mounts a response against them. This can lead to multiple food sensitivities and allergies. To make matters worse, the immune system can get a little paranoid and start to have problems with mistaken identity. Since the lectins or undigested food particles can look very similar to your organs, tissues, or glands, it can start to attack them as well. This is how autoimmunity works. Your body is attacking itself. The breakdown of the intestinal wall is a huge player in this process. Don’t you think you’d be better off getting rid of the foods that cause this breakdown in the first place? Adios, grains!

I mentioned quinoa above. Now, I haven’t done as much research on this non-grain as I would like to. But according to Robb Wolf in his book The Paleo Solution, quinoa contains soap-like molecules called saponins. These guys punch holes in your microvillii, which are critical for proper breakdown of peptide and saccharide chains. Believe me, you don’t want to punch holes in your microvilli. Definitely not a good idea. But again, this deserves more research.

So there you have it, the case against grains in a nutshell. I can go on and on, but I’m trying to keep these blogs pretty short. Be sure to listen to UW Radio TONIGHT at 5pm PT/8pm ET. Nora Gedgaudas, CNS, CNT, author of Primal Body-Primal Mind, will be digging deeper into this topic, including why she differs with the Weston A. Price Foundation’s stance on the healthfulness of grains. Gonna be a good one!

Out!

Sean Croxton
Author, The Dark Side of Fat Loss

by Sean Croxton
Originally posted at www.thedietsolution.co.uk

Meet Charles North.

A smooth talker and astute businessman, Mr. North forever altered more than 40,000 years of nutritional wisdom with a new invention and a little fear. The year was 1907, a time when milk was mostly produced by happy grass-fed cows and rightfully consumed in its raw form. With his newly invented batch-processing pasteurization machine in tow, North made it is own personal mission to rid the country of raw milk-induced disease.

The problem was that there was no raw milk disease epidemic. Yet, that did not stop the inventor from traveling through small towns alerting the people of an outbreak of illness in the previous town he had visited. Drinking unpasteurized milk caused the illness. The solution was his machine. The story was fictional.

To the naked eye, milk treated by North’s machine did not appear much different from its raw predecessor. And to the fearful mind, it was safer to consume.

More fiction. Let us take a closer look.

The Grand Designer engineered raw milk with a vital microstructure intended to provide nourishment and to complement proper digestive function. Milk’s structure consists of somewhat of a separation of powers. Its protein and fat components are meant to function independently with little to no interaction. In her book Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food, Cate Shanahan M.D. takes us under the electron microscope to show us a side of milk seldom seen.

“…we can see the casein micelles, which are amazingly complex. Imagine a mound of spaghetti and meatballs formed into a big round ball. The strands of spaghetti are made of protein (casein), and the meatballs are made of the most digestible form of calcium phosphate, which holds the spaghetti strands together in a clump with its tiny magnetic charge. This clumping prevents sugar from reacting with and destroying milk’s essential amino acids.”

Dr. Shanahan goes on to describe the fat globules, each one unique in size and enclosed in their own phospholipid membranes. These membranes are home to various specialized proteins that protect the globule from bacterial infection. Other proteins act like special transit passes, signaling the intestines to absorb the globules without inspection. This feature allows for effortless fat digestion without the assistance of the gallbladder. As long as the fat remains disconnected from the aforementioned casein and calcium, everything runs smoothly. When the components get too close for comfort, it can be a bumpy ride.

After the heat and strain of pasteurization and homogenization, the organized world that was raw milk comes to resemble a war zone. The population of beneficial bacteria that once protected the milk (as well as its consumer) from infection is wiped off the map. The utilitarian structures of the fat globules are destroyed as the homogenization process forces them through microscopic holes. The transit passes that allowed for easy digestion go missing. This slows the digestive process, thus the myriad of digestive disturbances experienced upon consumption of pasteurized milk including gas, bloating, and constipation.

“Processing can render milk highly irritating to the intestinal tract, and such a wide variety of chemical changes may occur that processed milk can lead to diarrhea and constipation. During processing, the nice, soft meatball of colloidal calcium phosphate fuses with the fatty acids to form a kind of milk-fat soap. This reaction, called saponification, irritates many people’s GI tracts and makes the calcium and phosphate much less bioavailable and more difficult to absorb. Processed milks contain anywhere from one-half to one-sixth the bioavailable minerals of the fresh products.”

