Why Grass Fed Meat?

Meat is good. Grass fed meat is better...much better. Our ancestors did not eat meat harvested from animals that lived in crowded conditions on an unnatural diet of grain-based feed augmented with the remains of other cattle, and their food sources were not chock-full of artificially administered growth hormones and antibiotics. Our ancestors obtained their meat from wild animals that spent their entire lives subsisting on their natural diets, and thus we evolved to thrive on protein from such animals and the nutritional profile to be found in such meat.

The benefits of 100% grass fed meat are many. Eatwild.com has a lot of great info on these benefits, the basics of which can be found here. I like their summary from that page:

When you choose to eat meat, eggs, and dairy products from animals raised on pasture, you are improving the welfare of the animals, helping to put an end to environmental degradation, helping small-scale ranchers and farmers make a living from the land, helping to sustain rural communities, and giving your family the healthiest possible food. It’s a win-win-win-win situation.

Nutritional Benefits of Grass Fed Meat

Grass fed meats, when compared to modern feed lot meats, are higher in many vitamins, minerals, beneficial EFAs (essential fatty acids) and lower in fat. Frankly, eating grass fed meat is like taking a nutritional supplement - except instead of coming in the form of a pill it's in a juicy steak or burger. The list of nutritional benefits can hardly be overestimated. Please check out Eat Wild's Health Benefits for a detailed discussion. For those of you with a shorter attention span, here is a 10 point summary from that page:

Score Ten for Grass-Fed Beef

Grass-fed beef is better for human health than grain-fed beef in ten different ways, according to the most comprehensive analysis to date. The 2009 study was a joint effort between the USDA and researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina. Compared with grain-fed beef, grass-fed beef was:

1. Lower in total fat
2. Higher in beta-carotene
3. Higher in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol)
4. Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin
5. Higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium
6. Higher in total omega-3s
7. A healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84)
8. Higher in CLA (cis-9 trans-11), a potential cancer fighter
9. Higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA)
10. Lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease

S.K. Duckett et al, Journal of Animal Science, (published online) June 2009, “Effects of winter stocker growth rate and finishing system on: III. Tissue proximate, fatty acid, vitamin and cholesterol content.”

Also mentioned is the fact that grass fed meat is significantly less likely to be contaminated with e. coli, and due to feeding methods is essentially immune to the underlying cause of mad cow disease.

The fatty acid profile in grass fed meat is similar to that of fish. Now I personally use fish oil supplements to augment my omega-3 intake because of the overwhelming research that supports fish/fish oil consumption as a major health benefit. Eating a grain-based diet has pushed the average American's omega-6/omega-3 ratio all out of whack relative to what it should naturally be, and this is thought to contribute to many modern metabolic ailments as well as cancer and heart disease. But eating plenty of grass fed meat can also provide you with a more natural, balanced fatty acid ratio.

Grain fed meat quickly loses any fatty acid benefits that may have been garnered during the short grazing period most cattle go through, but 100% grass fed animals build and maintain the proper fatty acid profile. The meat of grass fed animals also contains significantly higher levels of vitamins that you must otherwise get directly from vegetable sources if you only eat grain fed meat. This helps to explain how some hunter-gatherer cultures appear to do perfectly well on a predominantly meat-based diet. I'm not suggesting you go meat-only - I like veggies too much. But if you do, you'd better make sure it's grass fed!

Seriously - if you are truly concerned about your health and that of your family, do yourself a favor and research the nutritional benefits of grass fed meat. Read the information at Eat Wild.

Workout du Jour

Today's workout was a quick (16 minute) session of intervals on the heavy bag and kettlebell. Basically hitting and lifting in bursts of 60 seconds, with short 20-30 seconds active resting in between. That's good stuff. Now if the weather holds up I'm off to cut the grass and get some sunshine. Too bad I don't have any grazing animals to help me out!

Good luck and happy foraging!

Colbert Paleo-Nation!