The heat of pasteurization also denatures amino acids. These damaged proteins remain in the milk where they can become toxic, allergenic, and inflammatory. And if that were not enough, an enzyme called xanthine oxidase can hide within the fat globules, passing intact through the intestinal barrier and into circulation. This is not supposed to happen. In its unpasteurized form, xanthine oxidase is broken down and rendered inactive by the digestive process. When it passes intact into circulation it wreaks havoc on our arteries causing atherosclerosis, as well as free radical damage. Ouch.

Times have changed. And so has our milk. Raw milk was once adorned for its nourishing, immune-building, disease-protective benefits by people the world over. Now it is feared. But what is to be feared is its pasteurized, homogenized, so-called “safer” alternative; a lifeless source of digestive dysfunction, damaged proteins and fats, inferior nutritional value, and clogged arteries. Not to mention the sick cows from which it comes.

One hundred years later, Charles North’s story is still being told. Despite the fact than no outbreak of illness has ever been attributed to raw milk from grass-fed cows, we remain steadfast in our willingness to trade a milk product that causes imaginary illness for one that actually contributes to poor health.

Mr. North would be proud.

Source: Deep Nutrion: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food by Catherine Shanahan, M.D.

Sean Croxton
Underground Wellness
www.undergroundwellness.com

by Sean Croxton

What I Learned Today #1
Currently Reading – Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

In my quest to become the most prolific blogger in the history of health bloggerdom, I came up with the idea of sharing my newest learnings in the form of the What I Learned Today (WILT) series. This is the first of many golden nuggets of health information gleaned from the pages of the countless books I spend my days and nights reading obsessively. Today, I’ve been immersed in Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan MD, a former low-fatter who once believed she knew everything there was to know about diet and nutrition. That is, until she discovered Weston A. Price, arguably the greatest nutrition pioneer who ever lived.

A page-turner indeed, it was actually a short sidebar on page 12 regarding the Hippocratic Oath that struck a chord with me. As most of us know, our medical professionals take this oath on their graduation day. However, most have a limited knowledge as to what the oath truly means.

Believed to have been written by Hippocrates or by one of his students, the Oath begins:

“I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculpius, and Hygieia, and Panacea, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation . . .”

The Greek god Apollo is sure to ring a bell, but who are these other mysterious characters?

Devout believers in the laws of balance, the ancient Greeks understood true health and wellness to rest upon two complementary ideas. The first is Hygieia, the goddess of health.

By name alone, one may assume that Hygieia solely embodies the concept of general hygiene and cleanliness. However, she symbolizes the application of sound nutrition principles throughout one’s life, as well as successive generations, in order to ensure the proper building of healthy bodies. Such nutritional practices were intended for all phases of life, including prenatal, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Certainly, the proper time for nourishment is any time. Abiding by Hygieia’s decree was recognized as the most effective means of preventive medicine. How easily she has been forgotten.

Aesculpius, the god of medicine, typifies the indispensable knowledge of surgical procedures and remedies. Working with the tools of Panacea (the god of potions and cure-alls), Aesculpius comes to the rescue when nutrition fails, accidents happen, or infections set in.

Surely without Hygieia, there would be no health. And without Aesculpius, there would be no means of recovering health once it falters. The two work in synergy, balancing the feminine with the masculine.

Medicine has lost its roots, electing to abandon the feminine while adopting a hypermasculinized approach to wellness. The building of the body through Hygienic means has become an afterthought. Balance is no longer present. And when such imbalance is present, the inescapable result is chaos and disorder, thus the state of health in the modern industrialized world.

To swear an oath is to declare a truth. Hippocrates’ words represent the ultimate truth in the pursuit of health and sound medicine. Unfortunately, many who raise their right hands and swear this oath have no idea what it stands for. In turn, they have no idea what they stand for. This is the plight of our broken medical system, a system uncertain of the foundation on which it stands.

Medicine needs its woman back.

Sean Croxton
Just a Guy Gettin’ His Blog On…
www.undergroundwellness.com