Stephen Colbert recently interviewed John Durant regarding the "caveman diet". Here's the clip of this entertaining, humorous and pretty informative interview.

I like what I've seen of this guy. In the short time Colbert talked to him, he hit a lot of the main points of paleo programming. He didn't just limit it to diet either. Good show.

Workout du Jour

Today I am pretty sore from the squats and deadlifts yesterday, but I've had worse. This morning I did a quick 16 minutes of hard intervals on the heavy bag, and then went outside and got some sunshine for 15 minutes. The heavy bag training can be pretty tiring, but it's also a lot of fun. If you have access to a gym with a heavy bag, you should give it a go! Or if you'd rather buy your own for home use - like I did - there are some pretty good deals at Amazon. I got my 80lb bag along with some nice heavy bag gloves for less than $100 - with free shipping it was still delivered within 48 hours. Not too shabby.

If you're interested, go here and look around for something that fits your needs. Hitting a heavy bag is stress-relieving, fat-burning and fun - plus it teaches you how to move correctly while striking. I love using mine.

Heavy Day!

Ok, not all that heavy really. For the past several months I've been sticking to bodyweight exercises, kettlebell work and some training on the heavy bag. It was fun and (I think) beneficial as well, but I miss going to the gym and picking up heavy stuff.

So today I went back to the gym and did squats, hang power cleans and push presses, and deadlifts. I went a bit easy on myself since it had been so long, but I can already tell that my legs are going to be SORE. Squats are like that, unless I do them a couple days a week.

I definitely felt like I could do more weight on the squats, even though it's been months since I last squatted, but I made myself stop at 135 lbs. The HPC&PP were a little tougher, but not too bad. By the time I got to the deadlifts things were feeling heavy. Here's what I did, after a quick warmup on each exercise:

Squats: 135 lbs, 3 sets of 5
Hang power clean & push press: 95 lbs, 3 sets of 5
Deadlifts: 225 lbs, 3 sets of 3

As soon as I got home I whipped up a breakfast scramble of 3 eggs, a little turkey sausage, about half a cup of ground venison, and a heap of broccoli, spinach and collard greens.

SCIENCE!

Ok, as promised I'm going to provide some links to the science behind the paleo program. In this first installment, I'd like you to take a look at this paper published in 2005. It's essentially an introduction to the notion of paleolithic nutrition, and why it's a major improvement over what most of the world currently eats. It's pretty accessible too, for the most part, and well worth a detailed reading. Here's the link:

Origins and evolution of the western diet: Health implications for the 21st century.
Am J Clin Nutr 2005;81:341-54.

Abstract:
There is growing awareness that the profound changes in the environment (eg, in diet and other lifestyle conditions) that began with the introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry 10000 y ago occurred too recently on an evolutionary time scale for the human genome to adjust. In conjunction with this discordance between our ancient, genetically determined biology and the nutritional, cultural, and activity patterns of contemporary Western populations, many of the so-called diseases of civilization have emerged. In particular, food staples and food-processing procedures introduced during the Neolithic and Industrial Periods have fundamentally altered 7 crucial nutritional characteristics of ancestral hominin diets: 1) glycemic load, 2) fatty acid composition, 3) macronutrient composition, 4) micronutrient density, 5) acid-base balance, 6) sodium-potassium ratio, and 7) fiber content. The evolutionary collision of our ancient genome with the nutritional qualities of recently introduced foods may underlie many of the chronic diseases of Western civilization.


When you're finished reading the article, reward yourself by lifting something heavy and eating some meat!

Good luck and happy foraging.

The Paleo Pentad

The Paleo Pentad is a name I just came up with for my list of 5 categories that encompass a well-rounded approach to paleo-fitness. These 5 areas should be a part of any balanced plan designed to improve one's health, performance, body composition and general well-being. I'll list them here with a brief description, and in later posts I will expand on the dirty details.

1. Eat a paleo diet. I already covered this to some degree in an earlier post, but basically it's this: eat plenty of fresh meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts and seeds. No grains, no dairy, no pre-packaged foods. For the most part, do your shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store.

2. Exercise like your ancestors. Lift heavy things for short periods once or twice a week. Run fast occasionally. Jump, bound and climb. When you're not engaged in short, intense activity you should spend plenty of time walking or hiking at a leisurely pace. Avoid prolonged aerobic or "cardio" exercises such as jogging or stair-stepping.

3. Sleep! You need to get plenty of sleep to let your body recover and repair itself, and to maximize the benefits of all the good eating and exercising. Short-changing yourself on sleep will undermine your efforts in a big way, but getting a good night's sleep every night will do wonders.

4. Get outside. Our ancestors spent a LOT of time in the great outdoors, getting plenty of sunshine and fresh air. Sun exposure is a primary source of vitamin D, and most people are deficient in this crucial micronutrient due in part to staying inside under artificial light. Get some sun every day if you can - it's good for your body and your mind.

5. Play. Spend some of your leisure time engaging in fun activities. Play a sport. Go to the park with your kids and do what they do - don't sit on the park benches with the other parents. Learn a new skill that engages your mind and body.


Obviously, each of these 5 categories covers a vast array of individual possibilities. In subsequent posts I hope to expand on these areas and provide details, examples and SCIENCE regarding each.

Good luck and happy foraging!

The Paleo Diet - So Easy Even a Caveman Can Do It

So what is the Paleo diet? Basically, it's the diet our ancestors thrived on for over 99% of our evolutionary history. These are the foods that were available in the environment humans occupied in paleolithic times, and over millions of years evolution honed our bodies and genetics to function optimally while consuming them. In a nutshell, it's the diet we are built to eat.

The paleo diet is also sometimes called the Hunter-Gatherer diet. Our foraging ancestors ate this diet, and hunter-gatherer societies today thrive on it. It consists of pre-agricultural foods, because those foods were introduced very recently in our evolutionary timeline. The processes of evolutionary adaptation can move slowly, and humans have not fully adapted to the consumption of neolithic foodstuffs that only appeared on our plates with the advent of agriculture. Yes, agriculture has been with us for around 10,000 years - and this sounds like a long time. But compared to the entire span of human evolution, it's a drop in the bucket.

This chart, from Dr. Loren Cordain's excellent Paleo Diet site, shows the relative time scales of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle v. the agricultural lifestyle.

As you can see, the 10,000 year history of agriculture is a tiny blip when compared to the 2 million years humans have subsisted on a hunting and gathering lifestyle. What this means to us is that our bodies and genetics have been fine-tuned over a very long time to functionally optimally on a paleolithic diet, and only recently have we made the shift to an agricultural eating pattern. Not coincidentally, this shift in eating patterns was accompanied by decrease in overall health and the introduction of new diseases. There is a growing mountain of research now telling us that many of the so-called "diseases of civilization" - obesity, diabetes, heart disease, various cancers - are part of the price we are paying for the dietary shift to agricultural foods. I will provide links to some of this research for those of you who like that sort of thing.

He Blinded Me With SCIENCE!

At this point I could completely geek-out Thomas Dolby style and bombard you with the science behind all this - and trust me, sooner or later it's going to happen. But for now I'm just going to tell you what following a paleo diet is like, and why you might want to do it.

Why go Paleo?

You mean other than the whole "avoiding disease" reason? Well, for one thing you will become leaner - and who doesn't want that? Following a paleo diet will change your body composition, increasing or maintaining your lean body mass while reducing body fat. Even in the absence of an exercise program, eating paleo will make you leaner. I can attest to this from personal experience - I switched to paleo eating without changing my exercise routine, and I lost fat while at the same time improving my workout performance. And it happened pretty quickly.
The amount of fat you lose and how quickly you lose it is in part dependent upon what your diet was like before you went paleo. If you're a donut, soda and pizza kind of person, switching to paleo will produce relatively rapid changes in the way you look, feel and perform. If you already eat a clean and lean diet, you will see results more slowly.

In addition to looking and performing better, you will likely FEEL better on a paleo program. I know I do. The thing about agricultural foods is that we have not fully adapted to them, so we tend to get a lot of sub-critical inflammation and other disorders from eating them. By sub-critical, I mean it's not going to kill you (right away) but you sure won't be firing on all cylinders on such a diet. Allergies, joint aches, intestinal issues, and a host of other annoying ailments have been linked to non-paleo foods. Oh yeah, and the big ones too - heart disease, diabetes, widespread obesity...the big killers in our society.

But more importantly you'll look good naked.

How Do I Do It?

So now you've seen some of the reasons why you might want to go paleo - now how do you do it? Well, it's not that hard - as the title of this blog entry states, even a caveman could do it. Actually, our ancestors did it because they had little choice in the matter - but those who thrived best on paleo foods left more offspring and gave us the genetic inheritance that will make us thrive on such a diet as well. But the plan is pretty simple.

What to eat:

Meat - beef, chicken, fish, pork. Grass-fed meat or wild game is best, but you can get by with the stuff you find in your neighborhood grocery store. Eggs count as meat.

Vegetables - lots and lots of veggies, of many varieties. Green and leafy is great, and root vegetables like carrots and turnips are good too.

Fruit - apples, oranges, bananas, and so on.

Nuts and berries - walnuts, almonds, pecans, and other tree nuts. Not peanuts, which are a legume rather than a true nut. All sorts of berries are good.

That's it. Meat, veggies, fruit, nuts, and berries - paleo in a nutshell. There's plenty of variety and nutrition available in those few categories, all you really need. The categories above are in order of how much they should contribute to your daily calorie intake, more or less. You should have a huge mound of veggies on your plate, but the calorie content of even a massive pile of veggies will typically be lower than that of a normal portion of meat.

What NOT to eat:

Grains - these are neolithic foods introduced with the advent of agriculture, and as such are not among the foods the human species is well-adapted to consume. They are nutritionally weak and are poor substitutes for meat and veggies. They are also associated with various diseases of civilization. More on this later.

Sugar - refined sugars and especially new frankenfoods like high fructose corn syrup. Our ancestors never ate that stuff, and now it's in the majority of packaged foods. Steer clear of packaged foods.

Dairy - milk, cheese and the various products made from them. Neolithic foods again, and ones which many people can't even digest properly. They can also be pretty potent allergens.

Legumes - beans, peas and peanuts. These neolithic foods are typically not even digestible, and occasionally toxic, unless processed in some way. Avoid them as much as possible.

Excess salt - yeah, it's bad for you. Surprise.


Now this is a radical departure from the Standard American Diet (SAD), but that's a GOOD thing. In reality, no one should be eating the SAD - it's no coincidence that obesity and diabetes have skyrocketed over the last few decades. The paleo diet is also pretty intuitive and flexible. I will post my meals in subsequent entries to give an idea of how it can be done. There are also a lot of great websites out there - just do a Google search for paleo recipes.

That's enough for now on the dietary aspects of the paleo plan. Good luck and happy foraging!

Welcome!

I started this blog to discuss my interests in paleo eating, Crossfit, exercise in general, and various other (mostly) related topics that strike my fancy.

I'll spend most of the time here discussing why I am doing the paleo thing, and offering suggestions as to how to get the most out of a paleo-style diet and exercise program. I'm not a medical professional, or a biochemist, or in any way an "expert" in the field. Any suggestions I may make are based on what I've read from those who really know what they're talking about, and are not meant to be taken as medical advice.

I do know that following the paleo lifestyle has had a huge positive impact on my fitness, performance, and general well-being. You may benefit from what I've already experienced, or you may be way ahead of me on the journey. Either way I welcome your input.

Thanks!
Win